This may bite you nonconsensually in the ass even if you or your spouse weren’t patrons. (Same thing with far less “sexy” data breaches, but this is a fairly gigantic one by any standard.)
A lot of people who never missed a mortgage payment or sold a dodgy credit default swap lost a ton of money in 2008. In fact, a lot of the people who lost money weren’t even citizens of the country where the worst of it went down. I’m not saying it’s the end of the world, but shit this big splashes.
Yeah, I wouldn’t mind seeing AM collapse but honestly, that sort of leak doesn’t feel good. Cheaters can be shit and people who want sugardaddies don’t hold a high amount of esteem to me, but treating their partners better/finding less codependent situations is the sort of thing that isn’t “learned” all at once, let alone that while I can’t conceive of any other use case, I’m not omniscient.
Fuck AM, but I don’t know about all of their users. If I’m going to judge a situation, it’s probably better to do so one individual/case at a time. And in this case, I imagine it’s none of my damn business.
He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking.
You’re going to have to explain how his/her schadenfreude is linked to those outcomes in any causal sense.
Are you impacted by the leaks?
I don’t think that’s fair. Personal information is personal information and it’s shitty that AM lost control of that information (and shitty that they required $$ to remove it in the first place, but that’s another story entirely). Simply because one might disagree with the activities of people using AM (that are not illegal, as far as I’m aware) doesn’t mean they deserve to be, in effect, doxxed.
Oh I agree the hacking is a crime and is ‘not good’. It’s possible to agree something is harmful and illegal while not feeling actual sympathy. But lying and deception are unethical, even when they’re legal. There is a reason it’s called cheating.
Marriage is a contract. The terms of the site are that it’s about breaking that contract. I’d like to know if my business partners, for instance, lie to their other business partners. I think that, as with insider traders and people who put cats in bins, these people do very much so deserve to be doxxed.
As would I in their shoes.
They like to play with fire, that’s all it really says about them.
You’re making a lot of assumptions. Assuming the people who signed up are actively using the service in any respect. Assuming that a subset of those users are actively communicating with intent to cheat. Assuming etc. etc. Are all 37 million people in that AM database cheaters and cheating? Maybe there are some who are lurking and get their jollies from reading the (possibly public within the site) communications? Maybe your email address is in that DB because I know and dislike you and I’m an asshat that way. Any nuance whatsoever falls by the wayside and if any of the released information can be traced to me (or be seen that way), then I’m a shitheel, and if not, then I’m not.
In the same context, I read a lot of books. On a wide variety of subjects. I own a copy of the Anarchists cookbook, Mein Kampf, the text of Osama Bin Laden’s writings. Does that make me an anarchist, a Nazi, or a terrorist?
I disagree. Membership to website X does not automatically equate to “I accept and believe and will follow everything this website is about.”
Edit: This is all guilt by association, the results of which (for whoever signed up on AM with real, actionable, personal information) will be likely harassment or worse.
“Marriage” is not a monolithic thing with only one meaning to all parties.
I agree to the phrasing of AM’s marketing that it applies to deceptive partners and women looking for a “sugar daddy” or whatnot.
The site as actually used? I don’t know what exceptions exist, and my ignorance suggests that I don’t know if every single person deserves exposure. Besides that “deserving exposure” does not mean that everyone deserves the double-humiliation including those cheated upon exposed to the nation to be a laughingstock.
Fuck the hackers, and fuck AM. This is not a merciful act, this is not charity, this is not hacktivism.
There are a lot of marriages that are quite open/not monogamous but don’t appear that way to the public cause we get our panties in a knot over it for some reason. Just because one is getting tail on the side does not automatically equate to cheating as long as both spouses are cool with it who cares.
Me personally, I barely got time/energy for keeping up with my wife and work and family and have no clue how I could finagle in a fling even it was an allowed thing.
Hi if you’re reading, Mrs Tobin!
I already clarified I don’t think the hacking was ethical. Not that I have any power over this either way.
ETA: Not to you personally: It seems many people equate cheating with polyamory. Ashley Madison is not a polyamory site. Every person I know who is actually in a poly relationship would be insulted to be equated with covert, cheating spouses. From what I see in their lifestyle, successful polyamory requires a shitload of open communication, sensitivity and consideration of others, none of which AM is promoting.
Huh?
I didn’t say s/he caused bad events, I said s/he might yet suffer bad events from this, schadenfreude notwithstanding, personal innocence w/r/t ashleymadison.com notwithstanding. So might I. So might you. Just as it’s fairly likely we all left 2008 poorer than we came into it, our personal good credit histories and excellent moralities notwithstanding.
I guess I should stand on principle and refuse to tell you whether my name and credit card number are among the 37,000,000, but no, they’re not, may the hackers out me next if I’m lying. Heck, I don’t even think my wife is a member, or so she’d have me believe.
But while we’re bickering, I’d say that
Marriage is a contract.
is a statement roughly equal to “marriage is a holy covenant between one man and one woman” in terms of its generalizability–not that there aren’t hundreds of millions of people who’d agree with both statements.
I mean, I can’t imagine why consensual poly people of any gender would flock to the trainwreck that is AM (and especially after this), but I guess it’s a pre-set people who don’t care about “marriage” and don’t want anything other than casual dating/sex?
Yeah, this isn’t for the “Ethical Slut” crowd, but people I’ve known who were advocates of the book weren’t all put together responsibly themselves. Yet another reason why I’d prefer to “judge” persons on an individual level (or preferably mind my own damn business and avoid having to make any unnecessary and generally gossipy distinctions that don’t apply to my own relationship.
Well there you have a valid point. 
My point was that it’s rather unkind to have no sympathy for people who’s personal information has been released into the wild, to be used and abused by anyone with an internet connection, simply because it’s coming from AM.
Ashley Madison do not cater to polyamory. They advertize specifically to people who are married in the most typical definition (i.e. committed to one person) and want to have an affair. Granted, polyamory is often used as an excuse for cheating- much like some sexually abusive people may refer to their behaviours as being ‘into BDSM’- but disregard the actual lifestyle an openness needed for positive polyamorous relations to work.
I do have friends in a polyamorous relationship and they are extremely honest, open, caring people (probably the reason why their relationship/s has/ve been lasting for decades). They wouldn’t dream of deceiving or hurting their partners- any of them. I am exclusively monogamous, but I can see that even though their definition of marriage varies from the most conventional one, their understanding of committment and respect does not. They don’t simply check out of being honest and sensitive to other people’s needs and expectations just by deciding to be poly.
Yeah, that was meant for the thread, not for you; sorry. I’ve edited.
It’s not the ideal venue, but the vast majority of “unicorns” who would be willing to be a casual play partner with zero interest in relationship material are probably not easy to find. So who knows?
The site is objectively douchey in tone, but I don’t know everybody’s angle and if I’m slightly empathetic, I can imagine that several persons out of 27 million (much less real non-bot or male/female filler accounts of course) might be understandable exceptions to the douche-rule.
Perhaps someone going through the actual process of a divorce may just want some company, chaste or not, and not have to go through a public dating site and have that matter visible to their spouse to interfere with the paperwork / custody?
Even if a person has a shitty day and is a shitty person, if they don’t follow through with anything and their account is not deleted due to AM policy for “deleted accounts”, they don’t deserve to have the thoughtcrime inflicted upon their family.
