As we all enjoy the steady drip of humiliated conservatives who subscribed to Ashley Madison, ponder this map that someone made of subscribers to the site. Red dots represent locations with more than 85% male accounts, yellow signifies a slightly less male-tilted constituency.
Ha ha, there’s Pittsburgh. I bet I know people. I can also see Pakistan, Afghanistan, central Africa, the middle East and in general a whole lot of places where an affair has next to no consequences for a man but even the suspicion routinely gets a woman killed. Many of those little yellow dots practice honor killings.
The site claims almost forty million subscribers. If fifteen percent are women and half those accounts are fake, that still adds up to a bit over two million women. By the looks of it many live in India, a country still struggling with an epidemic (less generously, a tradition) of mostly unpunished violence against women.
This breach will hurt a number of people who may not be precisely innocent, but who did not commit anything like a capital crime.
Amir Khalid
Over on the right-hand edge of the map, there’s a dot in Kuala Lumpur. It’s not me, I swear.
beltane
There is a swath in Europe running from Amsterdam through Germany and Switzerland to Milan that looks like it’s all men. I wonder why that is.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
You more of a Tinder guy?
Archon
Why would a straight man join something like Ashley Madison when 85+ percent of the people on it are men?
Is there something I’m missing, because that’s the sausagefest of all sausagefests.
Peale
@Baud: He just messages people with cutie hottie pictures on UrbanSpoon until they agree to take him to dinner.
Omnes Omnibus
@Archon: Because it promises to introduce them to women who are willing to have sex with them.
Peale
@Archon: AM didn’t advertise that most of the profiles of women were fake. From the male user’s perspective, he saw a screen full of eligible women. He wouldn’t see the eligible men.
Keith G
@Archon: Because hope and or desperation springs eternal. As often does delusion.
Baud
@Peale:
That’s a thing?
(Do the messages say “eat me”?)
Omnes Omnibus
@Peale: That works?
Germy Shoemangler
Am I missing something? The only conservative I heard about was Duggar the younger. Have other conservatives been caught?
Omnes Omnibus
@Germy Shoemangler: Louisiana state GOP party official. But there will be others. It is known.
Germy Shoemangler
@Omnes Omnibus: Ahh, so the trickle begins…
kc
Leaving aside the “we all enjoy” bit, what steady drip? I’ve only heard one conservative name, and it was a reality show goober who had already lost whatever political influence he had.
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus: And his excuse was that he was doing oppo.
jl
Since some of the ID info was never verified, some of the dots are totally fake, and implicate people who may not even have been aware that the site existed.
I am curious whether there is any evidence that anything ever happened between two live people in the ‘meat space’? Did two live people ever actually meet and, I dunno, go so far as to shake hands due to this thing? Or was it a scam from start to finish?
Peale
@Omnes Omnibus: @Baud: I have no idea. I do think that any social media app could be turned into a hookup app with enough time and effort, though.
Gindy51
Does this map coordinate with viagra/cialis sales?
kc
Are there aspiring cheaters scattered across the oceans, or do my eyes deceive me?
Joel
Not getting out of the boat. I don’t care to know about the private lives of my peers. Rubbernecking is not a good look on people.
Steeplejack (phone)
@beltane:
That’s where all the al Qaeda sleeper agents are.
kc
@Mike J:
Sam Biddle (Gawker) gave the excuse that he was doing research.
MomSense
Ugh just found out that friends are getting divorced. I’ve got their youngest (of 4) this weekend while they sort things out before telling the kids. I think finding out about an AM account would have been better than how this went down.
It’s going to rain all weekend so I’m thinking movies, set up the tent in the backyard, and lots of cookies out of the oven.
mainmata
Actually, by far the majority of the yellow dots are coming from India not Pakistan and, though hard to be sure at the scale of the image not much, if any, from Afghanistan. Even in the Middle East, it’s pretty much only the Levant, mainly Israel by the looks of it.
Peale
@jl: I think its unlikely. I can imagine that a lot of men would get so frustrated by the non-responses from messages that they sent to fake profiles that eventually they would either give up or just start messaging everyone they saw – in which case if you were actually a live woman, you would just get barraged with angry message after angry message. Not much room for passion developing on that site.
SatanicPanic
I could have sworn Ashley Madison used to advertise on the Rush Limbaugh show. I’d Google it, but I’d rather not
Germy Shoemangler
Josh blamed you licentious liberals with your free internet porn.
beltane
@kc: They’re on their yachts. Unlikely any prospective hookups will swim out to meet them.
The more I read about this site, the more it looks like a total scam.
SatanicPanic
@Peale:
From what I hear this could describe every dating site
beltane
@Steeplejack (phone): If they’re on AM, they are probably sleeping alone.
sm*t cl*de
So catfishing with fake women subscribers has been outsourced to call-centres in India and Indonesia.
TAKING OUR JOBS.
Omnes Omnibus
@Peale:
Passion? No, cold calculation. My guess is that many of the actual women on the site were escorts.
trollhattan
@Germy Shoemangler:
Free? That sh*t costs, man!
beltane
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, unless Russian men were boycotting the site. Not many dots there, but whatever dots there are happen to be yellow.
Germy Shoemangler
Interview with the folks who did the Ashley Madison dump, via boingboing
They explain their motivation…
Peale
Oddly, UrbanSpoon disappeared into merger disintegration a month or so ago. Had no idea that it passed on. I guess we’re all on Yelp now.
beltane
@Germy Shoemangler: There motivation isn’t exactly clear (maybe they are not native English speakers) but it seems to have something to do with concerns over human trafficking.
wasabi gasp
Sheeshalink!
Peale
@beltane: No one seems to have elaborated that human trafficking link in the media. I’m not certain what that is about.
gelfling545
It may just be cultural ignorance on my part but I’m having trouble envisioning too many cases in which a woman who had to fear for her life due to sexual indiscretion would also be allowed to have the freedom not only to register for such a service but pay for it. My greater fear would be that some of these women may not have actually been the ones to choose their participation.
beltane
@Peale: The Boing Boing piece was very garbled.
Steve from Antioch
@Archon:
Supposedly there were lots of fake profiles and chat bots to make men think there were many more women.
Schlemazel
I’m gonna take a half-assed wild guess based on what I know about internet phishing: all those yellow dots you see in Central Asia? Guys working scams posing as women to bait the suckers in. The only thing that makes me doubt my suspicion is no mass of yellow in Ukraine or Belarus. Those are hotspots for this sort of game also but maybe they are doing OK on their other gigs & gave this work a pass.
redshirt
Lot of “women” working in India.
beltane
@Schlemazel: Maybe the pros in Ukraine and Belarus had concerns with the site’s vulnerability to hackers.
Culture of Truth
Ah but the Sony hack was all in good fun!
jl
@Schlemazel: @redshirt:
I don’t have time or interest to look for the source of data for that map, but given that we don’t know what data were used to make that map, and the scam site did not verify some of the ID info, no reason to believe any particular set of dots represent actual live humans actually using the site.
Peale
Hmmmm. Now that I think about it. How many of the women were fake bots, and how many were actually men looking for their Manti Te’os and whatnot. Maybe there were actually only 5 women.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
Um, what’s Tinder? (he said innocently.)
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Hook up app. Like Uber, but for dating.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@jl:
Omnes seems to have the same opinion as me — I suspect the majority of the women on the site were hookers trolling for clients, not bored housewives looking for a little strange on the side. That theory may also explain the “human trafficking” concerns the hackers claim they had about the site.
redshirt
Why no China?
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
What’s dating?
Oatler.
The world is in thrall to three ancient middle eastern sex cults and who can we turn to? India’s Hindus? No, they’re burning witches.
EthylEster
Nevada seems empty of dots.
Is this the result of legalized prostitution?
dr. bloor
It reads like a topographical map of fools with money.
DC/NoVa appears to be particularly densely populated with same.
Timurid
@redshirt:
Desi to wed; Ashley to bed
Amir Khalid
Ashley Madison’s looking more and more like an Internet fraud operation. Does that mean that American civil servants and military personnel who opened AM accounts with adulterous intent might be off the hook?
Jack the Second
@EthylEster: Nevada is also just pretty empty.
Roger Moore
@redshirt:
They probably blocked it at the Great Firewall. They’re a pretty uptight bunch, so I can easily imagine them blocking access to a site that only serves immoral purposes.
kc
@beltane:
Wait, I thought they were pissed because they claimed AM was ripping off male users and hardly any users were women.
Now they’re claiming they did it to combat human trafficking?
They’re full of shit.
beltane
@kc: It wouldn’t sound good if they admitted they hacked the site because there wasn’t enough human trafficking.
Mike G
In breaking news…
MURKA, FUCK YEAH!!!
France train shooting: Americans overpower gunman
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34023361
French media said the passengers who overpowered the suspect were US Marines who had heard the man loading a weapon in a toilet cubicle and confronted him when he came out.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@kc:
AFAICT, they hacked the site to steal credit card numbers and came up with a bunch of self-righteous reasons as a smokescreen.
beltane
@Mike G: That is very cool.
srv
Perhaps not capital, but probably mortal.
Moral behavior has fallen so far that I have encountered more than one divorcee this summer openly using tinder in front of their (and others) children.
If Satan didn’t create the internet, it certainly is a tool in her toolbelt.
David Koch
The hate other people’s “socialism” but they love their “socialism”
Calouste
@jl: Josh Duggar admitted to such. IIRC, the site has been around since 2001 or so. If no one had success in that time, it wouldn’t have had that many users. People would have been able to do a quick search and read complaints about the lack of success. Although, as mentioned above, it wouldn’t be surprising if a significant portion of the women on the site were either pros or looking for a sugardaddy.
dr. bloor
@Mike G: I was led to believe that the only thing that could stop a bad guy with a gun was a good guy with a gun.
Or: I look forward to all the wing nut posts bemoaning the feminization of our armed forces for apprehending the guy rather than turning him into a giant blood-and-gray-matter stain in the bathroom.
David Koch
ElvisTrump impersonators descend on AlabamaDavid Koch
Trump triggers Nazi Woodstock
beltane
@David Koch: But wait, we’ve been told the Confederate flag has nothing to do with white supremacy. These people must be mistaken.
Snarki, child of Loki
Is that a dot I see on Diego Garcia? How very strange.
Mike G
@dr. bloor:
Exactly. It’s UnPossible that they stopped an armed terrorist given that they weren’t allowed to carry guns there, and what were red-blooded US Marines doing setting foot in the the Fox-despised punching bag nation of France?
So many dilemmas for the tiny wingnut mind to handle.
Chris
@Mike G:
Pretty sure they’ll say “ha! Marines rule! Show those limp-dicked frogs how it’s done!” and leave it at that.
Actually, I’m semi-expecting to see a slew of “if there’d been Americans at Charlie Hebdo, the bad guys would’ve been down before they’d fired a shot.”
beltane
@Mike G: And they weren’t just in France, they were riding a French train, rubbing shoulders with French people, some of whom may have been well-groomed and stylishly dressed.
Baud
@David Koch:
But they hate other people more.
daveNYC
Peeps are aware that the data dump includes users of web sites for facilitating covert homosexual hookups, right?
That is going to get people right flucking dead. No number of red faced Duggars are going to make up for that.
rikyrah
Parents’ Ceremony Serves Up Elements of ‘Morehouse Gospel’
ATLANTA — For the previous 364 days, the carved wooden chest rested unobtrusively atop a bookshelf in a dean’s office here at Morehouse College. Then, on a recent Wednesday afternoon, the dean, Dr. Lawrence E. Carter Sr., reclaimed the vessel for its annual duty as the repository of Morehouse’s hope and history.
The coffer is formally known as the Thurman Chest, so named because one of Morehouse’s most illustrious graduates, the African-American theologian and civil rights advocate Howard Thurman, bought it in India in 1936. He had journeyed there to learn the concepts of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience directly from Gandhi.
In 1981, after Dr. Thurman’s death and cremation, his widow, Sue, placed his ashes in the chest. When she died in 1996, both their remains were interred in a monument outside the campus chapel here.
The chest, with its evocative image of boatmen navigating between two shores, then took on another purpose, as the centerpiece of Morehouse’s Parents’ Parting Ceremony. By the time evening descended on Aug. 12, the chest had been opened and placed at the entrance to the chapel as the parents of Morehouse’s 679 freshmen entered to take their seats.
Fathers, mothers and couples paused at the chest and dropped in a card or two, on which they had penned their hopes for their sons at this all-male school. Greg Olaniran wrote that his son, Christian, should not be afraid to be himself. Yolanda Coronel wished that her son, Sebastian, would fulfill his dreams.
Aline Williams and her husband, Dereck Caldwell, had not expected to be there. They had an evening flight back to Chicago. Or they did until Morehouse’s provost learned they would have to miss the parting ritual, and paid to book them a flight the next morning.
So there they stood on the chapel plaza — Mr. Caldwell, a manager for a payroll company, and Ms. Williams, a caterer — writing out their visions for their son Konnor. To feel a sense of brotherhood. To have a spirit of service. To become a whole person. Then, the couple moved toward their seats as three African drummers led the freshmen in white shirts and crimson ties past the Thurman crypt.
………………………………
In the annals of African-American history, and specifically of historically black colleges and universities, there is indeed a proper noun known as the Morehouse Man. These men have included not only Dr. Thurman and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but also Julian Bond, who died on Aug. 15; the director Spike Lee; the civil rights lawyer James Madison Nabrit Jr.; and innumerable politicians, scholars, scientists, ministers and executives.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/22/us/parents-ceremony-serves-up-elements-of-morehouse-gospel.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=1
Betty
@Mike G: I saw on France 24 that one Marine was shot and the other stabbed so they really are heroes. The one shot was badly hurt but is stable. They identified the sound of the guy loading his clip while in the bathroom and went on alert, then tackled him when he camme out. Thr French are deeply grateful as it could have been a bloodbath. Brave guys.
JPL
@Betty: Definitely. I’m going to put on France 24 now.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty: I expect that they will both receive the Navy and Marine Corp Medal.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@rikyrah:
King was admitted to Morehouse at the age of 15 — I had forgotten (or didn’t know) that he was a bit of a child prodigy.
David Koch
The lovely Ellen Page grilled Ted Cruz over LGBT rights at the Iowa Fair
Master debater Raphael Eduardo Cruz punked out.
Big tough Harvard debater frighten by an actor.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Atlanta’s first Black Mayor – Maynard Jackson – went at 16.
Mike G
@beltane:
(Translated to Wingnut) In summary, two US Marines, who were inexplicably riding public transport in the Fox-despised Marxist surrenderist hellhole of France, took down an armed terrorist despite being stripped of their God-given right to bear arms. Having been wounded in the incident, they will receive “socialist healthcare” paid for by the French Government.
jl
@Calouste: Thanks. I thought the Duggar scandal was just about the site dump including his info.
zoot
how is that possible? Who are all the men affairing with?
Let’s say 15% of the men and woman are gay. That leaves 70% of the subscribers as male doing those 13% women or almost 29 million men doing 5.1 million woman or more than 5.5 men for every woman. Good for the girls, not so hot for the guys.
Nick
I’m sure this has been said up-thread, but your last sentence is fucked up. People who have sex with other willing people because they want to are guilty of nothing.