Ahhh, dating. It鈥檚 an exciting, romantic and surprising time of our lives, full of first attractions, flirty talk, gifts, and of course, talking to computer programs created to sound like sexy, available, married women.
Wait, what?
Yeah, so do you want a big laugh for today? Apparently, that Ashley Madison website that married people would go to for an affair, wasn鈥檛 exactly being honest about the lusty married women using its cheating site to connect. And by 鈥渨asn鈥檛 exactly being honest鈥� I mean totally conning their straying male clientele into thinking they were talking to any actual women.聽
According to a story on Gizmodo.com, and covered by every news site worldwide, the Ashley Madison site had an army of 鈥渇embots鈥� or computer programs that would flirt with male users, in an attempt to get them to spend more money to answer emails, send e-gifts and flirt further.聽
Hilarious, right?
I mean, it鈥檚 hard not to laugh at the irony of men trying to be deceitful toward their wives, being deceived by a website of fake fembots instead. If there is such a thing as Internet karma鈥� that鈥檚 the perfect case right there. And, I鈥檓 copyrighting the term 鈥淚nternet karma鈥� now just in case it takes off.聽
According to some reports from users, once they paid the premium fee to upgrade their Ashley Madison accounts so they could answer the onslaught of interested women, nobody answered the follow-up flirts or emails. Some of the gents caught on that they were flirting with 鈥檅ots, and demanded their money back. The response from the company was that for any charge disputes it would have to send all relevant documents to the user鈥檚 home address. That means anyone wanting their money back was essentially faced with the prospect of having their cheating ways exposed at home.聽
Of course, they didn鈥檛 need to worry about being outed as an adulterer, or hopeful-but-destined-to-be-unsuccessful-adulterer as the case turned out, because hackers broke into the site and exposed users鈥� account info onto the Internet last year anyway, causing much embarrassment, divorces, and tragically, at least one reported suicide.聽
The site鈥檚 parent company, Avid Media, is now being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the U.S. and is also facing lawsuits from customers involved in the data hack.聽
But the company is pushing on, hiring a new CEO to rebrand Ashley Madison from a cheating site to a general-dating-for-everyone site. They鈥檝e also said they don鈥檛 use fembots anymore.
鈥淭he company is truly sorry for how people鈥檚 lives and relationships may have been affected by the criminal theft of personal information,鈥� said CEO Rob Segal in a news release issued by Avid Media. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why we鈥檙e charting a new course and making some big changes.鈥�
It remains to be seen if the company can regain the trust of users after these latest admissions. It should be noted, however, that even after the massive data hack and subsequent publicity, memberships on Ashley Madison supposedly increased. Nobody said cheaters were all that smart, I guess.聽
