Among all the sexual fetishes and would-be-cheaters uncovered in the Ashley Madison leak, there is one big reveal: Ashley Madison is, and always was, a terrible and very expensive way of having an affair.
Your Ashley Madison-using partner is probably not having an affair on you – at least, not using this website.
How do we know this? Because the Ashley Madison data reveals the gender of each account registered.
According to a Fairfax Media analysis of that data, there were 5,055,687 female accounts, and 31,343,429 male accounts.
Ashley Madison's leadership has repeatedly claimed the ratio of males to females in the key age bracket, 30 to 45, is close to 50:50. The leaked data has exposed that claim as at the very least tenuous: 84 per cent of all accounts on the website, worldwide, were male.
We also know that as the result of a lawsuit in Canada. Allegations from a former employee of Ashley Madison show that she was paid to create hundreds of fake profiles of females, to pad the website's numbers.
Extraordinarily, it actually emerged in 2013 that Ashley Madison had a service called 'Ashley's Angels' that would send fake computer-generated messages to users to make them feel like real women wanted to talk to them. Ashley Madison actually disclosed this in its terms and conditions.
Bio data reveals widespread prostitution
Fairfax Media has also opened up data files containing the 'seeking' fields that users entered when they were advertising for an affair.
It's clear from this data that – despite Ashley Madison's attempts to ban sex workers from the site – many users knew what they were getting themselves in to.
A search for "pay" or "money" brings up such comments as: "Good time guaranteed or your money back"; "Looking for man that is willing to pay $25 for camshow"; "Pay per play $150 30 minutes".
For years, consumer review websites have been pointing to exactly this conclusion. Treat them as the canary in the coalmine.
"Nothing but fake profiles luring you in by messages and pretty girls but sometimes profiles that look real, to only try and lead you to another unsecure website to hand over a monthly subscription fee and your credit card details to watch porn," writes one reviewer.
"Keep your money and stay away from this site. The whole setup of this site is to continually get payments using fake profiles to fleece more money out of you. Without doubt the most fraudulent dating site on the net," writes another. No surprise the website averages 1.4 stars out of 5.
That's not to say that many of the accounts on Ashley Madison are clearly legitimate in their adulterous intent. In fact, some of the users' requests are quite sad – such as the gentleman who writes "been in a relationship for 7 years, just want to feel something".
And it does appear there were some real women on the website. It was just very difficult, and very expensive, for the several male reporters who tried to find them. Real, legitimate, affair-seeking female users were as rare as hen's teeth, and were crowded out by sex workers and fake accounts.
It was very, very difficult to have an affair on Ashley Madison - and worse, it was very expensive.
A website built to make money – off men
Ashley Madison's entire business model was built around telling men they could have an affair, and then charging them for that.
Men can create a profile for free, but to initiate contact with the female profiles you need to pay. An introductory pack cost $49, elite was $149, and for $259 you could purchase an 'affair guarantee'.
And they made a lot of money. Avid Life Media, the company that owns Ashley Madison, reported revenues of $115 million on a total company value of $1 billion in 2014.
Women never had to pay.
Really, we shouldn't be surprised by the fact that the vast majority of users were men. Not when Ashley Madison's entire marketing effort – and their entire business-model – was so male-focussed.
How many women are going to sign up to a website that largely advertises on hardcore pornography sites, using photos of masked naked women?
Indeed, how many are going to sign up when Ashley Madison advertises itself like (such as) this, in an ad published in the New York Metro newspaper.
Ashley Madison was never going to allow you to have an affair, and we shouldn't be surprised by that. The only real surprise revealed in the hack was how gullible so many people were.
