This is how ridiculously easy Ashley Madison is to use

Ashley Madison may be in shambles, but the thirst is still very, very real.

One would assume, in the aftermath of the historic data dump that exposed millions of users, the infidelity site would be a ghost town. Not so! I signed up for an account (Dear husband: This was not my idea) to see what I could see. After three days in the bowels of Ashley Madison, a few things became clear:

Lesson 1: Making a profile is almost criminally easy, sort of hilarious

First of all, if you are going to creep on an affair site, I suggest you get yourself a fake e-mail address. Armed with this key piece of information, My first task was to select what sort of situation I was in for. Say what you will about AM, they are LGBT inclusive: If you’re a male seeking a male or female seeking female, you don’t even need to specify your relationship status. I chose “Attached Female seeking Males,” which was my first lie of many.

After choosing a username (more on those later) and a greeting, I was prompted to select from a list of “limits,” which is tantalizingly vague. What, for instance, is the difference between “Whatever excites me” and “Anything goes?” Not wanting to promise too much, I chose the latter.

Next was the main event, the profile picture. Pictures are key in online dating sites, even on adultery-themed ones where, I was realizing, absolutely anyone could just sign up and wade through all of your shirtless bathroom selfies.

Anyway, if I was going to commit to this, I had to have an actual picture, and I wasn’t going to subject a random Google Image search result to the shame. Artist’s rendition, it was.

If you’re looking for true discretion, don’t get on a dating site and post giant pictures of your face. JK! Ashley Madison has totally got you. Once I uploaded my picture, I was offered some disguises: Some masks, a black bar and a few blur options. It is really alarming how few people on the site choose to use these, especially the masks. So sexy! So Christian Grey. If I ran Ashley Madison, the whole place would look like Venetian Carnivale.

Looks good.

“Tell us more about you,” the affair robot now coos. “Let the men on Ashley Madison know what brought you here.” Time for more lies.

It’s important to note the background of this page had a variety of stock image men (some with sexy masks) awaiting your carnal attentions. They are just moments from interacting with you. They are, I assure you, not actual Ashley Madison users.

Lesson 2: People just post pictures and private information about themselves willy-nilly

Getting from landing page to man-ding page took about five minutes. Once I was done creating a profile, the wall of attractive stock photos vanished. I was then greeted with pages and pages of hopeful suitors in my chosen area. About half of the profiles had pictures. Dudes smiling in the pool, smiling on the beach, smiling while flexing various muscles, pictures that one can imagine may also exist on their Facebook pages, just as plain as day. “Were there naughty pics?” several people asked. Not that I saw at first, but the more intimate functionalities of Ashley Madison allow this to happen.

Aside from the alarmingly candid photos, the usernames are an absolute work of art. One would think you would want to be as non-descript as possible on a cheating site, but that logic has escaped “BrownHaired[CityName]TallDude1985″ or “[FirstName][LastInitial][NameOfFootballTeam].” Others got straight to the point. “Porn,” “sex,” and laudatory references to male anatomy were common username themes. Don’t know what “lonelypornlover69″ is trying to achieve, but who am I to judge a man’s identity? (However, I may live the rest of my life regretting not going for “FILTHYAFRICAN777*.”)

At this point, I had provided only a handful of information, all of it fake, yet I was already given access to an alarming amount of details about guys looking for…what, exactly? It didn’t take long to find out.

*All usernames mentioned are slightly altered

Lesson 3: Communication is nearly primal and, surprise! You are sending messages whether you like it or not

Like many dating sites, Ashley Madison has a mailbox where users can receive messages, photo keys (more on this later) and winks. Within minutes, I had gotten my first message. Hooray, I was desired!

Oh, OK. Well. The man who sent this message, by the way, was allegedly 62 years old. I listed my fake profile age as 30. He included a picture of himself on the beach.

I got a few messages within an hour or so, which was curious and a little sad to me. I posted a cartoon picture and only filled out the bare minimum of the profile in a specifically off-putting way. I hadn’t even gotten around to indicating whether I liked strip poker or not! (Everyone on this site likes strip poker). One can guess that some of the missives were just copy+pastes these guys sent to everyone — casting a wide net, yeah? But a few were specific enough. “Love the football reverence [sic,] one read. “How are you doing?”

Then I noticed that my “Sent” folder was suspiciously full.

Oh. Oh man. Looks like Ashley Madison wasted no time in nudging me into the waiting man mass.

As a reminder, I specified NOTHING about the type of man I was looking for (no one). “Someone just like you,” in this case, literally means anyone. For someone legitimately using this site, exploratory messages like this could be a nifty little feature. It did, however, sort of blow up my spot as a creepy cartoon bystander. No wonder the fish were biting, someone had baited my hook!

Lesson 4: There’s a very specific commerce at play

Looking at the Ashley Madison inbox is the first sign that there are several layers to interactions on the site. As a woman, I didn’t have to pay for anything. Men, however, have to pay in “credits” to communicate with others on the site. Did that mean the lovely grandfather-type had to pay to send me a single-word message? It’s unclear. There are different plans for credits and membership access, and I can’t spend my time worrying about whether “hotandready4urightnow” shelled out some dollars to talk to a cartoon face. It does appear, however, that users can highlight their profiles and flag their messages as “priority,” which probably costs some credits/money as well.

The way Ashley Madison seems to deal with pictures is very interesting. Members can send other members “keys” to their “private showcases,” which contain albums of pictures which allow you to further decide whether you’ll go ahead and play strip poker with them or whatever. This is, in theory, a pretty decent way to ensure a little bit of privacy, because users have to give permission. However, I, a cartoon maskface, got about 20 private key requests. (Users can also revoke keys, which happened a lot and made me feel weirdly bad.)

By the way, there was definitely some nudity in this section, but you had to allow the “rated” photos to be shown in order to see them. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, so I let it happen. I have regrets.

Lesson 5: Everyone wants to play strip poker

If you choose to fill out your whole profile, you get an array of amusing lists to choose from. Fun! They are as follows:

Preferences and Encounters I am open to: These range from mild (“Kissing,” “Gentleness”) to unconventional: “Experimenting with Tantric Sex,” Being submissive/slave.” My personal favorites were “Bubble Bath For 2,” and “Erotic tickling.”

What turns me on: These are your typical “type” descriptors. Maybe you want a “Don Juan,” perhaps? Or someone who “Has a Secret Love Nest?” If you’re seeking a “Father Figure,” boy howdy are you in luck.

What I am looking for: THIS is why everyone likes strip poker! Before I found this section, I just thought everyone was undergoing some very bizarre episode of groupthink. But no, it’s an option, right next to “Shopping for Sexy Clothes/Lingerie” and “Skinny Dipping.”

Lesson 6: There are standards

When I revisited my profile the morning after I created it, I was disappointed to see my photo had been removed. Apparently all profile photos need to be approved by the Ashley Madison team, which explains why there is no immediate nudity.

“We may ‘rate,’ decline or reassign your photo from public to private during our approval process,” the Guidelines field reads. Presumably, this means someone at Ashley Madison has to look at pictures of people’s junk all day.

“Photos may not contain minors, personal contact information and must reasonably depict a true image of the person described in the Ad Profile,” the warnings continue.

Drat.

Lesson 7: The site is designed for constant use.

If your settings allow for it and you are actually here to party, you could feasibly hang around on Ashley Madison all day. A chat box constantly updates you with who is online and available. Even in search mode, you can see which man offerings are online. Again, it does’t cost anything for a female user to message a male user. It also appears, outside of the Ashley Madison Affair Bot messaging people without asking you, you have complete control over the experience. You can block people (yay!) and even create lists of profiles you like. This experience may not be as promising for a male using the site, since by some counts 90- 95% of the profiles on AM are dudes.

Lesson 8: There are a lot of single guys on here

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Lesson 9: People will rail against logic and social mores, will risk their reputations, relationships and sanity, just to find a little strange.

This is no revelation, but seeing how people operated in what is clearly not a discreet, anonymous forum was kind of terrifying. Within a few hours, someone had sent me their honest-to-God phone number and e-mail address. Many profiles included full pictures AND job descriptions AND specific locations. There is no telling what someone could do with a reverse image search on some of these photos. Sure, plenty of the profiles didn’t have pictures but it’s not hard to imagine with a wink or two, you’d get a private key and full access to whatever they have to offer. Ashley Madison offers discretion at several junctures, but a large number of the users I encountered completely ignored any level of caution.

It was an unsettling reminder that people, when desperate or lonely enough, will thrust their crotches blindly into the Internet over and over again for even the most infinitesimal possibility of human sexual or emotional contact. That is sad. Ashley Madison is sad. Just go to a bar or something.

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