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Comment by Loughla | Hacker News Reader

This is just another example of the massive loneliness epidemic in today's world.

If there is enough value in basic chat bots for the people using that site, this is a sad state of affairs (pun fully intended).

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It really doesnt have anything to do with a loneliness epidemic.

There wasn’t enough value in the basic chat bots, the idiots using the site considered that basic chat as a prelude to IRL sex with a real woman, a goal tempting enough to presumably blinker them to how basic the chat was. All of which is to say: no value, 100% scam.

But a low effort scam, back then chat gpt was not a thing. They could at least connect the user among each other, censor/cutting conversations as soon as they reveal ones gender .. basically grindr, but with a scam on top.

This would be more obviously fake than a chatbot: the way women respond on dating apps is very different from the way men do, and would be noticeable instantly, whereas a few scripted chat bot lines may not be.

A low effort chatbot is an accurate representation of the type of responses most men are used to from women on dating sites. This is not a misogynistic comment or snark, but a result of the fact that women tend to have a large number of people messaging them.

You may well be correct but I don’t think it’s that relevant here. Dating sites were much less prevalent when AM was at its peak and presumably the average user married (and left the dating pool) years before that peak, even.

I just don’t buy that there were that many AM users thinking “this checks out with my prior experience in dating sites so it’s plausible”. They just weren’t thinking critically at all.

I disagree- it will also check out with their real world experience. Most men are used to women being cagey, aloof, and showing low interest in real life. They will assume they either need to try harder to interest her, or that she is playing “hard to get.”

Your precious comment might not have been misogynistic but you’re rapidly approaching it here. As a man I can’t say I am “used to women being cagey and aloof”. There are plenty of cagey and aloof people out there in the world, I don’t see anything gender specific about it.

Just like above, this is not a negative statement about women but about understanding how their experience is different. Women are used to being approached and pursued by men that they usually aren’t interested in, and might even be dangerous. A positive response would invite more unwanted attention. An attractive women in a crowded public space is often experiencing men trying to initiate some type of interaction (often aggressively so) every few minutes.

Men’s experience with women also varies a lot depending on how they look, and their social skills among other things.

I think at least everyone can agree to a less controversial statement: The user experience of a (heterosexual) dating site is vastly different for men than it is for women, just as the experience of IRL courting is vastly different for man than it is for women.

presumably if the chat bot was too erudite that would be off-putting to the man

In other words, the same value as porn or romance novels, just without knowing it. But those things do have value given that people pay for them knowingly.

No. Did you read the GP? When you buy a romance novel, you don't think a real life person is going to come out of it and romance you. It's a transparent fiction.

Yes, but porn and romance novel buyers know what they pay for. The AM users did not.

fantasy is fantasy, it's what humans do. it's not a key element of a story that "this isn't real!", quite the opposite.

The point is that AM was not selling fantasy. They were selling the potential of real world hookups.

> the same value as porn or romance novels, just without knowing it

It’s the “just without knowing it” part that makes it the scam.

It isn't loneliness, just sex. That market has been around a very long time. Virtually every product advertised to men suggests the product might lead to sex, be them the pretty girls selling trucks/beer, or the bikini-clad models on the beach in every travel commercial. Ashley-Madison just cut out the pretense. Rather than buy the fancy car in hope of sex, men just paid a smaller amount for the hope alone. Dreams have value.

I agree, but would say it’s even far deeper than that. It’s the toxic culture that dangles images of baked women and values of transgression rather than how to communicate and build a healthy emotional relationship with someone that may not be perfect, among other things.

If I recall the A.M. ads and site image correctly, it was also full of some hot woman with lush lips and skin showing, which is just an echo of the image men have in their minds, i.e., “I too can get that hot woman that the guy in fantasy world in the TV has”, when it was really even more than the journalist realized. It wasn’t just a bot farm, it was actually a male farm that harvested and monetized male dissociation from their environment and biological imperative.

> baked women

Sounds like you're mixing it up with 420Dates :)

I mean, these are presumably married men who were using it. So the problems might be a little more nuanced than just pure loneliness.

There is loneliness in marriage, sometimes.

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