Many countries punish "attempted murder" (trying to carry out the act but failing, the same way people caught in this scandal attempted but failed at adultery) so it makes sense to me to not strongly distinguish between "tried cheating on their partner but failed" and "tried cheating on their partner and succeeded".
How would you think the conversation about AM would/should be modified, in light of the fact that people were (unknowingly) talking to chatbots instead of real partners? I think I already made my views clear, but I would actually like to hear other opinions since I don't think I understand any view but my own on this. Maybe other people would prefer the conversation is about spambots on social media websites instead of what the people on those sites tried to do?
Edit: nvm. I saw (after I was already done typing) the sibling comments to my current one, and that makes more sense.
Actually cheating has an additional negative consequence attached: potentially exposing your partner to disease and / or infection
I mean we make countless bad decisions as humans, many of them rash last minute decisions in a time of desperation.
Given the ease of just making an account and talking to someone vs actually going through with something I feel like just being on a platform like this is villainizing what could have been a moment of weakness. But that doesn't mean that you would have gone through with it.
I would also put out there that there may be a decent subset of people that just the idea that someone might be into them without needing to actually do anything beyond that, is enough.
I fully acknowledge that there is a lot of nuance to this, but I would hope that as a society we could acknowledge a huge difference between a bit of fantasy/role playing and actually going through with something.
While the long term intentions (infidelity) might be the same, social barriers prevent many people from taking it forward. Signing up on a website is something a lot of people do for a lot of things and making that the entry point to something exciting and forbidden is good marketing at best and psychological manipulation at worst.
For some (perhaps most) people, just creating an account and taking a peek is usually not enough to push them over but for many others, it's enough to start a chain reaction that will end up somewhere which will have real consequences for them and multiple people related to them. Not a good idea and a company that's making money off of this without even considering that is not very ethical in my estimation.
Especially if maybe they were just watching porn and briefly in a horny state wanted to check something out. Post nut clarity is a thing.
There is just such a large number of events and thought processes between a last minute rash decision to make an account somewhere and actually meeting up with someone, not the least of which is the time and effort to make it happen. To say just making an account is barely less bad than actually going through with cheating is... wild.
OTOH, the makers of the website have designed it to push people to do something that's likely very damaging just to sell a product. And then topped it off by lying about what they're selling.
It's like flirting when your partner isn't around. It's bad (assuming it isn't something you've agreed upon), but if you stop it before it goes to far it's not as bad as going to bed with somebody.
Same with the AM stuff, it doesn't really matter that my hypothetical SO was too dumb to notice they were talking to bots. Their intention was to cheat, and so the trust would be gone. At that point, how am I supposed to believe that they aren't cheating in other ways?
It brings to mind another thing that sometimes happens lately, where "prank" channels on YouTube or TikTok film themselves committing crimes, thinking that since they don't actually mean any harm, or say, are using fake weapons, it isn't a crime anymore. But, of course, it is a crime, the people who are being "pranked" in this manner believe they're actually in danger. There has even been a case where a prankster got shot for pulling a knife on someone as a "prank", and the shooter was found innocent because it was reasonable self defense.
Now, flattening "doing bad things is bad" to "supporting police entrapment."
Beginning to think this is trolling.
If you tell an undercover cop that you have cocaine and you sell them a baggie of baking powder, you'll get arrested and charged with selling cocaine.
Obviously nobody was meeting with these chat bots physically. Real or fake, that is an important distinction.
And that they gave money to someone for what they thought was weed
I also don't interpret the other replies here to be saying the same thing as you. They're discussing the idea that getting caught trying to have an affair (that happens to be fake) has interesting parallels with getting caught trying to buy drugs (that happen to be fake). You're accusing the poster of trolling.
Looking at the other comments for a 3rd time, it's clear I'm not the only one expressing skepticism.
I can't find any more to discuss here, it would feel awkward sitting in a side thread, where no one else is engaging, scrapping over how to sort other people's comments. ex. people saying the follow up analogy is flawed doesn't say "I agree with jpohhhh", so someone looking to police here should feel they can validly.
And I don't like arguing with the cops, never goes well afaik :)
You are right though, I believe others were scamming him too.
Casefiles has an excellent three-part podcast on it.
Source? Don't recall this at all.
> it's treated...they were talking to real partners...presumably because that's...salacious
There's stigma against cheating that isn't mitigated by failing at it.
My bare minimum relationship standard is a partner who does neither, and I hold myself to the same standard.
What I'm trying to say is, it's okay if the person you are responding to wants more strict boundaries than the rest of us. If flirting is cheating to them, then it is and that's that.
There IS an important distinction to be had between flirting and being friendly, though. Being friendly and even laughing at a joke is not flirting without the intent.
So the assumption should be that most of the real people on the site whether they are the man or the woman, are in a relationship with someone IRL but went to AM because they wanted to cheat.
They ask you about your relationship status so probably the leaked data can tell us how many reported being in a relationship vs not. (But also keep in mind people might lie about it, in either direction.)
I think there were certainly lots of other people who were less world famous but prominent in their own businesses or communities. Wikipedia goes into it a little, and notes that there were at least two suicides following it. [2]
1. https://www.sportskeeda.com/us/shows/which-celebrities-expos...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Madison_data_breach#Imp...