Back in 2015, the popular adulterer website Ashley Madison made news when hackers leaked the personal details of its millions of users. At that time, one of the things we learned about the site was that, not only did the number of male users greatly outnumber the number of females, the females were bots or prostitutes. The whole situation inspired a multitude of think pieces, hot takes, self-righteous finger-wagging, defensive rebuttals to that finger-wagging, as well as widespread embarrassment for the users who were busted.
Now, I do not recall reading or seeing a public demand for assurances of the actual number of potential paramours for wannabe adulterers. However, it is possible that somewhere in the preposterous abyss of the internet, this piece of writing exists. If you are aware of it then, please, by all means, send me the 5,000+ word treatise on this consequential topic because I am keen to read it.
Anyhoo, the reason I bring all this up is that Ashley Madison’s new owner has gone above and beyond what I think the vast majority of people would expect from an adultery website: They hired a Big 4 firm to check the numbers.
Via the New York Post:
[W]hile past estimates of the number of women users turned out to be false due to the dominance of bots posing as humans, Ashley Madison execs recently hired a Big Four accounting firm to review its stats.
The latest data received the once-over by Ernst & Young, according to a report due out Thursday, and the number-crunchers verified the number of wannabe adulterers climbing aboard — or an average clip of 15,542 per day.
“[This] was the first step in communicating to our members and potential members that we had listened to them, and were now dedicated to being what we’ve always been — the leader in the married-dating space,” said Paul Keable, vice president of communications for Ruby Life, the site’s new corporate parent.
Engadget reported that EY “[showed] 5.7 million new accounts on the site in 2017 and a ratio of 1.13 active females for every active male on the site,” and “that the bots are gone.”
There you have it. Ernst & Young stamped its approval on a pool of potentials hook-ups for adulterers. Weird, huh?
I suspect the real numbers are under 15,000 if you remove the 300 or so duplicate hits from Ron Burgundy
You look very good in that picture. We should get together sometime and have a drink
agreed – she’s a real person.