Strictly Anonymous Confessions - 834 - How and Why Both Men and Women Cheat on Ashley Madison w/Paul Keable, Chief Strategy Officer

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Paul Keable, chief strategy officer of Ashley Madison called in to talk all about how and why both men and women have affairs on Ashley Madison. Why do men cheat? Why do women cheat? And, why should they they use Ashley Madison if they want to be successful while cheating? Tune in for all the details including how and why Paul wound up working at Ashley Madison, how his friends and family members feel about him working there, how the infamous date breech in 2015 affected their business and how they moved past it, the day of the week most people sign up for Ashley Madison and why, the ratio of active male memberships versus active female memberships, how and why that ratio only differs really in Latin America, why it seem like more women are cheating now than ever ad if that is actually true, the myth surrounding why most people have affairs differs from the reality of why they do, how the ramifications for males cheating in the workplace is changing and why Ashley Madison is the better alternative, exactly how the sign up process works, how you remain anonymous, how they keep billing discreet, how users can hide their anonymity when posting photos, why Ashley Madison works well for people in open relationships, a few female user stories including one who is married and use Ashley Madison to satisfy her gloryhole kink, the specific reasons why women and men cheat and how and why those differences will surpass you, how and why the nature of ones marriage doesn’t necessarily impact ones desire for infidelity, what happened to memberships during the pandemic plus a whole lot more. **REPEAT Originally aired 4/23 https://www.ashleymadison.com  **To see anonymous pics of my female guests + hear anonymous confessions + get all the episodes early and AD FREE, join my Patreon! It's only $7 a month and you can cancel at any time. You can sign up here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/StrictlyAnonymousPodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and when you join, I'll throw in a complimentary link to my private Discord! MY BOOK IS NOW OUT FOR PRE-ORDER!!!! Strictly Anonymous Confessions: Secret Sex Lives of Total Strangers. A bunch of short, super sexy, TRUE stories. GET YOUR COPY NOW: https://amzn.to/4i7hBCd Want to be on the show? Email me at [e-mail] or go to http://www.strictlyanonymouspodcast.com and click on "Be on the Show" Have something quick you want to confesss while remaining anonymous? Call the CONFESSIONS hotline at 347-420-3579. You can call 24/7. All voices are changed. Sponsors: https://bluechew.com Get your first month FREE! https://butterwellness.com/ Try the Butter Wellness perineum massager and use code STRICTLY for 20% off your entire order Follow me! Instagram https://www.instagram.com/strictanonymous/ Twitter https://twitter.com/strictanonymous?lang=en Website http://www.strictlyanonymouspodcast.com/ Everything else https://linktr.ee/Strictlyanonymouspodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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there on Discord. You get all of that, access to all of that for just $5 a month. It's patreon.com slash strictly anonymous podcast. That's patreon.com slash strictly anonymous podcast. Now, I have been doing one repeat episode a week now, and I'm going to do that moving forward. I have 800 episodes. I'm going to pull the great ones from the past that maybe you haven't heard because you're new listener. I've been podcasting for 12 years now. So I know that I have tons of new listeners.

But what I do when I do pull these episodes from the past is I re-edit the shit out of them, okay, and make them so much better. So if you heard it before, you might want to hear it again if you forgot about it. But if you haven't heard it, you're going to love this episode today. Because the Ashley Madison doc, which is on Netflix, which is so good. If you haven't watched it yet, watch it, you're going to binge it in one night. It's that good. Because that's so popular and everyone's watching it and talking about cheating. Why not repeat Paul Keeble from Ashley Madison's episode? We taped this over a year ago,

so we didn't talk about the doc at all, but we talk about so many other things. Paul Keeble is the chief strategy officer at Ashley Madison. First, we talk about how he wound up at Ashley Madison, his history. I was like, how did your family feel when you started working there? Because cheating does have such a stigma attached to it. We did talk about that out front.

We talked about the breach that happened, the infamous breach. And then we got into the really interesting stuff, like the behavior of the people on Ashley Madison, who signs up, how many women versus men. What is the day of, like the day that most people sign up? What are the stories of some of his members? He gave a couple interesting stories. I also have a story from a woman who used Ashley Madison for a very long time. Her episode is coming out next week. And it is super interesting, her point of view.

What you're going to find interesting, though, on this episode is when he talks about the studies of the differences of why men cheat versus women. And let me tell you, you're probably going to be surprised because I was. It's like opposite of what most people think, okay? He also talks about who's on Ashley Madison and what they're using it for. It's not just for affairs. He talks about how you remain anonymous on there, how it shows up on your credit card, how that all goes. He talks about different trends in different countries. one country where there's more women that are signing up than men.

And he tells you which country that is and talks about the reason why. And it's truly fascinating. All the stuff he talked about was really interesting. You're going to love this episode, especially if you just watch that doc. It's a good repeat episode, I think. So if you haven't heard it yet, you're going to dig it. So anyway, I'm going to be right back on with Paul Keeble. Hi, Paul Keeble, Chief Strategy Officer at Ashley,

at Ashley Madison. I have a million questions for you, but I would like to start out, though, a little bit about your background. How did people in your life react when you said you were going to go work there? Because there's a little bit of a stigma attached to Ashley Madison because it's a place where people go to cheat. Kathy, those are really great questions. So my background is primarily in communications. And I had been working as a consultant for about 15 years. And through some personal connections. I had heard the parent company that owned Ashley Madison, that owns Ashley Madison, was looking for someone senior to come on board to sort of help with their communications and some of their ongoing strategy. And I said, wow, that's kind of interesting.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And so I went and met with the CEO and I really enjoyed the conversation. I enjoyed the idea of this global brand that reaches well beyond the size of its business in terms of cultural awareness. Think about it. There's a whole episode of The Simpsons dedicated to Ashley Madison. And I said, wow, this is going to be either the worst decision of my entire life or the best. Right. So that's how I ended up coming to the company. And I'll be honest with you, a lot of conversations with a family. Yeah. And for the most part, everybody was on board. They understood the reasons why I was looking for the challenge, what it meant to me, and understood my own personal ethics and what I was looking for so that there was no miscommunications or misapprehensions.

And everyone's been really supportive of it. What's fascinating over the years because I've been with the company about 10 years now is when I go to, you know, parties or social events and somebody finds out that I'm the guy. Inevitably, long before the night's over, a married couple or someone within that couple finds me to sort of ask those curious questions. Is it real? of other women on the site, how does it work? There's a fascination about what's happening behind the scenes.

And I've never, knock on wood, but I've never had an adverse event in terms of people finding out having a little league baseball coach for seven years. And most of the parents on the team are aware of my profession, never had a bad interaction whatsoever. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, that was like one of the first things I thought.

I'm like, oh, we're going to be talking about Ashley Maddo. but I want to know a little bit about him. So you were there, if you've been there 10 years, you were there for the infamous data breach, correct? That was 2015? Yeah, I heard something about that. Yeah, I was there. So how long did it take to recover from that, do you think?

Well, I guess it depends on how you would define recover. So obviously we had to take time first and foremost to really understand what had happened and what did we need to do as a company in terms of making some really big decisions. Did we want to continue to be that brand? Did we want to continue down that path? And I think for the first year, year and a half, our primary focus outside of just some internal technology work was listening to our members, looking at their behavior. And I think in, I think it was 2016, 70% of our business.

customers in the United States were all identifying themselves as married, looking for something, i.e., they were all still coming to us for our core offering, looking to have an affair. And that really substantiated to us that, listen, we have a position in the marketplace. We're number one by leaps and bounds in our category, and people still identify and are looking for us. What was fascinating about the events of 2015 was we were signing up more than three times our normal amount of people. on a daily basis during the worst of it. Really? We had over 100,000 people join at periods of time.

Right. And our revenue was going up as well, our cost were too. So it wasn't really a great period of time. But it really showed to us that what we offer, what we represent, there's a need for it in the marketplace. And so what we had to do is really rebuild the trust. So I think around 2018, 2019 is when I would have said we really turned a corner from having to continually address a lot of the concerns and questions that came out of 2015 to really

more of a forward-looking who is this company going to be and how do we continue to evolve and meet the more than 20,000 people who join our site every day. Right. 20,000 people a day. Now, could I ask you as far as like behavior? Like, I want to know, what is the day that most people like wake up and decide I want to fucking cheat? Is it like after the weekend?

Is it before the weekend? Is it the middle of the week? What is the day that people sign up? the most. Do you know? Is that her day? So it's Monday. It is Monday. You come out of the weekend and once again, you were disappointed. You didn't have the intimate interactions you were more than likely looking for or you have them and they weren't fulfilling in the way that you had hoped for. And you finally say, you know what? I'm going to make a choice for myself. I'm going to make a choice for happiness and pursue an affair. And what we also then see is that the majority of

is that messaging, so people sign up on a Monday, and they start looking around. But the most heaviest day for messaging is going to be Thursday. And that's people looking toward the weekend. Setting something up. You got it. Interesting. How many men to women? Like what's your ratio as far as people that are members?

Yeah. So if you're looking at active paid mail, so those are guys you've signed up paid because you have to pay to communicate if you're a man, to active female. It's about one male to 0.6 females globally. But we have some countries, particularly in Latin America, where it's two or three women for every... Wow. Interesting. Really? In the Latin communities, there's more women than men. Yep.

Well, I think it's a combination of the loosening restrictions on women, because let's be clear, while some people believe that female infidelity has grown. Esther Perel, who's an amazing psychologist, Oh my God, I'm obsessed with her. She's estimated that, yeah, she's amazing. And I've spoken to her previously. She's lovely. She's estimated that female infidelity has increased 40% since the 90s.

Now, I slightly disagree with her assessment in that who was doing all the sleeping around way back when? Was it just this one really, really horny woman? No. The difference, I think, is that the increases in women talking about it, being more open about it. Because previously, the consequences for a woman caught. cheating were far greater for a man, and they're still not equal, as very few things are from the gender perspective. You don't have to really go all that far back to understand that women would lose their children, their economic means. And then you go even further back, you're literally

branded with the scarlet letters. So women have had to be smarter and better about how they went about their affairs. But with greater equality, from an economic standpoint, women are being more bold about the choices they're making. Now, there's one aspect, and I'm sure we'll get a little bit more deeper into that really I always want to make people aware and understand because it's a huge myth about infidelity that it's born out of completely broken marriages and that's a falsehood so many of our members particularly women will tell us they are in love with their husbands they love their families they're very happy generally overall but for up to 80% of our female members and we did a study with the university of Missouri found that they were in sexless or

orgasabless marriages. And so while they might love every aspect of their life, there may be 35 or 40, and they say to themselves, well, wait a minute, I've got a long road to hoe, and I'm not willing to give up that aspect of my life. It's incredibly important to me. And a lot of people say, well, then you should divorce. Well, why? Why should they choose that path and blow up the family? It has huge consequences, both financially and emotionally, particularly when, if you're looking across the kitchen table and you love that person there, but they're just unable or unwilling to fulfill that one intimate need. So why not have what we call a successful affair, which is an undiscovered affair? And then you can basically have, as we like to say, have your take it either too.

Yeah. I mean, listen, I always say cheating is there's like a spectrum. You cannot say all cheaters are like. You cannot put all of them in the same box. And talking about Esther Perel, I love her. I have sent articles like that she has written about cheating and infidelity. to people all the time because I feel like people just don't really have a good grasp for it. Were you on her show?

I was not on her podcast. It was a business conversation because obviously she habits similar world to our. So we were having conversations about some potential opportunities. And she's just a fascinating individual. And her perspective is obviously she's not going to go out there and tell you, my God, Infidelity is the greatest thing and everybody should go do it. And quite frankly, nor would we. But what she's doing and what we, where we, where we, where we,

we align is let's talk about it and really understand what's happening before you make that judgment. Because listen, if I could go out with the greatest 30-second commercial or the best podcast interview with Kathy ever and convince all the happily married people to have an affair, my business would be 150,000 people joining every day. That's not what's happening. I can't convince happily married people to have an affair. But what I'm hoping to do, what we're hoping to do is help people understand that there are better ways to go about it. Our most important competitor is not another brand. It's not another dating app,

so there's lots of people on the Tinder's and Facebook dating to the world to use that for that purpose. In fact, it's the office. And that is traditionally where affairs have happened. But there's been a real interesting change in the dynamic there, where previously, often you see a more senior, older male, having an affair where they were a junior female. In the circumstances where that affair came out publicly, and again, we're talking about consensual affairs, not instances of harassment.

The woman often faced the punishment. She lost her job. She was forced out or quietly packaged out. Yeah. Now we're seeing the consequences being evenly split. Bill Gates was forced out of his foundation. The CEO of Intel was forced out of his job. The CEO of McDonald's was forced out of his job.

Companies don't want these things happening in. in the workplace. And so what we're saying is take it out of the workplace, take it out of your social circles and have an affair with another married person who's equally under the understanding that they need discretion because they don't want to risk being caught either. It's the old concept of mutually assured destruction. I won't mess this up because it would impact my life, and you're not going to mess this up. And because of that, that is really the foundation to why Ashley Madison has been so successful and continues to operate post the events of 2015. Right.

Now, what is that process? And that's the reason why I reached out to your PR person over at Ashley Madison because somebody had called me up on the DL looking to have an affair, but he was petrified of getting caught. And I'm like, you know, why don't you sign up for Ashley Madison? He was like, yeah, but how is that going to show up on my credit card? Do I have to give my real email? Like how does the whole process work and how do you guarantee that anonymity now?

And what does it? What shows up on your credit card a month? Well, those are great questions. We spend all our time thinking about ways to limit your digital lipstick. And first and foremost, I'd say about 70, 80% of our members sign up using a burner email account, which we highly advise. It's free. You go sign up a Gmail or Yahoo. There's 100 different services you can use.

Don't use your work to build. So that's first and foremost. And that's going to limit the interaction. Second, you will not be billed as Ashley Madison on your credit card. I'm not going to tell you what that is because then everybody can listen to your podcast. But we do discreet billing for that very purpose. It's going to show up in a more innocuous name that is not as obvious. So no connection directly to Ashley Madison.

Could people Google it and find it somewhere? Did it get out on Reddit that this is the thing? Do you know what I mean? Well, listen, obviously people are going to post things as they see fit. Okay. But this is, you know, no one's looking at a $500 charge on your bill. You can get a credit package on Ashley Madison for as low as $9.99. That's going to give you 50 credits and give you the ability to start your conversation.

And I don't know too many people are scouring their spouses credit card bills for $10 charge here or $50 charge here. That's not going to come across the suspicious. So that's A number one. Okay. And this is why our system actually works a little different than the majority of traditional dating apps. Whereas you sign up to a Tinder or Matry Harmony, they have a monthly subscription basis. So if you see this reoccurring same charge every month, that might peak curiosity. Ours is a credit-based system.

So it's kind of like going to the arcade. You buy a certain amount of tokens, credits. And so I sign up and I see this, oh, Kathy, she's a podcaster. He's got this information. She's looking for this interaction. and maybe she's interested me, so I send her a message. That's going to cost me five credits, say credit, depending on the type of communication you're having.

And once that she receives that message and interacts with it or responds to it, the communication is free or can be free, no more credit usage between Kathy and I. Oh, okay. And that way you don't have to continuously replenish your credits until you move on to multiple different people. And that way over time, you can make a purchase here and there and won't seem as suspicious.

Oh, interesting. Now, do people are like, how does it work with photos? Are they all blocked until you make initial content and contact and then the person can see you? Or you'd have to see something before you're going to reach out to Kathy, the podcast. Or don't you want to know what I look like? So are pictures, once you buy in, the pictures are there? So it looks very much like a traditional dating app. Right.

There are opportunities to post a profile picture. We highly recommend posting something that obviously isn't your face, but we do give you tools to mask your face of that is the photo. Oh, interesting. Whether it's a face mask or blurring, most people put up a body part that is clothes, because nudity can't be on a profile picture. Yeah.

And you give it a sense. So whether it's a silhouette, a blurred out photo, something to give an indication along with their profile that gives an indication of what they're looking for. But what we've also built is a private gallery where you can put your more intimate photos, including a face picture, that you can release a key to

to another member when you reach a level of trust. And when that conversation's over, you can revoke that key so they no longer have access to your images. Oh, interesting. That's good to know. Yeah. So you could literally put it up there.

You can literally give them access to say, okay, listen, Kathy, you can take a look at my pictures for the next 10 minutes and I'm going to revoke the key. Right. And so you can manage your privacy on your fair journey as you see fit and we give you all the tools to manage that. Because again, at the core of our business is discretion. And so we really think about that on a day-to-day basis.

Right, right. Are there single people on Ashley Madison looking to hook up? So we have lots of people that span the whole spectrum of relationship types. So absolutely we have single people because I'll have women who come on as single. I'll have women who come on as divorce. I'll have women who come on to marry. but in an open relationship or a polyamorous relationship. And there's a host of them, and they're really clear.

And so when you sign up, the people identify that way. So you can see, if your preference is only to be with someone who's married, then only look at profiles who are married. If you're looking for a host of opportunities, all that information is going to be put on that individual's profile. And so that is part of what we offer, because you might be in an open relationship, and your partner's very aware of the activities you're taking.

You might be polyamorous, but you may not want your family or your colleagues to know about this business. And so going to a more traditional dating app doesn't work for you, coming to a more discretionary-based site like Ashley Madison does work with you. So while our core constituency is married people looking for an affair, we have a host of people looking for a range of activities. I think there's a greater awareness of the limitations of monogony. And we don't believe that monogony is wrong in it of itself,

but we do believe it shouldn't be the default. and more and more people are exposing themselves to different versions of monogamy. Dan Savage coined a great term years ago monogamish. And it really fits within the dynamic of polyamory where you might have a nesting partner or a core partner and the opportunity to expand your sexual opportunities elsewhere because different people fulfilled different aspects in terms of our needs. And again, you just don't need the whole world seeing what you're looking at. looking for and a lot of people come to us for that discretion and it's amazing our member stories we

hear from our members all the time because they can't from many of them tell people what they're doing and why they're doing it and so we become a form of catharsis for them to sort of talk about it and it just it amazes me the the range of stories and activities and experiences people have had in the site explain like what are those ranges like you know what are those ends of the spectrum what is the stuff in the middle Yeah. So I've had stories. So one of my favorite is a woman named Bobby Goldman, and I can say her name because she's very public and out there. You guys can look her up. She's amazing. She had an amazing marriage and her husband passed away. I think she was in her mid-60s. And she had lived in incredible life. He was a Hollywood producer and they had done all these amazing things. And she was an independent woman financially well off. But, you know, she started seeing her therapist post her husband's death. And her therapist said, listen, You're a bit depressed. I think you need to get laid.

And she's like, yeah, you're right. So she signs up on all these traditional dating sites. And it turns out all the guys that she was looking for around her age were all just looking for a caretaker. Someone to fold their clothes and make their meals. And she's like, no, no, no. Mama needs some action. And so she signs up on Ashley Madison, has all these affairs. So at one point she was having affairs with up to six different men.

And in certain cases, she even met their spouses because her spouse was like, I'm done with that part of my life. I'm so glad you're here to do it. And then Bobby goes off and writes a Broadway play called The Curvy Widow all about her experiences. Oh, my God. How come I've ever heard of this woman? I need her on my show. She's fantastic.

Yeah. She's fantastic. Mm-hmm. And then I had another member. And this is a bit more on the sentimental side. She was a lawyer, so very articulate, intelligent, educated. And she had married an older man. And as the years progressed, he fell into, unfortunately, early onset Alzheimer's.

and she became primarily his caretaker, but she still was a very vibrant woman full of life. And she couldn't go to a traditional dating site because her friends and family would have scorned her for that choice. Yet every day she took care of her spouse. But the burden of that was wearing on her. And so she chose Ashley Madison as a way to find an outlet to continue to be the woman who she was.

And it gives her a greater sense of self-worth and happiness enjoying her life, which allows her to continue to be the caretaker that her husband needs, even though he is no longer able to function in any way as a partner in her life. He is simply a dependent. And then I have stories like I have this one member, and she's married, she's quite affluent, and she has a particular fetish that she runs a personal glory hole, where she'll see anywhere from 10 to 20 different men in a night, and this is not a paid activity.

This is just her personal kink, where she sets up her curtain with a hole in it, in a local hotel, and invites her group of men over for the evening to literally just have a gloryhole experience. And she loves it, and she's been doing it for years. Interesting. Do you find there's a difference between the reasons why men cheat versus women?

Oh, there's a huge difference. And it's the complete flip of what everyone thinks. So I mentioned earlier that we did a study with, so the University of Missouri did a study with us, Dr. Alicia Walker. And she looked at the reasons why men cheat and why women cheat. And so we talked a little earlier about the reasons why women cheating was primarily because they were in sexless or orgasmless marriages. So they were outsourcing their intimate needs by Ashley Madison. I think there were literally one chapter in the book called there's always room for big dick because women were looking for very specific. experiences that weren't available to them in their marriage.

Yeah. And that is not what we believe women are cheating for. Everyone's like, oh, she's emotionally unhappy. She's, you know, revenge and all these other aspects that are just untrue. And men, it turns out, we're cheating for emotional validation. So, again, that's what most people think women were cheating. Totally. And this was an interesting insight because one of the biggest complaints I've heard from women,

anecdotally over the years, is that a lot of the men, won't follow through. They do a lot of setup, a lot of conversation, and then they won't commit to the act. And the reason for that really became apparent through this study to me, because the men, in this case, often were, I just want to be wanted. And hearing another woman say, my God, Paul, you are the man of my dreams, you can do all these things with me, and I can't wait for it. Oh, hey, I still got it. I'm still the guy. And that was enough for these guys. go back home and live a happy life. Now, that's not everyone because I don't think our business would be substantiated of all

these guys are going down that pathway. So still, while men will seek out of physical interaction, that's the emotional validation part really speaks to a strong majority of the men on the site. So that was really fascinating insight from my perspective. Yeah, because that's exact opposite of what people think. I have guy friends that, you know, are like, oh, it's way worse when a woman sheets because when she's doing it, it's for emotional reasons. When a guy's doing it, it's just for variety.

It just a little bit variety. But that's not true when you did these studies. Absolutely, not even close to being true. And it was interesting. A study just came out this week from another academic we worked with from John Hopkins University. And his findings were that the nature of your core relationship, your primary relationship, weren't necessarily impacting your desire for infidelity meaning just because you were in a happy marriage

did not mean you would or would not cheat. So the majority of the people were saying, I'm happy in a relationship in general, but I'm missing something specific. So it really dovetailed, quite frankly, right into Alicia Walker study invalidating that these people aren't looking to get out of their marriages. They're not looking for the most part to change their life. they're just looking to scratch that one itch that their marriage can't fulfill. Right. And then there's, listen, there's all different kinds of things going on.

But that's the majority is what you're talking about, correct? Like those studies are done and that's the majority people. Yeah, that's the big block people. And just as you said earlier, not everybody fits a specific pattern. Like I said, we have people come on and they're hot wives and their husbands get off on the fact that they're sleeping with other men. We have cuckholes. So wives are sleeping with other men as a form of quote unquote punishment towards their husbands, but it's a dynamic that the husband covets.

Totally. So it isn't a revenge scenario. It's just a really unique kink. And all these people choose us because, again, we have two things that are critical for this opportunity. One, the discretion so you can pursue your activities without the glare of the public light and a community of people that are really non-judgmental. I find fascinating about our members is they're probably the most honest daters in any other dating app, simply because they're not looking for a life mate. They're not looking to present their best

self. They're like, hey, I want this, this one thing, this is missing from my life. This is what I look like. This is how I am and this is how I want it. Because why would I compromise here? Sure, we compromise in our primary relationship. That's normal and expected and appropriate. but in this world, there's no compromise necessary because you will be able to find more than likely the person who matches your needs. Right. And there's no bullshit. You don't have to promise anything else. Everybody kind of knows exactly what you're signing up for. Exactly. I'm not going to love you till the end of time. I might love you to Sunday morning, but that's enough for these people, for our members. Let me ask you this. During COVID, what happened to your membership? What were the trends during COVID? Was it, More people signing up?

Was it less? Because people couldn't really meet up, right? But I'm curious of what happened. So in the first six to eight weeks, we did see a dip, but I think that was more a global shock. Yeah. And I think most businesses, regardless of the nature of them, other than the toilet paper ones,

saw a bit of a dip. But then suddenly it's skyrocketed. And we saw 30, 40% growth in daily signups. Because this was the interesting part. as various lockdowns and self-imposed lockdowns occurred and our social outlets evaporated, we became an online outlet for people just to connect with people for the purposes of hope. Whether that was planning something specific down the line in a future where we could get together or just the idea that someone is a similar situation looking for something that is what I want,

that was a way for people to get through what was really, quite frankly, a scary and harrowing time. And the numbers have not subsided. We just continue to see growth year over year. That's so interesting. So it was like because people were stuck at home. Maybe those people weren't meaning, but they could still chat and do all that kind of stuff through your app. Yeah. Well, think about it. If you had a small fracture or crack in your relationship, pre-pandemic, you had so many social outlets to alleviate that pressure. You could go out with your, you know, girls night out, you know, the boys go for, you know, out to the bar for a few beers. Whatever it was, all of that was disappeared.

And then not only that, I put you in a house and locked you down with that spouse. So whatever cracks might have been there, whether you were aware of them or not, suddenly became deepened and more exposed. And you were confronted with it day in and day out. And you're like, what the hell am I going to do about this? Yeah. And for a lot of people, they said, you know what? I need an outlet.

I don't want this to spiral into something that it doesn't need to be. And they chose us as that pathway. And it's been amazing for us. Yeah, that's so interesting. This is a very specific question that I remember that my one guy that wanted to join up was asking. And I get a lot of people when they want to call into my show or join my Patreon membership. They're like, oh, I don't want to use my credit card. Can I use some other form of payment, like a gift card?

So you can go through PayPal, which is another avenue that it's going to go there. It all depends which location, which country you're in, depending you have international. Every country has slightly different payment options based on what's available there. But we have a host of options. And again, we don't bill as Ashley Madison. So that's the most important part. And because it's not a reoccurring purchase, there are options for some activities like that. But at your baseline, you can just buy a one-time credit package and go on test the site and see if it works for you.

And again, for women, it's free to message management. Okay. Yes. It's ladies night every night at Asthma Madison. Oh, I like that. That's like your little tagline. Oh, it works for us right now. I like it.

So you guys, you said you see this trend in Latin America where it's like more women to men. What other trends do you see in regards to different countries? Anything else that's interesting? Well, this is one of the things that I find fascinating about our business and our brand compared to some of a more traditional dating apps. we're probably the only truly global dating brand in the world, simply because how traditional dating and relationships work differs greatly from culture to culture, whereas affairs are pretty much the same universally. And so our discretionary-based aspect works in every market,

except really one or two where we have a bit more of a challenge. And that's in France and Italy, particularly France. And because in France, the idea of having a side partner is so baked into the culture, they don't need a discretionary-based app for it. There's a whole set of unwritten rules and protocols around that. For years, French prime ministers had a fair partner that everybody knew about, but the press never talked about it. It was a shock.

I think it was Jacques Chirac's funeral when his mistress and daughter came to the funeral along with his wife. and these things are well known. So we struggle a little bit there for that reason, but otherwise there isn't necessarily a huge difference. I think that what we see in Latin America is the equality movement was later to come in Latin America and still struggles a bit. And so, you know, women, it's interesting. There is this image and expectation of the sexualized Latino woman that doesn't necessarily translate

because if the man is still seeking her. outside and leaving the wife at home, these wives are saying, wait a minute, you know, it's time for me to get mine too. And because they have now reached a greater level of quality from an economic standpoint, not all the way there, but closer, they are now taking control and manifesting, you know, a sexual life that fills their need. And that's why I think we're seeing greater numbers there in terms of the ratio. Yeah, that's fascinating. Now, if I like a real, like if I'm a real paranoid person, the Ashley Madison breach was like a big thing that everybody knows about. Like how do you guarantee people that that can't happen again? What were

the changes that were made or what's different now that you could tell me that will guarantee me that that's not going to happen again? So it's interesting from, from, you know, a pure security perspective. I could send you all our detailed security plans and blueprints, but that would be an incredibly bad idea. So, you know, the difference is I think now a couple things. One, we look at security as a Sisyphian task as in, it's not a checkmark that we can say, oh, we did the security stuff, we don't do anything today. No, every single day, we've got to push the boulder up the hill. And security is the responsibility of every single person in the company. Security and privacy drive the nature of our business. So we're looking at any time we're thinking about a new feature

new function within the service. How does it relate to the privacy of the member? How does it relate to the security member? And we have a security team and they're tasked every day to look at it from every single angle and every perspective. And so we work with outside vendors who do penetration testing. We have bug bounty programs to ensure that multiple people are looking at the system to see if there's any vulnerabilities. And it is an ongoing aspect to our business. And so, So we're really committed to that. And it's our number one priority every single day. Right.

And so now is there a footprint? Like if I go there, I sign up, I have my affair. I'm successful. No one hears about it, but I'm like done for some reason. Am I wiped out of the system? Like when I cancel my thing? Yeah, when you delete it, you're gone. Right.

So the key thing is you delete your stuff. It's gone. We pull the messages out of the inbox of the person you sent stuff to on the platform. And everything is removed. and the only thing that we keep for a short period of time is any financial transactions for bank legal purposes, but even that goes away after a period of time. We get rid of everything. We don't want to hold your digital lipstick.

There's no value to us if you're gone, and so we get rid of everything. We scrub it clean. And what about bots? I think one of the biggest problems sometimes is like a lot of the women are fake. Do you have a way of making sure that you don't have a lot of those on your site since you have single women on there? That's a scourge of all online dating. Yeah. Unfortunately,

online services, period. And between our manual moderation, so every single photo is manually moderated so that if you put up on your profile that you're 5 foot to redhead and weigh 160 pounds, but you put up a picture of Cameron Diaz, well, guess what? That photo's not going up and you're probably going to be put on a watch list because those things don't match. we have AI algorithms that through our data, when you get so many people signing up every day,

we can detect trends that likely indicate what is a fraudulent account. And so more than 80% of our fraudulent accounts are picked up by our system within under eight seconds and punt it out of the system. Every member has the ability to report another member of their acting in a fraudulent way we're going to investigate it because they don't help our business. We don't want them on our say. and we'll do everything in our power to get rid of them when we see them. And for the most part, we have a really great community that self-reports when they see things that are obviously not likely to be true and we'll investigate accordingly.

Right. So now people could sign up for free, correct? Walk me through the sign up process. You sign up, you post everything. Really, really simple. You sign up. You don't have to give, all you need is an email because we need to verify that. So everything we can send you, your various emails.

And yeah, free to sign up. You can look around and see the profiles and see what's available. a space, who might be interesting to take a look at. And then when you're ready, you can make a credit purchase, credit package purchase, and start messaging women if you're a man. And if you're a woman, like I said, it's free to sign up and free to message. And now I'm sure you see the trend changing where you are getting a lot more people who are polyamorous or they're just single, though, looking for another person that's married, whatever that is. Do you see a lot more of that happening? Because I think people are more open to it nowadays.

So anecdotally speaking, absolutely. So when we talk to our members, that's the information we're getting back. More and more people are coming from different spaces for really different types of opportunities. And again, because of the community that we've built and the discretion that the system has in place, it really is attractive for people looking for these activities. And we think that trend is going to continue to grow. We are looking at different ways to build products and features for that audience specifically over time. Yeah, because I'm assuming you look more into that

because you know that things are changing and maybe you're not going to have as many people having affairs. Though I do think there's something about cheating sex sometimes that's highly charged, right? Isn't that sometimes just a part of it? For a lot of her members, the allure of secrecy. There was a great episode years ago, Modern Family where Julie Bowen,

I can't remember her character's name, heard her husband would role play and they pretend to be different people and they go to a hotel and pick each other up at the bar. And while it was meant to be comedic in the show, there's a truth to that. And for some people, that secrecy, that scandalous nature in their heads of what an affair can be really is enticing. And think about it. I don't have to carry the burdens of that person's life, their work issues, their health issues, their family issues.

None of that comes into the affair. For many people, purely physical, so I can get dolled up, I can put on my nice jacket, do my hair, and meet that woman at a hotel in that beautiful dress. And it's just about us in that moment. And that can be really, really appealing for a number of our members. Right. Now, you know, I really think I'm going to air this episode this week because it's like cheating week for me. I was going to say, I really appreciate the conversation. It's a lot of fun.

Like I said, we're not here to tell you to have an affair. What we're telling you, if you're looking for one, there's a better way to do it. and the steps you should take to ensure that it's successful, i.e. undiscovered. But yeah, I love it. Yeah, so they go to ashleymadison.com. I'll put a link in the description, download your app. They can sign up for free, and they will remain anonymous. You got it.

And listen, you don't have to download the app either. You can go straight to the web, ashtonadison.com, and go from there. That way, it's not on your phone. Oh, yeah, you're right. Why would I say the app? You're right. but we do we do have an app a lot of our members use the app as well yeah it's also you can hide it and there's ways to manage that but we have both options right right right uh okay perfect thanks paul

thanks so much for coming on this was fascinating it's good people are going to work that thanks so much thank you okay i just want to tell you before you go that my book it's called strictly anonymous confession secret sex lies of total strangers is now available not only in paperback and e-book, but you can pre-order the audiobook. It's still not going to be out until August 25th, but you can pre-order it. The book is basically 17 different stories taken from my show. I kind of picked one story from each category that I talk about on my show. Like, there's a hot wife story. There's a cuck queen story. There's a cuck story. There's a gang-being girl story. Like I said, 17 stories. And they're all told in the third person. And they're

all true. I took the interview and rewrote it in the third person. And I wouldn't really call it like a total erotica book. Think like penthouse letters. It's more direct. It's not so over the top like erotica. I don't really like that kind of vibe, right? But these are true stories. 17 of them. They're really short chapters, easy read. You could read, you know, one or two and then skip around. You could read the whole book. It's available in eback format, paperback format, and finally, the audio book is available coming out August 25th, but you could pre-order it now. And if you buy my book in any format or pre-order it, I will throw in a complimentary link to my Discord. My Discord does not disappoint, okay? There's no way you get into my Discord any other way than getting the link from me, okay?

I give it to people who buy my book. There's tons of people in there. everybody shares content with each other and that's what you get to do there you can post your own pictures and videos there's tons of channels we have lots of contests where you can win a lot of money it's a super fun place to be it's a total strictly anonymous community and you will love it i will be giving anyone who buys my book access to my discord it's private like i said all you got to do is email me a screenshot of your purchase whether you did the audiobook the ebook or the paperback send it to me at Strictly Anonymous Podcast at gmail.com.

That's Strictly Anonymous Podcasts at Gmail.com. And I will send you the link to Discord. So anyway, thanks so much for tuning in. This is the Strictly Anonymous Podcast. Hey, everyone. Strictly Anonymous Podcast is looking for people to call into the show. So if you lead an interesting, naughty secret life that you want, to talk about while remaining anonymous or not anonymous, if you're out and proud, that's cool, too.

Send me an email, Strictly Anonymous Podcast at gmail.com. That's strictly anonymous podcast at gmail.com. Or go to my website, strictly anonymouspodcast.com and click on, be on the show. If you have a short confession that you want to get off your back, call my Confessions Hotline. 347, 4203579. That's 347, 420357. 7.9. You could call that number 24-7. I change all the voices on the confessions, too, so you remain anonymous. If you want to follow the show, follow me at Strict Anonymous on

Instagram or Twitter. That's at Strict Anonymous. If you want to sign up for my Patreon, on my Patreon, you are not only supporting my show, but you will get these episodes early, ad-free, and you get to see anonymous picks of my guests. Most of the girls send in anonymous picks and some of the guys send an anonymous picks. So if you want to see anonymous picks of my guests as well as support my show and get these episodes early and ad free, sign up for my Patreon. Patreon.com slash strictly anonymous podcast. That's patreon.com slash strictly anonymous podcast. The link is also in the description below. Thanks so much for listening.