Watch Your Info

30 thoughts on Watch Your Info

1. Am I evil for thinking this is funny?

2. I probably should have waited to explore that link until I got home…Hope Big Brother won’t notice the dirty pictures in my cache!

3. Wow, harsh! I feel evil for grinning too, but at the same time I can’t help feeling sorry for these men and their families.

4. I think what she’s doing is potentially immensely cruel to the wives and children of these men. I’m not letting the husbands/fathers off the hook — but too often, wives and kids pay the price for stunts like this. I understand the desire to post it all — but I think there’s an element of sadism here in exposing others’ foibles when that exposure is likely to injure innocent parties.

5. I’m with Hugo here. I can understand the desire to see the men who answer these ads get their just desserts so to speak, but I’ve seen personally how “outing” adulterers reverberates far beyond the target of the outing.

   In my view, it’s akin to knowing the street where a criminal lives and arresting everyone on that street because you know that one of them will be punished.

6. har har!

   screw ’em – i have little sympathy for those who deceive the ones they profess to love.

   nor do i buy that ignorance is somehow preferable to knowledge. perhaps there may be gentler ways of breaking the news, but the suffering that wives & kids may experience will be due to the betrayal not the medium of its transmission.

7. Who’s at fault here, though? These men are the ones who are emailing her and readily giving up their info to somebody they only “know” over the internet. I can’t harbor any sympathy for them. I can for their families, but the pain being brought down on them falls on the husband’s shoulders, and not the blogger.

   If it wasn’t the blogger outing these men, they would have been outed in another manner, and their families would go through the same pain.

8. Wow.

   I’m in jam and tas’s camp here…these guys have no one to blame but themselves. And face it, finding out your spouse or significant other is stepping out on you is going to be unpleasant no matter how the information reaches you. I think any “right to privacy” expected by these guys is easily outweighed by the right to live STD free that their wives generally expect; most married women don’t require that their husbands put on a condom before sex. These guys could be putting their wives at serious risk (because if they contacted legznmore, they’ve probably been doing this sorta thing for a while).

   At the same time, I think she’s crossed a line here. Not all these guys are married, and she ridicules some of them simply for their appearance, or for being a “loser”. Not cool. Cheaters I have no sympathy for, but give the ugly guys a break, huh? Not everybody is Vin Diesel, for cryin’ out loud. Hard to call a guy out for just being a creep when you’re posting equally creepy stuff on the ‘net.

9. I think what she’s doing is potentially immensely cruel to the wives and children of these men.

   “Hugoboy” chimes in with his usual ‘women-as-victim’ crap.

   I’m not letting the husbands/fathers off the hook – but too often, wives and kids pay the price for stunts like this.

   Oh heavens no! God forbid that Hugo, the man wannabe, should ever express any compassion for his fellow men. He can just sit back in his little glass house of privilege, after 3 failed marriages, and throw stones at other men. Way to go, ‘Hugoboy’!

   I understand the desire to post it all – but I think there’s an element of sadism here in exposing others’ foibles when that exposure is likely to injure innocent parties.

   Let’s call it as it is, shall we, Hugoboy? It’s a vindictive man-hating psychobitch acting out her own lurid fantasies of abuse and control.

   It’s time for you to learn to hold women accountable, Hugoboy!

   Mark

10. This is ridiculous – disguising your reactive consciousness (e.g., glee over the exposure of these men’s private, albeit lacivious communications to an audience they never intended) as a public health announcement (oh, this is the face of STDs! study and beware!) or, even worse, moralism (“can’t work up any compassion for married people getting called out on their adulterous ways). Admit that you are happy to watch these men be humiliated, but then ask the question, what is the agenda here? Protect the sanctity of marriage and out all adulterers? If you want to have a conversation about the viability of that institution, fine, but this isn’t how to do it, and I find it hard to believe that everyone taking pleasure in this blog post are so keen to defend marriage’s sanctity in the first place. And I can’t even address the absudity that somehow that blog entry some sort of public service offensive – while we’re at it, why don’t we put the face of every HIV+ person on the web since after all, what if they are in a bloody accident, wouldn’t you like to know whether they’re positive? Again: glee at other’s humiliation = reactive consciousness….

11. I don’t have any interest in starting a flame war here, Mark, but you’re making it very difficult. Hugo has well reasoned concerns about the website. I may not be in agreement with him, but I’m not going to question his manhood and bring his personal life into it just because of the opinions he holds. We’re all adults here, so if you can’t keep a lid on this childish tripe and stick to the points of the argument, then I suggest you don’t speak at all.

12. Speaking as someone in an open marriage who has, yes, used online sites like AFF to find partners, I have a problem with this. This woman is passing judgment on people whose lives she knows little about, really. It’s a form of vigilantism. Hugo’s right that it also punishes and embarrasses the families of those men; but I’ll go farther and say that embarrassing those men achieves nothing. She gets to feel morally superior, and perhaps we do too, but beyond that, what is really accomplished by what she is doing?

13. I don’t have any interest in starting a flame war here, Mark, but you’re making it very difficult.

    Be a man and take responsibility for your own actions. If you start a flame war, then it’s because you choose to start one. You’re pal Hugoboy will hold you to a higher standard of conduct and responsibility than he will hold any woman. Therefore, you may want to prepare yourself for that eventuality when he turns his talons on you.

    Hugo has well reasoned concerns about the website. I may not be in agreement with him, but I’m not going to question his manhood and bring his personal life into it just because of the opinions he holds.

    The guy spends a lot of time demanding higher standards of conduct from men than he ever does of women. I intend to call him on that at every turn. If you don’t like that, well you’ll just have to learn to live with it.

    If you want to call Hugoboy’s hypocrisy ‘well reasoned,’ that’s certainly your right, but it’s hard to be ‘well reasoned’ or persuasive when one demands, as Hugo does, that men behave at a higher level of conduct and morality than women must.

    We’re all adults here, so if you can’t keep a lid on this childish tripe and stick to the points of the argument, then I suggest you don’t speak at all.

    When I need your permission to speak, I’ll ask for it. It’s just that I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

    If you have any doubt about what I’m saying, look at Hugoboy’s own words. He expresses concern for “women and children,” but not for men. This is consistent with everything I have seen him post at his own blog and at other blogs.

    Mark

14. Someone should contact the men on the site and let them sue LiveJournal for hosting the infomation about them. That is assuming the info is libellous and they are entitled to under their relevant laws.

    Secondly, lots of men and women “cheat” online but don’t take it any further, its just an extension of the fantasies humans have. A report recently shows women dream about food, their looks, their jobs.. men dream about violence, sex with strangers and sport. The fact that these men have fantasies isn’t such a big deal and that they took them too far is bad.
    Of course, it is possible they fully intended to cheat, but in some instance it is also a fact that most people who cheat do so because their relationship isn’t offering them what they need. Maybe they saw this woman as someone real with whom they could escape their current life.

    It sounds bad, but everyone, is entitled to divorce and be find someone they will be happy with – and stats show a lot of relationships *do* start through the net and because of their nature are actually more lilely to succeed than “normal” relationships.

    Furthermore, far more women cheat in relationships than men. and far more women use the net to cheat than men – but you aren’t going to hear people banging that message home.

15. I think ISOU made a good point that this woman is putting herself in danger by creating this site, because for every guy who contacted her who is in an open marriage, there’s probably one or two others whose spouses don’t know about their extracurricular activities. If the spouses find out and start divorce proceedings, these guys may go looking for their own form of revenge.

    and invisible dan? I don’t care at all about the institution of marriage; if it stands or falls it’s no sweat off my back. I do think that most people want and assume monogamy in their marriage though, and HIV and HPV, among other STDs, are a valid concern for folks who don’t require condoms in their marriage. If I were married, I would want to know if my spouse were adulterous, and like Hugo brought up, yes, it would hurt like hell. Whether the disclosure is public or private, it hurts the cheated on spouse a helluva lot more than the cheater. But not knowing can have more dire consequences than knowing. If it were me in that position, I would immediately get tested, and then see a lawyer.

    It’s pretty common procedure for people who think their spouse is having an affair to scroll through websites looking for evidence. Like everything else on the Internet, caveat emptor. Don’t post anything you might not want seen in public. I think it’s kind of bizarre that these guys have that level of trust; that they don’t automatically assume that someone would do something like this.

16. My husband and I chatted about this site last night and he brought up another good point. What if the men sending in the pictures aren’t sending in their own pictures? It wouldn’t be the first time someone did that with a personal ad service (and I speak from some depth of knowledge on this).

    Also, I think she might be exposing herself to litigation when she posts those photos.

17. Sorry, that is just wrong and could land her in hot water for publishing people’s private data, even though they give it to her freely, there is still a expectation of some privacy. If she gets sued she will not be able to have any argument except for “they are bad men” and should be punished. I do believe that people who cheat on wives are husbands or wrong for breaking that trust, but the fact is that some may be in “open” relationships,.

    Also, what makes her so perfect moralisticly that she should be the punisher of these individuals. I think the mens behavior is wrong but she is just as wrong as the men.

18. The guy spends a lot of time demanding higher standards of conduct from men than he ever does of women. I intend to call him on that at every turn.

    Hear hear! We’re calling out the men for merely cheating, but their wives are guilty of being CHEATED ON. I mean, where’s the perspective? Being cheated on is surely a bigger sin than cheating, isn’t it? Those women should be stoned to death for being cheated on, the hapless victims.

19. I know I’m seconding again, but Bitch, Ph.D. brings up another point…how much does this woman really know about the people whom she exposes? I am not excusing hurtful or unsafe behavior, but in the realm of relationships, it’s all too easy to reduce partners to “good” and “bad”.

    Knowledge is better than ignorance, and when one factors in the risk of STDs – a very important observation – I might be inclined to look at these outings a little less critically. I, however, get the impression from what I’ve seen that this is less about safety and more about embarrassing someone for his poor judgement….the idea is to inflict some kind of emotional damage rather than ensure the safety of people. And that’s what I’m uncomfortable with. I don’t know about anyone else here, but I’ve had acquaintances who cheated (had affairs when the partners did not agree that this was permissible) and while I didn’t agree with their behaviors, I knew enough of their situations that I could understand why they did what they did. When you know the people, your assessment of the situation is a little more nuanced.

    It would also be interesting to see if there’s equal-opportunity outing going on here, i.e., exposing women who cheat as well as men.

20. Hey Mark, it’s difficult to take someone seriously who starts their sentences with “be a man…”

21. And, Invisible Dan, I don’t believe I made a judgement call on this post other than to say that I find it a bit hard to work up compassion for married people who use the internet to cheat. The HIV thing is a stretch, by the way. We’re talking relationship issues here, not a witch hunt.

    My pointing out the site isn’t a “public service offensive” as much as it is an internet curiosity – which is why I posted it in the first place.

22. I don’t think it matters what gender is doing what in this scenario. It’s never a good idea to set morality traps for people. But, I agree with Lauren, from a curiosity point of view this makes for good internet surfing.

23. Most of the comments have revolved around the ethics of married men looking for sex partners online. She acknowledges, though, that one of these guys (the sixth one down) is single, and the next one may be as well. Others may be married but have some open arrangement (we do all accept that marriage has whatever parameters the partners freely choose, right?)

    So if this is not about men cheating on their wives, what is it? Older guys, younger women? But at least one of these guys looks mid-thirties to me — hardly too old to have an equal-basis relationship with a woman of 28.

    So what it this about?

    I think we can bring all the feminist analysis we want to it, but trying to cast this woman’s livejournal as a feminist act is a mistake. Her motivations, as far as I can tell, and the same base instinct that drives reality TV humiliation-fests, the desire to feel better by ridiculing others.

24. Now hold up a minute, Thomas. I do not endorse her livejournal as a feminist act. Whatsoever. Remember the part above where I said I pointed to the site because “it is an internet curiosity”? – not everything I post has a stamped, sealed feminist approval. See other feminist commenters’ disapproval for that fact.

    This is where you’re right on and where I totally agree: “Her motivations, as far as I can tell, are the same base instinct that drives reality TV humiliation-fests, the desire to feel better by ridiculing others.”

    Reread what I wrote – no feminist endorsement here.

25. Quite right — I wrongly read in an endorsement you didn’t make or intend.

    Like you, I don’t have much sympathy for those who are leading double lives and deceiving women they have obligations to.

    However, this livejournal is just unenlightened “war between the sexes,” and I see no winners and lots of casualties. I’m a big fan of less social constraint on sexuality. It pains me to see people asking honestly for sex and getting squished for it — I more often say something about it when it’s women who are criticized for seeking sex, because our culture imposes a lot more rules and a lot worse sanctions on women for being their sexual selves. But it’s also painful to see this happen to men. Like La Lubu said, all she can say about some of these guys is that they’re losers. Can’t losers want sex, too?

26. “Robots don’t say ‘ye’!!”
    (squinting eyes) “I’ll show ye!”

    Insofar as the narrative reads like a Todd Solondz movie, I’ll have to pass on the vicarious entertainment.

27. this reminds me of a movie: This Girl’s Life. it’s about a porn star who tries a new venture. she places an ad to help women test their husband’s fidelity. if they cheat, she reports back to the wife. it was all a big thrill until one angry husband stalked her, raped her, and threatened her father.

    don’t fuck with people’s personal lives. it’s just bad karma, ya know?

28. There is actually a detective service that does something similar to this site; they place ads on personals pages, arrange meetings with attractive women (who are really private detectives), and then report back to the spouse that hired them. Pretty lucrative business they’re doing, too.

29. For the record, I did not think that you were supporting this as a feminist statement. The implications are interesting, but that would be a stretch to call it “support”.

30. This is so-o-o great! I’m gonna scan a picture off my boss’s desk, snip his wife and kids out of it in Photoshop, embellish it with a little fictional text, email it off and see if this woman will post it up on her website! LOLOLOLz0rz!!!1!1!

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