Ashley Madison Fallout Continues And The Only Hope We Have

Ashley Madison Fallout Continues And The Only Hope We Have

So, Ashley Madison may yield yet the data we need to prove our moral failings as a global society. If you’ve been living under a rock, I’ll help you out. It won’t take you long to catch up, I promise.

Ashley Madison is an adult match-maker website. Such a nice concept. Oh, the important bit? It’s mainly for people who are married and are wanting to have an affair. Their official tag-line is, “The most recognized and reputable extramarital affair company. ”Oh, and their website was hacked. And all their data has been released.

Right?

When the hackers released the data about the people that had signed up on the site they called the company out for being a fraud. Biderman, the company’s CEO, regularly would state in interviews that the site’s demographics were 50/50 evenly split men and women. It’s a pretty important piece of data for a hookup website, otherwise it becomes pretty difficult to find people to have affairs with apparently. And the other allegation the hackers leveled at the company was that even though they offered a service wherein the members could pay to have their data erased, the company never did any erasing.

Upon looking at the data, their allegation appears to be born out. It would seem that about 14% of the members were women. Of those, it is unclear how many are real women though as the hackers have intimated that the company falsified many of the accounts.  As to the second claim, just the sheer quantity of the member data released proves that all the members that asked to have their data released couldn’t have succeeded.

And now we are beginning to get some pretty amazing data visualizations looking into this data within Ashley Madison’s member records. This map will show you two important details. The areas in which females made up more than 15%, and where they didn’t. And it will also show you the world wide Ashley Madison user distribution.

These stats are fascinating to delve into, and the data is just a treasure trove of 30 million different people’s lechery. But this post really isn’t about Ashley Madison. Or it’s male/female ratio. Or about the company’s inability to delete data after being paid $19, when in fact they said they had. I’m sure that we will see enough about all that after the company is taken to court in a massive 30 million user class action lawsuit. This post is more about our collective need for love, connection, and all of us needing someone to make the pain go away.

The world has been telling itself for thousands of years now that we are the masters of our domain. That if we put our minds to it we can do anything. We have been telling ourselves that the only thing keeping us from perfection and bliss is the time necessary to point our brains at it. We have been telling ourselves that we are demigods.

But it just isn’t true.

Sooner or later I hope that you will realize that this lie that all of our societies are collectively telling you is intentional, and with malice aforethought in order to keep you on this belief-system treadmill. But to find an escape from this failed logic, I want to go to the most unlikely of places. I want to go to a video of someone who has confessed to being caught by the Ashley Madison trap. And it’s in this guys failures that we will learn just where we can all go to find relief from these lies that our world is telling us.

Sam and Nia are vloggers who exploded onto the world stage recently when Sam announced to his wife that she was pregnant by doing a test on her behalf after she failed to flush the toilet. Pretty cute. Regardless, a day or so ago, Sam came out and admitted to creating an Ashley Madison account.

Here are the details from the summary of the video post I wanted to highlight:

“The bible tells us in James to confess our sins to one another and to pray for one another.

I am a sinner, and a hopeless one at that. In no way do I meet the expectations of God for my life. I fall short of all his commands and I choose to disobey him repeatedly at my own consequences, which is why I am in such need of a savior like Jesus.

I feel ashamed of what I have to admit but I think it’s more than necessary for my dedicated followers, those who have entrusted their time and love in our family.

Over 2 years ago I did create the Ashely Madison account. To be clear this was only an account I used to navigate the site in my sinful curiosity and any messages or data pulled from that account would be evidence of that. I absolutely did not meet up or see another woman from the site. It was clearly a bad moment in my life and I acted on a sinful desire to be with another woman but never came close to going through with it.

It’s easy to watch our channel and think of us as a perfect family, but that’s simply far from actual reality. However, I am definitely not the man that I was then. I pursue my relationship with Christ on a daily basis and have since been involved in a weekly discipleship. We have our issues with sin like anyone else in the world. This is just one instance of my fallen self, one example of my imperfection and my fleshly desires. I will let you down, your friends and family will let you down, and yourself will let you down, just as I have let myself and family down. But Christ doesn’t let anyone down, which is why we are called to put our identity in Him and nothing and nobody else.

My wife and I plan to move forward as normal with our vlog, as we will not allow Satan any foothold in our lives. I have no doubts that we will continue to be attacked and shamed as we live our lives for Jesus in the public eye. It’s the reality of our humanness. You won’t see or witness any perfection from my family and especially not from myself.

I hope you are praying for one another and you pray for me. I do not plan to comment or say anything else about this situation. I am very sorry for my actions and regret it immensely. Our family would like to move on despite the hatred and criticism that will certainly ensue.

Thank you for listening and thank you for your understanding and forgiveness in this matter.”

The truth is, that we are all in need of a savior. We are all broken. Left to our own devices we all run off on our spouses and have affairs. We all are in need of a pain patch that will make the trauma of this life go away… whether that be drugs, sex, alcohol, entertainment, whatever. But those things don’t work, as I’m sure you are aware.

In the comments for this video and on other news sites Sam is getting completely eviscerated. Which is rich, because these same people that are tearing him apart are also just as much in need of forgiveness. Admit it. You’ve done some idiotic things in your own life. I have. Holy cow, have I done a crap ton of stupid in my life. But when we come out and admit our failings and let others know we’ve asked for forgiveness we just pile on. Which proves my point all the more… the individuals attack Sam are looking for release from their own pain by attacking others that have fallen.

Looking back at the map of red and the users around the world that have made accounts on Ashley Madison, I just feel sadness for them. I don’t condemn them… because I too could have found myself creating account there. I’m not above having an affair. But my only hope is in Christ alone. Like I said, I have done a ton of my own stupid. I am not above these individuals. Not by a long shot. But I have slipped past the veil of lies that this society is telling us, and have seen the truth that it’s only through God and Christ’s death and resurrection that I can be forgiven for all of my really dumb mistakes. And it’s only through God and Christ’s death and resurrection that you can be forgiven for all of your really dumb mistakes. It really is impossible to keep everyone thinking you are perfect like the world tells you to do… why keep up the act?