Throwaway because obvious (BTW, it would be really cool if HN had a way of allowing anonymous posts not linked to your primary account without creating a 1-time account that just clogs up the user table).

I am an Ashley Madison user, although probably not typical in any respect. And yes, my details are in the leak. Me and my wife grew up and married within the mormon church, complete with its absolutely distorted view of human sexuality. After leaving mormonism, we came to realize our sexual maturity had been stunted and wanted to experience new things...we now have a somewhat open marriage. We set a few ground rules because we do love each other and didn't want to break up, but then we set out on our quests to find other partners.

I tried the tinder thing, and that was okay. I tried just going to bars, and that was okay. I came away feeling a little skeezy, despite being completely honest with my wife, because I had to be dishonest with the girls I was meeting...nobody in those situations responds well to "Oh, by the way, I'm married", no matter how clear you are about it being okay with your wife. I also grew tired of hookups and one night stands very quickly. I wanted to meet women that occasionally wanted to meet up, but were okay with the fact that I had a family life and couldn't just run away any time either of us wanted some. Tinder and bars were definitely the wrong target market.

While I was doing this, my wife skipped straight to Ashley Madison. Put up a few pictures, and within seconds she was getting more messages than she could read. Like literally 500+ messages a day. She tried to filter them by stating explicitly on her profile what she was not interested in (specifically, out of shape or over 45yo). It didn't stop them. Most of the messages could be described as follows: Shrivelled or obese old men (my wife is 29 btw) well over 45 (including several senior citizens), accompanied by unsolicited dick pics, and messages about how they could last all night long or whatever. Some men were a lot closer to what she was looking for, but after filtering out all the garbage she didn't feel up to the task of trying to message back. She decided to ignore the messages and try messaging men herself. They either didn't respond, or they messaged back asking if she was a fake profile. She eventually was successful in finding what she wanted, but it was pretty significant effort.

I grew frustrated with the expectations of tinder and bars, and reluctantly decided to try AM. After seeing my wife's experience, I knew I was in for a sausage fest competition, but I also learned quickly what was a turnoff to women and I am pretty attractive myself, so I thought I had a chance. My perspective from the guy's side? For the most part, it is an extremely expensive scam. A single message will cost you $1-2 depending on the points package you bought (women don't pay for anything). If you want a priority message, it costs double that. All you get with a priority message is a guarantee that your message will not be buried in the 500+ message/day inbox of the woman you are trying to message. It can still get buried, but it only gets buried under other priority messages. I had 20+ messages a day from other women (or, more accurately, profiles of women). It was very obvious that most of them were fake, so I didn't bother with the obvious ones. Some of them were less obvious fakes. Some of them were scams to get you to sign up for other sites, or paid "background checks" from women who "just want to be safe". And occasionally, I got messages from actual women, but I never was interested in them.

I did have some success with talking to and meeting actual women. Based on my experience, I would estimate that 1000 is a pretty low estimate for the total number of active women on the site. I would probably ballpark 100-200 in my metro area, at least between 20-40yo. And here's another surprise...about half of them were single. In fact, all of the women I ended up meeting in person were single. But yes, it was quite obvious that the vast majority were completely fake.

I actually feel like I enjoyed my AM experience, but can totally understand why you wouldn't if you aren't comparatively young and attractive. For them, I guess you could blame it on AM being a scam site as much as you could blame it on having inflated expectations of what you could get out of it. I mean, if you are 50+, overweight, and have no clue how to talk to women, of course you aren't going to land a date with a 20yo hotbody. And yet it happened...thousands of men threw away their money in an attempt to hook up with my wife. I'd estimate AM made at least $5000 from my wife alone, in the two months she was active on it.

And then there is the leak problem. I wasn't worried about my wife finding out, and I'm not worried about divorce...but I am worried about my extended family finding my email address, because they are all super judgmental mormons (albeit with naive kind hearts). I have had to come up with a cover story with my wife if they approached her about it. My life won't end if they find out...it just will just become a lot more tense with my extended family. I also now have to worry about moral crusaders in background checks and other situations...I get the opportunity to tell people my situation is different while they smile, nod, and judge me as a sleazy cheater. That sucks. Add to that the fact that we couldn't delete our profiles without paying a ransom, and it totally sucks. And while the majority of the active users were likely men trying to cheat on their wives, there were tons of people just like me, as well as other situations (including single people, homosexuals, polyamorous, etc.) where they weren't cheating but they did want something direct and discrete.

TL;DR: Not a complete scam, just mostly. The site really was mostly a bunch of desperate men talking to bots and getting ignored by women, and paying out the nose for the privilege. And Avid Life Media is a pile of shit company that deserves their inevitable bankruptcy. Their executive team is both nefarious and negligent and should be burned at the metaphorical stake. I hope they shut down the company before the picture data gets released.

And maybe have some empathy for the users that got caught up in the leak, because all you have is proof that they signed up for a website, but you don't have any clue as to their situation nor intentions.