To Catch A Cheater: A Journey Through Online Infidelity

Contributed by: ElyseRomano on Monday, February 03 2014 @ 06:55 am

Last modified on Wednesday, May 24 2023 @ 12:08 pm

So just how easy is cheating online for men compared to women? To what abysmal lows will people stoop to steal another person's partner? And how can you uncover a cheater without tumbling down the rabbit hole of morbid, life-consuming paranoia?

Those are the questions asked on Recovery.org, where a brave sole posed as 40 different people on OkCupid to find out how the Internet affects infidelity. Each fictitious dater was married or 'seeing someone,' and their mission was clear: they wanted to cheat. Real photos were used, and the fake profiles were spread across the 5 US cities dubbed the "most unfaithful" by Ashley Madison.

The profiles were divided into four categories: The Brazen Cheats, The Married Maybes, The Recently Taken, The Sincerely Singles. Each category had distinctive characteristics:

• The Brazen Cheats: These extreme cheaters explicitly stated their desire to cheat on their current partners in the opening lines of their profiles.
• The Married Maybes: These folks listed themselves as married, but didn't elaborate on whether the marriage was open or monogamous.
• The Recently Taken: An edit at the top of the Recently Taken profiles explained that they were recently taken off the market, but haven't yet figured out how to delete their profiles.
• The Sincerely Singles: The control group listed themselves as single, and in every way appeared to be above board guys and girls just looking for Mr. or Ms. Right.

After one week of the experiment, only 10% of the total messages received across all accounts had been sent to the men. The female Brazen Cheats received more messages than the Married Maybes and Recently Taken women combined. The Brazen Cheat men received more messages than all of the other three male categories.

Of the 44 messages the male Brazen Cheats received, 36 were insults or inquiries into whether they were actually looking to be unfaithful to their partners. Only 8 messages were left over that could potentially be real 'leads.' Messages to the female Brazen Cheats, on the other hand, contained no condemnation whatsoever. Instead, they ranged from explicit offers of infidelity to messages that acted as if the recipient was single.

"It seems that when you make a bunch of fake male and female dating profiles and include references to the owners wanting to break social taboos by cheating on their partners," says an infographic on Recovery.org, "you effectively exaggerate what usually happens with male and female dating profiles: the women get vastly more unsolicited messages than the men and, probably because sex seems more possible than ever, the men go berserk sending the women offers of one night stands."

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