Gross: Ashley Madison Created an Indecent Proposal App for Men to “Bid on” Each Others’ Wives

Spilling people’s personal information against their will in a large-scale website hack is terrible, but we’ve seen something we just can’t unsee: affair hookup site Ashley Madison had an app in the works for men to rate each others’ wives—complete with dollar amounts. Yes, that’s a bidding system, essentially, and basically an online version of the movie Indecent Proposal, except the wives would presumably have no idea.

The app, developed in 2013 and tentatively called “What’s Your Wife Worth,” was never completed, but the leaked emails showed that wasn’t for lack of interest on the part of Ashley Madison’s chief executive, Noel Biderman. Maybe one of the coders had an attack of conscience? Biderman’s thoughts were that the two functions of the app should be to “post your wife” and “bid on someone’s wife,” in case you were holding out hope that it was just meant to be a ratings system and not a way for cheating husbands to discuss potentially exchanging money for unwanted wives.

I know I keep assuming we’re talking about straight couples here, but that’s only because it’s definitely the intention behind the app. Oh, and because an unbelievably lopsided portion of Ashley Madison users are men, so this would have been a way to keep them entertained in between all the affairs they weren’t having, I guess. That is if you consider trying to sell women like property entertaining.

Thankfully, despite Biderman checking in on the app’s progress, it seems none has really been made beyond the initial proof-of-concept, which you can see screenshots of over at The Daily Dot. Meanwhile, we’ll be trying to scrub our brains of the knowledge that this app was ever a possibility so that we can sleep at night.

(via Gizmodo)

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Dan Van Winkle

Dan Van Winkle (he) is an editor and manager who has been working in digital media since 2013, first at now-defunct Geekosystem (RIP), and then at The Mary Sue starting in 2014, specializing in gaming, science, and technology. Outside of his professional experience, he has been active in video game modding and development as a hobby for many years. He lives in North Carolina with Lisa Brown (his wife) and Liz Lemon (their dog), both of whom are the best, and you will regret challenging him at Smash Bros.

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