This document discusses research on dating and hookup apps and sites, with a focus on Ashley Madison. It covers topics like how dating profiles and interfaces have become qualified through attributes over time; how bots are used on sites like Ashley Madison to engage users; and how platforms shape emotional experiences and moderate affective economies through governance policies while denying authority over user actions. The document provides references for concepts like disconnection as an economic lubricant, geographies of disconnection, and the strategic denial of authority by web producers.

1. Ben Light
Connected Lives, Diverse Realities
Research Group
School of Health and Society
@doggyb
b.light@salford.ac.uk
(Not So) Sticky
Fingers: Automation,
Hookup Apps & the
Qualification of the
Intimate

2. An Economy of Qualities
(Callon et al 2002)
•A good or service is defined by the qualities attributed to it
during qualification trials.
•The result of these trials depends on the good or service and
the judgements made by consumers.
•Singularisation involves the alignment of consumer
expectations with what is on offer, in terms of how
differences affecting choice are both articulated and
understood.
•Attachment and detachment involve the capturing of consumers,
attaching them by detaching them from rivals, by engaging them
in processes of requalification.
•Services providers need to cooperate with a calculating
consumer on a regular basis - to keep their products alive as
it were.

3. The Quantified and
Qualified Self
• The qualified self refers to the process of the
creation of media traces of ourselves; which in
turn creates representations of ourselves to be
consumed. (Humphreys Forthcoming).
• This data may also include quantified self data
which seeks to generate an environment of systemic
monitoring where an individuals personal
information climate provides real-time performance
optimisation suggestions and where the individual
becomes a more calculable and administrable object
(Swan 2013).

4. Disconnection as
Socioeconomic Lubricant
(Light 2014; Light and Cassidy 2014)
• Disconnection as socioeconomic lubricant
• Payment to disconnect
• Release valves to maintain presence, datafication,
marketing, apparent critical mass
• Geographies of disconnection
• disconnecting by not joining a service, leaving it
or suspending participation with it for some time
• within a single service in relation to the people,
functions or features of a given space
• between between services
• spaces of the physical world may also play a part

5. Affective Economies
(Ahmed 2004)
•Emotions as not private, as part of exchange
•Circulating, involving attachment and
displacement
•The rippling effect of emotions
…they move sideways (through “sticky”
associations between signs, figures, and
objects) as well as backward (represssion
always leaves its trace in the present - hence
“what sticks” is also bound up with the “absent
presence” of historicity).
(Ahmed 2004: 120)

6. Speculative Devices
(Light 2016)
• Speculative devices, those things that are set
in place based on a conjecture of an outcome.
• By device, I mean a thing for affecting a
purpose, recognizing that objects contribute to
the processes of making events that constitute
society (Michael 2012).
• Speculative devices have the capacity (which may
not be fulfilled) to generate actions, thought
and feelings about the past, present and future.

7. Qualification
Trials
Affective
Economies
Qualified and
Quantified Self
Disconnection as
Socioeconomic
Lubricant
Speculative
Devices
€Attachment and
Detachment

8. Desired Digitised
Dicks in the 90s?
•Pseudonyms
•“Meateatr” (Shaw 1997)
•Numbers (between 10 and 25—referring to centimeters) and/or
abbreviations like TTBM (Très Très Bien Monté - translating
into Well Hung) used codes of expressive pseudonyms to
denote penis size (Livia 2002)
•Discourse
•“Youve heard of IRC inches? … somebody says eight and you
know its probably five.” (Shaw 1997)
•“are you still cruising for cock” (Campbell 2004)
•“6” cut cock”, “8½ inches of cock!” and “nice cock”
(Mowlabocus, 2010)

9. Desired Digitised
Dicks in the 00s
• Hookup digital infrastructures
• digitized photography,
• video chat,
• writing of dicks into interfaces
(see e.g. Cassidy, 2016; Light, 2007; Mowlabocus, 2010).
• Guides to using hookup apps
• “Mr Right Now wants to see your cock—not a pic of you cuddling
Aunty Ethel on Christmas Day. Mr Right might be put off by a
cock-only portfolio” (JockBoy26, 2010 17).

10. You Stole My Dick Pic
• Cast as duplicitous members who pretend to want to meet
in order to gain access to dick pics, whether in platform
or via requesting additional pics to be sent by other
means such as text, WhatsApp, or Snapchat.
• Once pics have been received, the conversation is
abruptly ended and the user who has provided them may be
blocked.
• Rather than the dick pic being sent in an unsolicited
fashion, it is instead taken, undermining the
expectations and desires of the dick pic sharer.

11. Dicks - Feel Free!
• Platform owners and app stores are equally key actors
(Harrison 2017, Light, 2014, 2016; Roth, 2015).
• Squirt, for example, operates as a HTML5 site.
“Currently, apps that contain adult material are not
allowed in the App Store or Google Play. Squirt does
not believe in censorship. We are pro-sex, and we
celebrate sexuality. Having to offer Squirt with no
nudity in the pictures, or having to police what
members put on their profiles for simple profanity or
the frank talk about the kinds of sex that we look
for is not an experience we want to bring to you.”
(Squirt 2016)

12. Dick Pics - Not In My Backyard!
But Maybe In My Alley?
•Apple's (2017) app store guidelines state that developers should not
include
“Overtly sexual or pornographic material, defined by Websters
Dictionary as explicit descriptions or displays of sexual organs or
activities intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or
emotional feelings.”
•The Google Play Developer Policy Centre (2017) states that:
“We dont allow apps that contain or promote sexually explicit
content, such as pornography. In general, we dont allow content or
services intended to be sexually gratifying.”
•The Apple App Store (2017) also engages in relegation work by stating
that:
“If your app includes user-generated content from a web-based service,
it may display incidental mature NSFW content, provided that the
content is hidden by default and only displayed when the user turns it
on via your website.”

13. Ashley
Madison
•Where millions go to find
something different, something
discreet.
•At the time of the hack the
service reported having over
43.5 million members. The
opening page of the desktop site
now suggests it has over 49.35
million.
•App is free to download, with
optional in-app purchases
ranging from $19.99 to $249.99.
•In-app purchases give users
additional functionality such as
messaging, gifts and chat time.
(iTunes download page 2017)

14. Masking Up
•We respect your need
for discretion so
we've created some
tools to keep your
identity a secret.
•Are you sure you dont
want a photo? Men are
37 times more likely
to contact you if you
have a photo.

15. The Bots of Ashley
Madison
•Ashley Madison, bots appear to be used to chat with human users to
keep them engaged, and they use fake profiles, created by Ashley
Madison employees, as a face for the interaction. The same bot can
inhabit many profiles.
•Anna Lee Newitzs analyses of the data dump revealed 70,572 bots,
70,529 configured as female and 43 configured as male.
•It was also reported that male users received 20,269,675 million
messages from female bots, and that female users received 1,492
messages from male bots.
•Female bots engaged in chat with men 11,030,920 times and, male
bots engaged in chat with women 2,409 times.
•Examining the source code of the site, it was possible to see that
bot based encounters could be generated every few minutes creating
a overall sense of women looking for men throughout the site
(Newitz 2015).

16. Guiding Bots
• Newitz reports via her interrogation of the source codes
comments that bots were given descriptions of how to act
by programmers that has them sporadically focusing on
engaging straight men:
host bot mother creates engagers
• birth has been given! let the engager find itself a man!
• randomizing start time so engagers dont all pop up at the
same time
• for every single state that has guest [non paying] males,
we want to have a chat engager
(Newitz 2015)

17. Bot Talk
hi,hi,hi,hi (s),hi there,how are you?,hey,Hey,hey there,hey
there,Hey there,u busy?,you there?,any body home?,Hi,Hi,Hi,hows
it going?,chat?,how r u?,anybody home?
lol,hello,hello,Hello,hello?,whats up?,so what brings you
here?,oh hello,free to chat??
Hmmmm, when I was younger I used to sleep with my friends
boyfriends. I guess old habits die hard although I could never
sleep with their husbands.
Im sexy, discreet, and always up for kinky chat. Would also
meet up in person if we get to know each other and think there
might be a good connection. Does this sound intriguing?
Bot talk – from Newitz (2015)

18. Turning bots on and off at Ashley Madison (Newitz 2015d)

19. Not Another Conference Darling…
Ashley Madison seemingly delegates the morality of engaging in an
extra-relationship affair to the user, positioning itself as
merely an intermediary – see Kylie Jarrett (2008) on the strategic
denial of authority of Web 2.0 Web producers.

20. Trustify
• An Ashley Madison user can pay to find out if their data has been
released by the hack.
• Anyone else can check up on someone they think may have used the
site (despite the fact that Ashley Madison did not have a
validation process in place so no links could be made between
users and their emails).
“If you suspect that you are being cheated-on by your spouse,
or that your partner is on Ashley Madison, then you are not
alone. The Ashley Madison data breach includes over 32
million users, and millions of Americans are cheated-on by
their significant others on a daily basis. Many of these
victims of infidelity cite that the worst part is not knowing
if they are being cheated-on. They just want to know the
truth. Trustifys Network of Licensed Private Investigators
can help you get the truth today.”
(Trustify 2016)

21. Business
Model
•12 Million+ members
worldwide
•Apple/Android
•ScruffPro
•Access more swipes
•Stealth mode
•2000 v 150 blocks
•No Banner Adverts
•Scruff Brotique

23. Travel and Events

24. The Profile

25. Location & Selection

27. Conclusions
•Disconnection as socioeconomic lubricant - psychological
and emboddied, not just behavioural
•Geographies of disconnection - not as between sites and
practices - but as between thoughts, things and feelings
•Affective economies - banality, desire, duplicity, and
reciprocity
•Shaping emotional experience through platform governance
but moderated by the strategic denial of authority (see
Kylie Jarrett 2008)
•Exercising power by stating the safe limits in order to
make money (see Steven Lukes 1974)

28. References
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Ashley Madison 2016b Ashley Madison Welcome Page volume, issue, Accessed: 20 January 2016,
https://www.ashleymadison.com.
Ashley Madison 2016c Guaranteed Affair Programe: FAQ volume, issue, Accessed: 25 January 2016,
https://www.ashleymadison.com/app/public/guarantee/detailsform.p.
Auger, J. 2013. "Speculative design: crafting the speculation." Digital Creativity, volume 24, issue 1, (March) pp.
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Light, Ben. (2016). Producing sexual cultures and pseudonymous publics with digital networks. In R. A. Lind (Ed.),
Race and Gender in Electronic Media: Challenges and Opportunities (pp. 231-246 ). London: Routledge.
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