Yet Another Reason Not to Stray

"Steve B______Cheats on his Wife!!!"
(Posting in "Cheater News"---www.cheaternews.com)


Actually, the original posting lists Steve's full name, plus his age, hometown, and place of employment. I don't want to add to Steve's problems, so I'm going to keep his last name out of this article, along with the full names of the other people I refer to. But, for better or worse, they're there on the cheaternews site for all the world to see.

There's been a proliferation of websites in recent years devoted to "outing" those who supposedly lie and cheat in relationships. Probably the best-known one is dontdatehimgirl.com. As the name implies, it's pretty much a woman-to-woman site, the primary purpose of which is to warn one's sisters about jerks, players, sociopaths, and assorted losers of every type. Members can anonymously post personal accounts of their dealings with a particular guy, along with his picture. Other members can then weigh in with their own stories and opinions about him ("OMG, I thought I was the only one to fall for that piece of s**t").

Theoretically, these sites allow the accused to post a denial or rebuttal, but you rarely see one. (What is the person going to say---"No, I'm not a piece of s**t"?). There are apparently no barriers to posting even the most scurrilous charges. Hearsay is common ("...from what I hear, he's knocked up three other girls and just laughs about it"), as is the gratuitous injection of other people's names ("...and I'd also be careful about his buddy who works for AT&T Wireless in Anaheim, Joe McD_____, who's probably even worse...").

Unlike dontdatehimgirl, on cheaternews.com women are as likely to be the accused as the accusers. And when they are, the scorn heaped upon them is particularly vicious ("...that fat slut will f**k any married man within two miles of her....The word is she's got herpes and loves passing it on...").

I have no idea if the majority of allegations on such sites are true or false, but I do know this: even if something is a deliberate lie, it's next to impossible to get it removed from the site. Our libel laws were not designed to deal with websites whose owners are not identified, and whose "forum moderators" are named (in the case of cheaternews) "paisley", "robstock", and "VooDoo". Posting a denial is, as I've said, just making a bad situation worse. I suppose you could spend tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to try to get an injunction ordering the site to remove your name, or even shutting the site down, but then what? Two weeks later, they'd open up again under a different name.

I'm sure that at least some of the people who post these things sincerely believe that by exposing wrongdoing and warning potential victims they're performing a public service. All well and good, but at what cost? Our laws are based on time-honored concepts such as due process, good-faith dealings, and the ability to confront one's accuser. How can you confront an accuser when you don't even know who he or she is?

There's another legal concept, though, that comes into play here, at least where married people are concerned. And that is "assumption of risk". Adultery has always carried a risk of exposure, but the risk is infinitely higher today. If your lover becomes your ex-lover, you'd better hold your breath that she doesn't go on a late-night rant on some website. Or that she doesn't tell all to her best friend, who then decides to make the world safe from cheaters like you.

Fear of detection shouldn't be the only reason to avoid having extramarital sex, or even the main reason. But it should definitely enter into your thinking. As I say in my book, modern life has made affairs much easier to arrange, but modern technology has made them much easier to expose.