In today’s complex media landscape, it can be hard to separate news from advertising. Advertising often wants to hide itself as news. Social media sites, including Twitter, don’t always tell you that items in their “What’s Happening” sidebar aren’t organically trending. Sometimes, they are straight-up paid advertising.
And this is where I found a “story” from the supposed news site Insider with the headline: “I used a dating app to meet millionaires. I got to travel the world, get fancy gifts, and learn a lot from my relationships.”
If I would have known the item was an ad, I never would have read it. But I thought it was a legitimate news item, and I was intrigued. I clicked, and I was taken to an article with a byline from a “Jane Ridley,” styled as an “as-told-to essay” based on a conversation with an “Amber Lucas,” whom I’m not entirely sure exists.
Amber, the “as-told-to essay” explains, was tired of dating “emotionally immature and financially irresponsible” young men. Instead, she wanted to meet “more stable,” “mature” men who “approached relationships with a generous mindset.” So she says she went to a website that “specializes in matching successful and attractive people.”
The website, it turns out, is run by the same company that ran another site (seekingarrangement.com) famous for matching young women looking for money with older men looking for, well, not someone to watch a football game with.
“Amber” goes on to explain in detail how the website works and how her dates went with three men she met on the site. One man bought her an airplane ticket to Paris, the cost of which, she said, “could pay off my car.” The same 53-year-old man (who Amber says is “about” 14 years older than her) also bought her an $11,000 Chanel bag.
Another one of Amber’s dates flew her to Seattle, where she was given his credit card “to have a spa day and go shopping” while he was in meetings.
Amber never really tells us what exactly she did in return for these trips to Paris, Chanel handbags, and Seattle spa days, but she does mention that “I have never had such good sex.”
Mmmkay.
I have serious doubts as to whether there is such a person as Amber. Maybe there are some real women out there who have had a fantastic time exchanging purses for sex with men they just met online. But why is Insider passing this off as “news”? Have we really fallen so far?
