How to "win" group sex

[helenic]

A couple of weeks ago, dennyd linked me to http://www.helpwinmybet.com. This site is now down, but consisted of a guy (Jim) who'd made a bet with his girlfriend (Allison):

"I said to my girlfriend that any stupid website could get tons of hits, simply because people are bored all the time. She said that I was an idiot and couldn’t make a website that could get tons of hits if I wanted to. After a long argument (mostly centered around the fact that she called me an idiot) we made a bet: If I could not make a website to get 2,000,000 hits, I would agree that I was an idiot; however, if I could make a website to get 2,000,000 hits, she would have a menage a trois (that's a threesome to you non french-speakers) with me and another girl."

So! Spread the link, up the hit count, help Jim get his threesome. There was a picture of blonde Allison at the top of the page. The hit counter was very nearly at 2 million, and looked set to reach it that evening. As the hitcount got higher Jim updated more frequently, boggling at having created a net phenomenon, and started joining dating sites to try and find their third partner. "Wanna be our third? Click on the link!" It was tacky, but he also posted about having had to update his bandwidth and needing to cover his costs, and was upfront that if you joined this dating site he'd get a bit of cash, and the teasing tone meant that it didn't actually grate.

"Reckon it's genuine?" I asked. "Probably", Denny said, "it doesn't look like it's making a profit." It was written with a kind of appealing ironic humour, and raised a smirk and a giggle when I first looked at it. Denny commented that the girlfriend probably had someone in mind and this was just an excuse, and I thought that you know, more people being open-minded about group sex is a good thing, even if they do go about it in stupid ways, so yeah, trendies making free with the bisexuality and sexual experimentation, that's kinda cool.

I forgot about it, and then yesterday my friendslist was spammed with links to http://www.helpwinthisbet.com. The hit count had been reset to zero, the more recent updates had been deleted; it was started again from scratch. The url was slightly different and the picture of the girl (and names of the characters) were changed, but the text was exactly the same. The other difference was that the contract link is broken - both sites linked to a scanned, handwritten contract, but "This Bet" didn't have the image, which suggested it was a copycat site rather than the newest incarnation of an ongoing hoax. I posted a few comments on the relevant entries pointing out it was a fake, and zotz directed me to an article about the original "My Bet" site on The Register, which not only provides evidence for the previous version's existence, but revealed that the site was for profit after all:

"If you look at the link properties for his links to metrodate.com and gamefly.com (well, the gamefly link is gone, but it did the same thing yesterday), the actual href link takes you through a redirection website! I looked up the owner of the sites that the links redirect through and came across a company named: ValueClick.com, an online advertising firm.

Now, this was before the statements listed for April 5 were posted. He has since stated that he is getting a financial bonus for signing people up for metrodate.com. However, with a click-through redirection system, he's actually making money from people simply clicking on the link to metrodate (not from having them sign up!)."

Why copycat it, then? Is the new "This Bet" site planning to use the same redirection scam? I did some research.

WHOIS doesn't have a listing for helpwinmybet.com: presumably the domain has expired or been deleted. The entry for helpwinthisbet.com is as follows:

Registrant:
Meter Systems
8469 E McDonald Dr
Scottsdale, AZ 85250
US
480 607-8572

Administrative and Techical Contact:
Hanson, Kevin metersystems@gmail.com
8469 E McDonald Dr
Scottsdale, AZ 85250
US
480 607-8572

Domain servers in listed order:
NS0.LETSMEETUP.INFO 69.9.169.144
NS1.LETSMEETUP.INFO 69.9.169.145

Letsmeetup.info? Sounds like a dating site, I thought: and sure enough, if you go to it, it is indeed: the sexiest adult dating community on the web. Apparently. And a whois search on it brings up the following registry entry:

Domain ID: D11936192-LRMS
Domain Name: LETSMEETUP.INFO
Created On: 25-Jan-2006 07:31:43 UTC
Last Updated On: 26-Mar-2006 20:49:45 UTC
Expiration Date: 25-Jan-2007 07:31:43 UTC

Registrant Name: Kevin Hanson
Meter Systems
8469 E McDonald Dr
Scottsdale AZ
85250
US
+1.4806078572

metersystems@gmail.com

Admin, billing and technical details all point to the same guy, running off the same two nameservers. The bet site isn't just a funny hoax, it's owned and run by a for-profit dating community.

Which is, you know, sort of how the internet works and I'm not really surprised. Except that suddenly, the nature of the site becomes a lot more questionable. When I first saw it, I found it funny, and I thought that promoting sexual relaxation and freedom was probably a good thing. When I find out it's run by a male-dominated mid-Western personals and sex site, suddenly this whole assumption is called into question. The majority of people looking at that site won't read it as the girl's bisexuality or the couple's excuse for sexual liberation; they'll read it as clever guy fooling his girlfriend into being a hot lezbo sex object with another hot chick of his choice, all through his clever use of internet technologies (which of course she knows nothing about, being a girl).

The Register:
"By our reckoning, that's a quick ménage-à-trois with enough page impressions left over for Jim to demand the whole thing is videotaped for posterity. Well done that man."

Valhalla forums:
"this guy is a smart fellow, todays hooraa goes to him! although it really shouldnt considering any normal male will help any random complete other stranger to do what ever it takes to have a 3sum."

Demand? And all that language about "winning"? However carefully it's phrased as "all in good fun" and with the full consent of the girl, the implication is clear: what every guy wants is hot, anonymous lezbo action in his bed (does he care who the third girl is? No) and a girlfriend who will accede to his demands for same if he can prove his strength and cunning through use of modern technology. Help Jim get "his" threesome? HIS threesome? The character of Jim/Dan/whatever is gambling with his girlfriend for her own sexual autonomy, and he's capitalising on the fantasies of other males in order to do so. Why else would it get so many hits? Even if it wasn't planned and funded by a profiteering male-owned personals/sex site, it's still objectifying: not necessarily in itself (if the girl had been fully complicit, fine - although do we hear her voice? Only through the male writer) but in the assumptions and desires to which it's designed to appeal.

This isn't about the female body: Hell, I look at porn, I'm (occasionally) a nude model. I'm all for looking at and thinking about the naked women. What's unacceptable is the male urge to possess female queerness. Despite the FHM "threesome phwoar" attitude, the truth is that the fact that I sleep with women and have mixed-sex threesomes is not ethical or acceptable to the majority of society. In the pub the other day the barman overheard elise and I talking and reacted with a mixture of amusement, lechery and fear that is completely normal. Our sexual choices and autonomy, when viewed by the majority of society, only become okay if they are controlled and presented and normalised by men. Jim "winning" "his" threesome? Go Jim! Women wanting to snog each other in public without offending anyone and marry and raise kids? Well, if Jim isn't there to run the show, I just don't think we can accept that.

Interestingly, in the time it's taken me to write this, helpwinthisbet.com appears to have gone down. I'm not going to start forming conspiracy theories, I'll just be glad the internet is rid of it and hope it stays that way. There's a cached version here in case you haven't seen the site and the above entry makes no sense.