Hey NYU girls, what would you do to pay off your unbearably high tuition costs? Would you go on dates for cash? If you’re “attractive, ambitious & young” and in the market for a “generous benefactor to pamper, mentor and take care of you,” or just pay your NYU bills, seekingarrangement.com is for you.
The site connects wealthy older men called ‘sugar daddies’ with college girls, or ‘sugar babies’. The girls basically work as escorts and in exchange the ‘sugar daddies’ make it rain.
It’s just like real dating but with way more money and way less emotional involvement. One girl was given an ipod just for showing up to the first date. With 500 registered users, NYU has more “sugar babies” than any other college, so we decided to contact the CEO of Seeking Arrangement, Brandon Wade, to find out more about the site and why so many NYU kids are on it.
How did you come up with the idea for Seeking Arrangement?
I got the idea from my own previous dating experience. I created a website where men can be gentlemen and women can be, well, ladies.
Has the site been successful?
It’s doing really well. We have almost 900,000 members. It seems to be catching on from a pop-cultural trend perspective.
Why has Seeking Arrangement had such success?
For a lot of reasons. A lot of people in my generation grew up idolizing Hugh Hefner, and I created a website where thousands of men could be Hugh Hefners. I mean Hefner created an empire in which women could be proud of their bodies. He changed pop culture and really galvanized the feminist movement. Playboy had really intelligent articles showing that women had opinions and were intelligent and not just sex objects. Also, people forget now that he’s fairly old but when he was gaining popularity, Hugh was a young man. Similarly, our ‘sugar daddies’ are not old men. The average ‘sugar daddy’ is actually 36. They just want someone to take out and have conversation with and a good dating experience. ‘Sugar babies’ are looking for a good time and someone to take care of their needs. Simply, they go out and enjoy each other’s company. I wanted to be Hugh Hefner. I was very geeky and nerdy and lacking social skills, and I was hoping to create a website where I could help men like me become playboys. The concept has done well.
Why are you targeting students for ‘sugar babies’?
Like Mark Zuckerberg figured out, using “.edu’s” is a great concept. There’s so much fraud going around, and there is value knowing that someone is a real person from a real school. Beyond that, people reminisce about college. I started dating when I was in college. College girls are the most active group of daters; once people leave college, they become involved in serious relationships and get married.
NYU has the most sugar babies of any school. Why do you think this is the case?
Well, New York in general is our most concentrated area for users. 15 percent of site users come from the New York area. It’s also because NYU is right in the center of Manhattan. There’s also a high cost of living for people in this area. I guess NYU students are proud to tell people they go to NYU. ‘Sugar babies’ from NYU and from the Ivy Leagues like to put this information in their emails and in their profiles.
People sometimes refer to Seeking Arrangement as prostitution. How do you respond to these accusations?
Actually, MIT wrote an article about me saying that I was basically the dark side of an MIT mind. But there were 32 comments and opinions arguing this fact, saying that what I was doing was perfectly acceptable. For those that accuse me of exploiting girls, what about the reverse? What about the young girls taking advantage of the wealthy older men? The relationships are mutually beneficial. I also want to point out that people have said that these students are desperate, but when you look at the site, 80 percent are working towards a college degree so this is actually not true at all. Seeking Arrangement is not prostitution; if users want to be prostitutes they can use Craigslist or many other sites. ‘Sugar babies’ do not refer to themselves as prostitutes. The media likes to label them as such even though they themselves do not.
Do you feel strange messing with conventional ideas about sex, love, and relationships? How do you feel money comes into play in all of this?
I think money plays an important role in any relationship. It’s all about money at the end of the day. All romantic relationships include money. When we were cavemen, men were hunting for food. The men who could get the most food were the most attractive. The best men get the best girls. The men who get the most money will be the most successful in relationships. The world gets very uncomfortable when we put money up front, along with a person’s looks and other superficial qualities, but the truth is, wealth is attractive. Money is also extremely practical. A woman wants a man who can take care of her needs. If you have money and you’re showing it off, you’re like a peacock spreading it’s wings, so to speak.
If you, like me, were hoping for something more than the Q&A equivalent of a press release here, maybe try the Huffington Post’s investigation: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/29/seeking-arrangement-college-students_n_913373.html
I get that Brandon is an idiot and exploitative and that’s all very apparent from the answers he gives, but to introduce his website as the fun and quirky way for NYU girls to avoid taking out loans is pretty revolting. The idea that Seeking Arrangements is “just like real dating but with way more money and way less emotional involvement,” is like saying this article was real journalism with way more sensationalism and way less critical thought.
That had nothing to do with anything, I’m just a sad person.
“I created a website where men can be gentlemen and women can be, well, ladies.”
I find it a more than a little frightening that Brandon’s conception of a “lady” amounts to this.
But on the topic of Mr. Wade, the site is one sexual assault away from being a debacle, maybe even a scandal.
Women’s studies historians, take note.
“I mean Hefner created an empire in which women could be proud of their bodies. He changed pop culture and really galvanized the feminist movement.”
This article was not an expose about Seeking Arangement, nor was it an attack on Brandon Wade. We let the guy speak for himself and he came off sounding like the obvious sleezbag that he is.
Okay, so you think this guy is a sleazebag. I think he’s a sleazebag too. I don’t think we have to explicitly SAY that in order for it to be painfully obvious.
It seems like y’all were looking for something closer to an expose, or wanted us to come down explicitly on the side of “this is bad.” So I’m sort of confused by your comments about “real journalism,” because traditional journalism would, in fact, never take that stance. Also, maybe you and I are just reading this differently, but I think John was pretty obviously sarcastic in his introduction. It’s only fun and quirky if you already think going on dates for money is fun and quirky.
Could we have pushed Wade harder on this issue? Yes. But we didn’t need to do that to make the point that he’s an asshole. He did that by himself.
How do I sign up to be a sugar son? I am very proud of my body, so I’ve been looking for an opportunity like this to put a price tag on it.
@Jane and Suri: Sorry
@Dan: You can do that on Seekingarrangement. Unfortunately, you have a 1 in 100 chance of getting hooked up with a sugar mama as a dude so I hope your body is as nice as you make it sound.
I am so sad that so many girls at NYU don’t value themselves enough to realize that they can pay off their loans on their own. I am equally as angry that there are people who think it’s okay to put a price tag on women, and even more upset that there are women who let themselves be priced. Thanks NYU Local for perpetuating misogyny!
“John was pretty obviously sarcastic in his introduction.” Yeah, nope. He’s pretty obviously glorifying the objectification of women.
Actually Kirsten, I really was trying to be sarcastic. I put quotes around “attractive, ambitious & young” to indicate that I had taken something directly from Wade’s website and to show that this was someone else’s idea.
Also I guess this could be unclear but “It’s just like real dating but with way more money and way less emotional involvement.” is also supposed to be sarcasm. I don’t know about you, but to me this arrangement doesn’t sound anything like real dating.
Maybe the picture attached to the article lent to the serious tone of my writing.
John, I don’t think you were trying to glorify the objectification of women, but it doesn’t come across clearly that you’re trying to be sarcastic. This reads somewhat like a press release because, “attractive, ambitious & young” are all good qualities that SA wants people to believe are embodied in sugar babies, as opposed to “desperate and drowning in crippling debt.” And SA I’m sure would love to be seen as real dating “but with way more money and way less emotional involvement,” instead of “but with a monetarily established power dynamic that emotionally exhausts women to pretend they are interested in someone that’s old enough to be their grandfather.”
And as for the image lending a tone or not to the article, let your writing speak for itself.
#1) If anything, this website is not degrading young women. It is offering them opportunities. Young, ambitious girls are always looking to move up in the ranks. I see this everyday happening in and around NYU (whether it is at bars, in class, or in the lobby of Stern). It does not mean that they will sell their souls and bodies for a quick buck, it just means they are ‘realists’. They ‘realize’ that in ‘real life’, a part of becoming cultured, powerful, and wealthy takes putting themselves out there and mingling with the people who can take them to greatness. However, not everyone (including myself) thinks that the “ideal self” equals the richest, most powerful, or most popular self. Sugar babies are just Type A personalities, they know what they want and will make great strives to get it. The girls who sign up to be sugar babies are not forced to do so. They make a choice. Any judgement about the sugar baby operations of this website is a judgement of the character of girls who are sugar babies. So if you think young girls greasing the wheels of the more experienced is jeopardizing the status of women in society, take up your concerns with the sugar babies themselves, not Mr Wade. However, that does not mean Wade is completely of the hook; the way he caters to Sugar Mommies and Daddies is not a user issue…
#2) This website openly condones extramarital affairs!! This is the real issue with Mr Wade’s business and I’m surprised no one picked up on it. If you read his website, you will see that he does not care about the moral implications of adultery. He refers to ancient/informal marriages in which men and women would just seek out the man with the most wealth. Mr Wade, society has evolved since then and whether you believe in the institution of marriage or not, women do not just seek out a man with the biggest stick anymore (or at least I’d like to think so). It is stuff like this that make me wonder whether the sanctity of marriage exists anymore.
#3) Do we only care about money nowadays? If this website truly creates a place where “men can be gentlemen and women can be ladies”, is the only glue holding the relationships of well-mannered people together a diamond necklace or a luxurious mansion? This website, if anything, is more of a depressing social comment on how little people really try to get to know one another and commit to relationships. If all we seek is sex and wealth, will anyone ‘feel something’ ? I’m not going to throw out the “L” word because I know that to many people it does not exist, but without something other than hot bods and fast cars, without genuine interaction, will people be emotionally numb in the future? What will happen to society then?
People be a-raging over here! Okay this first part has nothing to do with anything said previously: I think it’s a reasonable assumption that a good percentage of those “500 NYU students” registered are just checking it out for the lulz, just saying. That lil nugget of info may not be super representative of a much more interesting piece of information which would be how many of the registered NYU students actually DO go on dates. I’d be interested to know this actually, I wonder if that value is out there somewhere!
As for the students who do go on the dates, they have made a choice. Maybe they are desperate for money so they can stay at school. Maybe some actually prefer older men and women. Maybe they don’t view their own sexualities as something so rigid as can only be used for random hook-ups and relationships with those of our own age. Who knows why they do it? I sure can’t say. This is clearly a very polarizing topic, and my opinion is: I’ve judged them, and I conclude that I don’t really care. Their choice, not mine. I respect their decision to want to use a sugar daddy for whatever purpose, even if I would not do the same myself.
As for this John fellow, I’m not even going to dive into that big ol’ cesspot of fun that is the question of “misogynist?!?!” because lazy. But I thought he was sarcastic. And I also thought it was better for the Q&A for him to remain non-combative, as it allowed Wade’s seediness to be apparent without provocation. Ciao~
Really people? Is it really any of anyone’s business what these men/women choose to do? There are more than NYU and Ivy League Scholars on this site. There are plenty of older women and way younger men. Why doesn’t everyone concern themselves with life surrounding their immediate little circle and not worry about what other’s choose to do with their own time…..?
i like this kind of approach….since the meaning of true love gone long time ago…this kind of relationship is better than getting hurt with a man who not only pretends to loves u but also so damn broke….not only that,they are asking money from women too..shameless creature…so by being in this kind of relationship..i felt that we justified each other need honestly…i want comfort..you want pampers…sounds fair enough for me…to all the negative minded that have had posted a comment…please look this issue from a positive side