No matter what, sugar babies will thrive

“Maybe I’ll find a sugar daddy on the internet,” a friend mused ever-so-casually to me while lusting over a pair of $695 Miu Miu slip-ons that struck her in a magazine.

She hasn’t, to my knowledge, actually pursued it (the sugar daddy, I mean, not the shoes), but for that to be even a speck of dust on our cultural zeitgeist — something people even express aloud, for that matter — astounded me at the time.

“Is that even a thing?” I asked. “People really do that?”

She had no answer for me, but as the numbers attest, people do indeed.

In March of last year, the IDS published an article about the spike in membership of SeekingArrangement.com. The site connects older “sugar daddies” with so-called “sugar babies,” that is, the traditionally younger female recipient of a wealthy older benefactor, who is usually but not always male.

According to the number of school emails registered with the site, IU was ranked 17th in the nation for highest total members, with 62. New York University came in first with 185.

While the article equated the rise in membership with increasing college tuition costs, it’s hard for me to believe.

There have always been and always will be people in need of money. Does that mean that when the cost of goods and services inflate or the economy takes a dive, young people naturally turn to questionable means of earning income? No way!

Do you think people would have been any less interested in the concept 30 years ago when college tuition averaged an astounding 1,120 percent less than it does at present? Again, not a chance.

The site gained an audience because people will always jump at the promise of quick and easy money.

As long as the opportunities exist, there will always be people who will do morally questionable things for money. That’s nothing new.

It does not, however, mean that the site is representative of a larger ethos among college women.

Although I do find it disturbing that the seemingly-wholesome, corn-fed farm girl who sat beside me in finite might potentially moonlight as the pet of a local chiropractor, I think these sites represent less about the moral or economic failings of American society than they serve as an example of the ease to which one can find a niche for most any social faction via the internet.

From Christian Mingle to JDate, there’s a dating site for every type imaginable — tall people, short people, Democrats, Republicans, cat lovers, dog lovers, Ayn Rand fans, Trekkies, farmers, single parents, Ivy Leaguers, vegans, Apple fans, scientists, people with mental illnesses, STIs, tattoos or mustaches.

The popularity of SeekingArrangement.com is not a metaphor for everything wrong with our culture or a sign of impending doom. It’s not galvanizing the masses into adultery or prostitution.

It just represents another niche that has cleared itself a space on the internet for people who would have found each other regardless. It is yet another slightly off-putting niche genre in the dating world. Like others before it, this too shall pass.

And hey, at least we’re not NYU.

­— chkent@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Chloe Kent on Twitter @the_real_ck.