Loyalty-Test

Would your partner cheat? These ‘Testers’ will give you an answer. Loyalty-Test, a paid online service, was created to help you trap your partner. But what is it actually testing?

Caden Redmond, a college student in West Palm Beach, Fla., was on TikTok in April flirting with a woman living in South America. While writing to her via direct message, he told her he had never been to her home country but was planning a trip soon.

The conversation was going smoothly. He asked if she would show him around when he arrived; she said that would be cool. He called her cute, and she called him cute back. At one point, she said she “can’t wait” for him to get there.

Moments later, he took screenshots of their conversation, blocked the woman’s account and sent the images to her boyfriend.

“I just texted him and was like, ‘Hey, she said she wants to go out,’” Mr. Redmond said in a phone interview. “I sent him screenshots and he said, ‘OK, that’s enough, thank you.’”

Mr. Redmond, 19, was hired by the man to test his girlfriend’s loyalty, and according to him, she failed, leading her boyfriend to dump her. All the arrangements to lay the trap were made through Loyalty-Test, a service that allows people to hire “testers” to flirt with their significant others online to see whether they respond to the romantic advances or remain faithful.

Mr. Redmond charges $100 a test and has conducted five since joining the site this spring. Sometimes it takes just one DM exchange; other times it’s two to three days of online conversation: He determines what is included in his flat fee on a case-by-case basis. He only tests women, he said, and he doesn’t share any sexually explicit messages or private information of his customers and wouldn’t conduct tests on behalf of anyone he knows personally.

“I don’t aim to make people cheat,” said Mr. Redmond, who is a running back for Keiser University’s football team and a TikTok and Instagram creator. “I just do it because I’ve been cheated on, and I feel like if someone wants to know, they should know from someone who is actually not going to take their girlfriend.”

“That’s part of the job: Never follow through,” he added.

Since beginning in January, Loyalty-Test has brought aboard 30 testers — like ride-share drivers, they are free to take on as many or as few clients as they wish — and has been used by roughly 1,000 anxious customers who are unsure about their partners’ loyalty, according to Brandan Balasingham, 27, the website’s founder. (...)

To get people to sign up as testers and customers, Mr. Balasingham posted listings on job sites like Indeed, Handshake and Backstage. He also searched for microinfluencers to promote the service. He offered a $20 signing bonus to anyone who signed up as a tester, he said, and ran ads on Google with terms like “how can I test my husband?”

It doesn’t take much to be approved to be a tester: just an active Instagram account (it doesn’t have to use a real name) and an agreement to abide by Loyalty-Test’s terms. (...)

“We have a huge variety of testers,” he said. “And on the website, you can filter it down to whatever your partner would be interested in.”

by Gina Cherelus, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Getty

[ed. Liars, lying to liars for liars. Little wonder dating has become such a minefield these days.]