OTTAWA — Perhaps it’s not a ranking that the Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce will desire to publicize. Ottawa is in the top 30 of “cheating-est” cities in Kansas. The website Road Snacks compared the number of Ashley Madison accounts to the populations of Kansas cities with populations of 2,000 or more, then ranked the cities according to the percentage of people who have signed for the accounts on a per-capita basis. Ashley Madison is the infamous website that offers discreet romantic matches among married people who aren’t married to each other. The site was also the subject of a controversial hack in which the hacker released personal and credit card information. There were more than 32 million accounts created on Ashley Madison, and the consensus is that almost all of them were created by men. In Kansas alone, there were more than 111,441 accounts created. “That’s a lot, considering that the entire population of the state is 2.2 million,” Road Snacks said. The website’s slogan is “Life is short – have an affair.” According to Road Snacks, 650 Ottawans, or 5 percent of the population, are taking that advice. That puts ottawa at 27th on the list of 150 cities in Kansas, one of the higher percentages of cities in the area in which people have Ashley Madison accounts. Gardner comes in at 15th, Osawatomie at 25th. Other places farther down on the list, Carbondale at 32, Edgerton at 44, Baldwin City 45, Spring Hill 52, Paola 66, Wellsville 76, Louisburg 77 and Garnett 78. Osage City was 130th. Number one in the state, Fort Riley. As might be expected, the top cheating towns were those with military bases, big universities or in Johnson County. The two weirdest entries, McLouth, a town in northeast Kansas with 2,400 people came in at number two in the state with more than 12 percent of the population who have signed up with Ashley Madison. Then there’s Plainville in Rooks County in northwestern Kansas which came in at 9th, or more than 6 percent of the 2,250 people who have signed up.
Monday, Feb. 29, 3 p.m.
