Brandon Wade | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | American |
Other names | Brandon Wey, [1] Lead Wey |
Occupation(s) | Businessman, entrepreneur |
Known for | InfoStream Group Seeking.com |
Website | askbrandonwade |
Brandon Wade (born Lead Wey; [2] [3] [4] 1970) is an American businessman who is the founder and chief executive officer of InfoStream Group, an online dating company. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and MIT Sloan School of Management [5] and a former software engineer. He is best known for founding the sugar dating web site Seeking.com. Wade's web sites have been criticised for being comparable to escort services. [6] [7] [8]
Born in Singapore to ethnic Chinese parents, Wade was raised in what he describes as a "Tiger Mom–type of upbringing" consisting of studying and not much else. [9] While growing up in Singapore, Wade attended Saint Andrew's Secondary School and Hwa Chong Junior College. [10]
In 1993, Wade graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he received a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering on an Overseas Merit Scholarship awarded by Singapore's Public Service Commission. Upon graduating in 1993, Wade opted to stay in the United States, breaking his contractual obligation to return to Singapore and forcing his parents to pay about $300,000 in damages. [11] Wade then enrolled in the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he graduated with a Master of Business Administration in 1995.
After completing his MBA, he moved to New York City to work for technology consultants Booz Allen. He later joined General Electric as a technology infrastructure manager. [12]
Wade is the author of two books titled Seeking Arrangement: The Definitive Guide to Sugar Daddy and Mutually Beneficial Relationships [13] and Connecting with the IN Crowd: How to Network, Hang Out, and Play with Millionaires Online. [14]
In a 2014 essay for CNN titled "Dating website founder says love doesn't exist", [15] Wade wrote, "Love is a concept invented by poor people."
In 2006, Wade founded the sugar dating website Seeking.com. In 2007, Wade launched a companion dating site WhatsYourPrice.com, a dating website where members bid for dates in an online auction environment. In May 2012 he launched MissTravel.com, which pairs 'generous' travelers with 'attractive' travelers who would love the opportunity to travel the world for free. [16] Marlow Stern of The Daily Beast criticised MissTravel.com for its lack of safety precautions, including the high potential for sex trafficking. [17] And in May 2015, Wade launched OpenMinded.com, a dating website that caters to those who are monogamish with the goal of providing a safe and stigma-free environment that brings the ease and flexibility of online dating to the currently underserved world of open relationships. [18] He further states the website caters to those looking to engage in 'ethical cheating'. [19]
Wade's websites, which are based around rich men paying for dates with attractive women, have received controversy and criticism in the media, with Forbes , [20] The Atlantic , [21] ABC News [22] and MSNBC [23] all reporting on the moral ambiguity of the websites SeekingArrangement and WhatsYourPrice.com. The websites have been accused of treating their female members like prostitutes, [23] with WhatsYourPrice.com being described as "indistinguishable from prostitution". [24] It has been reported that a large proportion of women using the site are students, [25] and about 40 percent of the male users are married men. [17] [26] Wade has strongly denied there is an illicit side to the site. [27] [28]
A nerd is a person seen as overly intellectual, obsessive, introverted, or lacking social skills. Such a person may spend inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, little known, or non-mainstream activities, which are generally either highly technical, abstract, or relating to niche topics such as science fiction or fantasy, to the exclusion of more mainstream activities. Additionally, many so-called nerds are described as being shy, quirky, pedantic, and unattractive.
Child sex tourism (CST) is tourism for the purpose of engaging in the prostitution of children, which is commercially facilitated child sexual abuse. The definition of child in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is "every human being below the age of 18 years". Child sex tourism results in both mental and physical consequences for the exploited children, which may include sexually transmitted infections, "drug addiction, pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and death", according to the State Department of the United States. Child sex tourism, part of the multibillion-dollar global sex tourism industry, is a form of child prostitution within the wider issue of commercial sexual exploitation of children. Child sex tourism victimizes approximately 2 million children around the world. The children who perform as prostitutes in the child sex tourism trade often have been lured or abducted into sexual slavery.
Enjo kōsai, shortened to enkō (援交), is a type of transactional relationship similar to the Western sugar dating. It is the Japanese language term for the practice of older men giving money and/or luxury gifts to attractive young women for sexual favors. The female participants range from school girls to housewives. The term is often translated as "compensated dating" or "subsidized dating".
An escort agency is a company that provides escorts for clients, usually for sexual services. The agency typically arranges a meeting between one of its escorts and the client at the customer's house or hotel room (outcall), or at the escort's residence (incall). Some agencies also provide escorts for longer durations, who may stay with the client or travel along on a holiday or business trip. While the escort agency is paid a fee for this booking and dispatch service, the customer must negotiate any additional fees or arrangements directly with the escort for any other services that are not provided by the agency involved, such as providing sexual services.
GoDaddy Inc. is an American publicly traded Internet domain registry, domain registrar and web hosting company headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, and incorporated in Delaware. As of 2023, GoDaddy is the world's fifth largest web host by market share, with over 62 million registered domains. The company has around 21 million customers and over 6,900 employees worldwide.
Adult FriendFinder(AFF) is an internet-based, adult-oriented social networking service, online dating service and swinger personals community website, founded by Andrew Conru in 1996.
A girlfriend experience (GFE) is a commercial sex service. It ranges from a transactional sex relationship to a client paying a sex worker to pretend to be his girlfriend during the session. If the sex worker is male, the service is called a boyfriend experience.
Turning Point is a professional wrestling TNA+ event, produced by American professional wrestling promotion Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. The event was created in 2004 and was originally held annually in December, until the 2008 event where TNA changed its scheduled date to November. The 2004 event was the second TNA PPV to be produced annually. Since its inception, the event has been held exclusively in an indoor arena in Orlando, Florida, with all events taking place in the Impact Zone until 2019. Each event features talent from TNA competing in various professional wrestling match types. Since the inaugural event, eight championship matches have taken place in the main event.
Prostitution in Hong Kong is itself legal, but organised prostitution is illegal, as there are laws against keeping a vice establishment, causing or procuring another to be a prostitute, living on the prostitution of others, or public solicitation.
Kylene Barker is an American pageant winner from Galax, Virginia who was Miss Virginia 1978 and Miss America 1979.
Prostitution in Singapore in itself is not illegal, but various prostitution-related activities are criminalized. This includes public solicitation, living on the earnings of a prostitute and maintaining a brothel. In practice, police unofficially tolerate and monitor a limited number of brothels. Prostitutes in such establishments are required to undergo periodic health checks and must carry a health card.
This is a partial, non-exhaustive list of notable online dating websites and mobile apps.
Craigslist is a privately held American company operating a classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, community service, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums.
Arrangement Finders is a North America-based sugar baby and sugar daddy dating Matchmaking service, with its headquarters in Toronto, Ontario. The parent company is Ruby Inc.
WorldStarHipHop is a content-aggregating video blog. Founded in 2005, the site averaged 1.2 million unique visitors a day in 2011. The site, operated by Worldstar, LLC, was founded by Lee "Q" O'Denat. Described by Vibe as a "remnant of the GeoCities generation", the site regularly features shocking events caught on video, music videos and assorted content targeted to young audiences. O'Denat who referred to himself as a "Haitian ghetto nerd", described WorldStarHipHop as the "CNN of the ghetto".
Seeking.com is an American online dating service founded by Brandon Wade in San Francisco, California, in 2006. Wade was previously the CEO of the company until June 2022 when he was succeeded by Ruben Buell, who will serve as CEO of Reflex Media, the company that maintains Seeking.com.
Maddie & Tae are an American female country music duo composed of Maddie Font and Tae Kerr, both of whom are singers, songwriters, and guitarists. The duo was signed to the revived Dot Records in 2014. Their debut album, Start Here, was released on August 28, 2015, and includes the singles "Girl in a Country Song", "Fly", "Shut Up and Fish", and "Sierra". Following the closure of Dot, they signed to Mercury Nashville in 2018. They released their second studio album The Way It Feels for this label in April 2020, and the first part of their third studio album, Through The Madness in 2022.
Sugar dating, also called sugaring, is a quasiromantic or pseudoromantic relationship wherein a financially successful person dates a less financially successful person. Typically, the financially successful person is older and wealthy, while the other person is typically younger, attractive, and interested in improving their quality of life. Sugaring can be classified as a compensatory relationship whereby the recipient obtains gifts such as jewelry, luxury goods, leisure outings, vacations, fine dining, financial support, or mentorship, meanwhile offering social benefits such as companionship, affection, dating or intimacy.
Sugarbook is an online dating service that was founded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Sugarbook is most popular in the Southeast Asian countries of Malaysia, Singapore and Philippines.
the brainchild of Singapore-born Lead Wey
An immigrant from Singapore (his real name is Lead Wey)