Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal

In the early 2000's, when online dating was still relatively taboo, one firm took the monotony out of monogamy, Ashley Madison, unfortunately for the company and users, the site was hacked, and details made public.

Ok, so it's not exactly enlightening or educational, it's the kind of series you'll watch as you have tea and toast, whilst reading your newspaper, what it is, is an interesting story about human behaviour.

You will hear from hypocrites, more hypocrites, and a few people who very much have their feet on the ground.

I had a few questions, who did it, what would the fallout be, and would she stay with him?

You get some answers, unfortunately not all of them, but it's worth sticking with, episodes two and three are a lot more satisfying.

I wish Netflix would take note of so many comments, focused on the same thing, stop making your documentaries so long, this is yet another example, part one is virtually redundant, it establishes one thing, people cheat.

7/10.

It was an interesting premise. I enjoyed hearing the story of how Ashley Madison began and how they marketed the website. However, they took an idea that had enough content for a 1-1.5 hour tv special and turned it into three separate hour long episodes. It was very bloated and repetitive in a lot of places. The personal stories of the interviewees were also drawn out. The show did have some interesting facts and perspectives within it and it was well put together. However, I found myself skipping a number of interviews and scenes because of how repetitive it was. You're probably better just googling the story rather than watching this show.

This is interesting as this happened in the age where no one knew the impact of cyber attacks. This is similar to all dating websites these days. Documentry is well made and directed except the couple who look like they are just there to promote their youtube channel and flaunt fake love. I just ended up skipping all their interviews and scenes. The documentary focuses less on cyber attack but more on this couple. It's almost as if they invested their own money on this documentary. May be they did invest money and if they did then it is justified that they get so much footage out of it. Anyway, i did watch it at 1.5 speed.

This series show how a website exploited married people who wanted to cheat on their spouses without getting caught.

What is truly amazing is the sheer number: at one point, 37 millions subscribers !

Also some of the characters are presented as actually very good people. One is a Christian who really loved his wife and kids. Another one is a respected minister in a church.

However, what is unbelievable is that these millions of people gladly gave all their most private information and trusted the website to protect their privacy.

I watched the whole 3 episodes in one sitting.

I thought it was well put together by Netflix.

We weren't planning to watch this three-part docu-series, but a few extra hours the other day and a fetid curiosity led us astray and we binged it in one sitting. Once again, I'll save you the time and unless you really care about a skeezy website that helps people have affairs, there isn't much there there. I'd heard about the major hack, but knew (or cared) little about it and after watching this show, I didn't feel much sympathy for the people whose names were leaked. However, the show did raise an interesting point about the people who dove into the data and made it more easily accessible. As we continue to see, vigilante internet mobs can be dangerous, with their self-righteousness and certitude. The most empathetic character was the wife of the pastor who killed himself after his name appeared in the leak, and the least interesting (and annoying) had to be the nauseating Christian influencer couple who took up the most screen time. I needed a shower after watching this and am convinced Noel Biderman is one of the more despicable and poisonous pied pipers in the business world.