Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal

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.

Of the handful of the people they profiled, I.e. Christian guy, suicide guy, etc they all took ridiculous selfie / regular photos with really stupid looks on their faces, like they were always trying to be funny....

I believe that anyone who constantly takes pics like this are liars who are hiding something. I'll admit this is a far fetched theory but I've notice this in other documentaries also. A real man doesn't do this. So take a look at your significant others social media and also the photos around your house. You might be married to one of these unfaithful idiots and you didn't even know it.

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.

Out of the millions of Ashley Madison subscribers, the producers decided to focus the majority of their attention on a Christian vlogger couple and a pastor. Meanwhile, the company itself is treated as a completely innocent party and handled with kids gloves. The agenda is right in your face, and it's there for far too long. The last two episodes are basically the exact same thing. I get it, long ago I used to write essays for school and pad them with paragraphs of repetitive garbage in order to meet the length requirements. This, like many other Netflix documentaries, stretched out a simple story into a multi-part series. Come on, it's beyond time that we bring back the hour/hour-and-half documentary.

No matter how interesting the subject matter may be, this "series" is biased beyond belief. At first I almost couldn't believe that the victims of this doc were the unfaithful partners, it just seemed insane. But yes, we were expected to watch the cheaters explain their stories as if they are recounting traumatic events and feel sorry for them.

The "victims" paint themselves as naive and discontent partners tricked into doing something stupid (not immoral, just stupid) who then faced unfair consequences.

It's quite rich that the filmmakers have people in the doc explaining how the hack ruined so many lives, and yet don't see the hypocrisy that they are defending those guilty of infidelity, which undoubtedly ruins lives. They want us to be scared of the group responsible for the hack, but I think they should be seen as America's most noble whistleblowers.