Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal is a three-part documentary series that narrates the origins, rising infamy and ultimate downfall of a dating website for married people. Produced by Minnow Films, the series is directed by Toby Paton. Each episode has a runtime of about 49-53 minutes.
The documentary features former website users, ex-employees and journalists including Evan Back, Sam Rader, Nia Rader, Marc Morgenstern, Claire Brownell, Rob, Amit Jethani, Cathy, Stephanie, Joel Eriksson, André Catry, Christi, Joseph Cox, Bryce Evans, Pastor Bo Dauster, Michelle ‘Bombshell’ McGee and others.
Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal recounts the shocking internet leak of intimate details in modern times, revealing the consequences of exposing people’s deepest desires, betrayals, and sexual confessions to the public eye.
Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal Review
Darren Morgenstern founded Ashley Madison in Toronto in 2001 as a dating website that functions similarly to others in the industry. After creating a profile, users buy credits to engage with other members in the hopes of forming a connection. One distinctive feature of Ashley Madison is that the majority of its members are married or in a relationship, setting it apart from other sites. The documentary reveals that Morgenstern was inspired to create a platform for extramarital affairs after learning that 30% of people on existing dating sites were married.
It’s definitely not a hidden fact that all dating sites have some percentage of people who are already in committed relationships. Instead of deceivingly entering into relationships, Ashley Madison’s concept, “Life is short. Have an affair.” sounds like a straightforward way to pursue affairs. Knowing that the person on the other end is probably committed, removes the deception and disappointment many would feel at other sites. If only, what went behind the scenes was as straightforward as they marketed the site to be.
After attracting hundreds of thousands of signups in its initial years, the website saw exponential growth when Noel Biderman took over as CEO. Biderman enlisted his childhood friend Evan Back as vice president of sales and together they implemented a bold marketing strategy. Despite facing rejection from major networks, Biderman promoted Ashley Madison through appearances on news programs and daytime television, often accompanied by his wife. Often arguing that the website was not creating cheaters, but rather meeting an existing demand.
All of their strategies (mostly negative publicity) seemed to work as the site had amassed 37 million users and expanded into over 40 countries, by 2015. But Biderman made one critically biggest mistake that took down the whole business – not securing the site as they promised to its users. Taking advantage of this, in July 2015, hackers called ‘The Impact Team’ took over all their data and threatened to reveal the information about their users, their sensitive personal data, to the public. Their only demand – shut down the website within the next 30 days.
Another big mistake was to not involve law enforcement immediately and trying to solve the issue on their own. Eventually, all the data was leaked on the dark web, outing ordinary citizens to known personalities for being Ashley Madison users. What initially seemed like the work of a disgruntled user/spouse or a fundamentalist group turned into a personal vendetta when personal emails of the CEO Noel Biderman were made public, as part of the second leak. To date, nobody knows the identity of the Impact Team but most believe it to be done by someone from the inside or probably helped in it.
Repercussions Faced by Ashley Madison users
The documentary unfolds from two perspectives – one of the former employees, explaining their work structure and what went on during the growing phase. The second is of its users or their spouses, whose relationships were deeply impacted by the leak. One of them is the YouTube family vlogger, Sam and Nia Rader. Finding their viral moment with Frozen’s Love is an Open Door sing-along video, the couple found their audience as a Christian family channel, showing off their daily lives. But their new-found popularity also put them at the forefront of a cheating scandal as Sam was outed as the notorious site user.
More than Ashley Madison’s employees, I personally felt more deceived by Sam Rader in this documentary. For the major part of the documentary, it looks like he signed up for the site looking for some lost excitement from his marriage or probably just external validation. He repeatedly claims to have sought out some conversations here & there, but nothing that turned physical. Until you reach the halfway point of the third episode and he quickly sweeps aside that he was MUCH MORE involved than he reveals. Leave the site, he was hitting on his wife’s friends, who stopped being friends with her because of it.
Not sure how Nia was able to look past all the lies, probably the social media popularity and the income it brought along was a key factor in staying together. Having seen the snowballing downfall of multiple family vloggers, it’s hard to believe their authenticity or the message they portray. Contrary to them, there’s another couple who is much honest about their extra-marital affairs and keeping their marriage open. Meanwhile, it also highlights a grim reality where some of the site users took their lives when faced with public outings and shame.
Christi, whose husband took his own life after the leak, is probably the saddest story. The reason being that Christi knew about her husband’s affairs throughout their marriage and he wasn’t exactly hiding them anyway. Yet he decided to take such an extreme step only after the seminary he taught at, got to know about his association with Ashley Madison. It’s disheartening to imagine the kind of marriage they had and why women stay despite knowing they are being cheated on. The fact that he was much more bothered about his public image than his relationship with his wife, is enough to never forgive a cheating partner.
Although brief, Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal also gives some insight into the mindset behind cheating. As Evan Back states how they strategised their marketing based on different genders, it reveals that in the case of men, it was all about enticing them into fulfilling their desire for extra-marital sex without ever getting caught. To fulfil their sexual desires with no strings attached and also maintain their respectable image as a family man or good husband. It could also be enticing to some women but for the majority, such affairs were a way to escape the patriarchal marriages – being tended to the way they desire or have control over it.
While there’s no excuse for cheating, the real criminals, however, are the Ashley Madison employees. From lying to angry spouses about being a regular subscriber-based app to making fake bot profiles of women to keep the male users engaged and taking in money for deleting profiles but never actually doing that – they were never held responsible for their actions. The biggest hypocritic was Biderman, marketing the site while claiming to be in a monogamous marriage. Seeing some of them simply laughing over their ill practices is quite outrageous and makes you believe that it might be a regular practice in the dating site industry.
Overall, it’s an eye-opening and quite intriguing documentary. It’s also a cautionary tale for anyone to exercise some kind of anonymity on all the dating apps. Also, if you need to keep seeking an external thrill then simply don’t get committed or find a partner that follows the same values. People will cheat regardless of whether an application like Ashley Madison exists or not.
Rating: 4/5
Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal is available to stream on Netflix.
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