‘The Ashley Madison Affair’ Puts Cheaters on Blast

Stefany Phillips still remembers the exact date—Dec. 27, 2012—that she received a phone call from a woman who had been engaged in an 18-month affair with her husband of five and a half years. That level of memory detail speaks to the Earth-shattering trauma of infidelity, and in the case of Stefany and countless others it was facilitated by AshleyMadison.com, the infamous website that connects would-be cheaters. Spearheaded at its height by media-friendly CEO Noel Biderman, Ashley Madison is a portal that enables sexual and romantic deception. Thus, when it was notoriously hacked in 2015, there were few tears shed—except, of course, by those users whose names, contact information, and bedroom proclivities and fantasies were disseminated to the entire world.

The Ashley Madison Affair spends a small portion of its second episode lamenting the “human wreckage” wrought by that data breach, from destroyed marriages and ruined careers to, in a few apparent cases, suicide. Yet ABC News and Hulu’s three-part docuseries (July 7) doesn’t go too far trying to elicit sympathy for the Ashley Madison users who wound up as the hack’s collateral damage. Whether they were two-timing or not, the millions who signed up for the service were looking for something (companionship, love, kinky pleasures) that they weren’t getting from their spouses, and they generally sought it out in secret, keeping their accounts and resultant activities hidden from their partners’ view. Stefany isn’t the only person to relay the shock and horror of discovering that her husband was cheating via Ashley Madison, and it’s that anger and sorrow which resonates loudest in this exposé, not the harm and distress suffered by people (including celebs like convicted child-porn enthusiast Josh Duggar) who willingly used the platform.

Indicative of its “creepy” nature, Ashley Madison got its moniker from 2002’s two most popular baby girl names, and from January to August of that first year of operation, it grew its subscriber base from 60,000 to 550,000 members. It was a godsend to the unfaithful segments of the population, who no longer had to pretend to be single on traditional dating sites in order to cheat on their spouses. By August 2008, Ashley Madison was running commercials on ESPN and posting tongue-in-cheek billboards around the country, both of which earned it considerable press attention. So too did Biderman, who was more than happy to appear on television and respond to pointed questions about the ethicality of his enterprise while—as was the case on The View—being lustily booed by audiences.

Read more at The Daily Beast.