Hello and welcome to another “true crime” miniseries that isn’t particularly transcendent, but is devoured like Cape Cod potato chips doused in white vinegar.
What ? Already finished ? Three one-hour episodesAshley Madison: sex, lies and scandal on Netflix and we hit rock bottom. From this true story, of course, but also from the bag of chips.
Decision fatigue resulting from the abundance of new TV series is also that. We rely on the Netflix algorithm by selecting one of the titles in the top 10 from the platform and, oops, too late, the vortex sucks us in.
Out of laziness, boredom or sheer ease, we put on these “clickbait” type docuseries like Ashley Madisonwhich chronicles the rise and fall of this popular online dating site, a sort of Tinder for unfaithful married people.
It’s in Toronto – such Canadian pride! – what was this web giant designed, which had 37 million subscribers before a hacker revealed, in the summer of 2015, the names and contact details of all the cheating members, including the ultra Catholic Josh Duggar of TLC reality show 19 Kids and Countingas well as a handful of second-rate American politicians.
The first episode ofAshley Madison, a series offered in English and French, adopts a light tone for a nevertheless heavy subject. We’re talking about broken marriages, violation of privacy and destroyed lives. When the list of adulterers leaked onto the Internet, a pastor and professor emeritus from New Orleans killed himself in his garage. His widow testifies in the series and it is heartbreaking.
When it was created in 2002, the Ashley Madison site described itself as the world leader in discreet extramarital dating. Its slogan: “Life is short, have an adventure”. Ashley Madison guaranteed the confidentiality of its users’ data, which revealed their sexual preferences such as their credit card numbers.
No one – and especially not the cheated on partner – wants this private information floating around on the Web.
Every major media outlet (print, digital or electronic) covered the naughty rise of Ashley Madison, because her big boss, Noel Biderman, had a keen sense of marketing. A real TV beast.
Noel Biderman created daring and eye-catching advertisements for his website and visited all the TV sets, including the talk show The View, accompanied by his wife, to whom he swore loyalty in front of the cameras. Wait for the rest, if you haven’t guessed it yet.
Noel Biderman bamboozled all the journalists with his punchy and concise answers. He was lying about the security of Ashley Madison’s servers. He encouraged the creation of fake female profiles. He used chatbots to fool customers into thinking they were talking to a real person. In short, he himself orchestrated the fiasco that torpedoed his career.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY NETFLIX
Nia Rader
One of the most juicy parts of the docuseries concerns the Christian vlogger couple Sam and Nia Rader. They are beautiful, they are believers, they sing Frozen in their car, they have beautiful hair and beautiful young children, but Sam also has a parallel life thanks to that little tanner Ashley Madison.
Parenthetical: Ashley Madison is not a real “madam” or a real matchmaker. She does not exist. It is a fictitious name that was created by combining the two most popular first names in North America around twenty years ago, Ashley and Madison. So.
But back to Sam Rader, an emergency room nurse from Dallas, Texas. Without taboo, he unpacks his bag on camera, which takes courage or a big ego, it’s not clear, and the end of the second episode packs a punch that almost forces us to finish the series at once. Nia Rader, the cheated wife, also testifies, but not in the same setting as her husband. Did Ashley Madison get the better of the pretty Raders’ unwavering faith?
The criminal part of the series lacks depth and twists. When the computer attack occurs, two Swedish cyber investigators arrive as reinforcements at the Ashley Madison premises in downtown Toronto, like in a spy film. In our living rooms, we rub our hands in anticipation. These two European experts, who resemble characters from Scandinavian thrillers, will quickly identify the hacker hiding under the pseudonym The Impact Team.
We are waiting for the big final twist which, alas! will never show up. No credible suspect is identified and no one knows, to this day, who hacked Ashley Madison and why.
This is, moreover, the greatest fault of the majority of “true crime” shows which abound on digital platforms: none succeed in reopening police investigations or in elucidating crimes which lie dormant in the filing cabinet of unsolved cases.
You will not come away grown or transformed from watchingAshley Madison, we won’t lie to each other here. But you will definitely want to change your passwords on Hinge or Bumble. An unplugged leak happens so quickly.