The Ashley Madison Affair

Bad Actors instead of Real People Woo boy did I turn this off fast! Don't know about you, but when I settle in to watch a documentary, I look forward to hearing from the REAL victims and all those affected by the scandal. I appreciate the rawness and vulnerability of real people. Welp, on this one, instead of hearing from the actual people involved, they opt to have actors read testimonials as though it were their own. They are set up in front of some corny looking props with their names in quotes. On top of that, they are baaaaaaad actors. I really hope this is not a trend here to stay. If you can't get real people to participate in your doc, shelve it and wait. Don't insult the audience with this clownery.

The idea of this docuseries is great. Give information about the Ashley Madison scandal, done. The way it's done however, is so incredibly poor. You'll get 10 seconds of talking followed by 30 second of garbage stock footage to pad out the episode. This reals like a way to just stretch 1 episode for 4-5 episodes as a way to pump out more content. On top of that you get awful actors that are trying so hard to make this their "big break" instead of real people that suffered because of this site. This should be an example of how NOT to make a docuseries. Slow it down, stick to only the facts and stop jumping to stock footage. We arent 2 year olds that need constant pictures shoved into our faces.

The interesting part of this biz and website is that after the data was hacked, a huge percentage of the actual activity was not about people hooking up. Yes, they claim in the series that there were 6 to 1, men to females and there were men complaining about the site but that's only a small part of the documentary. That number needs a fact check though because some sources on the web claim that 99% of all the profiles were from men, which says most women were actually men on the site. Google for yourself. Anyway, most of it is about the ceo, his marketing techniques and the backlash against the morality as if that was the actual activity, which it wasn't. Even though they had people claiming to, or representing actual users that engaged in cheating. Actually, that didn't happen. Actually, the site was a mating marketplace for men seeking sex for which there was very little interest from women. So, as they say in the film, the biz was monetizing men but you wouldn't get that impression watching the whole series. What they should have said is that the website was designed to dupe men since they paid for the service and what almost all got in return was bogus contacts and contacts to sex workers. What came out after the data hack was that the website is a fraud but it still survives because 'meet girls' businesses always manage to find those looking for a fantasy. I can't personally understand it since there are other competitors now that are free but it's part of the human experience that goes back thousands of years. So not only is this poorly made but also poorly researched and preys on a fantasy that ashley madison never provided.

From the 'actors' supposedly retelling the stories, to the 'experts' to the storytelling, itself, this is just horribly done. The actors, dear God. Absolutely horrible and so desperately trying to be seen. Between all of them there's not a single one that brings script reading ability- it's horribly bad and cringe inducing. Every few minutes there's lurid AM-type ads, salacious, grotesque footage, the same nonsense over and over, used as filler, but turns an one episode story into three. The story itself is so impossible to watch/follow; it's scattered, unpalatable and unintelligible. The story makes no sense and then is constantly interrupted with horrible acting, nonsensical ad-like pieces, and ridiculous commentary by someone like Sunny Hostin and the harpies from The View. We struggled through 20 minutes of the first episode and had to shut it down. We went to the 3rd to see if there was any discussion of the Anonymous hack, and there was none. No discussion of the database that was brought to light that exposed the disgusting behavior by married people using this site to find opportunities to cheat- only one of the AM reps that constantly makes excuses as to why this behavior is totally fine. Either way, this whole thing is just badly done and a poor excuse for documentary filmmaking. How it's hitting anything above a rating of 2-3 stars is proof that the attempts by this site to get rid of bots is clearly not working.

This is not...very good. Like I don't mean the subject matter is bad or troubling or whatever (which it is), I just mean the quality of this docuseries is poor. The thing with the actors reading for Ashley Madison users is weird and confusing. But for me the worst part of this is the sheer amount of stock footage this docuseries has. Like hold of the interview subject for more than 2 seconds. Stop cutting to barely related stock footage. It's really obvious to me that the filmmakers did NOT have enough footage to make this series. Idk I remember when the Ashley Madison leak happened. I was in high school, and it was all over the news and social media. It was kind of...exciting...in a sick way, or at least it was the thing that everyone was talking about. This docuseries makes this huge scandal feel like watching paint dry.

Hulu should be ashamed for continuing to publish lifeless, banal "original documentaries" created by the novices at ABC studios. There is nothing compelling about watching hired actors recite anecdotes while playing endless scenes of stock video footage: couches, traffic lights, busses, dogs playing with sprinklers, bugs - yes, in a documentary about hackers breaching data to expose users engaged in extramarital affairs, the producers had the gall to show us a tick climbing a plant. Just call the documentary "We Think Our Viewers are Mindless Sheep". Someone needs to clean house at ABC Studios, fire the incompetent employees who are creating and approving this uninspired drivel and hire a team who gives a damn about what they do.