Ashley Madison, the eHarmony of why Mommy and Daddy don’t live together anymore, is no stranger to obnoxious public stunts created to advertise its discreet adultery hook-ups. In the past, the website has posted billboards featuring Bill and Hillary Clinton, offered a $1 million bounty for anyone who could provide proof that they’d slept with Tim Tebow, and run ads featuring a BBW model (without her consent) that suggested husbands should cheat on their wives because they’re fat. Now it will apply these same smooth seduction techniques to producing an hour-long commercial for its services, couched in television drama form.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Ashley Madison CEO Noel Biderman says the as-yet-untitled drama will be inspired by stories from the site’s users, exploring the “taboo world of extramarital affairs in the digital age” through old-fashioned, analog PR bullshit. “We’d all liked to have been a fly on the wall as Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton fooled around in the Oval Office, and we’d all loved to have been there when Tiger Woods bedded mistress after mistress,” explained Biderman of our universal desire for adultery, which is exactly like our universal desire to watch Bill Clinton and Tiger Woods have sex. Similarly, we’d all love to see a show based on Biderman humping his website.
But while we may never see Bill Clinton and Tiger Woods going at it, save for in the hazy twilight of our fantasies, The Ashley Madison Selfishness Justified By A Need For Variety Hour will feature a character modeled on Biderman himself, so that’s also embarrassing. “Here we are, this corporation run by a married guy with a family who himself has all these challenges in marriage and is helping millions of people have affairs,” Biderman lamented of both his character and himself, as a mournful violin sang softly in the background. Biderman’s wife will be played by a ball of intense self-loathing.
Still, it’s not all about Biderman, at least in a literal sense: The show will follow all of those real people you know that he claims are secretly having extramarital affairs, naming an entire social circle—“This is about your best friend. This is your neighbor, this is your school teacher”—that is even now surely trolling the Internet, looking for some strange. Their struggle will be explored sympathetically, through plotlines about “men cheating out of revenge because of what their partner did to them, or women no longer willing to live like nuns in a loveless marriage,” and other sexy rationalizations for infidelity.
Still, Biderman promises his adultery show definitely won’t have any women visiting male prostitutes. Like all Ashley Madison hook-ups, this affair’s going to be classy.