MODERN SCANDAL

a fictionalised retelling of the chaos and depravity that led to one the biggest data breaches of the century

BUMP.com is a dating site with a difference. Created shortly after the dot com bubble, it enabled married people to have extramarital affairs. Despite the shaky moral foundations upon which the company was built, BUMP quickly grew into a site with millions of users, all drawn in and deceived by outrageous marketing stunts, including crass illegal billboards, and the tongue-in-cheek (and completely unauthorised) use of celebrities and politicians with alleged sex scandals as cheerleaders for the site.

Between reports of huge disparity in the gender split of users, and rumours of the widespread use of chatbots designed to con money out of lonely men, the CEO was quickly branded “the most hated man in America”. And that was before it all went wrong.

This labyrinth of lies led to a group of hackers taking a moral stand against the company, threatening to release the names and addresses of millions of users. When BUMP called their bluff, the subsequent data leak had deadly consequences.

MODERN SCANDAL is a sung-through commentary on the ethics of facilitating adultery, media manipulation, and the dangers of a press pile-on, all juxtaposed against a big band score.

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MODERN SCANDAL was workshopped at the University of Winchester.