21 May 2013
The phrase Netflix adultery popped out at me when I read this Maureen O’Connor column in New York magazine. Netflix adultery is when you secretly watch a show that you had promised to watch with your partner.
A quick Googling shows that O’Connor didn’t coin the term, but it is quite recent. There are numerous hits from various sites, all within the last two weeks.
I immediately thought of the construction _____ porn, as in food porn or war porn, and wondered if there were other similar _____ adultery terms. Sure enough, Urban Dictionary has movie adultery going back to 2004. Urban Dictionary also records soapdultery from 2008, although that is slightly different in that entails watching a different soap opera.
Is Netflix adultery going to catch on? (As a term, that is; as a phenomenon it’s inevitable.) Or is it just a flash in the pan, a flurry of articles about a topic the media is temporarily interested in?
