What a perfect excuse.

To all you dirty dogs out there who have ever used the Ashley Madison website and find yourself exposed in the impending email dump, Gawker writer Sam Biddle — of “bring back bullying” fame –has the most ingenious idea for you.

Be bold. Say you were working on a story. Say it was just for research.

Biddle, pre-empting the dump, came out as a former Ashley Madison user on Twitter just after midnight on Wednesday morning. He said he set up an account on the cheating website in 2012, which was hacked and had its accounts leaked, because he was covering online dating when he was at Gizmodo.

He said he never paid for it and only lasted a day.

Is 24 hour enough time to gather all that insightful research?

Kim Zetter, a senior staff writer at Wired, had a pointed question for him. “‘I created the account for research” – how many AM users will be using that same excuse?'”

Biddle had a bland, boring reply.

“Only tech bloggers,” he wrote.

Let’s hope his online dating coverage was more entertaining.

Biddle is an award-winning journalist — in July he landed on Breitbart News‘ “Ten Most Heinously Unpleasant Writers, Ranked” list by Milo Yiannopoulos.

Yiannopoulos clearly loathes him. In a stinging writeup, he notes that Biddle’s career has focused on knocking rich, white males in the Silicon Valley for their wealth and privilege.

“Yet Biddle is himself the son of a wealthy lecturer at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University,” he writes. “I’m sure it was just a coincidence that Biddle applied and was accepted to study at… Johns Hopkins. The man who lashes out at tech chief executives for their privilege was also a member of Delta Phi, an exclusive fraternity for students from affluent backgrounds.”

Biddle came in at number one on the list.