The Search for Instagram's Worst Con Artist

21 year old Belle Gibson becomes an overnight Instagram sensation, a young woman, with terminal cancer, who's healing herself with alternative therapies, foods and smoothies after abandoning traditional medicines. Her story touches many, a business empire grows, sadly the story is all false.

It's a really interesting documentary, it's one I watched with a level of disbelief. How on Earth did she get away with it, this goes somewhere to answering that question.

It speaks to some of those affected by her posts and app, it speaks to her friends and family, and details various theories of how and why she did what she did.

Apple and Penguin, seriously did nobody there ask the question?

It's frightening to think that she's out there, and faced literally no punishment for her actions, who knows what she's doing out there.

It does concern me greatly though, the fact that people are so happy to buy into what they see on social media, a perfect stranger having the power to convince someone to give up medicines, it's boggling.

7/10.

It ought to be very easy to suss these scammers out because they all fit the same profile...people like Elizabeth Holmes, Amanda Riley (Scamanda) Anna Delvey/Sorokin, and Anna Stubblefield.

When I was watching Scamanda, which is a very similar story to Belle's, I realized that she never looked sick, she always looked healthy, and like Belle had perfectly groomed eyebrows. Later on in the series, Amanda's stepdaughter makes the same observation. No one else noticed this?

How is it that people get taken in by someone who is obviously lying? There have been cancer scammers before and since Belle Gibson. You'd think that a company like Apple, with all their "geniuses", would have insisted on a fact checking before investing. Did it not occur to anyone at Apple to consult oncologists or even ask Belle for proof of her diagnosis?

I suppose many of her followers were young, impressionable women who decided to invest emotionally in a person they did not know...which I find strange. I may be more skeptical than the average bear, however, it took me about 30 seconds to find out that brain tumors do not typically metastasize.

I find the lack of critical thinking and intellectual curiosity appalling; not only in her followers, but also the magazines that gave her awards and the business who agreed to give her money for her fraudulent claims.

BTW, she apparently made additional fake claims, e.g., her brother was autistic, which can read about on her Wikipedia page.