If you liked Apple Cider Vinegar on Netflix, you must check out The Search for Instagram’s Worst Con Artist. The former is a fictionalized retelling real life grifter Belle Gibson, who rose to fame after claiming that she was keeping brain cancer at bay by eating healthy, natural foods. The latter, a true crime documentary featuring real people affected by Gibson’s lies, is a bit less satisfying and neat.
And that, of course, is the point.
Real life is rarely neat.
I should tell you right away that a few years ago, a beloved uncle of mine was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Initially given six months to live, he outwitted his terrible disease for three years. As his illness progressed, I immersed myself in cancer literature, from The Unwinding of the Miracle to The Emperor of All Maladies, thinking that a deeper understanding of cancer would help me be a better niece to this man I dearly loved.
I was wrong, of course. They were great books, and I feel indebted to them, but it is ultimately impossible to be prepared for the reality of cancer’s predatory nature. If a disease can be thought of as psychopathic, then cancer must be the biggest psychopath of all, spreading gingerly and then confidently through healthy tissue as it kills the very body that cradles it.
Dubious cures were offered to my uncle throughout the course of his illness, both by well-meaning people and by charlatans. There was drama. There was false hope offered. And in the end, there was a sharp and quick decline. Thankfully, my uncle never abandoned traditional medicine, even as he strived to remain healthy in other ways. His pragmatic approach meant that we got to spend more time together. Many other cancer patients and families of cancer patients are not nearly as lucky.
So it must be said that Gibson’s lies feel personal to me. Faking a deadly illness is already deeply immoral. Faking a deadly illness and claiming that it’s simply ayurvedic soup and leafy greens that are keeping the illness in check is altogether evil.
All stories about evil have their roots, however, and The Search for Instagram’s Worst Con Artist makes it clear that Gibson’s pathological lying started in the home. Her stepfather explains that Gibson’s mother was possibly highly neglectful. As a young teenage girl, for example, Gibson was allowed to live with a mysterious older man. There are hints of abuse here, but nothing is fully spelled out. Gibson’s relationship with her brother comes off as ambiguous; is he righteously angry at his sister or is he trying to protect their late mother’s memory? Both?
A cloud hangs over her childhood, but it’s a cloud the filmmakers never fully penetrate.
Wearing other people’s stories like a second skin suits this pretty, creepily deadpan woman just fine
Much more straightforward are the stories of actual cancer survivors who were taken in by Gibson’s attractive, seemingly empathetic persona. As social media analysts and journalists point out, Gibson was able to leverage her Instagram account into a lucrative app and cookbook, with no one vetting her story until it became too big to control.
Not only were her lies persuasive, they were aided and abetted by app developers and publishers looking to make a buck.
Not a single developer or publishing executive agreed to go on the record for this documentary, and it’s former cancer patients who get to pick up the pieces here in their stead.
Sometimes, a documentary is made more powerful by the way it skirts around silences, and the silence of the industry that propelled Gibson to temporary stardom is highly noticeable here. The same goes for the Australian authorities, which have clearly failed to hold Gibson to account for the charity fraud she perpetuated while flogging her fake cancer story.
Following her fall from grace, Gibson briefly takes on a new fake persona, that of an Ethiopian woman. It becomes apparent that she is a Rachel Dolezal type, trying on various identities. I was left wondering if she’ll come back eventually and claim that she is an astronaut. Or an alien. The documentary states that Gibson was excommunicated by the Ethiopian community in Australia, but only time can tell where she will pop up next.
And while it would be tempting to cast Gibson as the victim of what is an obvious mental illness, the documentary remains elusive on the subject. After all, there are more obvious victims. And there is also the equally obvious fact that Gibson herself does not know who she really is, and perhaps isn’t interested in finding out.
Wearing other people’s stories like a second skin suits this pretty, creepily deadpan woman just fine.
A true con artist is always a bit of an ellipsis.
