It was a simpler time online in the early 2010s: you took a photo of your latte art, slapped on an Inkwell filter and watched the little hearts roll in. Under this innocent facade of self-documentation on Instagram, food and health became a millennial obsession. Hordes of girls were fascinated by plant-based diets. Orthorexia (an eating disorder in which one focuses obsessively on being healthy) was on the rise. And social media influencing was newly big business for the women – and it was, broadly speaking, women – who were savvy, thin and young enough to sell themselves, their lifestyles and their outlandish claims to curious followers. Enter: Belle Gibson, the real-life subject of Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar.
Active participants of this early internet wellness era will remember how Belle falsely sold a generation of girls (some of them very sick) a made-up story of how she cured a cancer she didn’t have with whole foods. Those who aren’t familiar with the now-thirtysomething Australian are likely to see how the show is marketed and packaged as fiction, based heavily on true crime, and then Google her. They’ll discover her infamous quest to heal her fake terminal illness “through nutrition, patience, determination and love” rather than modern medicine, and how it ended in her undoing.
