60 Minutes Australia | Unmasking Belle Gibson: The real story of the infamous wellness scammer
https://www.youtube.com/embed/fahOX8VBXCc
Quote: Apple Cider Vinegar (2025) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Cider_Vinegar_(TV_series) tells the story of "the wellness influencer Belle Gibson,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Gibson who built a lucrative empire on the back of her story about beating supposedly terminal brain cancer via healthy living. That story – and you may be ahead of me here – was false" (Mangan, L., 2025). Quote: "Who, from a safe distance, doesn’t love a grifter? Especially if the grift is on a grand scale and the marks bring it largely upon themselves? Step forward, then, Anna Delvey – born Anna Sorokin, though that never bothered her overmuch. The apparent German heiress parlayed a quick wit, good wardrobe and non-specific Mitteleuropean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitteleuropa accent into an entrée into New York high society. She extracted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the elite fooled by her poise, impressed by her connections and unable to imagine that anyone who knew which wine to order could not be everything she claimed to be" (Mangan, L., 2022). Further: https://www.about-fraud.com/top10-netflix-scam-movies/ Further: metaphorically, belief in such 'wellness' influencers/personalities can be understood in terms of a type of formal fallacy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy which follows the 'appeal to nature' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature logic e.g. http://trigg.gr/tag/ReasoningFallacyNaturalisticAppealToNature Bibliography: Mangan, L. (2025, February 6). 'Apple Cider Vinegar review – the wild wellness scammer who claimed she beat cancer with healthy living'. The Guardian; The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/feb/06/apple-cider-vinegar-review-wellness-scammer-belle-gibson-netflix Mangan, L. (2022, February 11). 'Inventing Anna review – a brilliantly told modern soap opera'. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/feb/11/inventing-anna-netflix-review-julia-garner-shonda-rhimes Davey, M. (2015, March). "Jessica Ainscough, Australia’s 'wellness warrior', dies of cancer aged 30". The Guardian; The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/mar/01/jessica-ainscough-australia-wellness-warrior-dies-cancer-aged-30
