How We Made Brands Out of Cancer and Mental Illness

Disease Debauchery: 'Apple Cider Vinegar'

Here’s a growing phenomenon that social media enables and amplifies: people turning diseases and mental health issues into marketing phrases. Anxiety sells because it’s widely relatable. Autism defines identity. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a legit excuse for being a dick. People brand themselves with their own afflictions to create attention-waves by appealing to a sizeable audience — a recipe that works like a charm to lure eyeballs on the internet.

We’re drawn to voices that talk AUTHENTICALLY and HOPEFULLY about the sicknesses we suffer from. Empathy is an online currency now. Homeopathy is a celebrated anti-corporate belief — natural, organic, accessible for both the poor and rich. These “preachings” serve as social lubricant. If you and I both suffer from depression or have reoccurring panic attacks, we connect. We understand what it’s like to be lethargic, not wanting to get out of bed for 48 hours. To breathe inside a void. We know the despair of gasping for air on the verge of passing out. Illnesses — uncomfortable, debilitating, terminal, or otherwise — are similar in many ways, but the torment they put us through is never identical.

I don’t know your personality — your fears, hopes, sufferings, or happy moments — just because we both got diagnosed with the same thing. But I know versions of the pain it causes.

On the one hand, this can be a valuable commonality, creating an empathetic and constructive connection that erases stigmas and shame. On the other, it can be preyed upon and exploited through an abominable and manipulative marketing strategy that often spreads false hope and artificial empowerment. But when you’re diagnosed with something serious, you cling to any alternative cure that doesn’t come from traditional medicine. It's easier to believe in a miracle recovery than to accept the cold numbers of definite scientific data. "Be brave, boy" sounds much more uplifting than "Your survival rate with chemotherapy is 63 percent.”

Samantha Strauss’ Australian Netflix miniseries, Apple Cider Vinegar, scrutinizes alternative medicine and pseudo-wellness by depicting two young women — with different incentives and ambitions — diagnosed with cancer. Its portrayal is aggressive, shameless, and sensational. It employs a sharp perspective that often uses tantalizing triggers to tell a true-ish but significantly dramatized story (inspired by the non-fiction book The Woman Who Fooled the World), which, at times, makes you want to scream into a pillow or break a window.

Strauss’ “Go big or go home” approach rarely utilizes restraint, and only if it fits the plot’s emotional beats. Screams get our attention, but it’s the silences that bring on introspection. This may not always feel like the right tone, but it’s the tone that will always make us feel. And Apple Cider Vinegar is hell-bent on taking us on a trip of ups and downs, the ruthless reality of having (or not having) cancer, and a crucial commentary on wellness and social media beaten into our brains.

The protagonist, Belle Gibson (Kaitlyn Dever in full blast), is a pathological liar and narcissist. We know this from the get-go. Her assumed Munchausen Syndrome is in overdrive even when she’s unaware of it. Attention is her drug — which she turns into a lucrative business of dollars and sympathy — that creates a luscious lifestyle based on a false identity. Belle claims she has brain cancer, although no doctor can confirm it. That’s because she doesn’t have brain cancer. She not only fakes the symptoms of the deadly condition but also the homeopathic cure she steals from an actual cancer patient called Milla (Alycia Debnam-Carey from It’s What’s Inside).

Milla, Belle’s primary inspiration, has an arm riddled with tiny tumors. We follow her story simultaneously as the plot jumps between present and past, from her brutal diagnosis to the choice she makes to try natural remedies instead of amputation and chemo that her oncologist recommends. The Hirsch Therapy (a fictional version of Gerson Therapy) she opts for at a Mexican hospital seems effective early on. Following a strict, juice-based diet and having coffee enemas, she feels healthier than ever. Through her popular blog and rising social media presence, she becomes a success story that draws thousands of women to her speeches and live meetups as a wellness influencer.

Belle is one of them. She’s looking for a friend and cancer-peer in Milla, but their first encounter quickly turns sour, leaving her feeling rejected and ignored. That sets a fire in her to surpass Milla in every way possible. Of course, Belle’s “success” is sustained by nothing but cunning and devious lies. Once Milla looks into her past and murky medical history, she sniffs it out fast that this girl is a phony yet adamant sociopath with an insatiable hunger for heed. From then on, she becomes determined to expose and destroy her.

Apple Cider Vinegar’s unraveling of a truth-inspired lie is fascinating, if also maddening at times, to behold. What makes it more than just another scandal-spectacle wrapped in a 6-hour-long miniseries is Strauss' daring authorial choices and no-holds-barred approach. She anatomizes the underlying toxicity in how we view, react to, and treat diseases whether they happen to us, a loved one, or a total stranger.

There’s a distinction between accepting a diagnosis, learning to live with it, and turning it into a full-blown identity. Belle does it strictly for attention, a compulsion rooted in her severe mental illness, while Milla does it for the noble reason of giving hope and consolation to others who receive none. But regardless of those differing intentions (moral or immoral), they curate and distort their message into a form designed for screens and eyeballs. Every post, thumbnail, picture, and video is inundated with an overdose of inspiration — wrapped in flashy Helvetica fonts and soothing text bubbles — to emit super-positivity. It's phony. Maudlin. Fake. It intentionally caters to others’ desperation to lift their spirit up even when all hope seems lost.

Those following these women’s journeys online only see portions of their actual suffering (or faking) that the two allow to be seen. But we, off the internet, witness all of it — every excruciating, ugly, and distressing moment they live through that isn’t showcased for an online audience but a real one. We watch how the process — treatments, side effects, inescapably grim conversations about life and death with doctors, family members, and strangers — affects them twenty-four-seven. How the cancer they're fighting (or pretend to be fighting) gradually absorbs their personality. They're either victims or survivors — there’s no in-between — and young girls before and after the diagnosis. But despite the evident implications of whom we should trust, root for, or despise, the series paints a complete and carefully balanced picture of choices, mistakes, and fallouts. In the end, the show isn’t just about the two characters’ fate — and whether they succeed or fail in their endeavors — but about a necessary and incisive examination of how we regard any illness in the first place.

It’s a subject that hasn’t been addressed this explicitly in a long time — if ever. And the show dares to ask the question: When did this escalate to such an absurd extreme? Today, if you asked people with physical or mental health conditions to describe themselves in a few words, they would likely say "autistic, bipolar, or cancer survivor" before they would something like “empathetic,” “kind,” or “a good listener.” Which addresses a bigger issue: When did we become our own diseases?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we should live in denial or purposely hide our defects that are clearly a part of us. There’s a healthy level of accepting and learning to live with the conditions we can’t cure but merely manage. Still, if the most intriguing quality you "proudly" claim about yourself is something like "being on the spectrum," then you have a problem (besides the one you want everyone to be aware of). It's one thing to come to terms with a sickness, disability, or mental disorder and embrace it, and it’s another to let it define your entire personality.

The more I see this phenomenon take precedence on various online surfaces, the more alarming it feels. Frankly, an addressal is long overdue, and Apple Cider Vinegar could be the perfect conversation-starter. Because we aren’t just our diseases — and we have the choice to fight not to succumb to them.

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