Apple Cider Vinegar — A culty influencer tale
Belle Gibson was an early health and wellness Instagram influencer from Australia who gained a large following by claiming she had brain cancer. She did not. It was a hoodwink, a scam, and a con. Her story is the basis for the Netflix series, Apple Cider Vinegar.
I see Belle as a cross between Anna Delvey (Inventing Anna) and Jessie Lee Ward (former MLMer turned coach). Anna, like Belle, honed in on what people wanted to hear. Having been drawn in by deception and acceptance, followers and fans readily opened their pocketbooks. Jessie Lee Ward, unlike Belle, actually had cancer. Ward decided she did not want to do chemotherapy and that is her right. What is not appropriate is to provide a play-by-play to hundreds of thousands of people of what she was going to do instead, leading them to believe this was a legitimate alternative cancer treatment. (The Dream did an episode about her, if you want to learn more about Ward.)
Jessie Lee Ward
MLM exec and coach who died from cancer. She, like Belle Gibson, chose a “natural” plan over chemotherapy and poster it online to her thousands of followers. Unlike Belle, she really did have cancer.
There is another Australian influencer who you may not have heard of. Her name is Jessica Ainscough, and she called herself The Wellness Warrior. She was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer at the age of 23. Like Ward (and Belle), she decided to forego traditional cancer treatments. Instead, she opted for the Gerson Method—a practice that entailed eating organic fruits and vegetables, coffee enemas, and meditation—which has been widely debunked as a cancer cure. Ainscough outlined this practice meticulously on her website, which at the time of her death at the age of 30 was reaching 1.5 million global followers.
“The first step in the cult recruitment process is to find vulnerable people. Who could possibly be more vulnerable than someone who has learned they have an incurable disease?”
The tactics these influencers used are the same tactics cults use. The first step in the recruitment process is to find vulnerable people. Who could possibly be more vulnerable than someone who has learned they have an incurable disease? Once lured in by the specifically outlined path to wellness, followers become immersed not only in a medical cure but also an all-encompassing ideology that goes with it. Buying the belief system and not being allowed to question the process (because you might negatively affect your ability to be cured) is Cult 101. Learn more about these practices in Hoodwinked, where I write about Ward and Ainscough and even the Kabbalah Center, which promised cancer could be cured by simply drinking Kabbalah water.