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If this is not Culture War tell me, but I'm flabbergasted, I have to share that with you all.
So it seems there is a documentary out about Elizabeth Holmes. I had no idea until I stumbled across this trailer, and at first I thought it was a movie. Because it looks like a movie. And I thought this was two actors and one, at least, of them was going to turn out to be a serial killer.
No, it would seem this is indeed the one, the only, the real genuine pure-quill Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos infamy herself. And all I can say is holy crap.
Because she looks nuts. She looks like "I am about to slip some gelsemine into your tea and then sit by your bedside mopping your brow and cooing reassuringly as you slowly succumb to its effects, in the best traditions of the Golden Age of British murder".
It seems to be shot like a film, there has to be a hefty dose of acting going on because the guy playing? being? the director/narrator of the documentary looks like he is acting the part of "guy reacting to something he doesn't trust" with the hanging open mouth and sucking his tongue etc. reaction. But it seems like the filming really was that weird.
Gosh amighty. And there's a small child, a real small child and not "the script needs a baby" child actor, in this and everything. That really makes me concerned, because I would not leave that woman in charge of a goldfish.
The woman was either crazy as a loon or drugged out to the orbit of Pluto, or both. Because that kind of "pop your eyes wide open until the balls nearly fall out and stare unblinkingly and hold that stare for minutes" kind of behaviour, that is not normal.
How the hell did she get money from the supposedly rich and canny, the kind of hard-nosed business people whose job it was to sniff out frauds and schemers, who made tons of money by making the right decisions on investments and trades? Did the crazy only come out later?
Two things:
Nathan Fielder is involved with this. This immediately makes it questionable how much of this is a documentary vs. a movie and what genre it is, also how much Holmes is involved in the "joke." If you don't know who Nathan is I really recommend looking into it, a few YouTubers have multi hour long videos that make you question reality. The guy is doing some really interesting performance art and/or is a wild person.
Holmes was always part of the take adjacent delusion complex. The technology was very obviously physically impossible to anyone with a science background, so like many scams you immediately filtered off anybody with any sense, so everyone involved was an idiot or profoundly desperate to find a blond female tech savant.
Sort of. Fielder makes one-of-a-kind shows and movies by putting non-actors in very unusual situations surrounded by improv actors and then weaving their genuine words and actions into the narrative he wants to tell. People talking about the shows get confused only because the primary improv actor is him, playing a fictionalized version of himself, and he almost always plays that character in public appearances.
What makes the documentary so interesting is that the "real person" in this case is walking into the whole situation open-eyed about who Nathan is and what he does. What narrative does he plan to create given that situation? How successful will he be going up against her desire to tell her own story the way she wants it to be understood?
I see what you did there.
To answer the question seriously, I don't think you need to try very hard to get someone like Madoff or SBF or Holmes to dig themselves a hole after they've been exposed. Just sit and record them trying to explain why what they did wasn't a scam.
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I am not a personal consumer of his content but I've heard in commentary on him that it deliberately makes it unclear what is a joke, what's him being awkward, what is him pretending to be awkward etc.
This means even if you know what he does it is easy to get thrown off since what is and isn't a character is blurred.
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