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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7047 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026

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I almost feel like there should be a mega-thread for “You Can See Everything.” It will be The Thing everyone online is talking about and writing think pieces about for the next few weeks. Spoiler-free review – it’s as good as everyone says, 9/10. Go in with knowledge of Elizabeth Holmes and what happened at Theranos, don’t go in with knowledge of what happens in the movie.

Some rambling spoilery thoughts from the morning after I watched it:

The movie confirmed my model for Elizabeth Holmes (and by extension, Billy) and many other con men/crazy people.

I think most people have far too binary of a view of these types. They model them as either cynical, lying, grifters who know that they are lying all the time, or insane people who have no contact with reality. I think the real answer is that they are both at the same time, but more by instinct than design.

My take is that the best modeling for Holmes+Billy is Nathan’s analogy to the David Blaine ice pick trick. What Blaine does is a “trick” in the sense that he is fooling the audience and he isn’t hurting himself, but it’s “real” in the sense that he is genuinely putting an ice pick through his hand.

Homles is an extremely weird person, and at least somewhat crazy. And I think her crazy/weirdness manifests in an extremely manipulative manner by instinct. I think she’s a chameleon who adapts to context to get what she wants. At Theranos, she adapted to the role of young, genius, female tech CEO; in “You Can See Everything,” she adapted to the role of poor, sad, beleaguered, earnest, wrongfully convicted, loving mother. Her behavior in the movie is primarily crafted to get sympathy.

But I don’t think it’s all an act, or even mostly an act. I think she’s a genuine shapeshifter. She simply does and says too much stuff that would run counter to a planned, orchestrated con act to get sympathy. Like, telling Nathan that she never lied while at Theranos is very stupid – strategic contrition is the far better play. And telling Nathan that she has literally never, ever lied in her entire life is so absurd that it completely destroys her credibility.

I think I have a little bit of personal insight on this by seeing a friend go through a horrible relationship with a borderline personality disorder girl. She ruined his life for years with emotional manipulation, and though she would have occasional moments of clarity and realize what she was doing, most of the time it was pure instinct. This woman would seemingly genuinely believe that her partner was a piece of shit who deserved to die in one moment, and then ten minutes later she would be head-over-heels in love with her partner and feel that she will die if they aren’t together. The contradictory mental states and beliefs were both real, the mind itself flipped according to subconscious dictations trained and modeled by repeated uses of extreme emotions to manipulate her partner.

There is a part in Scot Alexander’s “You’re Still Crying Wolf” that has always stuck with me where he says that so much of Trump’s seemingly evil behavior is explained by him just being really weird. He talks weird, he acts weird, he constantly does things that normal people can’t model onto a real person because it’s so weird. And that weirdness in part explains his evil. Trump probably didn’t accuse Obama of being born in Kenya out of racism, but out of weirdness.

I think this movie is a great display of this concept. People tend to underestimate the depths and complexities of weirdness. Holmes is an extremely, deeply weird person. Maybe its autism, maybe its some other psychological disorders, maybe it’s just have different personality nobs turned way up or down, but it all amounts to a weirdness that no one can quite wrap their minds around or model, even after a 3 hour documentary.

And Billy appears to be a kindred spirit. There’s a scene where he describes his relationship with Holmes in a completely insane and blatantly manipulative and controlling manner, saying crazy shit like Elizabeth spends every second of every day thinking about how to build monuments to her love for Billy. He sounds like an awful sociopathic narcissist abuser. Then later in the movie, Elizabeth says the same exact stuff about her love for Billy, which indicates that they are both deeply weird and maybe crazy people, but they are, in a sense, right. Their love is (probably) not some insane manipulation, it is real and authentic, but it is so weird that it looks like abuse from the outside.

Oh boy, this subthread is going to look like the Epstein Files, because there is no way to talk about the movie without spoilers.

The number 1 culture war implication is that Billy reveals he is a Republican during his climactic villain monologue. Charlie Kirk’s legacy might be the biggest unintentional victim of the film.

Working through this brings up the question: How much of a villain is Billy really? The film builds him up as the douchebag to end all douchebags, but what, specifically, did Billy do wrong? It is strongly implied that Liz would not approve of the things that Billy does in her name, but do we have a good basis to conclude this? Liz never says a single bad word about him.

Hollywood hates the idea that two imperfect people could be in a loving relationship with each other despite their flaws. They pretend that they don’t. They make lots of movies where the surface-level theme is about flawed people falling in love, but when it happens to real people they are treated with scorn. Amanda Seyfried flat-out admits that she wants to break Liz and Billy up. Why? What purpose would that serve? Is it because he asked for compensation in return for letting an entire film crew into his house?

The outwardly patriarchal family where the matriarch secretly calls the shots is a common archetype in traditional societies. Strange that it is so hard for modern people to recognize.

I am 100% with you on Billy.

If you go through Reddit/Twitter threads, Billy is getting more criticized than Holmes, people think he is a monster. My read is that he a douchey maybe-coke addict who shares a lot of the same pathologies as Holmes, but hasn't actually done anything illegal or even unethical besides lying to make himself look good. The final reenactment scene with Seyfriend strongly implies that Holmes really does enjoy being in their controlling relationship, and she's fine with Billy running her Twitter and exploiting her digital likeness. They are weird people, and what looks like abusiveness from the outside is just their weirdness in action.

The other major culture war angle is that Holmes is using modern feminist tropes as part of her psychological defense. A narrative you can see all over the internet right now is that Holmes was raped in college, then groomed by Sunny, then manipulated into the Theranos fraud, and now she's being manipulated by another wealthy powerful man. I suppose all of that is possible, but it relies on giving Holmes a tremendous amount of credence about her relationship dynamics with Sunny, her being raped, and the psychological impact of the alleged rape. All of it is based on her testimony, and she's the most unreliable person on earth.

Holmes isn't using modern feminist tropes; she's using tropes so enduring even modern feminists go back to them. "Young woman was taken advantage of by older, more assertive man" (which was the argument she made against Balwani) is a feminist theme in the same way that pontiff is a Christian title.

Her original persona at Theranos was much more explicable in terms of specifically modern feminist themes. Which is why she took center stage in marketing as the visionary girlboss - down to the deep voice! - in contrast to the more experienced Balwani. It was when it crashed you saw a shift.

When she lost, she descended into the sort of hypoagency most societies would understand. Down to crying when pushed on things.

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