Comment by diogenes_atx
6 hours ago
> Wild stuff.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I fail to see anything that seems particularly "wild" in a film featuring a bunch of insipid mind games. Mind games are not exactly new or fascinating, you find them almost everywhere you go these days.
There is no longer any mystery about Holmes. As everyone already knows, she was a fraudster convicted of criminal fraud. The whole story of Theranos has been covered at length in the press, including an award-winning book that was published several years ago [0].
This so-called documentary seems like another reality show featuring a former celebrity with little self-awareness, who is incapable of seeing how absurd and ridiculous she appears now that she is no longer powerful.
[0] John Carreyrou (2018) Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, Knopf
I cannot imagine being so hostile towards curiosity. You approach this as "I already know everything there is to know, and therefore this documentary (that I haven't seen) has no value".
I was merely citing the known facts in this case. The facts have been well-established in the criminal trial and in the press coverage about Holmes. The facts are voluminous, and of all this mountain of evidence, very little of it is featured in this so-called documentary.
that's not what this documentary is about
>she was a fraudster convicted of criminal fraud...
>a former celebrity with little self-awareness, who is incapable of seeing how absurd and ridiculous she appears now that she is no longer powerful...
As someone who has seen it, there's simply no way both of these descriptions of her are true. If you believe that she's guilty of everything she's accused of doing, she's incredibly self-aware and her entire participation in this movie is a desperate Hail Mary attempt to save face in the court of public opinion. At one point in the movie Fielder is having a conversation with another person and says something along the lines of "She's either innocent or maybe the most manipulative person in human history". The movie isn't as concerned with a true journalistic investigation of her guilt or innocence, there are better accounts of that elsewhere and plenty of people who can tell that story better than Fielder. What he seems to be most interested in is the absurd commitment to she has to her claimed innocence and how effective that is or isn't.
> If you believe that she's guilty of everything she's accused of doing, she's incredibly self-aware
There was a mountain of evidence against Holmes, and she was convicted in a criminal trial. So it seems like a safe assumption that she was guilty.
Does it follow then that, because she is almost certainly guilty, that she must be "incredibly self-aware"? Of course not. It's just as likely that she is totally lacking in self-awareness, and that she simply does not know when to shut her mouth because she has no idea how stupid she sounds.
>It's just as likely that she is totally lacking in self-awareness, and that she simply does not know when to shut her mouth because she has no idea how stupid she sounds.
No, because she doesn't sound "stupid" in the movie. The mountain of evidence against her is so extreme that being able to carve out any narrative in which her innocence has any plausibility requires such a calculated and well constructed plan that is shows a high level of social intelligence and self-control. Fielder literally lives with her 24/7 for weeks and her mask doesn't slip. You don't have to believe her story to recognize she's not a "stupid" person who "does not know when to shut her mouth".
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