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jdorfman23 hours ago | parent | context | favorite | on: The Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Ever... No one including my wife was interested in seeing it so I went by myself. It was long, but interesting. The author hits the nail on the head: “You sit there believing you’re watching a documentary about a woman who deceived the world, only to discover that you’re also watching a demonstration of how easy it is to deceive you.” I couldn’t agree more. help 
zeraholladay18 hours ago | next[–] I haven't seen the documentary, but I have a background in media and art. There are a couple of ways I could understand this. The first is the general public's lack of understanding of documentaries as an art form. Documentaries are essentially narratives presented as unfiltered reality ("facts"). Most folks don't truly understand this, or they lose sight of it through suspension of disbelief. That is, they don't know or forget about the film crew, editing, framing, and other artistic choices that form what they see. The illusion becomes invisible; they see only "facts" rather than a constructed narrative designed to guide their interpretation. Second, filmmakers often use deception as an artistic device in documentaries. Mockumentaries are a pretty clear example of subverting the conventions of documentary filmmaking. It's a bit meta for most folks, so I could see how someone without much media literacy might totally miss this. But it's definitely a very interesting artistic choice given the subject matter. reply yubblegum17 hours ago | parent | next[–] The achiles heel of the documentaries as a form of propaganda & psyops (aka "narratives presented as reality") is that they have a profound dependence on aural cues for manipulating the audiance. It is difficult to be subtle regarding that intent when sound is involved. So pay attention to the sound track and adjust your "suspension of disbelief" accordingly. reply pshc4 hours ago | root | parent | next[–] Yeah, the documentary was going hard on the dissonant horror movie strings right from the opening. And near the end, that bubbly euphoric/revelatory ascending arpeggio was a common motif. reply cm201212 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next[–] Fielder has said that setting the tone with music in documentaries is among the most important things he does. I also find that unsettling. reply hax0ron311 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next[–] I am lucky that I am very sensitive to emotionally manipulative music in contexts where I don't want to be emotionally manipulated by music. In general, it would help anyone to know more about the craft of how filmmakers get people to feel emotions. reply leoc10 hours ago | root | parent | next[–] Tantacrul (software project manager, UX guy, muso and YouTuber)’s “Music on Reality TV is Insanely Manipulative” https://youtube.com/watch?v=G77ev9pks4I is pretty good. reply jakzurr9 hours ago | root | parent | next[–] Heck yeah! Thanks. It's bad-tasting medicine, but Tantacrul makes me laugh, so I don't mind thinking about what this manipulation can do to me. Hopefully, I'll also pick up some resistance. reply wartywhoa2312 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next[–] My favorute example of a "documentary" whose sound stage reveals it as a psyop very obviously is the 2007 "Zeitgeist: The Movie". reply soulofmischief4 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next[–] To be fair though it is A24 and I don't know if they're capable of making music that isn't extremely tense and eerie, it's all they do. So keeping in mind that the movie, clocking in at nearly 3 hours, would have been too dry and possibly still fairly unsettling without music, I thought the score was actually quite fun. Nathan spent a good deal of time openly trying to decide if he was being deceived or not and while the music drove the tension, by the end of the movie it was clear that he had an open internal conflict about whether to trust her or not, and ultimately left that choice up to the viewer. reply thadt9 hours ago | parent | prev | next[–] This isn't confined to "documentaries" - everything we accept as unfiltered 'facts' must be from 'a certain point of view'. Consider the Canon illustration from the article. Those present a man from different lighting, angles and perspectives. No matter how much a photographer might want to convey objective truth, a picture will always be from some perspective and lighting. The same can be said for the news we watch. Or the history we read. Or the stories we tell each other. In 2026, we have swung too far toward the fanciful end of the spectrum of storytelling. We're now beset on all sides by BS generators (both human and artificial) and it's more important than ever to carefully handle truth in our stories. But make no mistake - the teller of a story is absolutely crafting a reality for you. It's on you to decide whether you trust the narrator, or not. reply jiggawatts9 hours ago | root | parent | next[–] > No matter how much a photographer might want to convey objective truth, a picture will always be from some perspective and lighting. A workaround is to always shoot everyone the same. If a journalist or interviewer grows a reputation, they can show everyone "on level ground" by keeping the pose, lighting, etc... constant. It's one reason that long-form YouTube interviewers like Lex Friedman are so popular with a more discerning crowd. "But he's so bland, monotonous, and boring!" cry the haters. "Yes! That's the point!" reply majormajor8 hours ago | root | parent | next[–] > A workaround is to always shoot everyone the same. If a journalist or interviewer grows a reputation, they can show everyone "on level ground" by keeping the pose, lighting, etc... constant. I don't think this works. And I think it might be actually easier to exploit. The fraudster knows what you're going to do in advance, and can target their own presentation to maximally take advantage. If the way you show someone conveys X about them, especially when due to outside cultural cues - here's the millionaire framing, here's the convict one... - and you just use the same X for every subject, then you're just suggesting a particular framing over and over. You're avoiding a layer of "my active framing is telling a particular story" but only with a passive—but still deliberate—framing of "my framing is telling a particular story" that you hold constant across every story. In some ways this is similar to what Holmes exploited originally! Lots of industry media was willing to uncritically frame and present her with their "visionary tech founder" styles, and she leaned even further in to that with the Jobs-isms. Would not a truer "fair" framing would've been to dig into the claims and let the evidence determine the visual language, to avoid the visual language of "Steve Jobs!!" bias the reader/viewer into giving Holmes' claims more credence? reply johndear22310 hours ago | parent | prev | next[–] Where would Ancient Aliens fall into this lack of understanding? reply WarmWash15 hours ago | prev | next[–] One of the most stunning things to me is that most people do not recognize film cuts as breaks in time. The classic example of a guy shooting a basketball and then a cut to the ball going in, and 90% of the population says "Yeah, I saw the video, he made the shot". reply wartywhoa2312 hours ago | parent | next[–] Most modern people would laugh at those who scuttled away from the Lumiere's approaching train back in 1896, but in fact they are really not that superior mentally. reply Brendinooo5 hours ago | parent | prev | next[–] This is like saying it's stunning that fish don't know they're wet, imo reply elmomle9 hours ago | prev | next[–] Growing up in a very high-functioning and very dysfunctional family, I felt that a lot of people were missing the basic truth. Even the film seemed to circle it without really understanding it. Elizabeth Holmes doesn't know her own center. She responds to the people around her; everything she does is to please her partners and/or the internalized expectations of her family. In the psychological parlance, she is an extreme fawner with narcissistic traits. Such people are, in a sense, masters of deceit, but once you understand that they lack a real center outside of how others perceive them (and that they also have real feelings, even if their notions of love are profoundly confused), there's no longer an enigma. You know exactly what you'd looking at. reply Obscurity43406 hours ago | parent | next[–] I met and spent a lot of time messaging and hanging out irl with a person this. Its so weird because at one point they really had me and I remarked to them that what I liked about them eas they were always up for it and openminded. Turns out they were just telling you what you wanted to hear and reflecting your desires back at you while trying to capitalize on new business ideas and have you contribute food/supplies for their gatherings. reply jldl8058 hours ago | parent | prev | next[–] Well said. I agree with you. reply esikich22 hours ago | prev | next[–] What was deceitful about it? reply tanseydavid10 hours ago | parent | next[–] They show Holmes reluctantly watching the movie "The Dropout" which is a dramatized version of "the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes" starring Amanda Seyfried as Holmes. Later in "You Can See Everything" Amanda Seyfried literally becomes an important character in the documentary including voicing her opinions and impressions, arguing with and challenging Holmes' husband Billy (they have just met for the first time) and talking at length with Fielder about his opinions and impressions. This inclusion of Seyfried in this manner ruined for me any chance of this film feeling like a "documentary." This is the point for me where the film went "off-the-rails" and begins to feel like a very confusing experiment in audience manipulation. It suddenly feels contrived because of this. reply openasocket6 hours ago | root | parent | next[–] But the question was how is this deceitful? Like, when someone says a documentary is deceitful, I assume there’s some important information the documentary didn’t include, or provided outright false information. I get that the documentary went in a direction you didn’t like. I just saw it this afternoon, and didn’t feel the same way, but I’m still processing it and I do find your opinion interesting. But unless you are saying this is, like, false advertising, I don’t see how that qualifies as deceitful. reply prettyblocks9 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next[–] Isn't that typical of Nathan's work? To mess with the viewer. reply DriverDaily9 hours ago | root | parent | next[–] But, I want my media to stop exposing my internal biases and just agree with them. reply ryan_n4 hours ago | root | parent | next[–] I dont see how this film "exposes ones internal biases"? reply lelanthran21 hours ago | parent | prev | next[–] I had the same question for the author of the article, but it's understandable that people are going to be cagey answering this question because they may not want to give away spoilers. reply shiandow20 hours ago | root | parent | next[–] To a documentary? If anything that's the part that convinces me it's more than just a documentary, the fact that people apparently don't want to spoil what happens. reply junon15 hours ago | root | parent | next[–] Well, it's both. We have all the public facts about Theranos. Nathan Fielder got to live with them for a period of time. That's not public information. It's still a documentary. reply tanseydavid10 hours ago | root | parent | next[–] >> It's still a documentary. Then what was the point of bringing Amanda Seyfried into the "documentary" as a major character? What does Amanda Seyfried actually have to do with the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos? reply WillPostForFood10 hours ago | root | parent | next[–] Because it is not a documentary about the history of Theranos or a bio of Holmes, it is about truth, deception, and media. reply velcrohn4 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next[–] Well, she probably watched lots of videos about Holmes and read a lot about her in preparation for her role. IIRC Tina Fey talked a lot about Sarah Palin. And “the point” is that it is an interesting twist to have an actor who portrayed a public figure actually interact with that figure. reply lelanthran20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next[–] > To a documentary? Well, yes. We know the plot, but we don't know in what light the movie casts here, and how they do it. reply tannertech20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next[–] Spoiler she goes to prison reply EdwardDiego18 hours ago | root | parent | next[–] OMG you ruined it!!!! (/s in case it's necessary) reply wildzzz10 hours ago | parent | prev | next[–] I'm guessing it's because she's still trying to control the narrative even though she's literally just waiting until her prison date. reply BEEdwards9 hours ago | prev | next[–] I had no interest in seeing it until I read this article. This sold me. reply cryptonym9 hours ago | parent | next[–] I didn't knew it existed before reading. Still, I have no interest in watching it. reply grvdrm16 hours ago | prev | next[–] In my experience with Fielder material, the only truth is what you said. I never know if what I see and hear is real or some flavor (if not entirely) acting. reply TZubiri18 hours ago | prev | next[–] It's not a particularly strong value proposition. If I buy a security product, and the seller sends me nothing, therefore showing how easy it is to scam me. Are they somehow less of a scammer, did I actually buy anything of value? Are they raising awareness of the problem? Or are they just the problem? reply iAMkenough11 hours ago | parent | next[–] People pay magicians to be deceived for entertainment. reply Obscurity43406 hours ago | root | parent | next[–] And whores for cheap trix reply jackmott4216 hours ago | prev[–] Neither you nor the author are saying how you were deceived. I think neither of you are being genuine Both just apologists for obvious scumbags reply
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