Sickness and Lies BBC documentary

[ChilliBean]

Has anyone watched this? I watched it this evening as I have seen lots of chronically ill influencers on twitter kicking off about the way the chronically ill community have been portrayed
I think it gave quite a balanced view of both sides
One influencer interviewed even admitted she deliberately didn’t take a medication that would have improved her quality of life for 3 or 4 months in order to stay ill/prove her illness to other people!
I think the internet can be a great source of comfort to people who are genuinely chronically ill but I do agree there seems to be a bit of an Olympics online of who can be the most unwell, and it seems at times to be rather toxic.
Just wondering if anyone else had watched it and had any thoughts?

 

[MrFMercury]

As far as I can tell one of the contributors feels she was totally manipulated, lied to and edited in such a way as to cause her very deep distress. She ended up in hospital but I’m not sure what happened and the BBC keep saying they’ll get back to her to offer her support and don’t.

It’s a tough one. I am disabled from birth with chronic illnesses and a couple of catastrophic events that no one saw coming. I ‘joke’ that if I posted half of it online I’d be accused of lying. There can be a lot of one upping on these communities though. I’ve never lasted in one because of hate keeping or being patronised. I also don’t want my whole identity to be based around what’s wrong with me. But some people do find comfort and validation there and that’s their right.

Reddit is the lawless Wild West. I don’t think you can stop people posting what they want on there. Is it so different from what we do here? I don’t know what the alternative is beyond a more inclusive society where people don’t feel they have to be the absolute worst in order to feel valid.

 

[MrFMercury]

That should say gate keeping not hate keeping!

Ive been thinking more about it and we are very different from places like Reddit, at the very least because we keep our comments here. We discuss people and situations and a lot of the time the holes in the stories they try and spin… but it all stays here. We don’t seek out the person putting themselves into a public space and send abusive or threatening messages . You can’t start a thread for someone who has a handful of followers and is obviously trying to be an influencer. We also don’t go finding out and making public private information about addresses unless that’s in the public domain etc etc. But if you choose to come read these threads about you then that’s on you.

I don’t know if that makes anymore or less sense than my last ramble!