The new and highly watchable Netflix series Apple Cider Vinegar joins a growing genre of what I call Scam Girl shows, like Inventing Anna and The Dropout. It is based on the real-life stories of two Australian wellness influencers. Milla, diagnosed with cancer, chooses an alternative healing route, blogs about it like it’s a fairy tale and acquires a large following. Belle, inspired by her, fakes a cancer diagnosis and rides the social media dragon all the way to the top until things go up in flames. 

The show plays with several themes with varying success. Chief among them is the idea of the influencer as a remix of fairy godmother, jealous stepsister and Cinderella all at once. Each influencer’s story is carefully crafted as a personal epiphany, one they repeat and repeat to a growing audience. Social media is structured to reward the most flattened narratives and numbers are heady so you soon begin to believe the Ted Talk version of yourself. Until someone remakes themselves as a new improved latest iPhone model version of you. That someone is often a jealous stepsister cast out of the system who craves belonging enough to blot out scruples, whose covetousness gives them the drive to take your story for themselves and make it bigger.