Borderline Personality Disorder

Münchausen by internet: the sickness bloggers who fake it online

IQ is normal or high in most patients and personality disorders are common: borderline personality disorder in up to a half and narcissistic personality disorder in up to a third.

Münchausen by internet: the sickness bloggers who fake it online

Australian blogger Belle Gibson has been exposed for fabricating her tragic cancer story. But her strange behaviour is more common that you’d think – faking disease in return for online fame is now a recognised medical condition

How would you fake cancer? Shave your head? Pluck your eyebrows? Install a chemo port into your neck? These days you don’t need to. Belle Gibson’s story is a masterclass on faking cancer in the modern age. She fooled Apple, Cosmopolitan, Elle and Penguin. She fooled the hundreds of thousands who bought her app, read her blog and believed that her story could be their story.

Diagnosed with a brain tumour aged 20, Gibson had four months to live. She blogged her journey of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, treatments she shunned after eight weeks. Instead, she cut gluten and dairy and turned to oxygen therapy, craniosacral treatments and colonic irrigation. Against all odds, she made it. Her followers were inspired. If Belle could make it, maybe they could too.

Gibson launched The Whole Pantry app in 2013, filled with healthy living tips and recipes. She promised a third of proceeds from the 300,000 downloads ($3.79 per download) to charity. Elle named her “The Most Inspiring Woman You’ve Met This Year”, Cosmopolitan awarded her a “Fun, Fearless Female award” and Penguin published her cookbook. Apple pre-installed her app on Apple Watch and flew her to its Silicon Valley launch.

Then cancer re-emerged, and Gibson announced on Instagram: “It hurts me to find space tonight to let you all know with love and strength that I’ve been diagnosed with a third and forth [sic] cancer. One is secondary and the other is primary. I have cancer in my blood, spleen, brain, uterus, and liver. I am hurting.”

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One Comment

  • invisiblerain

    That is bullshit because all sorts and types of different and similar people lie for different and similar reasons..and it does not prove that this ought to be a recognized medical condition. That is just bullshit how people are manipulative liars; and that it is a “recognized medical condition.” I am a borderline, and one of the symptoms is lying/manipulative, of which I am neither. I fucking hate liars. I acknowledge that yes, some mental illnesses encompass lying as a symptom; but, to honor it as an evidential diagnosis is bullshit. the psychiatric/medical “professionals” are enabling those who lie. knock it off. Umm..but..I partly admire this a-hole in that she succeeded at obtaining all that dough, but i detest the way she went about it. And then the dummy got caught! Lmao.

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