Community Munchausen's by Internet (Malingerers, Munchies, Spoonies, etc) - Feigning Illnesses for Attention

[lariumdreams]

Another fun MBI is Anqi Dong in NSW, Australia. I believe her latest shenanigans got investigated by authorities, because most of her puppet tumblrs are deactivated or made private.

The only one left open is this one, and I haven't found her latest money-making tumblr yet. https://fnugg.tumblr.com/

Basically, she claims to have fallen down some stairs in highschool, and what amounted to a wrenched arm so totally crippled her and made her bedbound u guize. She's somehow managed to get a staggering amount of money. I mean truly astonishing. One of the fundraisers linked below is just north of $56,000. And she has many other fundraisers scattered around the web.

The weird thing is, while she like to trumpet on and on about needing a care team, these carers are essentially people she finds on the Aussie version of craigslist, and she pays random people to come to her apartment to clean it. Her greatest wish is to get put on disability, but no one will declare her crippled.

All in all, she likes to put up "proof" posts of really shady seeming letters she claims are from doctors who treat her.

A few old fundraisers for your perusal: https://www.youcaring.com/medical-f...sport-and-rent-costs-for-bedbound-girl/342510


And finally, a review left by one of the people who came to clean her apartment.

 

[Jean Pierre Polnareff]

Another fun MBI is Anqi Dong in NSW, Australia. I believe her latest shenanigans got investigated by authorities, because most of her puppet tumblrs are deactivated or made private.

The only one left open is this one, and I haven't found her latest money-making tumblr yet. https://fnugg.tumblr.com/

Basically, she claims to have fallen down some stairs in highschool, and what amounted to a wrenched arm so totally crippled her and made her bedbound u guize. She's somehow managed to get a staggering amount of money. I mean truly astonishing. One of the fundraisers linked below is just north of $56,000. And she has many other fundraisers scattered around the web.

The weird thing is, while she like to trumpet on and on about needing a care team, these carers are essentially people she finds on the Aussie version of craigslist, and she pays random people to come to her apartment to clean it. Her greatest wish is to get put on disability, but no one will declare her crippled.

All in all, she likes to put up "proof" posts of really shady seeming letters she claims are from doctors who treat her.

A few old fundraisers for your perusal: https://www.youcaring.com/medical-f...sport-and-rent-costs-for-bedbound-girl/342510


And finally, a review left by one of the people who came to clean her apartment.

She actually sent me a message on Tumblr once begging me to reblog her donations post. I didn't have many followers, so I think she just picked a bunch of randos to solicit, but it always struck me as odd. I really doubt that someone who was actually bedbound would have that much trouble getting medical help.

 

[glass_houses]

Interesting, the other day I was reading an article about vitamin D deficiency symptoms and how they're often being misdiagnosed as Fibromyalgia. Or people will claim to be low D plus have Fibro - so it makes sense that a lot of them are overweight females with pasty white skin - they're the most likely people to suffer from low D. That said, the one person I know who complains about her Fibro a lot was just put on a combo of high dose vitamin D supplements and an SNRI - she feels 110% better than before.

Spoiler: Sometimes it's not a con.

Not to get too OT, but I know a sufferer of extreme fibro very well and I can tell you that she's in no way faking it. I've been friends with her for some years. I've also lived with a close relative who was suffering severe chronic pain for two years, eighteen of those months spent on the organ transplant list. I will honestly admit that I'm on the spectrum and that it can take me a long time to pick up when someone is lying, but I can catch on relatively fast if someone is making up chronic pain by comparing how they move to the way my relative did.

My friend is not making her symptoms up. Her joints swell randomly, she can't even wear a bra because tight clothing exacerbates the pain always in her skin. She regularly receives injections into her eye sockets for the pain in her face and the general area of the front of her skull. She's had severe seizures, one of which happened in a pool resulting in her ending up in intensive care because she technically drowned to death and was revived. I've cared for her in the aftermath of one of those seizures, nothing on the level of the one that almost killed her, but still not a pretty sight. She has considerable problem eating because even her digestive system is fucked up. Best case is when she throws up quickly, worst is when she spends the next three days being incapable of eating at all. She eats a very frugal amount of well cooked and unseasoned meat and vegetables once a night, and in the morning she drinks a smoothie made of an unbelievably foul concoction of seaweed and a fuckton of supplements that she's developed over the years to compensate for not being able to eat or metabolise certain vitamins (including large amounts of various D vitamins ftr), proteins, etc. She swims once a day because it's the least painful form of exercise for her, and if she doesn't exercise at all her joints and muscles seize up.

Her cognitive functions are also affected. I've worked in a scientific research facility with people working on their third doctorate, and I can tell you that she's still one of the smartest people I've had the pleasure of meeting, unless she's having a particularly bad day when her symptoms flare up and become considerably worse. Then she can't plan, can barely hold a conversation, her memory is fucked up, and the constant pain in her head goes from "severe sinus infection" to "two week migraine". Her eyesight gets completely fucked up will that's happening. Sleeping without Endep is pretty much impossible for her; she's tried a number of times to get off the stuff but completely without success. She's had so many pain killers thrown at her over the years that most of them just bounce straight off, or worse, fuck with her metabolism and exacerbate everything that it's supposed to treat.

As an added bonus, most of her family down her mother's side suffer the same symptoms, only not nearly as severe as herself. She still cops a lot of shit from people telling her that fibro isn't real. There's been a number of occasions where people have asked about her obvious physical symptoms, only to tell her to her face that fibro isn't real when she replies, and it's all obviously psychosomatic on her part.

And most tellingly, she has little to no online presence and is not involved in any support or advocate groups for any form of chronic pain or illness.

I know that fibromalgia is frequently used by con artists, but having observed the real thing close up and in high definition for a number of years, I'm a believer.

ETA: She's not overweight either. If anything, she's too thin.

 

[grumbleBum]

Spoiler: Sometimes it's not a con.

Not to get too OT, but I know a sufferer of extreme fibro very well and I can tell you that she's in no way faking it. I've been friends with her for some years. I've also lived with a close relative who was suffering severe chronic pain for two years, eighteen of those months spent on the organ transplant list. I will honestly admit that I'm on the spectrum and that it can take me a long time to pick up when someone is lying, but I can catch on relatively fast if someone is making up chronic pain by comparing how they move to the way my relative did.

My friend is not making her symptoms up. Her joints swell randomly, she can't even wear a bra because tight clothing exacerbates the pain always in her skin. She regularly receives injections into her eye sockets for the pain in her face and the general area of the front of her skull. She's had severe seizures, one of which happened in a pool resulting in her ending up in intensive care because she technically drowned to death and was revived. I've cared for her in the aftermath of one of those seizures, nothing on the level of the one that almost killed her, but still not a pretty sight. She has considerable problem eating because even her digestive system is fucked up. Best case is when she throws up quickly, worst is when she spends the next three days being incapable of eating at all. She eats a very frugal amount of well cooked and unseasoned meat and vegetables once a night, and in the morning she drinks a smoothie made of an unbelievably foul concoction of seaweed and a fuckton of supplements that she's developed over the years to compensate for not being able to eat or metabolise certain vitamins (including large amounts of various D vitamins ftr), proteins, etc. She swims once a day because it's the least painful form of exercise for her, and if she doesn't exercise at all her joints and muscles seize up.

Her cognitive functions are also affected. I've worked in a scientific research facility with people working on their third doctorate, and I can tell you that she's still one of the smartest people I've had the pleasure of meeting, unless she's having a particularly bad day when her symptoms flare up and become considerably worse. Then she can't plan, can barely hold a conversation, her memory is fucked up, and the constant pain in her head goes from "severe sinus infection" to "two week migraine". Her eyesight gets completely fucked up will that's happening. Sleeping without Endep is pretty much impossible for her; she's tried a number of times to get off the stuff but completely without success. She's had so many pain killers thrown at her over the years that most of them just bounce straight off, or worse, fuck with her metabolism and exacerbate everything that it's supposed to treat.

As an added bonus, most of her family down her mother's side suffer the same symptoms, only not nearly as severe as herself. She still cops a lot of shit from people telling her that fibro isn't real. There's been a number of occasions where people have asked about her obvious physical symptoms, only to tell her to her face that fibro isn't real when she replies, and it's all obviously psychosomatic on her part.

And most tellingly, she has little to no online presence and is not involved in any support or advocate groups for any form of chronic pain or illness.

I know that fibromalgia is frequently used by con artists, but having observed the real thing close up and in high definition for a number of years, I'm a believer.

This is what really, really pisses me off about the malingerers and spoonies. People with legit problems cop shit because of it.

 

[There_is_no_Dana]

Spoiler: Sometimes it's not a con.

Not to get too OT, but I know a sufferer of extreme fibro very well and I can tell you that she's in no way faking it. I've been friends with her for some years. I've also lived with a close relative who was suffering severe chronic pain for two years, eighteen of those months spent on the organ transplant list. I will honestly admit that I'm on the spectrum and that it can take me a long time to pick up when someone is lying, but I can catch on relatively fast if someone is making up chronic pain by comparing how they move to the way my relative did.

My friend is not making her symptoms up. Her joints swell randomly, she can't even wear a bra because tight clothing exacerbates the pain always in her skin. She regularly receives injections into her eye sockets for the pain in her face and the general area of the front of her skull. She's had severe seizures, one of which happened in a pool resulting in her ending up in intensive care because she technically drowned to death and was revived. I've cared for her in the aftermath of one of those seizures, nothing on the level of the one that almost killed her, but still not a pretty sight. She has considerable problem eating because even her digestive system is fucked up. Best case is when she throws up quickly, worst is when she spends the next three days being incapable of eating at all. She eats a very frugal amount of well cooked and unseasoned meat and vegetables once a night, and in the morning she drinks a smoothie made of an unbelievably foul concoction of seaweed and a fuckton of supplements that she's developed over the years to compensate for not being able to eat or metabolise certain vitamins (including large amounts of various D vitamins ftr), proteins, etc. She swims once a day because it's the least painful form of exercise for her, and if she doesn't exercise at all her joints and muscles seize up.

Her cognitive functions are also affected. I've worked in a scientific research facility with people working on their third doctorate, and I can tell you that she's still one of the smartest people I've had the pleasure of meeting, unless she's having a particularly bad day when her symptoms flare up and become considerably worse. Then she can't plan, can barely hold a conversation, her memory is fucked up, and the constant pain in her head goes from "severe sinus infection" to "two week migraine". Her eyesight gets completely fucked up will that's happening. Sleeping without Endep is pretty much impossible for her; she's tried a number of times to get off the stuff but completely without success. She's had so many pain killers thrown at her over the years that most of them just bounce straight off, or worse, fuck with her metabolism and exacerbate everything that it's supposed to treat.

As an added bonus, most of her family down her mother's side suffer the same symptoms, only not nearly as severe as herself. She still cops a lot of shit from people telling her that fibro isn't real. There's been a number of occasions where people have asked about her obvious physical symptoms, only to tell her to her face that fibro isn't real when she replies, and it's all obviously psychosomatic on her part.

And most tellingly, she has little to no online presence and is not involved in any support or advocate groups for any form of chronic pain or illness.

I know that fibromalgia is frequently used by con artists, but having observed the real thing close up and in high definition for a number of years, I'm a believer.

Yeah, this is why I didn't say it's not a real issue, it is for some people. Fibro tends to be a catch-all diagnosis for unexplained pain and nerve disorders right now. Some people who have legit pain go in and get the same diagnosis as someone who is easily treated with an SSRI or SNRI. Because there are no fool-proof diagnostic tests, munchies cling to it because nobody can prove them wrong and they get to make it up as they go along. I remember years ago, before Fibro, everyone was suffering from Migraines and doctors handed over pain pills like candy. Insomnia was also frequently claimed by people who wanted to get their hands on benzo sleep aids like Valium.

PL: I've had a sleep disorder for years, well documented in my medical history from a very early age. It's to a point now where doctors are so afraid to give out meds for sleep disorders that they've resorted to recommending things like daily meditation and drinking warm milk or shutting off your electronics after 8pm. That's fine for people who have a bit of trouble getting to sleep once in a while, but it doesn't do shit for those of us who go days without sleeping or who can't function with a normal night-time sleep schedule.

 

[repentance]

Another fun MBI is Anqi Dong in NSW, Australia. I believe her latest shenanigans got investigated by authorities, because most of her puppet tumblrs are deactivated or made private.

The number of lies is astonishing, but there's a lot of stuff which people outside Australia probably wouldn't question - like her using a private ambulance service (people on benefits get free ambulance transport with the regular ambulance service) and paying full rate for home help (no-one on government benefits pays full rate - it's heavily subsidised).

I won't even go into the legal fees bullshit. She's way past the time when she can file a personal injury claim.

It's interesting that her "eviction" notice says that she didn't meet her transitional housing programme obligations and equally interesting that her medical "proof" is no such thing. The physical exam findings are totally inconsistent with her claim of being bed bound for a prolonged period of time.

Her "moving costs" campaign was started only a few months ago and reached its goal so I really do hope that she is being investigated. The more of these frauds that get the book thrown at them, the better. I'll bet she didn't report that $60,000 income to Centrelink or the ATO, either (which may be the thing which brings her undone).

What *is* mildly interesting is that she even knows about private ambulances and home help agencies. It's unlikely she was hooked up with either of these through her transitional housing service. It makes me curious about her actual family background.

 

[lariumdreams]

What *is* mildly interesting is that she even knows about private ambulances and home help agencies. It's unlikely she was hooked up with either of these through her transitional housing service. It makes me curious about her actual family background.

I no longer have access to the journal, as it's either bahleeted or made private, but one of her sob stories was that she was "a victim of domestic violence" which... was when her father forced her to sit up and walk. Because her parents were also not buying her shit that getting her arm wrenched totally immobilized her. She said she managed to get a restraining order against her father for this incident, which I dimly remember she produced some kind of documents for. I don't think it was an actual court awarded order, I think it was the form she was trying to file.

OH and she has been trying to mount a lawsuit against the high school where she fell and wrenched her arm. The first lawsuit got dropped, and then second lawsuit involved a huge online donations scheme where she needed some ridiculous amount of money (like $10K) for a fee for her lawyer. She's gone dark since the, so I don't know what's she's done with the fees.

ETA: Another of Angie's many scattered fundraisers:
Somewhat :powerlevel::

Spoiler

I'm not trying to cast aspersions on anybody with actual debilitating health conditions. I have several of my own, so it's aggravating when I come across these people, because I know they're in the system demanding time and tests that could actually help someone who's actually sick. A few months ago, an older woman in her 50s had a screaming temper tantrum in the rheumatologist's office because her appointment was late; I was too tired to give a shit at the time, but seeing them in the wild kind of puts things into perspective. If you have the energy to shill for money or have a temper tantrum either online or IRL, then chances are you're not as sick as you say.

 

[There_is_no_Dana]

Somewhat :powerlevel::

Spoiler

I'm not trying to cast aspersions on anybody with actual debilitating health conditions. I have several of my own, so it's aggravating when I come across these people, because I know they're in the system demanding time and tests that could actually help someone who's actually sick. A few months ago, an older woman in her 50s had a screaming temper tantrum in the rheumatologist's office because her appointment was late; I was too tired to give a shit at the time, but seeing them in the wild kind of puts things into perspective. If you have the energy to shill for money or have a temper tantrum either online or IRL, then chances are you're not as sick as you say.

I can totally see someone who is suffering from a pain condition losing her shit over a late appointment, when you're in pain, you tend to have a shorter fuse. I'm more suspicious of the folks who seem to have an endless smile on their face yet claim to be in pain.

 

[HickoryDickory]

I can totally see someone who is suffering from a pain condition losing her shit over a late appointment, when you're in pain, you tend to have a shorter fuse. I'm more suspicious of the folks who seem to have an endless smile on their face yet claim to be in pain.

It can go both ways, tbh. Sometimes the fakers scream the loudest or they can pretend to be demure little soldiers, and vice versa. It just depends on what we can get from the persons personality and actions.

 

[Angry New Ager]

Some people who have legit pain go in and get the same diagnosis as someone who is easily treated with an SSRI or SNRI. Because there are no fool-proof diagnostic tests, munchies cling to it because nobody can prove them wrong and they get to make it up as they go along.

Five years ago, my personal lolcow was seeking an official diagnosis for some sort of autoimmune disease. Scleroderma and/or Hashimoto's thyroiditis were ones she had diagnosed herself with (as well as the old standby fibromyalgia), and she actually managed to see a rheumatologist and undergo various tests.

At the time, she was all over a health forum, recommending vitamin and mineral supplements and Chinese herbs to sufferers of other ailments, and offering possible diagnoses to them (she has no scientific or medical training at all), so she'd obviously spent a lot of time consulting with Dr. Google.

It was no surprise to me when her rheumatologist failed to give her a definitive diagnosis of any sort--not even a conditional one for fibro. And it was even less of a surprise when I looked up the physical manifestations of clinical depression and saw that she was a match for many of them--including GI issues; pain and stiffness due to muscle tension throughout her upper body; headaches; lack of energy; difficulty sleeping; and hypersensitivity to certain stimuli (sounds and odors, as well as being touched on her many, many "trigger points").

And her mental state is dead on for a chronic depression and anxiety sufferer. She can't focus, and is easily distracted (and claims to have ADD). She's easily irritated, with low frustration tolerance. She sees herself as a perennial victim, wallowing in her feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, but her decision-making ability is so fucked up that she keeps herself stuck.

She's already claimed that she has bad reactions to every anxiety med available, and can't possibly take them. So to tell her that she doesn't need to see another rheumatologist, but rather a psychiatrist, and get her fucked up brain chemistry sorted--haha, yeah, like that's going to happen.

Surprisingly, she's not a drug-seeker. She lives in a state where marijuana is legal, and using cannabis or its derivatives would probably help her, but she's vehemently opposed to it (or alcohol), and has turned down many of the heavier painkillers before.

What she really wants is a conclusive diagnosis that proves she's physically unable to work, so she can collect disability. That's it. She's stated before that she never wants to work again for the rest of her life (except make her shitty "art" whenever she feels like it, and get paid a lot of money for it). She's spent four years back in school for a post-bac BFA, convinced that it will somehow make her a professional artist, but now she's finally run out of student loan money (and thus her means of support and justification for avoiding work) without even finishing the degree. This also means access to student health services is about to end, so she's desperately renewing attempts to get the diagnosis she wants--but she'll never accept the one that might actually help her, or its treatment.

It's going to be interesting to see where she ends up next. She's homeless, and the rescue mission she's been living at on and off for the last two years is kicking her out next week. They've tried to help her find employment so she can get back on her feet, but she insists she's totally unable to do any of the jobs offered. Yet she attends all of her art classes and hands in all of her work, and if there's something she really wants to do, she's never too sick to do it (and there are no consequences afterward). And when she has managed to find men willing to pay for dates and motel rooms, somehow she's never too sick for that, and they never inadvertently hit her pain "trigger points" during sex. Funny, that.

And I keep waiting for her to attempt online begging, but she doesn't have any sort of online following, and will never build one because she can't handle even the mildest criticism or negative attention. She tried a sugardaddy site a couple of years ago, but she's too old, too seedy-looking, and has grown too fat to be appealing. So I just keep watching and waiting to see who she manages to leech off, next, and how she does it, and watch the drama unfold when it goes to shit again.

 

[repentance]

I no longer have access to the journal, as it's either bahleeted or made private, but one of her sob stories was that she was "a victim of domestic violence" which... was when her father forced her to sit up and walk. Because her parents were also not buying her shit that getting her arm wrenched totally immobilized her. She said she managed to get a restraining order against her father for this incident, which I dimly remember she produced some kind of documents for. I don't think it was an actual court awarded order, I think it was the form she was trying to file.

OH and she has been trying to mount a lawsuit against the high school where she fell and wrenched her arm. The first lawsuit got dropped, and then second lawsuit involved a huge online donations scheme where she needed some ridiculous amount of money (like $10K) for a fee for her lawyer. She's gone dark since the, so I don't know what's she's done with the fees.

The Centrelink income statement shows her being paid at the independent rate. As she's under 22, she has to demonstrate to Centrelink that she has a good reason why she cannot live with her parents in order to be paid that rate. It's often because young people are studying or working too far from their parents' home, but it can be because of family problems. If she claimed it was because of family problems, she'd need to provide some evidence of that - they do actually check with the parents, require routs documents, check with support agencies, etc. I noticed that many of her referral letters are couched in "she told me" terms, though, rather than direct knowledge/observation terms.

The legal stuff is just bullshit. PI actions are done almost exclusively on a contingency basis here. If a lawyer is asking for a retainer, it's because she doesn't have a case. She had a limited time in which to file and that passed long ago. She also could not pursue a claim without a shit ton of medical evidence, yet the home care service letter says she doesn't even have a GP (even though Medicare covers home visits). If anything, she seems to actively avoid medical investigation of her "condition". There is also no way on the planet that the transitional housing service would not have offered to hook her up with medical services, community transport, etc - it's a massive part of what they do.

On the bright side, if she's under-reported her income to Centrelink then she will get prosecuted for Centrelink fraud. They're required to refer all cases of fraud to the DPP and the DPP routinely prosecutes for much smaller amounts than she has been overpaid. She'll also be on the hook for the overpayment.

Ironically, there's a very good chance that she has severe enough mental illness to actually qualify her for Disability Support Pension - if she'd actually both to collect the medical evidence to support a claim.

 

[Feline Darkmage]

That's exactly what some of the people in your community are though.

 

[Helvetica Scenario]

Oh fuck, not The Mighty.

I made the immense mistake of following them when I realized that I was falling asleep sitting up, a lot, that I probably shouldn't do anything that required unbroken concentration and heavy machinery, and went looking for articles on how other people coped with that. It seemed like it might offer some fairly decent insights so I decided to follow it for a while, see what else they had to say. Turns out that perhaps one in five articles they publish might actually be remotely insightful. Everything else is quasi-inspirational bullshit about what brave little soldiers we members of the chronic illness community are, and passive-aggressive shit designed entirely to be smugly posted to Facebook feeds about 'what not to say to someone with POTS' (anything that isn't unremittingly positive and supportive, apparently, also never ask them any questions and if you want to be a proper ally you should probably donate to their GoFundMe). Absolute garbage, and I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of the almost all-female audience who think it, like, really speaks to them is a self-diagnosed spoonie with 800 utterly contradictory conditions so now you have to be nice to them, you shitlord. Some of them definitely read it for tips: you can count on seeing people commenting to just about any article at all to say, with worrying enthusiasm, 'hey, I think I have this!'.

The endless patronising crap these sites spew about how 'brave' and 'strong' and 'inspirational' living with disability or chronic illness supposedly makes everyone who does it is really beginning to get me down. Having a disability does not make you, me or anyone into a perpetual infant who cannot survive without constant coddling and head pats. If only the Spoonies would stop demanding them.

 

[Feline Darkmage]

The endless patronising crap these sites spew about how 'brave' and 'strong' and 'inspirational' living with disability or chronic illness supposedly makes everyone who does it is really beginning to get me down. Having a disability does not make you, me or anyone into a perpetual infant who cannot survive without constant coddling and head pats. If only the Spoonies would stop demanding them.

A parallel thing happens with a lot of trans people and women too, this seems to be a common theme in identity politics. The people who constantly talk about how Group X or Group Y are "uwu so brave" grate on the disabled, trans, or female portions of the population until we get sick of them coddling them like children.

 

[HickoryDickory]

A parallel thing happens with a lot of trans people and women too, this seems to be a common theme in identity politics. The people who constantly talk about how Group X or Group Y are "uwu so brave" grate on the disabled, trans, or female portions of the population until we get sick of them coddling them like children.

That's kind of why I don't go to womens groups. If anything, I find that instead of helping prop people up to get better, they just let people fester in their own victimhood. It's pretty gross and frustrating, tbh.

Just to add, I did get pulled aside once for telling off a whiny druggie whose kids were taken by CPS. It was worth it.

 

[glass_houses]

That's kind of why I don't go to womens groups. If anything, I find that instead of helping prop people up to get better, they just let people fester in their own victimhood. It's pretty gross and frustrating, tbh.

Just to add, I did get pulled aside once for telling off a whiny druggie whose kids were taken by CPS. It was worth it.

Having been in several different support groups for Reasons over the years, my personal conclusion has been that you go in, get what you need, and get out again. Through the groups you meet friends who're on the same level, so at the very least you end up with a person or two that you can connect with, sometimes intimately, sometimes Facebook and fortnightly cafe dates over tea and bitching. If you're cyclic or are able to somehow haul yourself up to even a moderately better place, support groups can be bad for you if you linger too long. If there's no place for you but down then the support group may well end up being one of the most important things in your life, and in many situations that's the best you can get.

But if you're getting better or even getting better with coping, support groups can end up sucking away what little life remains in you. Both because you're surrounded by people who are rightly or wrongly completely focused on their personal situation and have no ability to look beyond it, or even worse, the group is infested with spiteful bitches who are jealous and angry that you're clawing your way towards daylight. Those spiteful bitches are invariably jealous because a: you're succeeding at something, anything, b: you're getting attention from genuinely decent members of the group who are encouraging and happy for you, and c: you're diverting attention away from said spiteful bitch and we can't have that, can we now?

Invariably (and this isn't just my own personal experience) the spiteful bitch has clawed her way to the top of the food chain, where she squats over a pile of rotting flesh like a vulture. The group is invariably split in their personal opinions of her. There are a small, vocal minority who will gleefully tear to pieces anyone who speaks about her unfavourably, while the majority tiptoe warily around her and pay her lip service so that she doesn't go batshit at them over... well, nothing basically. It's always impossible to figure out what exactly set her off and set it to rights so she is mollified enough to flap back to her foul nest. And invariably, a few days after her tantrum, the word gets out: the spiteful bitch has had a massive crash/relapse and it's all her victim's fault for subjecting the spiteful bitch to such horrific levels of stress.

The problem is, hell if you can see any evidence of the spiteful bitch's worsening condition. She'll whine and sob about how awful she feels, but when you watch her move around you can't see any indications whatsoever of the crippling pain she says that she's enduring, she's perfectly able to spit litres of bile like a champion even though she's supposed to be so severely depressed that she can barely form a sentence, let alone get out of bed, and she can scoff down the large quantities of snacks and treats that she loudly demands in between whining about her crippling, agonising tummy ache.

The best case scenario is that the spiteful bitch is just an awful, awful person who terrorises the group into submission by a combination of passive aggression, unpredictable temper, lying, and exaggeration, and who are eventually told to either shape up or GTFO. The worst case scenario is that the group has its very own full blown personality disorder infestation, and when that happens the only thing you can do is nuke the entire group before an all out bloodbath erupts. The problem that plagues all support groups of any kind is that they are indeed support groups, and by definition are welcoming and none judgemental, and questioning members is not unreasonably seen as impolite.

MBI isn't a new phenomenon. It's an old, old one that's just spread into new territory like a noxious weed. And hell if anyone knows what they can do to kill it.

 

[Labrat2320]

Spoiler: Mild powerlevel

As someone who works in the biomedical field and also happens to live with a progressive, incurable disease that will probably kill him within a few years but still doesn't have a 'spoonie tumblr'...

I'm incredibly repulsed by these assholes for one simple reason: they endanger the actually severely ill. I have colleagues who immediately start typing up a psych referral as soon as someone rattles down a litany of diseases and has non-specific symptoms.

It's odd how the currently trendy ones are fibromyalgia, POTS and EDS. Fibro is almost entirely subjective. POTS is extremely easy to fake (not gonna give tips here but it's out there on teh intarwebz) and EDS, well, the diagnostic criteria are set so low, it's almost impossible not to satisfy it. Even I would qualify for an EDS diagnosis. With obese women in particular, lower body ligaments are under extreme strain and female hormones do contribute to somewhat more laxity. What is diagnosed as EDS in them is half the time ligaments being stretched to their limits by a 450lbs body.

 

[lariumdreams]

A new trend in MBIs has been gastro complaints. Probably one of the most popular (and obnoxious) is just-breathe-nicole on insta. https://www.instagram.com/just_breathe_nicole/

Nicole for a pretty long time was insisting she had a super serious gastro issue, and as such had to have a naso-gastric tube for a liquid diet, because according to her she just kept throwing up all solid food. But after a year of tests all doctors agreed it was a somatic issue. She rarely goes more than a few days without demanding (and usually getting) an emergency hospitalization. As of now, the medical community has gotten sick of her shit and scheduled her with eating disorder therapy. Which she is busy denying. The doctors are demanding she remove her NG tube, which is throwing her into a panic.

Cow also participates in beauty pageants, which just is horrifying. D:

 

[HickoryDickory]

A new trend in MBIs has been gastro complaints. Probably one of the most popular (and obnoxious) is just-breathe-nicole on insta. https://www.instagram.com/just_breathe_nicole/

Nicole for a pretty long time was insisting she had a super serious gastro issue, and as such had to have a nastro-gastric tube for a liquid diet, because according to her she just kept throwing up all solid food. But after a year of tests all doctors agreed it was a somatic issue. She rarely goes more than a few days without demanding (and usually getting) an emergency hospitalization. As of now, the medical community has gotten sick of her shit and scheduled her with eating disorder therapy. Which she is busy denying. The doctors are demanding she remove her NG tube, which is throwing her into a panic.

Cow also participates in beauty pageants, which just is horrifying. D:

Skimming down... Her boyfriend buys her books on medications? Or is the boyfriend also a figment of her imagination?

 

[lariumdreams]

God only knows. There's precious little photographic evidence of him. These are apparently his forearms. She also has a rather porky plateful in front of her of rather heavy food, for someone with stomach problems.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BS8nczODWyP/

Here's Nicole with a NG feeding tube while pageating. https://www.instagram.com/p/BTCpLZMjFkY/