Gonna start off with this....the name of this documentary is pretty ridiculous. As a vegan for 10 years I don't see how it really relates to anything beyond the fact she is vegan. The other thing is how the journalist Allen Salkin makes some pretty dumb claims about vegans as a whole. Having been around major centers for veganism (SoCal, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Austin, Washington D. C.) the "crystal" worshipping hippies are a largely rare sight these days. Plus, environmentalism and tying it to the food on your plate doesn't mean we are "better" than you. Since we are into generalizations, Salkin looks like he eats nothing but burgers and coffee, which as a former journalist myself I can say is about right. Anyway, here is the review if you are still reading.
I still can't believe this story. Ten years ago I would have said this person is nuts and how does a society with ample amounts of information available to them fall for this type of behavior. Of course, now we have people who believe the earth floats on a giant turtle and a war between two countries is a false flag event with cut scenes from ARMA3, so the collective naivete of society is no longer surprising. We talk about red flags in meme forms these days, and even ten years ago this guy might have been a red shirt (which that whole thing was pretty wild as well) and on fire. So many red flags.
The argument that people are going to get into is how much at fault was Sarma Melngailis for her own downfall? While gaslighting is a major source of contention in online blogs and such, it's hard to take into account that Matthew Strangis already had numerous problems that Melngailis should have spotted from a mile away. He was using a false name, he did not look like an elite special forces operative (sorry, but this guy would not have passed the physical they make you take every year) and he was friends with Alec Baldwin (which even before the Rust controversy, was an arrogant, anger ridden jerk with multiple failed marriages and incidents of bad behavior). The thing that set me off is the lack of pop cultural influence of Melngailis and it makes sense how Strangis could pull this off. Anyone that watched True Lies or read Cloud Atlas at the time would know this guy is probably full of it.
It comes down to who to believe is the true perpetrator. Did Melngailis play the game in hopes of getting out of major debt, or was Strangis that good at finding vulnerable, naive marks who would gladly believe the cosmic stories he talked about while also milking you dry of all your money? I don't know what to make of it. I'm not a part of this world of glitz and celebrity gushing while being capable of giving people 100K like nothing. I'm just gonna say that no one is that stupid. And if you are, you probably deserve some of the backlash you receive and ultimate blowback of the situation. I don't normally stand up for rich people but if I was one of the people that got bilked in the eventual 6.1 million scam, I would be pretty ticked off that the perpetrators got maybe a year and half of jail time between them. I don't care about the supposed abuse. Anyway, an infuriating watch.