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The documentary "The Vow" made me rethink NXIVM for months, but I still disagree with the mainstream take
I watched The Vow back in 2021 and it took me a solid 3 months to sort out why I didn't buy the popular narrative that everyone was just brainwashed. The film spends way too much time on the women in the inner circle crying about being victims, but glosses over the fact that some members joined for the self help and left once it got weird. I kept digging through court transcripts from the Albany trial and found that several former members testified they were just looking for career networking, not a cult leader. How many other documentaries do you think slant the story just to squeeze out a tearjerker arc?
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felixlane3mo ago
Used to think the doc was spot on until I read through some of those trial transcripts myself. Made me realize they were cherry picking the most dramatic stories to sell the show, not to tell the whole truth.
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abby_morgan183mo ago
oh come on, it's a documentary not a history textbook. they're gonna pick the juiciest parts to keep people watching, that's how tv works. i read through some of that stuff too and honestly it's not like they made anything up, they just didn't include every boring procedural detail. like yeah they left out the part where witness x went back and forth for three hours on cross examination, but who wants to watch that? the core story about the wrongful conviction is still there, the transcripts back up the main points. people get so dramatic about this stuff like the show committed a crime itself by being entertaining.
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eva_moore3mo ago
Well hold on @abby_morgan18, I gotta push back a little on that "didn't make anything up" bit. They actually did leave out key details like the fact that the guy who supposedly ran the secret society admitted under oath that he exaggerated a lot of his own claims to sell books later. It's not about needing every boring cross-examination, it's about them cutting the stuff that makes the victim narrative harder to sell.
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