Scamfluencers

And the book, The Woman Who Wasn't There, The True Story of an Incredible Deception by Angelo and Robin Gabby Fisher.

narcissistic fantasy

what in ourselves allowed us to believe all his stories?

Just Desserts, written by Katie Vine for Texas Monthly

One of my favorite true crime titles in the last year was "A Threat of Violence" by Marco Connell. It's about a murder that takes place in Dublin in the early 80s and the fallout of this murder. It is fantastic.

Yeah, I think I need to listen to that one.

The book In Vino Veritas: The Rise and Fall of a Wine Forger Extraordinaire by Peter Helmin.

Here's what he told the writer of this episode.

I only actually finally did it because I was about to become a dad and didn't want to go to the hospital without having sent it to some agents.

So I did.

It was known at that time, not to me but within the world of publishing that some person or group of people had been perpetrating deceptions of this type, not just all over town all over the world.

We tried to talk about what is this person's motive? What are they going to do with a word file of my manuscript and we couldn't come up with a possible explanation that created the sort of nauseous stomach drop in. Who am I? What is this world kind of feeling?

A strange book appears on the shelves of Italian bookstores.

Its author is Filippo B. Its cover is a silhouette of a teen boy with gel tear, a popped collar, baggy jeans.

And the book's title is bully, which means the same thing in English as it does in Italian.

So, Bully tells the story of Diego, a shy teen living in an unnamed suburb of Rome.

His parents are divorced and he's struggling to fit in at school.

His classmates tear into him because he looks, acts and dresses like a dork.

And he loves just two things. Books and the internet.

A loser, like yours truly.

And yet, Diego is also special. He's brilliant.

He's so brilliant that he gets his hands on a copy of the final Harry Potter book before anybody else does.

But despite pulling that off, he still remains an outcast.

So he figures he's got no choice but to become a bully, just like everybody else.

So that quote, everyone will like me because the truth is that I am better than them. That's really dark and it also is really sad.

Well, Filippo B is the not so subtle, gnome de plume of Filippo Bernardini, a bookish, awkward Italian kid, much like his main character, Diego.

And also like Diego, Filippo was raised by divorced parents in an elegant, medieval suburb of Rome.

Another trait they share is that Filippo seems pretty convinced that he's superior to everyone around him.

After all, he published Bully his debut novel when he was still just a teenager.

Now, Bully is basically the diary of a lonely outcast.

Filippo is so angry at his classmates that in the book, he uses their full names.

So this is essentially fanfiction of his real life.

Yeah. And the lesson of the book is pretty dark.

There is a relationship between tormentors and victims, something close to a real friendship or even love.

A person cannot live without others just as a tormentor cannot live without his victim.

Imagine writing that down. This is clearly a teen who's experiencing a lot of shit in their life.

Yeah. And by publishing a book, Filippo hopes to get the recognition and praise that he craves.

It's successful enough to get Felipe the job of translating a forthcoming book by Parasite Director Bong Jun-Ho.

It's called The Gift by Sebastian Fitsick.

It follows a con man that tries to save a kidnapped girl and here's the twist.

He has a photogenic memory but he can't read.

She spoke with Julienne and Olivier

She spoke with Julienne for the book, but didn't include much about his life outside of Alex, probably to protect his identity.

The book's page is full of reviews, like one for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The story is about a woman who marries a wealthy widower. But when she moves into his estate, Manderley, she can't escape the lingering memory of her husband's first wife, Rebecca.

And the whole thing ends with the house going up in flames.

It's a classic and it's an epic.

It's about Danielle's ex-husband and it makes a lot of explosive claims.

It alleges that Danielle was a sex worker and that she was involved with a Colombian cartel and that she has a criminal record.

There's even a copy of her mugshot in it.

Joe's parents even bring him to meet her in the hospital when she's born.

They tell her that if she doesn't have family, she has nothing.

As kids, they go to the basement of one of their houses and give each other little kisses.

I remember thinking, why would anyone want to do a show about regular wives and moms like us and document our day-to-day lives?

I didn't even have a lawyer. I signed on the dot, like in front of her. She had the contract. I signed the contract with Jacqueline.

I was never involved in his business. Nothing. Hello. What would I know about construction?