Entrepreneurship is inherently risky, and risk is inherently unpredictable. The only stable correlation between risk and reward is that success tends to follow persistence. My very first blog on this platform, A Resume of Failure alludes to this fact. Past failures offer no guarantee of success; no one is “due”, but to abandon risk is to accept defeat.
In this series of essays, I intend to take a calculated risk, shaped by a specific failure. My modus operandi typically consists of wrestling through a subject from all angles till I feel like I’ve gotten a good grip on the big picture, a process which typically takes several weeks and somewhere between 10-30,000 words. By the time I finish, the window of relevance has often shifted. String enough of those together, and you get an 880 page unread elephant that follows you everywhere you used to discuss ideas with friends.
If ever there was a subject that provoked such temptations to detail, it is the labyrinthian swirl of meta-narratives within and without the film, You Can See Everything. Fortunately, the Oscar buzz means that the zeitgeist will be extended, or catch a second wind. To capitalize on the moment, I will be writing and releasing my analysis in a serial form, aiming to keep it tight enough to hold the attention of the normal reader. The first two will be free. The others will be worth paying for.
What The Movie is Not About:
Deception certainly plays a central role in this film, but not in the way people think. What is completely overlooked in the vast majority of responses is the seductive danger of self-deception. Understanding this movie requires a great deal of self-awareness, which means identifying and questioning prior assumptions. This is an inherently subjective task, but I will point out the most common pitfalls I have observed in the responses of other viewers, and highlight what this film is not about.
First, the film is not about establishing the guilt or innocence of Elizabeth Holmes, or the validity of Theranos project. Getting caught up on those questions is a trap that will cause you to miss what is really going on.
Second, the movie is about people, not types of people. Understanding requires a conscientious refusal to diagnose and categorize. Good, evil, psychopath, sociopath, narcissist, liar, pathological liar, autistic, manipulator, felon—even normal—such labels allow us to orient ourselves, but once a judgment is made, our brains stop perceiving and start reinforcing.
Third, the documentary nature of the film does not mean it is reliable, factual, or objective. It is not about what is true or false, or ethical. Understanding the film requires us to reconsider how we know what we think we know, and how we measure right and wrong. Moreover, the film requires us to extend this posture of uncertainty to our other tools of reckoning. Entertainment, journalism, social media, medical and financial institutions, governments and courts of law—we all question some; few question all.
The removal of all such tools is incredibly destabilizing—and that is the point. Because it is only when all such crutches are stripped away that people can recognize the key distinction that upholds the rest, revealing the singular question that motivates all our other actions. Am I an insider, or outsider? That question is operating in the background of your mind as you read these words, probing you to make a judgement—why should I listen to this guy?
The answer is, you shouldn’t. Not if you are looking for any sense of assurance about your capacity to perceive the truth. But if you want to understand why You Can See Everything makes you feel unsettled, I might be able to help.
Why You Can Trust Me
So, why should anyone care what I think? To quote Rousseau, “I am different from all other men I have seen. If I am not better, at least I am different.” If Rousseau had the benefit of the internet, he would have discovered that his sentiment resonates with more people than he imagined. Perhaps not many, but some. Rousseau was an outlier; sensitive, intelligent, passionate, incredibly principled, and remarkably resilient. His uniqueness allowed him to experience the highest highs, and the lowest lows, but always as an outlier, and therefore, an outsider.
It takes a specific kind of outsider to understand the significance of that key phrase, You can see everything. In another setting, a specific word is given a great deal of attention in the film; what does Elizabeth mean by can? And that word is just as slippery in this context. Is it referring to the visibility of everything, or is it speaking to the capacity to see everything? But this article will focus on another word - the word You. To be able to see everything rests in your ability to see how that specific you—Nathan Fielder, sees the world.
I have a distinct memory of the first time I saw Nathan Fielder. It was shortly after my wife and I returned home from our honeymoon in Europe. I was having a guy’s night with a few of my friends, when the host pulled up an episode of Nathan For You on-demand. The skit was called Toy Company, and it is well worth watching:
It was just about the funniest thing I had ever seen. My reaction was the exact opposite to Elizabeth’s Holmes experience with Who’s on first?. I immediately grasped the entirety of the situation in all its comedic brilliance. That’s not to say that I approved of Nathan’s tactics, nor did I have any desire to emulate his experiment. If I experienced any schadenfreude, it was directed towards Mark, not the children.
What resonated so deeply was seeing someone capable of surviving the kinds of social blunders that would have made me want to curl up in a ball and hide.
I don’t think I was necessarily expecting my wife to fall over laughing, but I was surprised by just how deeply she disliked it. Her reaction induced only the slightest feeling of rejection; what I find funny is just a tiny fragment of my identity, but it served to reinforce a much stronger sensation of fear and caution. I immediately realized that if I wasn’t careful, if I spoke or acted without thinking, I possessed the capacity to come across like Nathan, and her reaction to that was something I never wanted to experience.
If that feeling is foreign to you, consider yourself fortunate. It’s not a normal feeling. It’s a survival instinct; a sign that something is wrong. To the person experiencing it, it is evidence of a threat. But what if the threat gets to dictate what it means for the person experiencing it? If they want, they can ignore it, and encourage the person to ignore it as well. This solution is proven effective when the subject stops acknowledging their pain, even if the feeling does not subside.
But if the person who experiences that feeling persists in sharing their experience, that “something wrong” will eventually be acknowledged. It will be identified within the individual, and labeled with a diagnosis. For those of a similar age to Fielder and myself, a diagnosis is recognized as something bad—an impediment to being considered normal. Neither one of us have received a formal diagnosis. The long held suspicions that Fielder is autistic stem from the portrayal of his character on Nathan For You.
The fictionalized version of Fielder is modeled on people with autism, but is not a specifically autistic character. I had become familiar with the quirks from Michael Falk’s autistic reporter news segments from the Onion—a fictional pastiche that ramps up the most obvious stereotypes.
In contrast to Falk and other popular portrayals like Jim Parson’s Sheldon Cooper, Fielder’s comedic premise is rooted in the plausible deniability of a condition, forcing subjects and viewers to wonder if there is something genuinely wrong with the character, or if he is just a dick. The deadpan performance, ramped up for comedy, remains just subtle enough to beg the question, is he really faking it?
But my own thoughts, and likely Fielder’s, were plagued by the inverse question; when the comedic performance is dialed down, am I really making it? Am I coming across as normal? Am I fitting in? Such questions are “normal” at certain times in one’s life; teenage awkwardness is fairly universal, and they eventually subside. A driver’s license is proof you belong behind the wheel, obtained by demonstrating your competence. But what do you do when doubts continue to linger?
I had ample excuses for being awkward growing up. My family was very religious in a very secular part of the country, I was homeschooled, my dad was kind of a nerd. But when you turn 27 and you’ve still never kissed a girl, it’s hard not to ask yourself, is there something wrong with me? Of course, the last thing I wanted was an affirmative answer, and especially a diagnosis.
Any diagnosis, official or otherwise, is a social construct—an external status marker imposed on the individual. But the constructed nature of social reality is ultimately inconsequential. It’s the social part that matters. Sticklers will insist that sociopathy and psychopathy are not “real” diagnoses, but this does not stop people from imposing those labels on others, nor does it lessen the negative consequences. For the vast majority of people, social reality is reality. This is especially true for those in danger of being excluded from that shared experience.
I was fortunate enough to have many doubts assuaged over the next few years. I got married, had kids, improved my career, and bought a house. But none of that erased the suspicion that I was somehow faking my way through life, and each new milestone only exacerbated the feeling that at any moment, I might be found out as some kind of fraud.
At 39, I stumbled across the accounts of people diagnosed with autism as adults, and their experiences mirrored my own. A few were diagnosed formally, many others self-identified—a practice that is generally accepted within the autistic community, for a few simple reasons. One is that it is difficult to fake an authentic resonance with an internal experience. Having a diagnosis is less important than finding someone that understands and can relate to you, and if you find that, you don’t really need a label. The other reason is that a diagnosis can be expensive and difficult to attain, and there are virtually no tangible benefits to receiving a formal diagnosis as an adult. No accommodations, no opportunities, and no sympathy.
You can try to use the label as an excuse in the future, but unless you act like Sheldon Cooper, don’t expect to be believed. And don’t expect any apologies from everyone in your past who just assumed you were a dick. Whatever degree of success you have attained only serves to prove that being different wasn’t really much of an obstacle at all; your mediocrity is entirely deserved. The only consolation comes from knowing that there was a reason life seemed so hard. That, and the recognition that you can stop pursuing any future hopes and dreams that depended on figuring out that one elusive thing that everyone else seems to grasp. You don’t have it, and you never will.
What You Can’t See
Am I autistic? No, I’m not. Neither is Fielder, and neither is Elizabeth Holmes. Nor are the vast majority of engineers, or the quiet old bachelors that used to work in machine shops, the aging transvestites, the junkies and winos, and the odd hermit holed up in a fishing shack up north. To be autistic requires a diagnosis by an individual who has gone through a process of social vetting. It is a label that society confers, and without that label, there is no substance to the claim. A diagnosis might have redirected the course of many lives, maybe for better, maybe for worse. It’s impossible to say.
What I can say is that I, and they, are different, and that difference meant never quite belonging, and never knowing exactly why. The success and failure of all such individuals is directly tied to the ambiguous nature of their identity. When everyone else can’t quite determine that someone belongs, they are given the opportunity to prove themselves. A few succeed beyond the wildest expectations of their peers. Many more crash and burn. Others experience a combination of the two, and failures often inform how such individuals identify and approach opportunities in the future—opportunities like the one that Nathan Fielder seized in this film.
It would be entirely wrong to assume that Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim had a grandiose vision for this film, and they have spoken openly to the contrary. The idea that a narrative was deliberately crafted fits neither the evidence or the stated intent of the filmmakers. What the film conveys is a selected body of evidence that fits together in a specific pattern, an emergent pattern, difficult to articulate—something that can be seen, felt, and intuited—but only to those whose senses have been trained to look beyond the surface of the map to perceive the underlying territory.
What the myriad of responses suggest is that Fielder has succeeded in forcing the viewer to see a single scenario, and a few individuals in the same way that some people, like myself, view the entire world. Whatever opinions we form about Holmes, about her past, about her relationship with Billy, are inherently unstable. We can never know for certain what she meant, or what she intended, we can only choose to doubt, or to believe.
The problem is that admitting such doubts about Elizabeth Holmes will inevitably lead to doubts about the world from which she emerged. Our culture, like all cultures, is built on myths; but America is unique among the nations. The American dream is the dream that allows the creation of new dreams and new visions—dreams of universal opportunity and unlimited growth, of feminist equality, of the genius inventors, and technological salvation. All such dreams are illusions—until they manifest in reality.
But what happens when someone believes all the bullshit myths with true sincerity? What happens when someone who fits all the expectations and projections of countless fantasies suddenly arrives on the scene? What if they are constantly praised and encouraged and elevated to higher heights, and repeatedly offered new and unprecedented opportunities? And what happens when all those dreams suddenly collapse? Deception certainly played a role in the failure of Theranos; the question is, who was the deceiver, and who was being deceived? And if Elizabeth Holmes wasn’t to blame, who is?
Do we live in a world of where trust is the norm, where the occasional villain can dupe the masses? Or do we live in a world of deception that devours the trusting and the naive? That is the question that You Can See Everything asks us to consider; the answer is left for us to decide.
I believe that there is more than enough evidence to suggest that it is the latter. Whether that evidence is sufficient to overcome the desire to believe in the former is another matter. But there is at least one moment in the film when we can admit that Elizabeth spoke the truth. When Nathan asked her about meeting Billy, “Do you feel like it would have gone in the same direction with you guys, if he knew from the start, that it was you?”
“Maybe not; the bias is so strong.”