Category: Documentaries

Documentary: An Update on Our Family

The fall of the Stauffer family and its popular YouTube channel

The perfect family is not always what it seems, and An Update on Our Family documents the crumbling facade of one such family: the Stauffers. The Stauffers attempted to sell its perfection through a YouTube channel that presented their idyllic family life. The channel became increasingly popular with pregnancy announcements, and ultimately, the adoption of a boy from China with special needs.

But as with all perfect families, the facade fell apart, a deterioration that began when the adoption did not go the way the Stauffers intended and did not fit into the glossy presentation of their family.

This three-part HBO docuseries reveals the monetization behind these types of channels, what happens when fans become overly invested in a family, and particularly, what happened when the Stauffer family made a tough decision about their adopted child, and the backlash that occurred. It includes interviews with other family channel parents, journalists, adoption experts, and a YouTube expert, but not the Stauffers themselves.

Anyone who has watched a family channel, read a mommy blog, or is interested in the dark side of this type of content should check out An Update on Our Family.

Documentary: Sweet Bobby

A story of catfishing, power, and manipulation

The Netflix documentary Sweet Bobby is a catfishing story like no other. It’s a tangled tale of power and manipulation perpetrated for no other reason than control. A chilling one, at that.

Kirat meets Bobby Jandu online through a family member, and they become friends, talking on Facebook for months and forging what seems like a close relationship. Kirat learns that Bobby is getting divorced, but he gets engaged to someone else, all while he and Kirat maintain their close online friendship. Tragedy hits Bobby when he is shot, has a stroke, and ends his relationship. As Kirat continues to support him, they find that they have feelings for each other and get engaged, but they have never meet in person—not even once—and every time they make plans to meet, something comes up. When Karit finally tries to find him, Bobby’s true identity is revealed.

Kirat was catfished by “Bobby” for almost nine years. She tells the story from her perspective, an often painful trip through manipulation and control, made even more painful when she discovers the real person behind Bobby’s fake persona. She shares many of the texts, photos, and videos they exchanged, and is joined by family members and friends, who provide their insights on the tragic situation.

Documentary: Can I Tell You a Secret?

Can I Tell You A Secret? details the story of the stalking and harassment of several women in the UK on social media, which escalated to text messages and phone calls, all perpetrated by one person. The stalker relentlessly terrorized these women by creating fake profiles, impersonating them, spreading rumors about them, and even contacting their friends and families and telling lies about them. These crimes weren’t fully investigated until one police officer took charge.

What were the reasons for this despicable behavior? Would the perpetrator be prosecuted for his crimes? The Netflix documentary features two episodes that tell the story through first-person accounts from the victims, the police officer who took on the case, and others. It shines a light on the dangers of social media and the evil ways people can use it.

Documentary: Death Row Confidential: Secrets of a Serial Killer

A death row inmate helps solve cold cases

In 2022, cold case detective and former FBI investigator Ken Mains received a letter from Bill Noguera, an inmate on death row at San Quentin prison. Noguera claimed to have information about a serial killer also housed there, Joseph Naso. Naso had been arrested in 2010 following a routine probation check, when police found photos and other evidence of several murders in his home. Among these was a list of ten unnamed women at specific locations.

Naso was tried and convicted for the murders of four women in 2013, and was sentenced to death. Others on the list remained unsolved. During his time on death row at San Quentin, he began to talk to Noguera about his crimes and confessed to over 20 murders.

Oxygen’s new multi-part series Death Row Confidential: Secrets of a Serial Killer follows Mains as he works with Noguera (who took copious notes about Naso’s confessions), along with detectives from the locations where Noguera claims Naso killed his victims, to solve these cold cases.

Death Row Confidential

Cameras follow Mains as he attempts to connect the names on the list to information in Noguera’s notes. The documentary also provides a perspective not often seen in true crime: that of an inmate helping to solve several murders. It includes Noguera’s calls from death row and interviews with victims’ family members, who share their difficult experiences not knowing what happened to their loved ones.

Why did Noguera want to help solve these cases? Did the confessions lead to any convictions? Watch Death Row Confidential to find out. The series premieres on Oxygen on September 13 at 9 pm and will be available for streaming on Peacock at a later date.

Documentary: The Most Hated Man on the Internet

The fight against Hunter Moore and his revenge porn site

To be called the Most Hated Man on the Internet requires a certain degree of despicableness. Hunter Moore does not disappoint.

The Netflix documentary (named after a Rolling Stone article) traces the many contemptible acts Moore committed, first by creating a revenge porn site, then by hacking into email accounts and phones to populate that site with nude photos.

The story begins with one victim, who realized that a topless photo she had taken had been posted on Moore’s site without her consent. The cases multiply from there, with more and more victims describing their horror at finding out nude photos of them had been posted on the site without their permission, along with their full name and social media pics. Even after many requests to remove these photos, Moore was undeterred. He blamed the victims for taking the photos in the first place, so they remained. His brazen attitude and personality attracted many followers, who left bullying and hateful comments on the women’s—and men’s, in some cases—pages.

But one victim’s mother had had enough, and she went after Moore. After a reporter exposed him, white hat hackers and the FBI also took up the cause. Will Moore get his deserved comeuppance? If you can make it through this shocking story to the last episode, you’ll find out.

Documentary: Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed

The decline of a megachurch, and an empire

A church behaving badly is not all that unique, and the Hillsong megachurch is one of the more recent examples. Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed sheds light on the illegal and un-Christian activities that stood in the way of the church’s goal to take over the world.

Hillsong’s lofty aims were to reach past the worlds of religion and music into realms of higher education and film, and across continents. Impeding these goals were the misdeeds of its pastors and staff, who were involved in sexual misconduct, financial fraud, sexual abuse, and even rape, misdeeds that filtered up into its highest levels to Brian Houston, its former senior pastor, and his father, Frank Houston, Hillsong’s founder.

The four-episode docuseries (featured on Discovery+) starts by laying out the promise of Hillsong, its celebrity congregants, and its expansion, then uncovers the sexual misconduct and affairs of New York City pastor Carl Lentz. Episodes first recount Hillsong’s origins in Australia, its supposed culture of openness, its preaching of the prosperity gospel, and its loyal volunteers. Later episodes show how this dream disintegrated into lies, scandal, fraud, and criminal charges.

Documentary: Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult

The strange story of how TikTok dancers were sucked into a cult

Cults come in a variety of flavors, but they all serve the same purpose: control. And Robert Shinn follows that formula with his cult. In 1994, he founded Shekinah Church, a church for Korean Americans, then slowly began to control its members by convincing them to work in his many businesses and give him most of the money they earned. But this was not enough for him. In 2021, he decided to combine religion with entertainment when he searched for dancers on TikTok for his talent management company, 7M Films, and then pushed them into joining Shekinah. He did these things not because he was a truly religious man or truly interested in helping young people with their careers, but for the typical reasons of a cult leader: money and power.

The three-episode Netflix docuseries Dancing for the Devil describes how Shinn turned these dancers into Shekinah followers and cult members who he isolated from their families and took advantage of financially. It follows the Wilking family as they try to get their daughter Miranda to leave the cult. It also follows former members filing civil and criminal charges against its Shinn and others, and brings on other members who left the cult.

Documentary: Escaping Twin Flames

A cult manipulates people looking for true love

If you could find true love, how far would you go to get it? Would you join a cult? That’s the question asked by Escaping Twin Flames. Twin Flames Universe preyed on people’s desires to find love, by espousing the doctrine that everyone has a “twin flame,” a person who is the other half of their shared soul. It promised people that its methods—and its expensive courses and coaching sessions—would help them find that person, and as a result, find happiness.

But Twin Flames Universe was—and still is—a cult, and this documentary outlines just how crazy its beliefs are. From advocating stalking and harassment, to pushing members to work for the cult, to claiming that one of the leaders, Jeff Ayan, was Christ-like, the cult used typical manipulation tactics to control its members, take their money, and convince them to do whatever its leaders wanted.

Twin Flames Universe made many promises to its members, promises that it could not keep when the soulmates the leaders guaranteed people did not manifest themselves. But because it had brainwashed its members into believing its unbelievable concepts, Twin Flames convinced members to follow new promises, new doctrine, and new guidance about how to find true love, to the point of some changing their gender identity. As the cult morphed, some members saw the true darkness underneath this twisted facade and left. Others, however, are still beholden to its nonsense.

Netflix’s three-part docuseries charts the rise of the cult and the realizations of members who left, as well as documenting the heartbreaking stories of family members of those still in the cult struggling to get them back.

Documentary: Scamanda

How Amanda Riley used a fake cancer diagnosis to scam everyone around her

If someone you knew said they had cancer, would you believe them? Most likely. Because no one assumes their friend, or coworker, or family member would lie about something that serious. And that’s what Amanda Riley counted on. Riley faked a cancer diagnosis, chemotherapy treatments, remission, and even a clinical trial to garner sympathy, attention, and thousands of dollars in donations.

She started a blog detailing all of her travails and in the process, fooled friends, fellow church members, strangers, and parents of kids who went to school where she was principal. She took their money and gifts, and even filed for bankruptcy as part of her scam.

But some close to her were suspicious, and this suspicion led to an email to a TV producer, which snowballed into a police investigation, an IRS investigation, and an arrest for wire and bankruptcy fraud.

The four-part ABC News series Scamanda details the story, as told by friends, church members, the producer who first investigated the case, the subsequent detective, an IRS agent, and the Scamanda podcast host.

Documentary: The Tinder Swindler

The story of con artist Simon Leviev

A brand-new con exists, one that preys on those looking for love online: romance scams. Netflix’s The Tinder Swindler details the story of Simon Leviev, who conned women he dated—and others—out of millions of dollars to support his lavish lifestyle. He met women on the dating app Tinder, and at first, seemed like the perfect rich boyfriend, showering them with fancy dinners, expensive hotels, and flights on private jets. And by pretending to be rich, he laid the foundation for the lies that convinced girlfriends, friends, and others to give him money, lies about enemies out to get him and needing to avoid using his own bank accounts and credit cards.

Leviev was eventually exposed for his dirty deeds by some of the women he cheated, and they worked with a Norwegian newspaper, VG, to reveal his fraudulent activities and warn the world about him.

The Tinder Swindler is a warning about online dating, believing what you see online, and trusting someone who is too good to be true. Who is so bad, in fact, that you might lose your life savings over them.