I just watched "Big Vape The Rise and Fall of Juul" on Netflix but I have some issues.
It's no secret that Netflix has a bias in its documentaries, it's repeatedly been shown and proven to hide evidence and talking to certain people to feed into a narrative, and while it has seemingly improved on that, it still does it.
But my biggest issue with this is, the documentary is so incredibly fucking hypocritical. Majorly so. So to sum up the point of the documentary, in a sense, is that vaping is bad, it's harmful, it's an unknown science that was propelled faster than it should have been, it led to a million issues to everyone involved, and people need to be more aware of what they put in their bodies. Except. At the exact same time it is saying the exact opposite of all of that.
But this is where the hypocrisy bothers me. So a large chunk of this documentary is dedicated to shaming Juul, and saying how while they said they are only for adults and it was to stop addiction, it was secretly being targeted to kids, and while on one hand they were saying "No this is bad and dangerous" on the other they were saying/showing "But either way it is cool looking and isn't harmful, so you shouldn't be doing it, but if you do eh there are worse things you can do." and the entire time the Netflix documentary obviously frames that as bad. EXCEPT THEY DO IT TOO. The entire first episode is dedicated to how innovative and cool Juul was and how hard they worked to make the product, barely anything bad is said. They then show all the adverts, in full, that Juul was criticized for and were labelled as bad for targeting children. Then sprinkled all throughout the following episodes they show people smoking Juul, people working for the company defending it, insisting that people should do it and it's fine. They show and interview people who are addicted to their Juuls/vaping, some of these people having almost died and suffered from collapsed lungs, some admitted they are more addicted to vaping than they ever were to cigarettes, like, really bad things, but then show these people laughing about it and going "But eh I enjoy it so whatever!" and play it off like nothing! A girl literally cries confessing vaping almost killed her, but then she is shown repeatedly vaping and laughs it off saying she feels no need to quit as she feels fine now! And then it ends it all by blaming Vitamin E and saying Juul actually causes no issues, it was purely another thing so eventually don't smoke that and you'll be fine
And that's what I hated! This documentary is partially framing itself as being anti Juul/vaping, and has people calling out the way Juul advertised and how they handled all the complaints and criticisms. But then it does exactly that. It frames itself as critiquing this company and everything it did, but then it does exactly what the company did and seems to be promoting vaping/Juul more than it's discouraging it. Like again, at one point it critiques Juul for creating an epidemic and having no support network for quitting it, even showing a mother crying about her addicted son. Yet does it do anything to show how to quit vaping or ways people can get support for it. No.
Like I could keep going on but this is already long winded and me repeating myself! But everything it seemingly portrayed itself as attacking Juul for, how they presented themselves, handled the situation, for having secret ulterior motives and investors who are the enemy, how it played off the issues, gave conflicting views and facts. Literally everything this documentary seemed to be "slandering" Juul for, it itself does, and it came across more as not so secret advertising and support for Juul than it was anti it. Which, if it wants to do that, fine. But it doesn't frame itself like that. It's so hypocritical and seems so exceptionally biased in all the wrong ways!
