The Vanishing At Cecil Hotel: EXPLORING the Manipulative Power of Withholding Facts

If you’ve seen, which I don’t recommend, Netflix’s 4-part documentary series, Crime Scene: The Vanishing At Cecil Hotel then you would’ve seen the manipulative power of withholding facts…

In episode one, the elevator security footage shows Elisa Lam hiding from “some(one).” Overall, the episode leads us to believe she was kidnapped by ghosts or a homeless person on Skid Row.

In episode two, we are led to believe she was kidnapped by a heavy metal musician named “Morbid” who stayed at the Cecil Hotel one time, but it turns out he wasn’t even in the country at the time of her disappearance.

In episode three, it’s revealed Elisa Lam’s body was found inside the roof water tank where the hatch was closed. We are then led to believe the Cecil staff, or the U.S. government or some secret international government agency was behind her death and possibly working in collusion with each other to purposely use her as a tuberculous host to spread the virus to the homeless population as some sort of population control strategy. It’s interesting to note the TB test is called, “ELISA-LAM,” which such eery coincidences are likely to be found when there are thousands of people on the internet with a little too much time on their hands trying to crack a case!

In episode four, it’s revealed her erratic behavior in the elevator was actually quite normal for her when she didn’t take her four anti-depressant medications, which the toxicology report showed she hadn’t taken. And before arriving in L.A., she had expressed a lot of nihilistic/melancholic thoughts indicating she wasn’t in a good mental place. Previously mentioned facts were also given more airtime such as there being no evidence of foul-play done to her body and that the water tank hatch was actually found open, which makes it possible for her to have fallen into it. This episode leaves the rational viewer who understands the inexplicableness of irrationality with virtually no doubt she died at her own hands. A sad story, but despite a few anomalies and mishaps is all too common in our modern world.

The reason I want to highlight this documentary is because big tech, big media, and big education are controlled by Democrats, which I call the influence-industrial complex.

How about that for a plot twist?! But please don’t close the elevator door on me yet…

Ask yourself: How might the influence-industrial complex be withholding facts on [insert political issue] to advance their agenda?

The Netflix Documentary positioned facts in order to keep the viewer watching longer because had they put “episode four” first then you wouldn’t have felt the need to listen to the crazed conspiracy theories; whereas the influence-industrial-complex withholds pertinent facts to drive a narrative that increases their own power! We are taught and told that the SOLUTION TO ALL OUR PROBLEMS is to GIVE MORE POWER AND CONTROL to THE 1%, i.e. big government, big education, big tech, big business, big insurance, big banks! ✂️

Unfortunately, people are too often intellectually lazy. When you hear an opinion how often do you go out of your way to get the other side’s opinion on the matter? A smart person does the latter because a smart person knows certain facts were intentionally and unintentionally withheld in the original telling.

A smart person also sees a RED FLAG when after hearing one side of the story they’re supposed to believe one side is totally innocent whereas the other side is 100% crazy, stupid, or evil…

A smart person also questions why we are even spending time on 1 story relative to the other million stories we could be talking about on any given day?

Crime Scene: The Vanishing At Cecil Hotel was largely a non-political documentary, but of course, Netflix couldn’t help inject some of its political bias. Elisa Lam’s accidental death wasn’t attributed to her upbringing or her own agency, but to a lack of mental health funding. I’m not necessarily against increasing mental health funding, but for me, the problem with rising depression, mental illness, and suicide isn’t so much a lack of prescription drugs, but a lack of personal agency and social connectivity.

Our sense of less agency is both real and cultural. I’m more in the camp that we are better off acting like we have personal power/responsibility/agency/purpose/choice even if in many situations we don’t, i.e. “focus on what you can control,” and then go out and work to give power back to the individual rather than giving up more and more of our power to a small “well-intentioned” elite in Silicon Valley and Washington D.C.