Angel Vic and the truth about hustle culture

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1:15So, Mariana, last night I watched Netflix's Raygun documentary about, of course, Raygun, the viral Australian breakdancer who got a zero score at the Olympics. Yes, I remember Reagan. I haven't seen the documentary, but I do remember Reagan. She was a real staple of social media for a period of time, kind of understandably, because her breakdancing was really bad. Yeah, well, exactly. I think you should definitely watch it. It's very interesting because it answers that question that I think we all wondered of like, how will this person psychologically deal with the fact that she has become the laughingstock of the entire universe overnight, right?

1:51Because that's what I was thinking. Does it also answer the question of why on earth she was there in the first place? Yes. The other big question, how did she get to the Olympics? Do you remember around the time, people were not just like, this is funny. People were like furious at her. Yeah, because people said that she was basically making a mockery of the sport, right? Which is, which whatever, you know, you can think that. But then there were the people who were like, there's a conspiracy here and she runs the Australian breakdancing competition. Yeah, or like her parents own it or something.

2:16Which isn't true, right? That was a sleuthing disease, which I thought you might be interested in. It sounds honestly like an actual nightmare that you basically wake up and you're suddenly like performing. That's it. That's it. It's that's what I was me and my girlfriend saying the whole time. This is my worst nightmare Like everyone be like the coach me. All right, there's two days to go. Like are you ready? And she's like, I still don't know how to breakdance It's so terrifying honestly Yeah, like first of all her head coach they're like Australian breakdancing head coach did like nothing and the interviews like didn't you like Weren't you where and he was like, oh, I was mainly doing like administrative stuff I wasn't really like trying to help her and any and it's like dude and her and the other problem is her husband And he was like, just do a kangaroo move.

2:55Just do like swimming, like do a sprinkler. Be you. You're amazing. And then on the day when she does. I would definitely be getting divorced. When she does. My husband was like, I need my husband to be like, don't do this. I wish my girlfriend was more like that. It's a terrible idea. I wish my girlfriend was more like that. All the other people are like, oh my God, we just like our faces drop. We're like, what's going on? He's interviewed and he's like, and I thought it was beautiful. And it was kind of sweet, actually, because you're like, this guy loves her, you know. Yeah, but if you loved her, surely you would be like, actually, this is a really bad idea.

3:28They're Australian break dancers, though. So, like, never in their head is the vibe of, like... They don't operate by normal social etiquette. No, they operate on, like, a kind of, like, purely, like... Vibes. ...ego-driven vibe. And I think the big redemption arc would be she goes to the next Olympics. And she... But it won't happen, because at the end of the film, you see... The kind of redemption arc they've created is she's met a group of people in Taiwan who are more into, quote, creative breakdancing. Each of you they are. Shit at breakdancing. People for whom, like the kangaroo. Do you remember that?

4:04Anyway, what happens when someone becomes hugely viral for reasons that some people say they don't deserve and it all goes wrong? What do they do next? And that is what we're going to be talking about on this episode. So there's this influencer called Angel Victoria Murdoch, and she grew a huge online profile, including posting about how she was on the physician's assistant program at Duke University. Only it turns out that her classmates discovered she wasn't. And it is a jumping off point for us to talk more broadly about influencers who create like a whole other character, right? go mega viral and then it all unravels.

4:47And on the topic of unraveling. We're going to slightly change tack and talk about Milo Yiannopoulos, who after praising ICE, has now been arrested by ICE and deported from the US back here to the UK. How that kind of feud within the right led arguably to his downfall and also how he has kind of set everything in motion for the internet that you and I are talking about today in some ways.

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6:25Recently on my social media feed, I've been seeing quite a lot of content about an influencer who I hadn't really come across before. And it's not content from her, but rather other TikTokers, other people posting about her. With this Angel Vic situation, babes, how far were you willing to go? This entire situation about the Angel Victoria situation is so disheartening. I just spent like 30 minutes going through videos, watching that Angel Victoria girl lie and all I can do is laugh. She's a 26-year-old called Angel Victoria Murdoch and she's got more than 300 ,000 followers. She also appeared on Temptation Island, this reality TV show, in 2025.

7:06so her whole thing on social media is about being a young successful woman she has spoken about selling real estate before and she's also spoken about being on this physician's assistance program at Duke University which is a very prestigious university in the US only it turns out that that doesn't seem to have been the case and the way that was found out was because several of her classmates who were seeing her content seemed to be like hang on a second who is this yeah I've not seen her at classes I've not seen her around she doesn't seem to be an graduation photo and there's a whole thread on Reddit where one of the classmates says like, how has this happened?

7:41And it's now had mainstream coverage. It's been covered by the New York Post and Duke University have essentially come out and said, no, this woman didn't study with us. But like she, in the video, she's got squabs on, she's talking about like going to her rotations and she very specifically names the university, right? It's not like she just generally says, oh, I'm training to be a physician's assistant. Hey guys, get ready with me for my psych rotation as a PA I don't know if I'm gonna vlog inside, but I'll at least show y 'all when I get ready and what I'm wearing and Take y 'all along for a little drive.

8:12I know what rotation I'm starting with which is Family medicine So I'm excited about that. Hey guys, so I start my pediatric rotations tomorrow and I wanted to show you What is in my bag? PA edition. I hate like my schedule because I'm in PA school during the day So I can't really work during the day because I'm in school. So I have a night job. We're tired. We're stressed out we actually need a break. We're overworked and overstimulated at the same time. These are really hard courses to get on. People work really hard, which is what a lot of the young black people on TikTok who are posting about this, particularly younger black women, because she's a young black woman, are saying, hang on a sec, I worked really hard to get on this program or I worked really hard to be on a program like this at a different university or to get my degree or whatever.

8:58And you're kind of undermining it by making this whole thing up. And the creators that you're talking about have also said that because of this, they're now being questioned. Are they real? But let's not overstate how crazy this is, right? This is a woman who her entire thing was, I am studying at Duke University Physician Assistance Program and I sell real estate. And neither of those were true at all. Yeah, because there's no evidence that she has this license to sell real estate, right? Which, by the way, is a misdemeanor in North Carolina. So that could land her in jail. But like, why did she make up such a specific lie?

9:31What was her end game here? And also just the story of her classmates. I think it was because they found out that her graduation robe was not the right color, that they were like, yeah, this woman's lying about everything. So, yeah, when you look at this Reddit thread, it seemed to start unraveling when a couple of people who actually are on the program at Duke tried to interact with her on social media and got blocked straight away. And they were like, what's going on here? And it was after that that then everyone was kind of like, hang on, Have we ever seen this woman around? She doesn't seem to be in our graduation photo.

10:04There doesn't seem to be a record of her being at the university, all this sorts of stuff. And there's one TikToker who's gone especially viral posting about this called Kira, the class historian of that year at Duke University. She's on the Physician's Assistance Programme herself. OK, so let's get into it. I hate the fact that this is the way that we're being introduced. But my name is Kira. I am a recent graduate of the Duke PA Programme, Class of 2026. And she basically lays out like kind of how they started to figure out that there was something off here that wasn't right. And she really clearly makes this point, which is when she posts a lot of other content, Kira, about kindness and mental health and not wanting to be icky about calling this out, but also calling it out because this is important that you can't make up an entire backstory and use credentials that are not true.

10:51when you've got real people like her, another young black woman who has studied on this program, who's worked really hard to study on it, and it kind of invalidates real life achievements. People need to know that PA school is very, very difficult. Like, it's like med school sped up times two times speed. Like, we're learning everything there is to know about the human body in two years, and then we're expected to go out and practice medicine. Overall, like, two things that I hate the most about this situation. One is that you're literally preying on people who are trying to get into this career.

11:22And then on top of that, you're profiting off of it. You have brands reaching out to you. You're getting brand deals off of this. Like you're making money off of people thinking that you're something that you're not. And then it's scarier because it's like, now that you graduated, what were you gonna do? And for the record, it's physician assistant, not physician's assistant. I'm not anyone's assistant. We practice medicine independently. We see our own patients and it's very hard to get there. So like, if you see a person in PA school, just know that they're struggling. They're not on vacation every other week.

11:51You do not get to cosplay the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. It's quite interesting reading through the comments as well, because a lot of people feel that, right? They're just like, oh, this is really frustrating, because actually this woman doesn't need to make up this whole backstory. Can't she just be her? Why has she built a profile? But I guess the point is that if she didn't have this kind of very successful career and lifestyle that she's pushing, perhaps she wouldn't have the level of virality and she wouldn't have the level of interest. And so she's kind of made this stuff up in order to have that level of notoriety or fame or whatever you want to call it.

12:22Yeah. And I think the dichotomy between Kira, who's posting about this woman being a fake and the woman herself, Angel, proves kind of what's wrong with social media in a way. Because Kira says, I am actually a student here and I've been posting for a while and I'm not getting anywhere near the followers. I'm not getting brand deals with Sephora. You know, I'm not getting any of this stuff. And Kira's like, getting this degree is hard work. You cannot be a medical student and a realtor and an influencer. It would be impossible. And there's an element of, and there's quite a lot of discussion in the comments, both on TikTok and then on Reddit as well, and particularly younger black people talking about the kind of pressure to present yourself as excellent.

13:03And you might remember that whole kind of hashtag black excellence trend on social media, which in lots of ways it was all about trying to promote black people into spotlight and celebrate their achievements. but actually the I'd say negative side effect of that is almost feeling like you have to be extraordinary versus say white people who can go viral for doing something really mundane I mean we spoke about Ellie Ellis going mega viral overnight just for doing a really simple get ready with me the reason she seemed to have gone viral was because they were so normal like this kind of normal maxing thing um she didn't have to you know show that she was also training to be a nurse or a doctor or some kind of really impressive profession and then also like like making lots of money on the side and all this sorts of stuff.

13:43She could just be herself. Whereas it feels like there's been a certain rhetoric online, which puts a lot of pressure on younger black influencers to create a kind of like, here's how successful I am in my personal life, in my career, in every other way. And perhaps what's happened with Angel here could be a byproduct of that. Yeah. And I think that's why a lot of people like here are speaking out about how creating this unrealistic standard of success is damaging, right? You know, the image of hustle culture on social media that you always have to hustle. Yeah. And I guess when it comes to Angel, she joins quite a long line of influencers with all sorts of different backgrounds who have created a persona online, which is totally at odds with their actual life.

14:32And like the first person who came to mind when I was thinking about this was Belle Gibson, who you might remember is the influencer from Australia, who built an entire social media presence, posting about her own cancer diagnosis and advocating for non-conventional treatment, alternative therapies, complementary therapies. And it turned out that Belle Gibson didn't have cancer in the way that she'd said. And like she made this whole lifestyle, right, of like, here's how you can get better. And the danger with that was, and the criticism and the real world impact was people following her did have cancer.

15:05Yeah. And so they were believing that what was happening on her journey, which she was benefiting from, right, those people could then be put at serious risk. Would you put Anna Delvey in that category? Yeah. So Anna Delvey was this young woman who I'm sure quite a lot of top commenters have heard of her. She purported to be a German heiress and she would, you know, like lived this incredibly extravagant lifestyle. and then it turned out that sort of everything she'd said about her backstory or quite a lot of it was not as it seemed and she got in really serious trouble for it from a fraud perspective but she sort of then has now continued on and sort of like made it her thing that that was just who she decided to be.

15:39And she now has brand deals with like where she's working with like Playboy France and like Goop and stuff like that so I think that's a really interesting case study right because when you talk about people who create this persona you've got a few different cases you've got Anna Delvey who has turned her negative I faked everything virality story into actual profitable virality. You've got Belle Gibson, who she was ordered to pay a fine rate because she also, she said that the proceeds of her book were going to charity, which they weren't. So she was ordered to pay like a few hundred thousand dollars in fine, which she hasn't yet paid.

16:08Or you have Raygun, who now maybe is entering into an era where she turns that virality into profit. And I'm even seeing - Poor Raygun's catching strays here because Raygun is not quite the same as these, but it is this No, no, no, no, no. Sorry. She at least tried to break dance. No, but I'm seeing if you go on the hashtag for Angel on TikTok, some of the things people are saying now are like, this isn't illegal, therefore she ate. And people are saying things like, she should just flip this into a redemption arc because she's deleted all of her posts. She's like, don't do that. Keep the posts up, take all the free attention, flip into a redemption arc, maybe even become a physician's assistant later on and then everyone will love you.

16:44So the idea is that at least some people on social media think this is like a valid thing to do to fake it until you make it.

16:52Angel Victoria Murdock:Angel Victoria Murdoch. First of all, nasty name. Love that for you, sis. You're going to do great things. Second of all, yes, she was like cosplaying as a medical school student for brand deals and what's the problem? Like what's the real harm? You know what I mean? Like, okay, Was she operating on people? Was she giving medical advice to people? She just, you know, she played dress up a few times in light on the internet for brand deals. Okay, whoop-dee-doo. I mean, it's hard, right? Because it's like being an influencer as a career is different from other jobs. It's like you basically can build a character.

17:31And in fact, a lot of influencers do feel like they are almost in character when they're posting. And it must have taken a huge amount of effort from Angel and lots of the influences we're talking about to like maintain this facade, right? To like keep up like this kind of content, to live this kind of life. I mean, there's probably some quite interesting sort of psychological analysis more broadly about people that feel like they want to pretend to be someone else and not be themselves. Like that's always existed throughout history, but social media has provided this portal through which you can do that and not just do it, but actually be rewarded for pretending to be someone else.

18:05For essentially acting, right? It's like acting as a character that wasn't really who she was, according to the evidence that's available to us. I mean, these stories about imposters have always captured cultural attention, whether that's like the Tinder swindler or, you know, even London Falling, which is the book that everyone seems to be reading this summer, is about a teenage boy who pretended to be a Russian oligarch. But what's strange about social media is it seems to reward those imposter narratives. And then there's a question of like this scale. Instead of the real, instead of real people but you are actually doing the things the imposters are alleging to do.

18:40Exactly. It's like it's more real and will get you more followers to do a Get Ready With Me video in like a scrubs on your way to your physician assistant course than it is to actually do the hard work of getting that degree. That's the weird world we live in right now. But like it also runs the gamut from people to like Andrew Tate, like how much of his wealth did he lie about in order to sell his courses? I'm not saying this because I think this. I just think it's an interesting thing to think about. Is she so much worse than a lot of influencers who pretend a lot of things all the time but just don't go quite so far.

19:08Yeah, I mean, like, who said TikTok wasn't meant to be a performance? Like, whoever, where is it written that it has to be, like, your real life that you're showing people? Maybe her interpretation was, like, I'm playing the character of a medical student, you know? And I guess the problem is, if you create a world where you succeed by faking it, obviously you're going to get these, like, fake maxes, right? The issue here is, like, she wasn't even, it seems, training to be a physician's assistant or at least not a duke and so it's it's kind of like what what was her where did she see this as going because you can't then strike up brand deals or pretend to treat patients who you're not able or qualified to treat so it's it's it's a particularly concerning path you go down when the entire thing is so fabricated like surely once you've graduated as as she did like she posted these graduation photos and quite a few of her classmates pointed out or quite a few of the people actually in the class pointed out well hang on these are the wrong gowns and like this why is she pretending to graduate and stuff like what was she going to do next like this is like fake maxing without a clear end goal she did fake max her way into it reportedly some brand deals i've not seen any we've not seen she was also on that temptation she was on a reality tv show yeah so she managed to leverage her 300 000 plus followers into something i mean 300 000 plus followers can be turned into into money maybe she was planning to sell courses maybe she's planning to become a wellness influencer who knows maybe she just wanted to seek the validation from people who would see her as smart and successful one of the things that really strikes me about influences when they present a life on social media that is false or at least has elements which are false do the people in their life like their real life know it to be false or are they also pretending to them because there's an element of that that's interesting like with bell gibson she was pretending to everyone that this was going on it wasn't like everyone in her life was like you don't have cancer and then she was posting about having cancer like she was telling everyone she had cancer it reminds me of um i investigated this case of a young woman who believed that she was madeline mccann um i did a podcast series about it it's actually in this feed for anyone that wants to listen and i genuinely believe that she thought she was and she posted about it on social media and then regretted posting about it in the way that she did and regretted causing harm, but then went through this whole stalking case and all sorts of things relating to the family and got herself in a right mess.

21:37And it's like, there's something quite lonely and sad about it. It's like people feeling like people will only be their friends or connect with them online if they pretend to be something that they're not because they're not feeling very happy with who they are. People often ask me about Andrew Tate, you know, is he a performance or is he actually like that? And in both of those cases and with Angel as well, I think there is the sense in which audience capture plays a part. And audience capture is the phenomenon whereby you as a creator become radicalized by your audience. So the classic example of that is Nico Avocado.

22:08He was a vegan influencer. He wasn't getting any followers. One day he ate a burger with the title like vegan eats a burger or something. And people loved it. They then wanted to do more stuff like that. He eventually became obese and almost died from like eating meat. Because his audience were like, the more extreme you are and the more you fall down, go down this rabbit hole, the more we give you validation. So you become a performance in response to your audience. Like a sort of puppet of the algorithm. Exactly. And do you really believe you are that person? Maybe that question is outdated in a world of social media.

22:40It's almost besides the point. It's besides the point because if you do these things every day, if you say them every day, what are you other than what is concentrated from your actions and your words, right? You perform this person and then you essentially are this person. Yeah. And with this woman, once she'd started posting this stuff, when we're talking about Angel here, like when do you stop how do you stop yeah because by that point you've done it right like you've posted that first video in scrubs you've started referencing in in videos that you go to university once you've started doing it and then also there aren't really repercussions in fact there's just reward yeah where does it end i feel like maybe instead of belief which kind of implies some kind of rational understanding that you are this person what these people have is more akin to faith against the shadow of self-doubt, against the shadow of external doubt, and be like, you know, I really am this person.

23:26I really am this person. I look at myself in the mirror and I tell myself that I am this person. And then it just gets carried away with them. So we reached out to Angel to ask her questions about the content she'd been posting. And we put these allegations to her and she hasn't responded to us.

23:46speaking of people for whom their social media personality is more real than their real personality milo yiannopoulos was arrested august 27th by ice by the department of homeland security and deported back here to the uk he got here on the 29th of august for according to the government of plumbing security overstaying his legal stay in the US. And this is someone who is one of the famous far-right alt-right commentators, someone who's touched both of our careers in many ways. Every story that we cover can be traced back to him in some way. He's one of those people that just comes up time and time again in sort of every sphere, right?

24:23For me, he's come up when I've been investigating the conspiracy theory movement in the UK, particularly following the pandemic and people that believe almost anything and everything is a hoax. And he's associated himself with some of the figures who frequent those circles. He may start moving away from the alt-right now. I mean, it seems that way. I think the alt-right might be moving away from him. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's true. Both are true. This is someone, by the way, who repeatedly praised ICE, said that there should be checkpoints at supermarkets, intersections and gas stations, and immediate deportation for people who are here illegally.