Munchausen by Internet

You can find online support groups for people suffering from various illnesses. This has been of great benefit to the sufferers, but they now have to watch out for cuckoos in the nest, people who are perfectly well but fake their symptoms so as to garner support for themselves.  If they are good online performers they can attract quite a following and that brings with it certain benefits. The first is to their egos, the second may be to their pockets because people who follow them can be quite generous with sympathy gifts.  The trick is to adopt an illness that has very few visible signs (although you may be in a wheelchair or a hospital bed with various tubes apparently attached).  It is a good trick to have an illness which is unusual but just becoming trendy.

People who do this have been dubbed sickfluencers.  Now that the online world has been alerted to their existence, other people follow them very critically, analysing the details of their presentation for signs of fakery.  If a sickfluencer is caught out, they may have sufficient hide to come up with some excuse for their sudden recovery.