SXSW 2024: Whatever It Takes is a bugnuts dive into an eBay stalking scandal

Photo by Thorsten Thielow

It’s hard to believe that at a time when news stories big and small are constantly being shoved into our eyeballs via a never-ending parade of platforms, that a tale this terrifying might fall through the cracks. And yet, that’s exactly what happened to the news at the heart of Whatever It Takes, from The Fourth Estate and Gossip filmmaker Jenny Carchman. Carchman’s film looks at eBay, a company whose founding motto was “most people are inherently good” and a wild story involving unhinged employees, pig fetuses, cockroaches and a pair of small-town Massachusetts journalists. Yes, pig fetuses. You read that right.

In the fall of 2019, things were pretty good for Ina and David Steiner. They’d made a name for themselves through their website ecommerce bytes, a blog that—among other topics—specialized in news related to eBay. That livelihood, and indeed their very lives, were soon to be upended via a barrage of offensive Twitter DMs which morphed into a whirlwind that rocked the couple to their core. The couple believed they were just doing their jobs, but a litany of unforeseen factors made them public enemy #1 for a large corporation that had once viewed them as allies.

Whatever it Takes is kept afloat by its confounding, compelling central story, and its subjects’ resourcefulness. Thanks to the Steiners beefing up security just as the stalking began, Carchman has access to a bevy of Ring and security camera footage that captures exactly how fast things escalated. The Steiners get a series of bizarre deliveries at all hours of the day, which then moves to doxing and then out-of-state cars tailing the couple. 

You may be asking yourself some reasonable questions at this point, like “who would do this?” and, more importantly, “why?” The answer to the first, amazingly, is eBay. The answer to the second is far trickier. Carchman unmasks the culprits by the film’s halfway point, but they’re just one of the elements in play. That unveiling opens up an even larger can of worms, one that exposes both how corrupt and how amazingly stupid corporate America can be. 

At a brisk 92 minutes, Carchman packs enough in to the point of overload. The story at the center of the documentary is an unwieldy one, given just how many pieces are in play. Besides the Steiners themselves, Carchman features talking head interviews with everyone from the police, the FBI, as well as a slew of former eBay employees baffled at what occurred.

Part of the documentary moves away from the Steiners completely, focusing instead on the rise and growth of eBay itself, from a small flea market during the early internet boom to a global powerhouse in reseller and auction markets. Whatever It Takes isn’t just the story of two unfortunately targeted individuals who found, but of how a corporation could be this twisted to begin with.

The longer Whatever It Takes goes on, the more convoluted the story becomes, swallowing itself in the process. However, it’s a testament to Carchman and editor Seth Bomse that it’s all so easily digestible. Just try not to be too angry by the time the epilogue appears on screen. Justice most certainly hasn’t been done here, even if the documentary chronicling it all is a triumph.