Previous: The Strangest Dream
Welcome to an after-hours taping of News on News. We’ve popped into the studio tn w/ a small bundle of some v. strange articles. None are big or bad enough to get their own episode— which is great! They are fun-sized little zidbits (Ziz tidbits).
Up first, we have People Mag— which has just written a grand “Zizian” overview. All our best friends’ moms used to read People when we were in middle school, & we thought that was rlly cool. For all we know, they’re still reading People— as may be 5 of our aunts, plus anyone in our dentists’, doctors’, & hairdressers’ waiting rooms. What, we wondered, might they hear abt this “culty crew”?
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We really just wanted to linger over one quote:
After cleaning out his former tenants’ trailers and trucks [Lind] discover[ed] dozens of jars of urine, an ultrasound machine, 3D printers, multiple computers and 50 containers of lye
Did he? People is not naming their source 😞 Let’s start from the bottom up.
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W/ 50 containers of lye, we fear we are back in Lye Wonderland.
We have heard of lye containers big enough to dissolve a person, & we have heard of modest lye jugs. Now they have multiplied to 50, & we want to know: 50 of which size? Were Emma & Somni wanting to dissolve 50 bodies at once? Were they buying 50 of these:
or these:
or maybe these:
…or is the press’s inability to name a source for this lye, & to determine a quantity of this lye, suggesting this may be… a lie?
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Multiple computers & 3D printers are unremarkable possessions. We don’t personally own either, but both are totally legal & fine.
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An ultrasound machine made us burst out laughing at the thought of Somni & Emma giving each other recreational ultrasounds 🤣🤣🤣 Who is owning this in their cramped box truck:
Who? If they own it, surely they are stripping it for parts. Even if not, what is the harm? What role does an ultrasound machine play in a murder plot? We can say what role it plays in People’s list: it makes us doubt those 50 lye containers even more 🥲 Who is giving them this info?
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We finally reach those dozens of jars of urine! At this point, Somni & Emma own so many things, they must have been sleeping on the roofs.
We doubt these jars too. If they’re real, they might be contextualized by the fact that these girls had no running water. But if they’re real: “dozens” makes it sound like more than 24 total. Let’s imagine it as 18 jars of urine each.
Are they buying lots of jarred marinara over time, or did they each start out w/ 18 empty jars?
Where are you storing 18 urine jars in amidst your 50 lye containers & your ultrasound machine? We are, as Jamie predicted, left w/ more questions than answers.
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Up next, we have Abigail Anthony for the National Review:
She would, unfortunately, be cute if she hadn’t just written this:
Abigail, what is your trauma? What is so wrong w/ honoring the pronouns of cult members? You have not even said “cult leaders”— whom we’d still want to see given basic respect, but about whom we can imagine many ppl wondering, “why do they deserve it?”
From there, your introductory kvetch gets even weirder. Why don’t vegans deserve to have their pronouns respected (DTHTPR)? Why don’t anarchists DTHTPR? We suspect it’s bc you think no one DTHTPR. If so, why not say that outright?
Why make an obstacle course for others to jump thru? Why promise that— if they are meat-eating, authority-loving non-cult-members— you WILL respect their pronouns? To which other niche demographics do you intend to be so sweet & kind?
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Yet we immediately feel the need to apologize, as you open w/ 2 fantastic observations:
It was challenging to cover a “trans rat community” known as the “Zizians,” in part because understanding the complex story requires juggling hundreds of small details.
many of [other reporters’] articles [on the topic] are misleading.
Don’t we know it! We are all set, Abigail, to buy you a rosé, lean across the table, & fall into some much-needed girltalk: oh those hundreds of details! Oh those mischievous reporters! You are inches away from being declared Our Comrade. Tell us, Abigail— which misleading articles have most made your blood pressure rise?
🙃 You, Abigail, are giving us déjà vu. You, like Mr. Osborne, are reminding us of Mary Hume:
At what point will you be satisfied w/ the media’s endless, endlessly-creative invalidations? Your pickiness makes us feel weird, bc we— thru all our bitching on this exact point— have taken consolation in the thought: at least the media is making someone happy!
We may not be their target audience, but surely they have one! Surely they have someone in the stands to cheer them on!
Now we worry they may not. They may be tying themselves in knots, trying desperately to win approval from America’s transphobes— trying desperately to kick the football of “sufficient transphobia”, only for you, Abigail, to yank it to your chest at the last second.
Porque? If the media is bad, & you are mad, & we are sad… what is fueling, what is encouraging this never-ending parade of sinister, shabby, & silly coverage? What is it all for?
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Lest we be accused of pathological pickiness, Abigail, let’s turn our eyes away from all that makes us frown. Let’s tear ourself away from such bickerings, & share one thing from your article that sparked true joy:
🥲 We are so attached to this. We too struggle to refer to “the Zizians” in alternate terms that don’t become repetitive, but your fancy italics have taken this artform to a whole new level.
They stand out like a flourish of balsamic reduction around your otherwise bland & tough roast. They give it balance & contrast; they practically give it dynamism & well-roundedness. This, Abigail, is plating at its best.
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Zidbit #3 is just the Know Your Meme page for “Zizian Murder Cult”.
We had not known this calamity was an honest-to-goodness meme! As a meme enthusiast, normally we would be enthused; but we dk how we feel abt this first meme:
—which Leif K-Brooks has offered us w/ this note:
This meme is attempting to explain the relationship between Zizians and rationalists.
Leif, we love an attempt. We like the aesthetic of attempts far more than that of settled mastery, & we accept your meme on these grounds.
Ofc, your meme makes no sense. It’s sinister w/out trying to be— w/out knowing enough to try. The only thing that makes us chuckle abt it is that final pic of the incredulous newsman:
whom we will be appropriating for our zizians.co meme crew ☺️
W/ just one meme, you have fallen into 2 of our bingo boxes: “😇 Benign Rationalists”, & “Unihemispheric sleep”. If we were feeling severe & reachy, we could also find you peeking out from inside “Ziz’s misrepresented blog”. The worst part is that your path to nowhere is so well-trodden, we have nothing else to add. It has all been done before. We wonder why you’ve been selected to represent the entire Zizian meme community; but then we read the Zizians’ meme overview (ZMO), & we kind of understand.
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We want to look at just 2 things from this ZMO.
First, it catches our eye when it says:
Ziz has… been accused of targeting and recruiting transgender and nonbinary people into the Zizian cult
& when, a little later, it deepens this motif:
a blog post delves into… the cult-like tactics supposedly used by Ziz to recruit nonbinary and transgender people. [It] discusses how Ziz would target vulnerable young transgender women to isolate and recruit into her cult.
Know Your Meme’s first use of this motif is somewhat harsh: it makes us think, “on what grounds is she accused of this?” The second use is more successful: it tightens that description of Ziz’s recruits to “vulnerable young transgender women”.
Who could read that & resist jumping to these poor ladies' defense? 😢 It frames Ziz like she’s Bluebeard; but— in fact— Ziz is also a vulnerable young transgender woman. She, like most ppl, shares commonalities w/ her friends. The framing of these commonalities as suspect is a move that we have certainly seen before— it comes from The Unnamed Site (TUS).
This “vulnerable” line mimes chivalry towards trans women- but, looking over the whole of this page, we dk if we’re buying it. If these editors truly wanted to Defend Trans Women, they prob. wouldn’t deadname several of them in their ZMO, then excuse themselves by saying that others have been known to deadname these girls online. We know this meme, we are bored by this meme, we encourage them to find an exciting new meme.
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The 2nd thing we’d like to look at from Know Your Meme (KYM) is actually v. exciting: KYM has offered us a timeline of viral “Zizian” posts.
This is wonderful. This is remarkable. We’ve ofc alerted the News on News archival division; they are down there rn w/ their little white gloves, slipping under laser beams & pocketing each post for removal to our studio museum ☺️ We have them on camera: let’s see which treasures they have found.
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The boys in archival have found only 2 treasures, amidst 3 bankers’ boxes filled w/ dusty scrap. Such is a curator’s life. Treasure #1, the boys have warned us, is cursed. One of them has already been chased by a mummy over it; his current location & health status are unknown.
Treasure #1 was introduced to us as “a blog post by Apollo Mojave”, & was cited making a number of strange, strangely-familiar claims. We were all set to tear into Mr. Mojave for pasting his post wholesale from The Unnamed Site (TUS), before we got a glimpse of this treasure on our cameras & realized it is TUS 💀 We’re reviewing our footage now, & have hit pause on a shot from the v. top of TUS— where it includes one of our fav things: medieval art (MA).
TUS’s MA is a little confusing. It appears to show a bull, a griffon, & a big, happy fish. We wondered: are these signs of the apocalypse we’re unfamiliar w/? Is that the insinuation? TUS’s MA is also in B&W— a pet peeve of ours.
Those manuscript artists risked their lives mixing mercury & lead & goodness knows what else to achieve their pigments 😤 We’ve found a color version of it here:
We are enchanted, but what could TUS be up to? We have phoned a friend. We have phoned our eschatological art historian friend Dave, gotten his voicemail, & left an angry message telling him to call us back immediately w/ his take on TUS’s unexpected articulation of meaning thru a bull, a griffon, & a big, happy fish. We will be back after the break— god willing, w/ notes from Dave.
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