Previous: In a Mood for Self-Revelation
Today in News on News, we have screwed up our courage, & walked once more thru the SFGate ⛩️ Will we ever return? If we return, will we be aged 600 years? 😮💨 Which ogres— & which bingo points— lie in store?
This Gate was erected by managing editor Katie Dowd, & editor-at-large Andrew Chamings. We promise never to reveal his location 🤫
Katie has written many fabulous- & sordid-looking articles which normally, we’d love to sink our teeth into. Maybe one day, if our plate is ever free from zarticles (Ziz articles) again! Andrew’s articles show us a titillating range of fatalities— bodies found here, bodies found there, bodies found seemingly everywhere. This man knows what he likes, & we applaud him for it.
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We have already commented on their expert opening photoshop gambit, which sandwiches Mz. Ziz in between Jim Jones & Charlie Manson.
We will say only: we love their color scheme. It is psychedelic yet current, while being oddly queer.
Katie & Andrew surprise us: they are not here to rehash the sad old saga that we know so well. We find them in a musing mood, a mood for metaphysics as they ask themselves: “what exactly is a cult, and do the Zizians qualify as one?”
🤷🏻♀️ Well, answer #1, according to them, is: who knows! There’s no legal definition.
But they do their best to sketch a broad culty outline (BCO), which we— as a cult true crime enthusiast— think is rlly good! According to this BCO, most cults have:
1. Strict rules & values
2. One face they present to new members, & a diff. face for the initiated. They do not, for ex., usually court new members w/ talk of their wackiest beliefs or practices.
3. A persuasive & charismatic leader
4. A v. strong sense of hierarchy
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😮💨 Thank goodness they’ve made that clear! They can now wrap up their article w/ some truly New News: that Ziz & co. (ZAC) did not fit this description in the least.
For one thing, ZAC were anarchists. They were not “led” by anyone, & seem to have tried v. hard to avoid hierarchy. Likewise, we have never heard of “rules” from any of them— strict or otherwise.
It seems highly unlikely they would present a false face to new friends. These new friends are repeatedly noted to have climbed aboard via Ziz’s blog, which is quite transparent abt her beliefs & opinions. It does not lure you in by promising salvation at noon tomorrow, only to surprise you w/ its talk of epistemic blindspots & anti-ethics.
These friends had values, to be sure— but were they “strict” values? We may call them rigorous or deeply-felt, but these do not a cult make! Who’s to call another person’s values “strict”— esp. if they are not inflicting their values on others, or harming themselves thru their praxis?
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👋 Thank you, K & A, for resolving this myster— op, it seems they have one more thing to say. Ahhh, these are more cult-y tactics:
5. Encouraging members to invest lots of time &/or $, which makes it psychologically harder for them to leave.
6. Wearing down followers: thru drug use, sleep deprivation, cutting contact with loved ones, & forced labor
7. Sexually or financially exploiting members
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These are all great points!
Ziz & friends did not monetize their innovative mental tech; & Ziz never paywalled her blog. Her blog does take time to read, that’s true— but her friends were not required to read its posts, as if completing Scientology courses, in order to remain her friends.
Needless to say, there was no sexual exploitation going on among these friends— Mz. Ziz, for her part, is quite terrified of being perceived as ~a predator~, & has thus chosen to stay out of the arena of love altogether.
She has likewise chosen to stay out of the arena of substance use. There’s no indication she enforced this stance among her friends (HF)— just as there’s no indication that any of HF peer-pressured each other into drugs. No one in this group was forced to labor, & no one was forced to cut ties w/ their families— tho a number chose to do so for a variety of personal reasons.
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One of the best & most 😮💨 laborious parts of this case is that these young ppl spoke their minds v. freely online. This is how we’ve come to the above opinions, so we’re excited when K & A tell us they’ve also been on the trail of these “digital footprints” (DF)!
What a relief!
No doubt we’ll be wrapping up this curious thought-experiment of an article v. soon ☺️
But K & A have halted their chase, sat down on a rock, & let out deep sighs 😮 They tell us they have been hither & thither, up hill & over dale in pursuit of one of these DF. They call their quarry’s course “rambling”, & we, curious which creature they might have found, put the q. to Chat: if you were tracking an animal in the U.S., which animals’ trails could best be described as “rambling”?
Chat was delighted we asked. It told us we were prob. dealing w/ a foraging animal— rather than one who hunts & thus travels more directly from point to point. Perhaps a nocturnal omnivore:
• If this rambling trail often zigzags, doubles back, or leads in erratic patterns, we may be chasing a raccoon.
• If the trail shows this creature stopping frequently, & moving slowly w/ an irregular gait, we may be after a possum.
• If the trail turns frequently, but is not overly erratic, it could have been made by a skunk.
If none of the above, it might be one of these slow-moving foragers, which likewise enjoy a meander:
• The solitary porcupine makes erratic trails thru brush & forest.
• Black bears, esp. juveniles, wend unpredictably in search of food.
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Chat asked if we’d like to narrow it down based on scat. We passed this q. along to K & A, who cried no! They are quite certain they’re on the trail of the Zizster! To crib a meme from tumblr user @donttrythisathome:
K & A then opened their bag, & flashed us a glimpse of what they’ve found so far on their wanderings— “some of the reasons why [Ziz] broke apart from mainstream society.”
This is excellent news! We love these reasons, which you can read abt here, here, & which you can see broadly hinted at here, & ofc in these 4 notorious posts beginning w/ this one. We enjoy those who break apart from mainstream society! We think they are brave & pioneering ☺️
Op, but never mind: K & A have snapped their bag shut as soon as they’ve noticed us peering in, & are looking down on us censoriously 🫢 We thought those "reasons" were interesting, but didn’t mean to offend!
They've moved along to a totally diff. topic, which we prefer over them scolding us. We get possibly the most lifeless description of Rationalism to date— “[they] 😇 seek to create a higher moral compass through improved decision-making processes”— & from there, they cross into that forbidden land, that land of infinite sorrow: that land of trying to quickly sum up what “the Zizians” believe in (WTZBI).
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Many have tried to pull the WTZBI sword from its stone. None have succeeded. Yet we read each fresh attempt from the edge of our seat.
We want them to get it! We want to know the answer!
We read every one of these articles like we’re watching a pole-vaulter take a running jump towards the hurdle. Alas, with each passing day, these journalists’ responses are looking more like Nailed It cakes:
Some of what A & K reveal is totally innocuous:
1. “For the Zizians, modern society felt irrevocably broken”: as it did for the Frankfurt School!
2. “Ziz… likened animals to human babies”: that’s sweet!
3. “Like many trans people, the Zizians feared persecution and violence, and the insular nature of the group may have given them a sense of safety.” A & K have said all that needs to be said! What is wrong w/ a notoriously harried & marginalized demographic fearing violence?
4. “Members attempted living on boats and off the grid, seeking to buy property in rural Vermont.” Rents are unbearable! & what do you have against Vermont?
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Some of A & K’s findings are debatable in their cause-&-effect, but 🥱 we dk if our readers would be riveted to watch us die on these hills:
1.“the rise of artificial intelligence only deepened their fears about the future.” Are there no other reasons, in our 21st century, to fear the future?
2. “As part of their quest toward altruism, some became virulently against eating meat and embraced a radical vegan lifestyle.” Ziz was vegan long before she got into Effective Altruism; Jamie is also vegan for quite personal reasons. Even if this were broadly true— so what?? Pardon the expression, but where’s the beef?
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One of these findings is Rationalism misattributed to our cabal:
They feared the “singularity,” the biblical moment when AI rises up and becomes one, decimating the human race. Some wrestled with their role in the Bay Area tech scene in the face of a modern-day Book of Revelation: Destroy AI or help build it to save themselves? One of their driving forces appeared to be that concern of societal collapse brought on by AI.
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One of these findings is— a Loaded Leap— a jump from sthng banal to an exciting & unfounded interpretation:
The presence of white box trucks, often kitted out with solar panels and high-tech equipment, at nearly every place they frequented spoke to a need to flee at a moment’s notice.
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…& at last, one of these findings is:
Part of the Zizians’ appeal may have been their tenet that people can be split into halves.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 Well, they technically CAN, but…
🥲 The sword of “Zizianism” remains firmly in its stone. Who among us will be so brave as to give it another yank?
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Next, we are the ones to scold the censorious K & A, as they give us a lot of unrelated cult examples, then double down on 2 unsubstantiated ideas.
Idea #1 we have talked abt already: many of Ziz’s friends were no-contact w/ their families— now that you mention it, so are we. Generalizing from personal experience, we’d say this is a choice typically born from many fruitless attempts to reach a hostile other. It is sad, but sometimes necessary in order to live a good, hostility-free life— it is, in that respect, life-affirming, rather than destructive.
We would, incidentally, like more cut-off families to hear this from the press, so that they may be moved to reexamine their past hostilities, ask what it was all for, & grow towards a brighter, softer tomorrow.
It would make us v. happy to see the press challenge these families’ focus on what faults in their children (TC) would, “out of the blue”, turn TC so hard-hearted. This would require the press to give honest, unflinching coverage to TC’s reported experiences, & to challenge the poisonous maxim that “parents are always right”.
This is no small thing— but it would be v. brave, & oh-so-worth-it. It would be one more way the press could support those who are down, while scrutinizing those who are up— & one more way the press could gift its readers more generous stories abt their own lives, or abt lives whose paths they may not understand.
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We sat K & A down, & delivered this homily bc we were disappointed by their insinuation that Ziz’s friends would choose to go no-contact thanks to ~mesmeric & cult-y~ reasons (MACR), rather than due to much more normal & human reasons.
We pointed out to K & A that their only evidence for this MACR came from speaking to Daniel Blank’s estranged family (DBEF), which sounds confused abt the reasons behind their estrangement— & which, incidentally, is not quoted saying, “the reasons were cultiness!”
Our heart cannot help but go out to DBEF, & we hope that they can, every day, reach closer & closer to clarity— whatever that clarity might reveal. Daniel is ofc in jail rn, which makes the situation that much sadder, & which we mourn alongside them.
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Idea #2 we’ve slapped down already over here. It is one of our least-fav ideas to see: the idea that Gwen is deferential & easily-persuaded. The first time we met w/ this rumor, we said:
This is not the Gwen we recognize from her blog, where— incidentally— we find her railing against these “deferential” insinuations.
Gwen strongly dislikes when ppl imply she & friends were in any way “deferring” to Ziz, bc this has been used to imply that they would never have criticized CFAR & MIRI were it not for Ziz’s wicked influence. To her mind, it strips them of their autonomy.
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We will add only: this is a character smear (TIACS) started by the Rationalists. TIACS which helped them minimize the girls’ brave attempts to blow the whistle.
Also, this is neither here nor there, but K & A have flubbed their illustration of how dear Gwen was going down a dangerous path.
They have said:
[Gwen] left behind a full academic scholarship at Rice University to join Ziz on a doomed rusty tugboat in San Francisco Bay…
In fact, Gwen left Rice in order to join up w/ the Rationalists— after she’d read Eliezer’s apocalyptic prophesying. She wouldn’t have known Ziz LaSota if Ziz LaSota had bitten her on the nose. It was, ofc, Ziz who joined Gwen on what we’re sure was a cozy— if also doomed & rusty— tugboat.
Alas, as we said to K & A: by painting Gwen as “deferential”, they have painted themselves into a corner- from which they cannot easily show how daring, creative, & enterprising Gwen really is.
Perhaps on some level, this is why they have relegated her to first mate. The choice, in any event, does not show v. diligent tracking of the Zizster’s far-reaching blog, which K & A were complaining abt so recently. Its trail seems to have confounded them, & to have left them lost in the bush.
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We pause here to note that “raccoon-like” is by far the best description we’ve found for Ziz’s blog. Like a raccoon, Ziz is v. curious. She likes to get her hands on a lot of things, is a clever problem-solver— & is a creature of darkness. By this we don’t mean the usual unwarranted slurs against “darkness” in the West: we do not mean Ziz is morbid, moody, or has underhanded motives. Darkness is a wonderful thing: generative, warm, healing, & liberatory. It is powerful yet protective. It sharpens touch, taste, & sound, so that we may feel all the more.
Ziz is raccoon-like in one more way: she loves to double back & loop around on her ideas. To be on the trail of her blog, a hunter must get used to loop-de-loops: to resign themselves to looping; even to enjoy the process, as one enjoys opening a nested Babushka doll.
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Here’s one Babushka doll of a line which K & A encountered on their walkabout:
I liked [Gwen]… I told [her] that if [she] could be turned to the dark side, [she] would make a powerful ally.
The outer Babushka doll of this line— at least, to us in the West— may raise red flags. It clearly did for K & A, who pocketed it as proof that Ziz is “dark-sided”, & who seem to have then called it a day.
Their interpretation of Ziz’s line— that “Ziz found [Gwen] vulnerable to manipulation”— does not show them opening this Babushka doll: does not show them unpacking what “the dark side” actually means (WTDSAM). To unpack WTDSAM requires loopery— loopery around to that aptly-named little number, “My Journey to the Dark Side”.
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A “turn to the dark side” is, in plain English:
A process of radical self-authorship—rewriting the internal constraints imposed by our conditioning in order to act in alignment with our deeply held, self-determined values.
It is a phrase w/ Zizesque dramatic flair, but there is nothing dark-sided abt it.
We may translate Ziz’s encouragement of Gwen into more banal psycho-speak:
I like you. The more you let your true self take the reins, & the more you shed what you have introjected from others, the more I can see us working together.
We, as rather a creature of nighttime ourselves, love Ziz’s “dark side”, & wish more ppl would practice it. In fact, we wish K & A would have practiced it: so that they could have removed the conditioning that told them Ziz was scheming & manipulative. Such a “turn” could have brought them many pleasures— if only they’d uncovered the charming range of Babushkas which their smoking gun really contained.
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