As someone who loves to do a little vexing, I have probably already spent far more than is a healthy amount of time studying and writing about Ziz over the years, and have had an unfortunately close sidelong relationship with some of their group for an extended period. But (ahem) “now that the author is dead it’s all dead un-adapting information for me to make “antibodies” from.” So that’s what I’ve beendoinglately. I’ve in a sense already started writing the post you want, more for my own personal closure than anything else, but you’re correct that it’s a large large project.
I probably turned Ziz into something of a kismesis when I finally did my heel face turn away from the EA brainworms that were eating me, so I know that actually yes they are as bad as they seem. The current death toll for folks deep in the memeplex is five, with another currently under arrest for murder charges. That is an insanely high KDR for a group their size.
Something I think does need to be said, is that having taken all of Ziz’s blog content and stacked it chronologically end to end, it reads completely differently than it does in its original context. Divorced from the wiki-style links connecting everything, it goes from being a strange and unhinged manifesto to something of an apocalypse log, a found footage horror story about a brilliant person slowly breaking and going insane from the hostility of her local environment. At each step and time jump you can see the wheels come off the rails a bit more, finally culminating in the 80 page long expose of the entire rationalist community that is “intersex brains and conceptual warfare.”
I note that because when I look at the story of Ziz’s destruction spiral, not just the damage she did and who all was caught up in it but the beats of the story and how her own state was affected at various points in the spiral, I have to say, it’s not all on her. She is not the sole creator of the brainworms that consumed her, she came by them naturally and organically while participating in this community. Ziz is simply the loudest and most visible casualty of the same sort of mental knot that has consumed lots of other EAs at this point as well.
Zizians is a moderately decent if biased starting overview of her content but it fails to really engage with the actual teeth of the material very much and if you’re going to take its word for things then you should also read the rebuttal. And yes you are wading into literal years worth of drama and back and forth attempts at character assassination by various individuals involved in this mess, so lol, beware. Feel free to DM me if you want to talk about this.
If you want, I could DM you about sending you my existing notes on the matter. (I’ve already sent them to at least one other person, but I don’t think that should matter in this case?).
As someone who loves to do a little vexing, I have probably already spent far more than is a healthy amount of time studying and writing about Ziz over the years, and have had an unfortunately close sidelong relationship with some of their group for an extended period. But (ahem) “now that the author is dead it’s all dead un-adapting information for me to make “antibodies” from.” So that’s what I’ve been doing lately. I’ve in a sense already started writing the post you want, more for my own personal closure than anything else, but you’re correct that it’s a large large project.
I probably turned Ziz into something of a kismesis when I finally did my heel face turn away from the EA brainworms that were eating me, so I know that actually yes they are as bad as they seem. The current death toll for folks deep in the memeplex is five, with another currently under arrest for murder charges. That is an insanely high KDR for a group their size.
Something I think does need to be said, is that having taken all of Ziz’s blog content and stacked it chronologically end to end, it reads completely differently than it does in its original context. Divorced from the wiki-style links connecting everything, it goes from being a strange and unhinged manifesto to something of an apocalypse log, a found footage horror story about a brilliant person slowly breaking and going insane from the hostility of her local environment. At each step and time jump you can see the wheels come off the rails a bit more, finally culminating in the 80 page long expose of the entire rationalist community that is “intersex brains and conceptual warfare.”
I note that because when I look at the story of Ziz’s destruction spiral, not just the damage she did and who all was caught up in it but the beats of the story and how her own state was affected at various points in the spiral, I have to say, it’s not all on her. She is not the sole creator of the brainworms that consumed her, she came by them naturally and organically while participating in this community. Ziz is simply the loudest and most visible casualty of the same sort of mental knot that has consumed lots of other EAs at this point as well.
Zizians is a moderately decent if biased starting overview of her content but it fails to really engage with the actual teeth of the material very much and if you’re going to take its word for things then you should also read the rebuttal. And yes you are wading into literal years worth of drama and back and forth attempts at character assassination by various individuals involved in this mess, so lol, beware. Feel free to DM me if you want to talk about this.
Thorough reply, thank you!
If you want, I could DM you about sending you my existing notes on the matter. (I’ve already sent them to at least one other person, but I don’t think that should matter in this case?).
Feel free!