#zizians

[henghost]

wake up babe new reference in the mainstream media to worm in relation to the murder cult just dropped

[cpericardium]

mom!! we're in the news

The Guardian article link

[derseprinceoftbd]

A friendly reminder that the joint Worm Fandom+Rationalism movement has killed over 38,615 people, exactly one of whom was a landlord. This is genuinely the most evil force in the world today. A dangerous cult movement is rapidly gaining control of both American youth culture and the U.S. government.

[specialagentartemis]

“I can't tell you how much of this story is just the result of Bay Area rent prices being unreasonable.

It's really a real estate story.”

The thing is. It is. The whole Behind the Bastards series on the Zizians, a vegan Rationalist cult, is incredibly compelling, but I was just struck over and over again by how preventable it all was, if there were any social support networks at all.

And man, it was tragic in that… it was the story of a mentally unwell trans woman being pushed around by transphobia, misogyny, transmisogyny, unaffordable housing, and normalized awful workplace cultures until she increasingly broke with reality.

A huge part of it was that housing was so unaffordable that she ended up living on a boat with someone else who exacerbated her worst impulses and drove her deeper into her delusions. A huge part of it was that the unreasonably demanding Bay Area tech workplace culture created pressures she refused to compromise on and thus she was pushed out of the tech world. A huge part of it was that the police were twitchy, violent, and transphobic. A huge part of it was that the tech world and the Rationalist world were full of misogynistic and transphobic men. Unable to afford rent, unable to keep a job, unable to make friends… you can understand how someone already not-all-mentally-there got pushed to more and more extremes.

Here’s another reason we need affordable housing, a 4 day workweek, and trans rights: prevent people from joining murder cults because they have no jobs and nowhere to live! And I mean this 100% seriously!

From Behind the Bastards: Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent), Mar 20, 2025 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661

[toasterlightning]

I heard that there were people lamenting that they couldn't hear worm takes from the imprisoned zizians, and that they couldn't know what their opinions were on amy dallon

and I am delighted to inform you all that actually I do have this information, because I have discussed amy dallon with one of the imprisoned zizians (audere)

his take was that amy should've set up her own hospital so that people could be brought to her instead of having to go to each hospital, and charge for treatment to efficiently allocate her services to the most in-need people, and then donate the proceeds to charity, and since she didn't do this it meant take she didn't actually care about helping people and she was just trying to make herself feel like a good person.

which if you think about it is a very zizian-esque take.

EDIT: TO BE CLEAR AUDERE = MAXIMILIAN SNYDER

[carcharodontosaurus-enthusiast]

so it begins...

[azspot]

The ‘murder gang’ of computer whizzkids linked to two killings 3,000 miles apart

Investigators are exploring whether two apparently unrelated murders could be linked, by way of an alleged cult made up of highly educated computer scientists with an interest in animal rights, Andrea Cavallier reports

Youngblut and Snyder, as well as Bauckholt, allegedly followed a self-described “vegan Sith” ideology, according to Open Vallejo, which reviewed their social media posts and spoke to a friend close to the group.

Jessica Taylor said she was a friend of Bauckholt, who she knew by the name Ophelia. She recalled warning Baukholt about Zizians, a group she described as a “murder gang.”

“I remember warning Ophelia that Zizians were a death cult with a high local death rate…,” she wrote in a post on X after hearing about her friend’s death. “Idk if this involved Ziz or associates but... well, Bayesian evidence (lefty radical violence + violent women).”

Several online posters attributed the attack to the “Zizians,” which was referred to as a “cult” on various online forums. The group is a radical offshoot of the Rationalist movement, an ideology centered on using scientific techniques to enhance human decision making, Open Vallejo reported.

[katherinakaina]

I also need to add a bit of context to your very short bit about Zizians, @strange-aeons .

TLDR: Ziz left the rationalist community 6 years ago and even at the time she wasn’t liked there, the fact she managed to exploit. Her actions directly contradict both hpmor and what CFAR was doing and teaching. Her other affiliations that are no less relevant include being an anarchist and a vegan. You are not immune to cults just because you are not into any particular weird internet subculture.

Cults form from niche subcultures, that’s true enough. But any subculture can form a cult because any culture, even the mainstream one, contains some ideas that can be twisted to an insane degree. And any ideology, even the most niche and scary one, can be approached casually and sceptically. What is actually needed to create a cult is not a special ideology but a cult leader and vulnerable people to follow them. That is the main uniting quality between all cults. Trying to figure out what’s wrong with a certain music band or a certain fantasy book forum is an exercise in motivated reasoning. You will always end up finding something that's wrong.

The rationalist community was trying to prevent the formation of a cult as best as they could. Partly that’s the reason why people like Ziz and others with bad and unpopular takes were often tolerated longer than necessary. To encourage criticism and prevent getting stuck in a positive feedback loop. Because it’s not a high control group! You cannot be simultaneously mad that people are allowed to talk about wacky ideas on forums and also that the group is supposedly very rigid and controlled. Apparently, they could use some control. Not like it would actually stop an aspiring cult leader from recruiting, they’d just go some other place.

Zizians were not mostly trans by accident (what are the chances?). Ziz was recruiting the most vulnerable people who related to her and were willing to trust her (also because there’s a lot of trans women in the community, like a lot). She used their very real and grounded experience of discrimination to convince them that her not being liked is not due to her takes being bad but because she’s trans.

And she had a lot of takes, some of them not being popular enough you actually complained about. You criticised LessWrong for being too pro-capitalist for your taste and then started talking about the Really Bad rationalists and THEY ARE LEFTISTS killing landlords and cops.

Now if we are talking about ideologies that devalue human life, how about some that require actual Class War (guess what people do in wars) or violent mass uprisings? Or some that require assassinations of certain select individuals? How come you hear that there are people on forums discussing the ethics of murdering those directly responsible for destroying our planet and you, as a leftist, do not immediately recognize yourself in it? Nothing discussed on LessWrong is more violent than a communist revolution or even the killing of Brian Thompson.

Why being into rationality at some point and reading hpmor is the only thing you told about Ziz? I think I know why. All the right wingers really leaned into the whole ‘trans vegan cult’ thing. That is not a good look for our side, is it? How amazing would it be to find a scapegoat. Who cares about those AI safety freaks anyway? They are all cishet men anyway! All cishet men who somehow have an offshoot of violent vegan queers, that certainly adds up.

Ziz being a radical vegan* (another niche subculture) corresponds to her actions way better than anything that's discussed on LessWrong or happened in hpmor. In fact, there’s an exact scene you probably skipped. Harry is on a very important and dangerous mission with Quirrell and at some point he is told to hide while Quirrell duels a cop guard at magical Guantanamo Bay – a total pig and an absolute scum who Ziz would kill without a second thought. Harry does share her sentiment, he fucking hates Azkaban. But when Quirrell tries to kill the evil torture cop Harry instinctively protects him jeopardizing the entire mission. And it’s not a random scene. It starts the entire disillusionment spiral where Harry realizes his beloved groomer professor might be a bad guy. Murder of a bystander whose only crime is being a product of his society is not something Harry can tolerate. He does end up decapitating a bunch of actual death eaters in the very end (the bit you probably did read) to save his own life and defeat Voldemort and even then he regrets it and apologizes for it (despite it being the right thing to do and not even comparable to a random cop). There’s an entire scene where Harry bonds with Draco over their mother’s deaths where he expresses that every death is a tragedy, even deaths of very bad people (like Voldemort).

Not to mention the entire immortalism theme (did you skip the entire third book?). One cannot read hpmor and walk away thinking human life is worthless or only super geniuses deserve to live. Timeless decision theory leading to murdering people is not in there**, nothing in the fic even suggests such a conclusion. More about how you got most things wrong about hpmor here.

Let’s face it, those were a bunch of sleep deprived vulnerable people high on all sorts of radical ideas, who were kicked out of every decent movement and that’s why they slipped into a cult.

Any subculture can become a cult. If you ever read a boring preachy fanfic or ever went to a physical meeting with internet weirdos. If you ever felt rejected by mainstream society and went looking for ‘like-minded people’, for a ‘found family’, for a ‘place where you belong’. You are not safe. Touching grass from time to time is not enough. You have to never leave the pastures to be highly immune to cults. And that ain’t you, my friend. That’s none of us.

Previous post about rationalist community.

* Ever heard ‘veganism is the moral baseline’ (sometimes minimum or imperative)? That’s not a slander, it’s a commonplace argument and an actual slogan.

** The only use of timeless decision theory in hpmor is about being able to reliably cooperate with other well meaning people, not about killing anyone.