Annie Elise

And so did this whole, like, way of life that the Zizians had.

A lot of people who ended up getting involved were living in the San Francisco area, which, by the way, is one of the most expensive places in the country.

So at one point, while Ziz had been living on a 90-foot-long tugboat that she had hauled down from Alaska, later, an entire group of Zizians ended up parking their trucks and buses on a piece of land north of San Francisco in Vallejo, essentially kind of building their own little compound that was off the grid.

And I want to quickly touch on how this group worked.

There was no real hierarchy.

I mean, yes, Ziz was basically the founder, but it's not like she was worshipped like these other cult leaders or that there was some sort of religion aspect to it.

The Zizians pretty much all communicated online and through blog posts.

They also talked through Discord chats, shared Google Docs, but it wasn't like normal cult groups like FLDS or...

what is the other one I'm thinking of, NXIVM, or things like that, where it's a lot of like these gatherings and, I don't know, it just was a little bit different.

It had more of like an online central kind of basis to it.

Some of the members didn't even know each other in real life.

A few did, but not all of them.

And what's also really surprising, or I guess not too surprising depending on what you think, but before getting sucked into the Zizian group, a lot of them were doing totally fine in the outside world.

Most of them were highly educated, they had advanced degrees in science, math, or engineering, they worked in tech or finance, and they made good money.

It also wasn't a huge group by cult standards.

I mean, at the group's peak, there were an estimated 30 to 50 people involved.

That's it for the whole worldview of Zizian.

And it kind of sparks the question, right, of...

When you are someone who is seemingly accomplished on the surface and you have everything going for you, you're well-educated, how do they get sucked into these groups?

Is it because the group leader finds a tiny little weakness to exploit?