Annie Elise

Is it because the aspiration of this ideology is so extreme and enticing that they just kind of like

I get zeroed in on it.

I really don't know.

But before we go any further, and trust me, there is still a lot to get into, I do want to pause for a second and ask a question that a lot of people are still debating, which was, are the Zizians actually a cult?

Or were they just like-minded people who met on the internet?

And it's not a cut and dry answer.

It's really not because on the surface, the Zizians didn't fit to the classic image that most of us picture when we hear the word cult.

There were no matching outfits, no isolated compounds in the woods, no leader demanding loyalty or, as we like to see often, sexual favors in exchange for some sort of salvation.

Also, nobody was physically recruiting other people.

They just happened to stumble upon each other online, whether it was in comment sections or maybe even chat rooms, and then just kind of slowly go down that rabbit hole together.

And people could leave the group whenever they wanted.

And as far as we know, there also wasn't any sign of any sort of financial exploitation, which we know is very, very common in traditional cults.

But then, on the flip side of that, like other cult groups, a lot of members did start isolating themselves from their families and friends.

And the person at the center of all of this, Ziz, she had a lot of influence.

Now, there's no public evidence that Ziz ever told anyone directly that they needed to commit violence.

However, her blog posts would often talk about people who, quote, didn't contribute value and suggested that, logically, death could be a reasonable outcome in some cases like that.

And for the people who were already very deep in it, that kind of language could really shift how they saw the world.

And how they saw the people in it.

So some people see the Zizians as more of like this fringe philosophy or even a fanbase that eventually went too far.

I mean, at the very least, it is a textbook example of online radicalization.