63: The Zizians: The Internet Cult That Spiraled Into Chaos (w/ SomeOrdinaryGamers) | Red Thread
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At the start, they were idealists, determined to change a world they believed was slipping ever faster into disaster. A tyrannical world dictated by artificial intelligence. But as their lives spiraled out of control, well before this dark fate would manifest, their idealism gave way to chaos. By the end of the story, six would be dead.

Two more would vanish into the wind and others would be left maimed, imprisoned, institutionalized or forced into hiding. This is the descent into the idealism-driven madness of the Zizian group.

And this is Red Thread. And it's a special episode of Red Thread because we have an incredible guest with us this week. Someone very well versed in this realm who's already done a fantastic video on the subject matter. So we've got an expert in the house. Hello, Some Ordinary Gamers. Mudaha, how's it going? It's going good. Great to be here, guys. As soon as you mentioned Zizian to me, I was like, oof.

I immediately remember the video I made. I'm like, all right, we got to do it. This group of people is a very recent development. I mean, they've been going on for a little while here, but it's definitely a very current story because...

I mean, it's still happening right now while we record. There's trials that are underway and different court cases pending and things like that, and still investigations into the matter. So it's still a developing story. I should make that very clear. But it is a very interesting one. And I think the current vibe of it is also rather interesting to dive into because there are very few cases like this that kind of...

kind of shed a light on how the internet operates in these new kind of internet cult-like environments. So I think it's a very good discussion point for that. Jordan. Yes. Jordan is also here, the second host of Red Thread. That's right. Have you heard of the Zizians? No, but looking at their faces, I'm really scared already. They all look like horror fiction characters.

They're not a friendly looking bunch. No, man. Holy hell. And all of them just have that kind of like possessed look in their eyes. So I don't know what the hell this is about, but sorry to cut you off, gentlemen. No, this is a story of an internet cult that would go on to claim the lives of many in their kind of...

Manic way. I don't understand how- Don't you reckon they don't need a trial? Like, they're guilty of something. Yeah. Clearly. Just take them off the street.

Yeah, it's like, these are just people that, like, and it's funny too because I think the reason why the story kind of blew up is that, like, when you really look at their, like, when I saw the headlines when I made my video initially, I was like, vegan, trans, cult, Silicon Valley people, every single, like, population.

A possible headline hit. You know, buzzword was just hitting. It's like, you know, you start to look a little bit more into them and you see like a trail of bodies. It's like, this is just...

It almost seems like something that would exist in a television show or something, right? But you can't write stuff that's this wild, you know? Yeah, the way it was described was vegan trans death cult to me. And I was like, wow, okay, that's very salacious and very upfront. Surely this is like some kind of propaganda or there's some kind of misconception here. But then looking into it, I'm like, wow, this really was just a vegan trans death cult.

Very, very, very interesting. The one time you didn't get clickbait by the most crazy clickbait. Is it fair to say that this is the modern version of the Manson family? I would say that it's more of the homeless version of the Manson family. I would say so. Okay. It piques my interest.

Somehow more mentally ill than the Manson family, I think. Like very, very, very, very just out of touch with reality, which is ironic for what we'll talk about in the future. All right, but we're going to get started here because it's a decently sized story and we're going to start from this compelling point in the narrative.

On August 19th of 2022, out in the San Frisco Bay, the Coast Guard received a call at 11pm. It came from a distressed woman who was travelling through the bay, a woman by the name of Naomi Lasota. She was on a boat called the Black Signet with her friend Emma Bohanian and her sibling, Jack Ziz Lasota.

Naomi told the lifeguard that her brother Jack, who had transitioned and identified as a woman who used the name Ziz, had leaned over the engine of their boat and subsequently fallen into the dark waters below. The Coast Guard failed to find Lasoda's body, searching throughout the night with multiple boats, helicopters, planes, and drones that were used to survey the area with no kind of body recovered. Through the Freedom of Information Act, we know what was logged into the Coast Guard's book on that night. When

When they interviewed Naomi, they found out that neither she nor Lesota were wearing life jackets and she couldn't pinpoint exactly where Jack or Ziz had fallen off because she was unfamiliar with the boat. Officials said it would be impossible to survive the temperatures in the water for more than 25 hours. Lesota was presumed dead by the authorities and an obituary was placed into the newspapers two weeks later. So she was...

She was ostensibly declared dead in this situation. And I wanted to place this kind of story right at the beginning because it's a nice little intrigue setter. There's a mysterious boat-related death. Yes. But we'll come to understand who this Ziz Lasoda character is as we go through the story. I did want to ask this question at this time, though, because we have an American expert on the panel, which is always nice to have. San Francisco, yay or nay? Yay.

It doesn't seem like the best place to me, honestly. You know, San Francisco is kind of a shithole, to be honest. It's got that reputation. It's funny, too. San Francisco is like... I've been very briefly, and it's such a beautiful city when you're flying into it, and then you're like,

As somebody that likes Southern California, I think SoCal is way better than whatever that northern side of California is. Yeah, NorCal fucking sucks, dude. I'm sorry, NorCal? What is NorCal? Is that just north? Is that like the badlands? Yeah, it's like Sacramento. No, NorCal is like Sacramento and fucking San Francisco. Central California is like the real badland. Nothing happens there except meth manufacturing. Oh, yeah. Okay.

A vital part of the economy. That sounds like the place to be, yeah. I mean, that's where Fousey was born, and you can imagine how wild things get. Yeah. Yeah.

Whenever I think of San Francisco as an outsider, the mental image that is concocted for me is a river with tech, tech bros on one side and then homeless junkies on the other side. Like this massive stark kind of difference in socioeconomic lives. I mean, you've got, you've got the biggest tech companies over there. So it's like, you got like CEOs that live in like Palo Alto and like some of the ritziest districts. Right. And it's like, like,

No joke, SF is probably the most expensive place in the US to live, I think. Because of that, yeah. Yeah, cost of living is through the roof. No joke. California as a whole is bad, but San Francisco is really bad. I have a family friend who works for Roblox out there, and he legitimately says half his salary is just spent in the living, right? Half of his Roblox? Robux or whatever the fuck they're called? Yeah, half the Robux they give him goes back to living. Yeah.

I would not be surprised if they did pay their employees in Robux or whatever they're called. Dude, it's like, it's a city where like, if you have a hundred thousand, like, like, I think it's like the poverty line is like, if you're making less than a hundred and like a hundred thousand, a hundred and ten, you're still actually poor. Like how bad do you have to be when you're making six in San Francisco? It's bad.

like it's a super expensive city to live in and like you know you got like the rich district and then you're not too far off from the mission district where it's just it's like actually like fentanyl alley like it's bad i mean um have you guys ever been to la i've been i've been there not for long though not enough to get like the rub of the land

best part is like as long as like let me tell you like there's this place and if any of your viewers have played Cyberpunk 2077 there's this place called Pacifica right like this real degenerate like just gang violence like absolute shithole yeah that is basically downtown Los Angeles everything surrounding it is beautiful it's

It's just downtown LA. It's just like, I would say... Typically where the people have money and stuff, that's probably the nice parts, I would assume. Yeah, very nice parts. You got private security, you know? Yeah. Not the central area. That shit... My rule, anytime I travel places, if I don't see a cop car for more than 10 minutes, I'm in a fucking real bad part of town, you know? Yeah.

That is incredible from the outside. I don't think I've seen a police officer in about three years myself in my area. No, no, dude, like in the US, like when I'm driving, like it's actually different. Say like when I was in fucking Houston, I was with there. There were gen.

and like there was one point we're driving home from dinner and i like look at her i'm like honey i've not seen one fucking like sheriff vehicle i haven't seen a cop car for a while you start having heart palpitations freaking out bro so the thing is we were staying at a place on like alabama court or something right and like my dumb ass the place was on east alabama and i'm in the car and i just it goes to west alabama

And, like, so East Alabama is this really nice place where our Airbnb is. West Alabama is where they sell fucking crap houses. It's, like, the alley of trap houses. Like, when I didn't see a car for a while, I'm like, oh, honey, I think we're actually in, like, the worst part. And I'm seeing, like, junkies, like, kind of stumble on the road, like, last of a zombie style. Yes, yes, yes. That was the only time where I've, like, literally broken red lights, like, getting out, like...

Yeah. And who cares? There's no cops to arrest you anyway. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like there's a fucking camera or anything. Like, who gives a shit? Dude, that is so insane. The last thing I saw was, like, this one dude with a big-ass pipe. I'm looking at him like, this is a fucking Elden Ring boss. I'm out of this place. Thought you could get away, huh? Yeah.

It is the only place where like, okay, so when you're going onto a highway, there's like a fucking freeway ramp, right? Like normal places. Bro, this place, it goes from like main street, take a right turn right onto the fucking highway. Like you gotta, you gotta fucking rip your car. And Dallas, Houston driver, sorry, they're like driving like 90 miles an hour for like just no reason. Like it's the only state where every third car I've seen.

Crazy stuff, dude. America, it's like the Wild Wasteland perk got enabled and it's just complete. Sounds great. I'd love to learn that.

A lot of freedom. You can see why the Zizians hooked up over here. But yeah, we'll get to it later in the story, but these people, they live in San Francisco, and when we get to the point where they're living and how they live, it all starts to make sense. Oh, really? Okay, so yeah. Homegrown. Could only happen there. Imagine living in that kind of wealth disparity and seeing that on the daily where you see the effects of, you know,

Homelessness and drug addiction and things like that. If you existed in that environment for longer than a week, you would very quickly start to become disillusioned with society as an entity. Like, yeah, it would be very hard to like separate the ideology of...

Of what they would end up leading towards. Okay, so born Jack Amadeus Lasota on the 23rd of January 1993 in Alaska. Ziz, as they are now known, was a student who was studying computer hardware engineering before then dropping out, before dropping that course to instead attempt to find a career in indie game development.

around the time of 2015. From a young age, Lesotho was exposed to technological concepts such as artificial intelligence as their father worked in that field specifically. This was described by many as a hacker from an early age, having a strong proficiency with hacking, which let them access school systems and alter confidential documents.

I don't know if that makes you a hacker. I don't think school systems are generally the most secure. I don't know if that's maybe just an Australian thing, but over here they're pretty easy to get into. The school systems? Which school are we talking here? I'm assuming elementary and high school and stuff are probably easier than college. It's incredible how...

tech savvy both of you are that you aren't impressed by them hacking the school system. It's just child's play. Literally child's play. Hacking as a term is thrown around very loosely in my experience. People describing hacking generally just means being able to access a system's information, which is not

necessarily the hardest thing to do if it's right just guessing the password might be the secretary's birthday well not even just that just like navigating to the root root access uh section of you know this oh yeah you gotta remember like some middle schools and elementary schools like bro when i was growing up like i've seen windows 95 and when i was in like middle school like i've seen shit that old you know like it used to be so bad like

It used to be so bad, bro. Like, back in the day, like, just getting past the enterprise, like, security of, like, the computer network was not... Like, we used to play Counter-Strike 1.6 in the school computers. And we never really had any issue, yeah, bypassing any of their nonsense. Well, I'm surprised that Windows 95 can carry it. Go on, sorry. It's true. Those school networks, like, the school administrators at, you know, primary schools and high schools are probably...

barely more educated in in computers than the students themselves i mean listen look this is gonna sound like my background is cyber security it stuff so it's like i don't want to shit on like the elementary school guys but generally speaking most of their job is usually uh our passwords need to be reset yada which is very oh just very loose like filters like very loose yeah exactly that

I mean, we had filters. We had fucking filters so we couldn't see porn in school or go to 4chan. Literally, it was so easy. Back then, I was considered fucking Dumbledore, the head wizard of fucking Hogwarts. When I showed a bunch of kids, I showed this one guy, I was like, hold on a minute, we can ping the address in the command line

We can copy the IP address and put it into the web browser. Then we don't have to worry about the blocks. That's how we access like half the websites. It's like a two-step process. Usually so easy. Anyway,

Yeah, see, Jordan, you could have been having fun like us at school. Yeah, but honestly, again, I am the elementary school teacher just sitting there being like, good, good, I'm learning. Like, I don't know anything. You would have thought of us as like Gandalf the Wise. Yeah, absolutely. You are a wizard. Computer wizardry. Digital wizards.

So Lesota had moved to the Bay Area with the intent of looking for opportunities within the tech community, but it was a rough start from the very beginning, even titling a portion of a blog that Lesota had created, My First Year of Bay Area Hell. So immediately, not off to a great start in San Fran. Yeah, good review. They were fired within...

They were fired within days from their first job and were also not having much luck finding stable and safe housing. Lesota had, for a long time, been active on their blog, which was titled Sincerely. Ugh. Sorry. They're bloggers, dude. They're bloggers. Man, that was... Jesus, you're talking about trying to save time on this podcast. You just did it, Jackson. That's all we needed. That's all we need, yeah.

This group can get fucking cringy, dude. Immediately, it's like Redditor pretentiousness that I just cannot stand.

So they were also a frequent user of rationalist websites like LessWrong and AstralCodex10 to blog where Lesota had two accounts, first starting with one under the name JackLesota first, so that was their traditional username before they transitioned, and then they created a new one under their new name, Ziz, which is their nickname that stuck. The

The rationalist, and I need to put this description in here, definition, because it's a very important component of this story. You might be wondering what the rationalist community is. Simply put, it's a relatively new movement that gained footing in the San Francisco Bay area, so it can trace its roots back to San Fran. The

Their focus points, the members aim to use rationality even to avoid biases. The rationalist culture is best described by Tara Burton, a writer for the New Atlantis, who states that the community has a, quote, technocratic focus on

on ameliorating the human condition through hyper-utilitarian goals with the distinctly liberal optimism that defines so much of Silicon Valley ideology. That is, that intelligent people using the right epistemic tools can think better and save the world by doing so. How fucking pretentious that sounds in every way. I fucking cannot stand this at all ready. Like...

It's like, it's like, it's like rationality. It's like, you got to think about it, right? Like being a rational human being shouldn't require like an entire, like a belief set, you know, it's just like,

It's such a condescending way of viewing life as well. Like only I, every, every human has the basis of rationality. You're not some fucking, you know, freedom fighter just because you think you're intelligent. Yeah. They're like Plato or something. It's like, we're coming up with the allegory of the fucking cave. Yeah. I just, I hate the way they write as well. It's so weird, isn't it? It's always just this strange combination of I'm this hyper rational human being. Now, listen to my wanky English essay.

You know? Yes. It's like so contradictory, isn't it? Like you could say exactly the same thing in like three words if you were like truly rational. But there's always just this philosophy major crap that they always put into it.

This is what I call pseudo-intellectualism. Like, real intellectualism, in my opinion, is being able to convey these same messages or intelligent messages in the most succinct way possible. That's the true sign of intelligence in my eyes. Yeah, absolutely. It's being able to dumb it down to the most accessible... Yes, exactly. So, this kind of wankery, if I'll put it really first-place me,

Because he's so obnoxious, dude. They really could have just, like, really streamlined this to, I sincerely think I'm smarter than everyone else on planet Earth. Like, that's... Bro, they're like...

You know, it's like, this is the definition of, like, living in fucking San Francisco, right? Like, you gotta realize that these people are actually fucking... Yeah, I mean, bro, you can only come up with this level of fucking ass-sniffing from the state of California. 100%. Really? So that's like a real cultural event of living in California, is it? Bro, you...

Yeah, 100%. I actually think if you went up to a homeless person in San Francisco, it's a coin flip whether they're going to start quoting rationalism excerpts like this at you. I think it's highly possible that even the homeless people there are like this. It's almost like a character trait that you need to have in order to exist in these environments.

I mean, you gotta imagine, right? Like when you're living in like, when you're living in like a place, right? Like California, it's like, you're already like, I mean, I, I've, I, I'm from, I'm from fucking Toronto. So it's not like I'm not from like a big city either. Like I've been in a city. Yeah, that's the California of the North. I see through you. I mean, hey, listen, we're California and New York fused together. Okay. We've got shitty weather and we've got pretentiousness. Okay. Nice. Oh, what a paradox. Fuck.

But it's like, you know, I see it here all the time, too. It's like when you're going around a city or especially like at a university or something, right? And it's like you'll come across somebody that's taken one fucking humanities course. Yes. And they think they're smarter than like 95% of the rest of the country because their perception of the rest of the country is like uneducated, like embryos. Like, dude, get the fuck out of here.

So obnoxious, dude. Fuck off. Sorry to the audience. If you're from California and San Francisco specifically, no offense intended. I'm sure there's a bunch of people in those places that are still decent, hardworking folk, nice people. No offense intended. 2% of them, maybe. I do think it is a city thing more so than a California thing, honestly. I think cities just attract these sorts of people. No, I mean, it really is just people that...

It's mostly pseudo-intellectuals that I think like these Zizian types, right? It's like, if you're from a place that... I feel like if you've worked a normal job, and I think all of us have, obviously, if you've been to any... Even high school, right? If you just worked a normal job and had a normal human interaction, you're not putting your ego at the level of a planet, right? You're a normal person. Most people...

Most people in California can be normal. It's just, this is like really Hollywood, like Silicon Valley. These are very insulated people who live in a bubble of intellectualism. You can, like, a lot of them just purely exist at like universities and such. That's their environment. And so they just kind of exist in this mind frame and regurgitate the same things at each other. And yeah, it's like the meme of you...

You haven't experienced real life if you stay at university forever. And there's some degree of truth to that. Anyway, where was I? So yeah, essentially, the rationalist belief is the belief that highly intelligent people without biases are the only ones capable of saving the planet. As such, it's highly popular on internet message boards where everyone is obviously extremely intelligent. Oh, 100%. Every single person. Geniuses.

Because everyone knows that if you're highly intelligent, you waste your life on a message board. 100%. And also, your Reddit updoots correlate linearly with your intelligence. Also, higher updoots. Dude, actually, like, on a total side tangent, on a total side tangent, since you mentioned Reddit and, like, internet-like intelligence, did you guys know that today Reddit literally got, like, fucking brainwashed by AI?

Yeah, I saw the information about that. So one of the subreddits changed my view. There was like a fucking University of Zurich launch like a LLM model, like a chatbot into their like Reddit and just started like fucking with people about like really serious topics. Really? To the point where like... Yeah, an AI chatbot basically across Reddit. It started making profiles of like black guy, but I'm against BLM. And then like the other one was like fucking sexual assault victim. So it's all like...

It's just like, that was like ethically damning and then they didn't like tell anybody that they were doing a research prompt on people. Like why they would even do it to begin with. So it's just like all these people on Change My View trying to get their like, they were trying to like change the way people were thinking with like misinformation and everything. And it actually did work. 100% it would work. It's also Redditor, so they're the most susceptible to like stupid shit. Easily.

I have to imagine a strong majority of those situations on that Change My View subreddit is probably just bots arguing with bots. It's bots all the way down, usually, a lot of the time. Dude, I think most of the internet is probably just bots now at this point. I think it came out a week ago that 50% of internet traffic now is just actually bots, and now it's probably a little bit more. So that's a strong...

for people out there. Don't take every user online as a real human being. A lot of the times they're not. Yeah, half the time you're arguing with somebody in a YouTube comment section, you're arguing with some LLM model. Like, it's just not worth your time. Yeah, 100%. Wow, that's a great tip. Okay. Yeah, it is. Everyone take note of that. Yeah, you are arguing with an algorithm. Sorry, go on. Yeah.

I mean, don't take it to the extreme of dehumanizing every single person you argue against. There probably are some people out there. I reckon you're obviously saving more time in the long run if you're just anyone that disagrees with you slightly, just being like, bot, bot, you're just a bot. And then you never have to change your view, which never happens on the internet anyway. You just saved a lot of time. I think arguing online has to be probably one of the most unproductive things a human being can do. Don't you reckon? Just...

generally. Yeah. An interesting anecdote, not related to that, but about the rationalist community website that we were talking about before, which was, what was it called? Less wrong. Uh,

Eliza Yudkowsky, who created Less Wrong and is regarded as one of the core figures of the movement itself, published a Harry Potter fan fiction called, quote, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Oh, man, these guys, their brain IQ level is so high. I can't get over it. It's too strong. Dude, you just have to be a different type of person to understand the level of intelligence that's coming from you.

So this fan fiction helps promote the movement itself. And this is interesting. This is how effective this is, taking these fictional worlds and co-opting them into your belief system or using it to promote a belief system. A quarter of the less wrong user base, when surveyed, claimed that they had found the site due to the fan fiction itself. Yeah. That's interesting. A lot of fan fiction fans on that site. Oh, yeah. Totally rational.

Back to Lasoda, however. Sincerely, Lasoda's personal blog was definitely a blog best described as a rapid series of thoughts from a technical mind attempting to appear philosophical, i.e. pretentious. I would describe this as pretentious. Very pretentious. With rambling thoughts and ideas mixed with pop culture references from properties such as Star Wars. You have my interest.

I mean, you gotta imagine, right? You gotta imagine, right? Star Wars is a very accurate representation of very, very parallel to current modern day stuff. You can't get much wrong than that. It's great to see these people. You know when you watch something like a piece of science fiction and you're like, wow, that's really cool. And then you walk away from it. It's a cool piece of entertainment. These

These people were inspired like that changed their life.

It's life-defying. Yeah, it's another thing that I can't stand where people can only discuss real-life topics through the lens of their favorite fictional universes. You see it online a lot where people will only contextualize horrifying issues with society or the world through the myopic lens of Star Wars, Harry Potter, or whatever else is popular at the time. Like, oh man, I can't believe this genocide is happening. The Avengers would never do that. I'm like, what...

It reminds me of that one, like, it reminds me of that Vosh clip. You remember that one? You remember the Vosh clip where he's, it's like this clip of Vosh going, like, I see, like, they were talking about, like, Kyle Rittenhouse and, like, self-defense, and he's like, I've seen enough Marvel movies where the good guy doesn't laser people. What? Yeah, dude. It's fucking, that's, like, every time, like, that's why I based my entire life on, like, would Vin Diesel have done that? Would that have translated to reality?

Well, hey, hey, hey. Vinny's, like, yet behind. He lives by one code. Family first. Totally fine. Dude, I always love when, like, I bring up, like, Fast and the Furious to, like, friends, and it's like, why do you watch that? It's like, you know the story's bad. I'm like, yeah, man, because I'm, like, absolutely waiting for the next big, like, plot point and, like, story revelation in fucking Fast and the Furious. I totally know watching it. I just want to see cars go fast. Yeah. Like, what the fuck? Tokyo Drift is still the best.

Still the best. Okay, so the style of writing on Lasoda's blog was very binary.

And ideas and conclusions were written very matter-of-factly. Lesota was intent on connecting with rationalists within the tech community, combining both of their interests, as they noticed others in the tech community who had concerns and issues with modern technology, particularly those concepts of AI. This foundation of belief and these connections within the rationalist communities and users of those communities is what eventually evolved and spread out to later form what would become to be known externally as the Zizian movement.

I'm going to put this up front. This isn't a name that they gave themselves. This is something that other people from the outside would begin to call this group. A group of people that followed Lasoda's kind of messages and belief system. Yeah, teachings. Scripture. They would call this group Zizians. But I didn't find any kind of evidence that suggested that they themselves called themselves anything like that. I don't think that they believed...

in any kind of name as far as I could yeah as far as I could tell

I mean, they didn't believe in hard work and employment either, so it's like these are all more concepts. These are all abstract concepts to toy with. So simply put, the Zizi internet movement would best be described as a branch of the rationalist community. A very rotten branch, I would say. Not one that the rationalist community really appreciates. Out of an already dying and pretentious tree, too. Yeah, totally.

In their personal life, in Lasoda's personal life, however, not everything was going well. I can't believe that. With them struggling to find full-time employment. Lasoda had been doing work on and off for companies like NASA, but no one wanted to commit to hiring them as a full-time employee with companies only offering independent contracting positions, which came with no benefits. Now, I should say that this is obviously from their perspective, so I'm wondering why

I'm wondering what they were like as an employee. I mean, I've had one of my family friends, he worked a lot of contractor positions, so this doesn't really seem like super... Yeah, it's not surprising, especially if you're really entry-level, right? Yeah. But, you know, obviously...

these positions are kind of designed in a way where you just kind of get your footing in, you get your experience and experience. Yeah. Yeah. If you're not, if you're not, if you're not leveraging it into like a full-time job, then it's like, I think most of it kind of falls onto you. Um,

Not to victim blame as well. Lesota couldn't hold down a job very well, it seemed. And in most of those cases where people complain about situations like that constantly, I always tend to believe that there is some level of a bad fit at the workplace or something like some kind of issue where they are not productive enough for the company or they're not a good fit for the environment at the company. Maybe they create workplaces

workplace drama, unnecessary workplace drama. I mean, if you're unable to meld with five or six different groups, it's probably on you. Yeah, that's what it is. It's like when there's smoke, there's fire kind of situation. If it was one or two jobs that they kind of were fired from or let go of, then I would think that's an unlucky break and that the job itself may have been the issue. They weren't an ethical workplace. But given the fact that this seemed to happen pretty frequently...

It does seem to indicate to me that they weren't a great person to work with, perhaps. Man, they really remind me of a kind of profile of person that I bump heads with in my own little world of the universe of the internet constantly. And the way that I can describe them every time is that they're like well-off losers. Yeah.

I think that's always the case. It's always just like they come from fairly rich families and they have a lot of time to sit around and think about these things, but like they're just not mentally up to it, you know, and socially they can't. I mean, when you got to pay bills, you can't be there sitting there like philosophizing about like Star Wars and shit, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right. So it is this weird thing of them just kind of being like geeks that they're just not the alphas of like, you know, the elite.

And so it's like, what do these people end up doing? And it's always this kind of stuff, right? It's like, well, I'll start my own revolution then. I'll just change society myself. They always move into that realm.

It's really weird how that happens. It's a level of narcissistic compulsion towards not taking accountability for your own flaws and working to fix them because there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with me because I'm so intelligent and enlightened. It must be everyone else. It must be society itself that is the issue. And of course, there's flaws with society and jobs like this, I'm sure. But...

I do see it a lot, like you said, Jordan, that there are a bunch of people who just do not take accountability and work to fix their character flaws or whatever that make them a better employment option. I mean, it's just easy to blame everyone else. It's such a sign of our times, this exact type of person and profile. Right.

Like this is becoming more and more prevalent. And like, even when you guys were just highlighting, as you said before, all the key words of just like this, this vegan trans death cult that believes in like techno feudalism AI. It's, it's like, it's just, it's, it's just such a morph of everything that's happening now, you know?

I think it's more because of the internet, right? Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, exactly. That's important. Instead of this person going out into the world and being molded by social situations and hearing their flaws or perceiving their flaws from the view of other people, what they now do is they use a form of escapism, which is entering the internet, entering these forum message boards. Yeah, you go to r slash rationality. Yeah, they can't even really... It's like they barely distinguish between reality and Star Wars. They can't even decipher that.

Their flaws get validated into looking like positive character traits to them. The other thing too is like, let's say that you join a discord of like, you know, a group of people that are rationality focused. Right. And let's say your group has a hundred people.

And like you're, you know, like 80 of those people are saying, you're a little crazy, bro. You're a little out there. All these people have to do is just go to a few clicks, you know, on their UI and just make a new server where it's like rational and rationality, but you know, more extreme. And then the 20 people that are on the server goes there and then it, you know, cycle repeats until it reaches like the Zenith point, which is what the Zizians really are. Yeah. The internet, the internet has made it possible for these bubbles to just flourish in the

Again, this is a common term, but echo chambers. Yeah, it's like misery-loving company, and then misery loves even more of that same company too down the road. So they don't have to change because they can be around like-minded people who genuinely see their flaws as pros, which is why it festers, and they don't make the changes that they need to make.

By the time you go to high school, I'm sure we all individually had flaws, obviously, in our middle school, elementary school. As you're interacting with other children, other people your age, other peers, you're all joining into... I wouldn't say a hive mind that makes it sound like we lose our individuality, but you realize in order to fit with society...

as a fucking as a whole like being a functional member i have to learn to address problems with myself and then learn to you know change myself or become a better person but yeah these people you know you're in the internet all day you don't have to fucking worry about it you can join any community of like yeah morons like you nothing forces you to change you know and and yeah i mean that's absolutely it and you don't get the kind of

necessary that is needed to change yourself, basically. Like, you don't get those negative experiences that are required. Basically, you're not a bully. I mean, I don't want to put it that way because bullying...

bullying is bad bullying is obviously bad but you know there were several situations in life where you you go through an experience and you look back and you're like fuck i wish i did that differently i wish i acted a different way and then you make those modifications to your character to the way that you perceive the world uh to then better fit in we're a social species that's how we operate and i think i think the great lie of the internet is that it's it's you're killing it all the time

on a grander scale, which isn't true. You're not being social in the way that our species was meant to be social, right? You're not socializing in the way that has, you know, historically led to people growing in a healthy direction. Whereas now internet has isolated people under the faux, you know, image of socialization.

socialization when in fact it's not socialization. And we're seeing that more and more. The rising degree of mental disorders, mental illnesses, just depression across the board, across all ages is rising exponentially. And it's because we're not getting our socialization the way was intended for us, not by a high being or whatever, but by our biology basically.

Anyway, so shortly after a failed application to Google, Lesota applied for unemployment benefits. Through this particularly turbulent patch of time. Imagine that. It's just like, all right, I'm going for the height, the absolute pinnacle of employment. All right, that didn't work. Where's my welfare chair? You know, there's like a few other companies that could have gone in between there, surely, right? Yeah.

It's like, man, I didn't get the CEO position at Microsoft. Fuck it. I'm going to stay home all day. I'm delving into philosophy on how this could possibly happen. To play devil's advocate a little bit here. What? Just so that we're not bashing on people with unemployment. Like, that's what unemployment is for.

Not to just coax off forever, obviously, but it's to be used while you try to find a job. No, no, yeah, but there is, again, there is that type of person, and I know because I was one of these people. Like, I absolutely could have got a job.

after university. You abused unemployment? I felt, I was ashamed of it every second I was on it. That's so based, honestly, I defend, I defend your abuse of it, honestly. At least my tax dollars are going somewhere nice, you know? I defend that. At least it's going somewhere. I hate it. I'll be honest, like, I drive through so many potholes every day that I, at least I hope that you're having fun with me on the phone. I sure as fuck am having fun.

But that's like, don't take it regularly. It's just like, okay, there's unemployed people that just can't get a job. They're not coping in life, right? And then there's people like me where it's like,

I could have gone to Kohl's. I could have gone to Walmart. I could have done that stuff very easily. But instead, I was just like, oh, what? I didn't get a job in TV. No, that's it. I quit out of life. So that's it, right? Is that arrogance? You thought those jobs were below you. Yeah, totally. It's crazy how she, like Jack Lesoto, literally looks like Dexter from the TV show. Yeah. That's actually straight up Dexter. We were just talking about Dexter before the- Wearing a wig. That's it.

See, like, she gets her stuff from Star Wars. I get my life advice from Dexter. We're not so different after all. Through this particularly turbulent patch of time in Lasota's life, they also decided to make it even more difficult. They began to fully step into their new identity with them undergoing hormone therapy and transitioning into a woman.

Lesota also met someone at a rationalist event who would become increasingly important in their lives around 2016, another transgender woman named Gwen Danielson. Upon Lesota and Danielson first meeting, they instantly became bonded through their mutual beliefs and life experiences, which is fascinating.

Of course, you know, they're both at a rationalist event, so they probably share similar experiences and lives. Also both trans. Lesota brought up the idea of moving onto Gwen's sailboat that Gwen had been permanently anchoring out in Richardson Bay. Gwen was on board with renting out the space to Lesota. Lesota just needed to help cover costs and fees. Lesota paying $600 a month to pay for the mariner. Mariner? I'm not a boat person. Mariner? Marina. Marina. Marina.

Marina's 15-day cost for electricity, which was still about half of what La Sota had been paying on Airbnbs and cybertaxis. What a goddamn brilliant use of financial points. Yeah.

I will leave exclusively through A, B, and B's. I will say, like, San Francisco's expensive, but, I mean, just reading that alone, it's like, come on, man. Like, if you're taking... It's like, you know when people who are like, they're like, man, it just can't make ends meet. Like, the times are tough. And then you look at, like, their daily spending, and it's like...

Wow, so you just door dashed every meal. Okay, well, there's your issue. Exactly, I can only cry so much. If you're not going to do the bare minimum of trying to make your financial situation work, it's very difficult. Like, she's staying at Airbnb. Did the crackhead motel not appeal to you? That was available. You could have saved a lot of money. Airbnb's can't be cheap. On top of that,

Well, I will say, though, using the Mariner, if that's $600 a month, that's not bad. I mean, that's going to be pretty good for San Fran, surely. Bro, I mean, like, that's killer, though. It's like, if you ever live in, like, if you've ever been in, like, SoCal, like, there's a place, Huntington Beach, not too far from, like,

I'm usually at. There are so many people that live at the beach and they live in their RVs. We call them beach bums, but they're usually people that have money saved up and they just want to live their life on the beach, just swing around, chill. Super cool life. I personally couldn't live that way, but they choose to go out there. They live in their RVs. It's like van life over here, right? It's way better than paying thousands of dollars a month to rent

renting out a shitty shack totally in that area i yeah like you said i couldn't do it i couldn't be cramped in one space like that for i mean like i'm just saying like i couldn't live without like doing a job you know like that's just like some people they just save money for like years and it's their life like it's a it's a great honestly like it's you see you make you make good money there and then instead of spending it on like one fucking like apartment rental that's probably gonna

sap away a good chunk of that. Yeah, it's like, these people usually, like, when they're living in their boats or RVs, it's like, it's kind of just a place where they sleep. Most of their day is spent outside, right? I don't know how true that is for, you know, the Zizians, but when you're outside on the beach every day, hanging out and talking to people and having drinks, it's like, yeah, all you need is a bed, really. True. I don't think they're doing that. I reckon they're probably just staying in the boat the entire time.

Crabbed in there like rats. Like rats. Although it does sound kind of romantic. Everyone has the idea of wanting to live on a house. No, it sounds incredibly smelly. That's a very good point. Again, it's just, it's not romantic living with Jack LaSoda, is it? No, no. Yeah, very smelly. You just have to look at his face. Yeah, it smells.

Lesota wasn't able to set up their computer how they had wanted it, being unable to fit three monitors into the boat due to the cramped living conditions, which they wrote about. I need these three monitors. It's not working. Oh my God. How am I supposed to trade my meme coins without my three monitors?

living in a sailboat with like a very powerful computer and three monitors around like it's a very cyberpunk it does it does you buy like your you buy your rtx 5090 for the insane markup like where do you live it's like yeah i just live on my tugboat oh dude that's absolutely where most of their welfare money probably went is upgrading their rig 100 their computer

all in that text it almost it almost feels like some it feels like the plot to like the best indie game like some oregon trail last shit they just like live on a boat and slowly patch it up and upgrade it's a game that twitch streamers get momentarily infatuated with

Muda, how many monitors do you have? What's the perfect number? Dude, I only have like two, man. I don't live this easy in life. But then again, I'm also not in a boat, dude. Well, also, we're not like hyper intellectuals that need that much information coursing through our brains at any one time. Two is more than enough for me.

Yeah, honestly, this is all I ever really need. Like, as long as I can have my Dextra on one monitor and my editing suite here, I'm good, dude. I'm not doing the rationality stuff. We're lesser life forms is what we are. Our brains weren't made for this much information. They've got, what is that, like, 4, 8, 12, 12 different windows open at any given time, all pointing to rationalist.com or whatever the fuck it's called.

on different platforms. Yeah, it's like Rationalist or some 4chan. They're on like fucking tech or whatever the heck it is. Yeah. And all of this on a sailboat. It's just such a funny concept. It's such a funny concept. It is surprising to me that renting or sorry, renting marina space with all those electricity costs and stuff is cheaper than just

getting a dinky little apartment or something somewhere. It's strange, no? I feel like it's, like, in a way, like, I almost am, like, impressed. Like, okay, if I lived out, like, by myself, like, no family, no, like, significant other, no nothing, if I was, like, single, like, I've always kind of said this, like, I would love to get, like, a trailer in, like, the fucking middle of nowhere, you know? Like, just...

have my sat connection because I can live like that I can live in a small town like it's kind of a charming thing I love it I love living away from cities and stuff live away you know exactly it's like it's cool but you

I mean, it's such a masculine... It's such a guy kind of vibe or dream is just to live out in a log cabin somewhere by a lake. Totally. I mean, like, it's like... You know, like, the meme of, like, the guys that have, like... Like, I shit you not, like, when I moved into this house, like, probably for a whole year... Actually, most of my life, like...

only had like my television my playstation and a beanbag chair in the living room that I swear to god that's how I live right like yeah my whole home would be empty like it would just be this computer in this room and my bed in the other so I'm like man like if I had to live in a trailer I easily could like I mean I'm like I wake up scratch my balls like move to my computer room

More than enough room for it. Maybe leave the area. Yeah. More than enough. Exactly. So the sailboat stuff, that seems like luxury life to me. That's what I was going to say. I thought sailboats were a rich person thing. This person's like using it as a makeshift hotel.

Well, when you look at their, like, when you look at the video of the sailboat, they grabbed. Yeah, it's not great. Because I believe the sailboat, yeah, they grabbed. So they, we'll get to this later in the story, but they rode this thing all the way down the West Coast. And let's just say it was not the SSN from Pokemon Red and Blue. That's what we're putting in there. All right, it's not...

It's not great. But still, renting the marina and stuff, I just thought that that was a rich person thing, being able to dock your boat alone. Sure, you could buy a little dinghy or whatever and go out fishing and stuff, but usually, at least over here, you store it at your house and stuff. Having it permanently docked at a marina. I believe the marina they were at, they weren't docking their boats with the big yachts and stuff. Yeah, the yachts probably.

Yeah, they were probably far away. I don't know enough about the marine life, the marina life and stuff, or boats. Anyway, Lasoda was also anxious or on high alert from a wound left over by a previous terrible roommate they had months before. So this, in combination with not being able to set up the computer how they wanted, it led to, at the start, pretty frustrating living conditions for themselves. Yeah.

They were, however, making it work between Gwen Danielson and Lesota, and they were very quickly becoming quite close. On Lesota's blog, Zs would recall they and Danielson would talk for several hours a day about, quote, this is from the blog itself, quote,

Transness about neuroscience and about their old crazy plans to save the world, which was to breed super intelligent dogs. About the ferret named Nova they considered their son, whom they had given to a pet store after deciding trading ferrets was not the optimal course. Changed their mind and tried to find him again so he could be cryopreserved

and it had been too late, about my attempts to figure out the actual art of planning and my mental tech I wrote on my blog, about my much cruder back then theories on human morality. End quote. Jesus.

Wait, trading ferrets? What are they? Is there like a ferret stock market? Yeah, I guess they went to a pet store and decided they wanted a different ferret. They said, no, this was not for me. And then the crier preserved it? Like they wanted to crier preserve their old one? You know, it's like the craziest thing is it's like, you know, these people, now that I'm like re-looking, like reassessing them, we're kind of stupid to like consider these people smart. Like they're actually pretty stupid. Yeah.

Intelligence means so many different things. It's so hard to boil down intelligence to one thing. You have these people who are naturally very good at whatever their studies are, like their computers, their programming, the technical knowledge they're in.

But anything else, like that doesn't mean they're intelligent at everything. And it doesn't mean that you can put a Lego set together, but that still means you're kind of dumb as rocks. Like 90% of the other. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. So they initially bonded over their similar ideas, but the situation on the boat wasn't perfect.

Jesus.

After eventually talking it out, however, Lesota wrote in their blog that Gwen came to agree with Lesota's assessment of the situation and Lesota ultimately concluded that, quote, over time, they, meaning Gwen, became less painful to be around. And I took this to mean that Lesota, like this is the first example that Lesota was a very...

very adept at manipulating people of this sort. Definitely. Once they were able to have conversations with people, like-minded people like this, it does seem like they were very proficient at manipulating them to bend them to their will, more or less. That's like the mark of a good alpha, I wouldn't even say cult leader, but just a leader in general, right? It's like

Somebody has to be like an alpha in these scenarios. Somebody has to be like the guy that wrangles everyone together, right? Like you can't just have, it's also why I say like you can't have a whole room full of alpha people because it's like, then you're just going to spend all your time like trying to see who leads who. You're never going to get anything done. I don't know about that. We have three alphas right here, boys. Us. Yeah, that is true. Silverback. But we're also not rationalists though, boys. I don't know. I don't know if I can be considered an alpha dude. Yeah.

I don't know if I can be considered an alpha, dude. Like, I got my life advice from Fast and the Furious, so I wouldn't say I'm nearly. What are you talking about? That's alpha as. No, he's right. That's not alpha. That's Sigma, baby. That's the next level up. How do you think? So much better. Yeah, dude. Right, we're becoming. What did we say? Yeah, that was probably the most insufferable thing I've ever said. It's so, yeah. We're talking about Reddit, dude. It's rubbing off on us.

Okay. Lasoda began to write on her blog more about her now hardened beliefs that she had been kind of moldings throughout this time. These were concepts such as the necessity of sociopathy

and the impediment of morality. Lasoda began to build a network of people who would listen to them, people that Lasoda had deemed as being vulnerable to the ideas that she was attempting to spread. She began to quickly amass followers through her blog and through these forums, these different forums, these different rationality-based forums, and

And Lasoda believed that she had the knowledge to bring self-awareness to both sides of the brain, each side having their own values, she believed, genders. And she believed that these sides of the brain often wanted to kill each other. She could help her followers learn this hidden talent. It's like schizophrenia, dude. Yeah, I mean it.

It's like literally just that. Yeah, I mean, it is. She thought that she could help her followers learn this hidden jujitsu form of breaking down each side of her brain, claiming that she could teach her followers to sleep with one side of the brain while allowing the other to stay awake. Concepts such as sleep deprivation were masked by Lesota as simply the person optimizing themselves and becoming a better person of themselves or a better version of themselves.

She called this tactic... Yeah, basically. She called this strategy or this tactic of separating one's brain into the two halves unihemispheric sleep.

Ziz used UHS as a secret tool that she gave to her followers in order to impress them, basically. So she would be like, hey, I can unlock your hidden potential. I can make you into a better person. You just have to let me... Clear open your third eye. Yeah, you just have to follow me. Give me your belief, you know.

Yeah, just basically become a follower and I will give you this tactic. So it is very cult-like. I've heard this group described as cult-like. Maybe not full cult, but definitely cult-like. And there are definitely certain characteristics...

One of the things that's kind of important is the use of sleep deprivation. So it's like, if you're kind of like sleep depriving people, right? I would say it's super intelligent from like Jack's perspective because she basically is putting everyone into a state

Where they're so easily susceptible, right? Yes. How many times have you been half awake and it's like you've done... Right now. You're in a conversation, it's like, sure, I'll do it. It's like that's the kind of state you're putting yourself into. So it's like very... When you're that sleep deprived, when you're that sleep deprived, I mean, everyone's been sleep deprived, surely. You know what this is like. You know the mental fog that descends over you that makes making decisions very, very...

arduous and difficult you can't think things through as efficiently as you could if you were fully awake and like you said being in that state makes you far more vulnerable to um or susceptible to people's you know people who are able to push you it's almost like just being drunk you know it's like yeah i mean it's like you know i think they say that being i i'd have to look this up but i remember hearing that

sleep driving or being half awake is just as bad as drunk driving in terms of being able to drive efficiently. Oh no, absolutely it is. Because it's like when you're like, I've never been drinking and driving but it's like, I think everybody might have been buzzed. You think you're not drunk enough, you might be buzzed.

And it's like generally the first thing it's like you'll feel like behind a motor vehicle. It's like you'll probably want to doze off, right? Like that's how a drunk driving accident is going to happen. Same thing when you've like been up for forever, right? It's like it's easy to doze off in your car. I've had it happen to me. Like I was coming home from a long drive in like New York and it's like –

I did like a straight shot, you know, like I didn't stop at all. And like, I want to say like probably 30 minutes before I reached my home, like the final leg of the drive, like literally the final like tunnel of the journey. I fell asleep probably like three or four seconds into the car. Right. Like, and mind you, thank God the vehicle was like autopiloting. Right. So it was like just keeping itself in the lane.

But like I woke up because a car like screamed at me. Right. It's like you're not giving me an input. So basically, I would say like a minute or two of like sleeping. And it's the weirdest feeling because like you're like, whoa, I could have died, you know, like without knowing. So, yeah, it's terrifying. It's absolutely terrifying how impactful it is.

being under those kinds of conditions are like being half awake because it's very it's very it's disgusting too because it's like you know you're putting yourself at risk and you know I put other people at risk too in that situation so yeah it is drunk driving in a way

Yeah, for sure.

And it's not just like you falling asleep at the wheel. When you're in that state of being hyper-tired or whatever, to that level... It just happens. Your reaction time as well. Your brain doesn't logically think things through to the speed that it usually would. It affects everything. You don't have to actually fall asleep at the wheel for it to be dangerous. You can literally just not have the right mental state

available to you to be able to make decisions. Yeah, you could probably see a car coming your direction and not be able to rationally turn your wheel or get out. Your brain's just not able to... You're not at your optimal best. That's the thing. And that's kind of what you see with the unhemispheric sleep. It's not a way for them to reset or modify their brain chemistry so they have two sides of the brain that operate differently. You see this in a lot of cults and also...

government experimentation conspiracies especially. You see people being put into sleep deprived states to make them more susceptible to suggestions and things like that. It's used across the board in brainwashing tactics because you obviously want your brainwashee to be as vulnerable as possible to suggestion. So yeah.

I mean, it's a torture method too, right? Like it's used by actual like, you know, militaries and it's used by actual like government agencies. It's like, if you want to torture the hell out of somebody or you want them to be like in an interrogation pool, you like, you basically don't force them to sleep. We've seen it happen in the past, right? Like guy goes to bed, they start blaring the loudest music, right? It's like, it's considered one of the most inhumane forms of torture, right? Like sleep deprivation, fucking around with food.

I mean, this is something that, you know, is designed specifically to break down a normal human being into a state where they're not themselves. Yep. Sure.

And so that's why I think that this, there's a lot of debate online, whether this is Ian's count as a cult for a bunch of different reasons. Like there's no religious motive or whatever. There's no religious figure in it. But to me, this is like, no, I don't think so. I don't, I don't think so. That's just the argument that I've seen online, but this is point number numero uno about why I believe this to be more cult like than not non cult like is because the,

uh, Ziz did utilize brainwashing tactics essentially to make the people that followed her as vulnerable as possible to her suggestions, whether or not she did that on purpose. I don't know if she believed in her unique hemispheric sleep herself or whether she'd use it as a tactic to brainwash them. It did still have the effect of essentially making them brainwashing susceptible. Uh,

So for those of you out to give you an idea of what this tactic is, you don't have to sign up to this course anymore. I've got it right here. Do not try this at home. I mean, you could. It's just putting you into a state of sleep deprivation. It's not recommended, obviously. Don't do it. Don't do it expecting anything good for you because being sleep deprived is bad.

So UHS involves number one, forcing yourself to be tired, obviously. Number two, lay down or sit up. Number three, close one eye and keep the other one open. Number four, distract the open eye with some kind of engagement. And she suggested having someone with you to occupy your other eye, basically like talk to you so that your eye could focus on them, etc.,

Number five, eventually you'll feel one side of yourself fall asleep. It will become numb. And then six, once in UHS, so that's unihemispheric sleep, it is supposed to be possible to infer which aspect of your personality is associated with which side of the brain. Which side of your brain is like what gender, what kind of aspect of your personality is existing on each side of your brain. So the idea here is basically like Ziz believes or wanted her followers to believe that there were

There were two souls within each person or two different sides of a coin to each personality or person. And she wanted to basically make people believe that they could get in touch with both sides of that coin and understand themselves deeper. It's weird thinking about someone hearing that and thinking, really? Two souls, you say? I'm just not that interested, you know? Like, if there is two souls in one, huh? It's just...

It's such a shallow belief as well to me. It appears to be extremely deep to them probably. It's like, let's just chop the brain in half based on which side of the body it is and put one to sleep and one... It's pretty weird. She thinks they're dolphins or something.

Again, she thinks it's deep, but everyone understands we have different components of our personality, different traits, different interior beliefs and different aspects of our personality that I guess you could define as being multiple persons inside yourself. That doesn't mean you are multiple persons. It just means you are a broad, complex human being. She read one article on neuroscience and considered herself to be a fucking leading expert is what I'm reading out of this. Ha ha ha!

It's like, I get it. It's not that deep. Just because you call it cuneohemispheric sleep, it's not that deep. Anyway.

Probably the earliest known case of someone succumbing to Lasoda's beliefs is a person named Maya Pasek, who around this time in the story, which was back in 2018, they committed suicide. They connected after Maya commented on Lasoda's blog. Originally, Maya's name was Chris Palek, or Pasek, sorry. But later, as Maya... But...

later communicated as Maya when they realized the left side of their brain identified as a male who they named Shine and the right side of their brain identified as a female who they named Maya. Lasoda reached out to this commenter and they began to talk back and forth. Maya began to practice Lasoda's hemispheric sleeping in an effort to debuck it, as Ziz calls it, her twin personhood.

It's just, this is... So what is it like to kill the one side you don't want? No, I think it's just to better understand them. Yeah, just to better understand them. It sounds like fucking severance, dude. It sounds like severance. It's like when they go from their innies to their outies. That's what it almost sounds like. Yeah. That's what they're going for. You're right.

This led her into, this led Chris, or Maya, sorry, into sleep deprivation. On the 27th of February, 2018, Maya wrote a blog on her personal blog, which was titled Squirrel in Hell. The blog post was titled Decision Theory and Sleep, where she starts the blog by saying, quote, if I commit or spend my life on some altruistic pursuit too hastily, I wish to have pre-registered my suicide and also to have made it clear that it was not a fluke accident failure of rationality.

I mean, there's always a failure of rationality, in my opinion. I don't know if that's a hot take or not, but... She pre-ordered her stuff at times? Like, what the fuck? And also made it clear that it was not a fluke. I mean, I don't want to say it's like, oh, it's just people giving up. That almost seems too cold of a take, but generally speaking, it's like...

I feel like anybody can be talked off a ledge, you know? Like you said, it's like a failure of rationality. It's like, generally you'll see it. It's like with people who like lose their jobs. Like if you go to like an Asian country, like you lost your job. Oh my God. I'm like, I literally don't know how to live. I might choose to myself. Right. So it's people that are often very smart. They're at the edge. Talking them down is pretty easy. I feel like, again, when you add in the fact that they're going into a sleep deprived state, they're being like fucking,

They're not being challenged, you know? Like, their irrationality is being rewarded by this group. Yes. And that's what leads to them, you know...

It's on that, on that, on your anecdote there, I did want to say that it was very funny to me researching this, that their idea of becoming more rational involved making themselves as irrational or putting them into a state of irrationality in of itself, like being in these sleep deprived states, their idea of becoming rational was in fact to make themselves irrational. Like that is just, that is so like,

It beautifully sums up the entire movement, really, in how little sense it makes. It's crazy to me. But yeah, like you said, failure of rationality. There are very few situations where I think

is the rational option. And all of those involve like terminal illness or something like that, where there legitimately is no path forward without pain and suffering. Like, sure. You could rationalize it then, uh, every other situation. Like it's such a binary thing to me. Like if you continue to stay alive, there is a chance that things will get better in most situations. So why would you not take that chance? Regardless. Yeah.

Regardless, this blog was written and then basically she committed suicide not long after posting at approximately age 28. And while there was no kind of blame pointed at Lasoda, it has since kind of been viewed to have been...

impacted by Lasoda's manipulation. Yeah, influential, I would say. When you consider that they were in active communication when Lasoda was kind of using these unihemispheric teachings to put her in these vulnerable states. Yeah, I mean, it can't be good for your mental health. Imagine if your circle of friends convinced you into...

That's such a... I can't believe these people exist. That's so dark, isn't it? Maybe not convinced you into it. Maybe not convinced you into it. But they didn't walk you away, right? They didn't walk you away. It's like, yeah, that makes sense. Go for it. Put you in the environment where it was the logical outcome, right? Where it was the logical outcome. Whoa. Imagine inhabiting their head spaces.

Oh my God. Well, there'd be two sides of it. Yeah. Two sides. Yeah, you're right. Right now, right now, so far we know six people, not just three. We know six total. So to describe Ziz's hemisphere belief system, I have a quote here from the Zizians.info website, which is kind of like a website that was created to house all of the information on this from an outside source, like people critical of the Zizian movement.

This quote says... It's the Quran of the modern age, some would say. Yeah. New Testament 2.0. Quote, Ziz believes there are two kinds of core, good and non-good.

Damn. And you said that there wasn't a religious text, Jackson. They figured it all out. Finally. Ragnarok for not making things simple. Dude, it's like 1984. It's like the non-good good. Yeah, that's what it reminded me of too. It's like, why don't you call it double good and negative good? Good and double good. Exactly.

Good and good minus. Minus. Yeah.

Alright, so Ziz believes there are two kinds of core. Good and non-good. Non-good cores are the most common, which is about 95% of the population. A non-good core is one that only grants full agency when dealing with issues of self-survival or protecting offspring. This is enforced by a filter that only unlocks full agency when it detects those objects in a situation. Sometimes this filter breaks, producing a good core.

Because people have two cores, there are three basic alignments. Non-good, single-good, and double-good. They've got it! Yes, they've got a double-good. Well done.

This is fiction. This is a fictional universe. Single good is about 5% of the population having one broken core, which allows limited altruistic agency. This seems to believe the probability of cause breaking is independent. That means the double good alignment only occurs in one fourth of 1% of people. This

This is important because double goods are the only people who can have full altruistic agency in Ziz's worldview. So I'll break this down again. So this is like another cult, another thing that leads into the cult-like behavior of this group is that

She's basically saying, using my unihemispheric teachings, I can turn you into a double good aligned person, which means that you are in the top 0.5% of the people or population who can...

actually enact good. Basically, I can turn you into a superhero or a good person. You just have to follow my teachings. So they are, in a way, turning themselves, Ziz is turning themselves into a Messiah-like figure, which is important in the context of a cult, right? They need to be revered, and they need to make the followers believe that they are truly special people. There needs to be somebody that can apply the level-ups. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And...

And they can make you believe that you are the main character or someone special. Again, this aligns with cult-like ideology and behavior. Yes, it does. 100%.

Okay, so Lasoda helped create a group called the Rationalist Fleet, which was a project designed to help other rationalists find housing on the sea. She purchased her own boat, another boat called the Caleb, that she got for a good price in Alaska. She made a Facebook post calling for others to join the journey from Alaska to San Francisco, which was a 1500 mile or 2414 kilometer journey. It was not smooth sailing. Jesus Christ. What an Alaskan barge. Christ.

Christ. Something that was probably used to catch crabs in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. Yeah, I mean, just scroll down. You can see the picture of it. You can see the picture of the boat. It's not a good boat. It's covered in barracuda and shit. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay, yeah, sorry. I was just reading the thing there. I was just like, Jesus Christ, if that is not sinking and that's what boats look like, holy fuck.

I'm telling you it was not the SSN dude it was definitely not there it was not good picture will be on screen and a reminder we've got video on Spotify now as well so you can see it there as well

They set off from Ketchikan and made it down to Pillar Point Harbor, but the boat was providing too many problems with passing sailors, even reporting the boat was unsafe to authorities. They continued on, however, living on this boat in Pillar Point Harbor, just south of San Francisco for quite a time. Very rational thing to do, by the way. Totally. It was less living on it and more like it was marooned. I don't think they could move the boat at that point. It was pretty, pretty

Oh yeah, they had a whole lawsuit. We'll get to it later. But yeah, it's not a good sign to be in San Francisco Bay. No.

So eventually Lesotho sold her stake in the Caleb in 2021. And by the following year, the boat was abandoned, sinking into the waters where it still sits, which is pretty funny considering they are like, this group is staunch environmentalists, basically like they believe in the greater good, they're vegans and such. And yet they basically just let this boat sink. Yeah. Probably create an environmental and ecological problem.

Yeah, they created a mini oil spill. That's what they did. And then left. They had to put the big shell around it like Metal Gear Solid. Holy shit, what a hunk of crap. Like Muda said a second ago, there was a lawsuit that was levied against the Caleb and its fleet of brave admirals. The quote is...

A fleet of admirals. God, sorry. It's fucking hilarious. It's so good. And so what all of the sailors going past and saying that this was not seaworthy. These are quote non-good people, are they? They're testing your faith? Just imagine being like a crap fisher from Alaska and you just see the shit fucking like pedal past you on its way to San Francisco. Yeah, we're going to San Francisco. Yeah.

You'd immediately know that it was held by double good people so you'd feel safe. Exactly. Don't see many of you on these high seas. Mostly filled with non-good pirates. These guys are awesome.

This quote is from the lawsuit and it says the Caleb is unseaworthy and is not reasonably capable of being made fit to be used as a means of transportation by water as evidence by sinking. Pretty ironclad lawsuit if I do say so myself. Surely you don't need to adjourn.

In its current state and position, the Caleb presents a danger to navigation, health, safety, and the environment. So don't take it from me. They did negatively impact the environment. I wish I actually went to law school. No, like, honestly, like, it's episodes like this. Like, it's stuff like this that makes me wish I actually could afford law school and, like, go to it. Because I wish I could be a judge. And then, like, just imagine getting to wake up, going to the courtroom, and then this is presented. Okay.

I'd be the happiest judge ever like I don't have to cover any like crazy drama or something like that like murders or rapes like they just come up and tell that's a different judge I get to preside over like the fucking Caleb this aspect of the story would be a fun component to judge or preside over for sure

Lasoda's beliefs were evolving and changing and she was now completely moving away from rationalism. Believe it or not, this isn't the most rationalist set of events. But, you know, she's...

She still thought of herself as a rationalist, just an offset, but essentially she broke from the core rationalist movement and became a detractor. Remaining steadfast in her beliefs about human consciousness and the differences in both sides of the brain's hemispheres being different, she spread to fierce political and ethical stances such as radical veganism. And I mean radical veganism. What is radical veganism? What does that even mean?

I mean, it's just really cool. Like, what do they have, like a jihad against, like, meat? Like, what the fuck? I mean, yeah, I mean, like, I'm guessing radical veganism is taking it to its most extreme form.

Of basically like everyone who doesn't subscribe to veganism or doesn't, you know, be a part of that lifestyle or that choice is an enemy. Not just they're making their own choices or whatever. They are a legitimate enemy who is negatively impacting the world and making it worse and therefore should be treated as such.

In addition to that, when it came to AI, which was already a big topic in the rationalist movement as they wanted and advocated for morality to be programmed in, Lesotho instead came to the conclusion that the eventual takeover of AI would be powerful and inevitable, and AI safety groups were weak and were simply wishful thinkers when they believed that morality could just be coded in.

I mean, to be fair, I kind of agree with that, honestly. I do think that the AI safety groups... Yeah, I agree with that, for sure. And that's the thing with this cult, too. It's like, when I was first researching it, there were a couple of their beliefs that I'm like, oh, yeah, I mean, this makes sense. But then, like, if you really think about it, it's like, who doesn't?

believe that in every like you know what i mean like anytime the topic of ai comes up we always talk about like how do we safeguard it how do we put it on rails you know how do we make sure that you know we're not giving people prompts with misinformation or possible like you know something that could be really dangerous so it's like it sounds like a good belief to have but like you know if you really like if you really just think about it on its own it's like

It's really not all that profound. It's like, yeah, everyone kind of believes that. Everyone. It's like, you don't need this lifestyle to advocate for safe artificial intelligence. Everyone already kind of agrees there. To put it in terms that Lasoda probably also put it, it's kind of like Skynet from Terminator. Everyone understands the implications of what could potentially happen with artificial intelligence.

It's not always going to be just funny chat GPT prompts and funny generated imagery. If we're talking about reaching the point where artificial intelligence does become sentient, then it does open that kind of can of worms where

you know, it does become very terrifying. I mean, yeah, you know, when we're talking about, like, AI in the sense, like, you know, obviously, it's, for some people, they look at it like, oh, generative AI, chat GPT memes, like, images, whatever, like, Studio Ghibli crap, but, like, we've, like, when I think about, like, dangerous AI uses, I think of, like, oh, what about using AI to, like,

where you launch a predator missile at, right? Or use like AI in conjunction with like medical data to see who you deny coverage to or who you give premiums to, right? Or even just broadly, even just broadly, like currently speaking, like you were talking, I can't remember if we said it on the air or not, but again, that Reddit thing

The subreddit, yeah, the Change My View. It's like using it to modify human behavior. Human behavior, yeah. You know, use misinformation to change people's psychology. Blackmail as well, of course, there's ethical issues with generating nude images of real people, things like that. It's already a can of worms and it's only going to get worse. Yeah, I mean, we've had cases where I think it was literally this year or last year, I

you have the United States DOJ like going at people, putting them into jail for like 20 years because they've been generating child pornography, right? Like AI generated stuff. Good. Not good that they're generating, good that they're generating. No, no, that was your words, Jackson. You can't go back on it. Don't take it out. No,

Now we're using it as input. Very bad. Now you're done, Jackson. You are done. I've been foiled by AI. But it's like, you look at stuff like that and it's like, you know, people have this really generic response of like, well, it's not like actual real children. And I'm like, no,

but it's using real training data. It's using disgusting... You know what I mean? There's no way to rationalize it. I'm so tired of arguing with people like that online, like lolly fans and stuff. I just can't anymore. Watch the hat, man. It's not a real key. It's like you come across people who say that and it's like...

It's like, you don't understand how dangerous it can be. Like forget, take the child aspect out of it. Like porn of anybody without their consent. Right. It's such an evil way to go down because it's like, imagine like the amount of jobs you can take away from people. Right. Like let's say you get like a job at a law firm or something like as a woman or a guy. And then like all of a sudden, like somebody's SEO like,

AI generated porn of you. It's like, even if it is AI generated, no company is going to want to want that. And it's like, there's so many, there's like, when I think of generative AI or AI in general, like for every good that I can think of it, I can think of a hundred bad uses of it.

And, like, looking at, like, the Zizian cult, it's, like, it's an altruistic way to believe, like, we should police AI. But I think, like, in the reality of it, it's, like, I think a lot of the biggest companies right now, ChatGPT, like, XAI, like, the guys who run Grok and all that stuff, I think they're already thinking of these way ahead of, like, us even, right? Yeah.

Well, yeah. I would hope so. Yeah. Well, I think it's one of the reasons why you haven't seen some of the most mainstream AIs being used for really evil stuff. Most of the time you see people using AI for bad stuff. They usually went to an open source model and they took away the guardrails out of it. And now it's being repurposed in a local fashion to do some really evil stuff.

But so far, it's not easy for somebody to download ChatGPT on their iPhone and put in a jailbreak prompt and then generate the most evil shit. So far, at least. But yeah, it's a good thing to worry about. Do you need to be a rationalist? No, no. It's a completely rational thing to worry about, 100%. It's going to have severe consequences for society.

But this belief that artificial intelligence was inevitable and all-powerful would become all-encompassing and the idea began to turn violent as Lasoda began to believe the concept to be an existential threat.

Due to the belief that artificial intelligence was already an existential threat, force was justified against anyone who would dare to stop them. Due to this, Lasoda's movement was becoming an action-orientated movement, moving away from being just online. Just to be clear, Lasoda was pro-artificial intelligence, but only so far as she believed that humanity needed to evolve first...

to move beyond the fractured two minds that she believed humanity had. And she believed artificial intelligence would just mirror one half of human nature. And if this fractured still existed, artificial intelligence would take the worst form of humanity. So here we go, taking a rational idea and in the concept of extreme rationality made it as irrational as you could possibly get, I think. Like turning it insane. Yeah.

Like, God damn it. Because people are, like, truly, like, unhinged people. Like, there's no succinct way to put it. It's like, I feel like she watched Terminator 2 Judgment Day once, and it's all over. Like, all she looks at chat GPT is just, like, walking Arnold Schwarzenegger's, like, T-1000s and shit, blowing the world up. Don't you think that that is always the sign of somebody who is...

I can't put my finger on whether they're stupid or insane, but somebody who thinks... I mean, look, their entire identity is just around the entire premise of I see the world rationally. And the fact that even before up in the text...

I was talking about the fact that, you know, non-biased people, non-biased intelligent people, sorry, are going to somehow lead us to some new utopia. Don't you think anybody that has this opinion of, I see the world completely objectively...

And everybody else is biased except me. I'm the only one that isn't biased. And everybody that agrees with me coincidentally is also not biased. But as soon as they don't agree with me, all of a sudden they're not rational. You know, like that type of mentality endlessly freaks me out.

anybody with that type of I mean that's just like cult stuff in general right it's like the moment you have some sort of division in discord it's like they will not allow that to happen it's like when we talked about earlier if you had a server of a hundred people for instance right

And it's like in the hundred, like, like 80 people are telling you you're a psychotic person, but then you just like blow them away. You're like, all right, I don't want to listen to you. I'm going to go to listen to just 20 other people. This is it. Like they're breeding themselves into a place where there is no division. There is no discord. It's only further and further extremism. And it's taking what rational beliefs really are. And like, you know, using the most irrational ways to like justify or like,

But it's just very strange to me. Like, yeah, I get the, I get like, you know, kind of condensing yourself into a little cult. Yeah. Cause I think everybody does do that to some degree. Obviously these guys have taken it to the nth, but it's also just this idea that, I don't know. It's just like, I feel like a truly sane human being is able to sit there and think like, yeah, my brain is a house of mirrors. I have a bunch of distortions in my own head.

And so not everything that I'm seeing in the real world is actually how it is. You know? I don't know. I always find that like insane people just don't have that at all. They just have that level of belief. That's what makes them insane. Don't you think that is what makes them insane? Yeah. I mean, that is legitimately what makes them insane. That's the definition of them being insane. Like not being able to pass reality. Jesus Christ. I'm just like, what is now? Yeah.

What did you think insanity was? It's just like, well, I just thought that somebody who was insane just had like no concept of reality at all. But it seems like... Was your definition of insanity literally just doing the same thing over and over again? Like you just believe that buzz... Oh, no, I hate that cliche so much. It's just always the thing that someone in an office says that isn't interesting. You guys just take it for a cry. You guys just say fuck, right? Three, get out of here. That's back when it was cool.

That's back when Ubisoft cared. Yeah. And then they literally became insane by doing the exact same thing over and over again. Got him. Actually, yeah, dude. Like, they took it really seriously.

All right. So, yeah, as an example of Lasoda's movement becoming more action orientated, Lasoda took an idea that the rationalists believed in, the other rationalists, this being the timeless decision theory and adjusted it in a very dark way. The theory is based on, quote, not merely making decisions that tend to give you the best immediate outcome. You should follow decision-making principles that, when followed, tend to lead you to the best outcomes, even if it means making some optimal in-the-moment decisions sometimes.

Lasoda used this concept to rationalize violence, with the belief being that performing an act of violence today could prevent suffering or something bad in the future or a different timeline, thus the violence was required in of itself. This violence was always justifiable if you considered the future possibilities, with the justification even extending to murder. This is also called moral consequentialism and is simply the idea that an action's morality is determined by its outcomes.

Killing one person to save a million lives is justifiable. I mean, you've heard this a million times. Yeah, it's like the train track. Yeah, the train track. It's all the tropes. It's the baby Hitler. The baby Hitler one, yeah. We've heard it all before. And of course, if you hyper-focus on that concept and believe it,

to be true, then yes, if you believe a certain outcome is guaranteed, if life continues in this direction, then of course everything is justifiable. If you truly believe that people eating meat is going to cause the extinction of the human race and the only way of preventing that from happening is murdering every meat-eating person, then you can justify that in your brain. But you are clearly insane if you're doing that.

Because murdering people is an insane act. Isn't it always weird that it always moves to like, wouldn't you kill baby Hitler? Where it's like, well, if you're going back in time at any point, wouldn't you just go to that VNN art school that he was trying to get into and then just be like, just let him pass, you know?

Yeah. And then you wouldn't have to kill him. Yeah, like, actually, it's a million different. It's a type of person that won't. That's a good point, actually. Yeah, it's like, why would you want to kill a fucking baby? Yeah, why would you want to do that? Why would you do it? I'm looking for an excuse.

Yeah, like let him graduate the fucking art school so he can make a shitty like drawings. Like who cares? Then it's like everyone lives. Or there has to be. And you just get one shitty art school. I want to see if we got better drawing windows. I really want to know that. They call themselves altruists because it makes them feel good. But it always goes back to killing or killing babies. Surely there is an altruistic outcome where you don't have to shed blood and you can still get the outcome that you want. Don't you reckon?

Yeah, they always just bring it to that. Yeah, why can't you go back in time? Even if you don't want to pass him from art school because you care about art so much, go back to when he was a kid and go to those pivotal times and change him from, you know... Or better yet, just shoot him when he was in the party, like the Nazi party. When he's already committed his crime. Blow his brains out. Like, what the fuck? Goddamn. It's so dumb.

The most innocent point. Yeah, it's like the baby is actually innocent. Literally. Yeah, kind of similar like you just want to kill a baby to be honest. That's not altruistic. That's fucked up. And also like what's stopping you from doing it now? Just going down to the water, just shooting a baby in the head and be like, you don't understand. That was Hitler too. I just did the world a favor. I could tell.

imagine going back in time putting shooting a fucking baby in a ward and then pretending to be the good guy yeah don't worry even in that ward over in like you've just killed a baby and the nurses come running up being like what the fuck you're like don't worry it's okay yeah i don't understand what this baby was gonna do if i told you it would blow your mind i feel like what we just talked about is like it's like it's like it's like

It's like, think about it, like, from a Terminator perspective, right? It's like, why the fuck would the T-1000 have to go all the way back to when John was, like, fucking, what, 15, 16? Yeah. And he was able to run away? Why the fuck didn't they try and travel 15 more years back and just shoot the fucking pregnant mom? I don't know.

Oh my God. That's such a dumb story. The mom was innocent in their eyes. Like giving birth to Hitler. Isn't yeah. Isn't bad. What's the T1000 had more empathy than these guys. Yeah.

Yeah, like, hold on. You're telling me Skynet... Yeah, unironically, Skynet was like, maybe you don't want to fucking kill a baby, but maybe when it's like 18... We're not that fucked. Yeah. It's like the ones... These ultimate beads of rationality came to the conclusion, maybe we shouldn't kill a baby. To be fair, we're dunking on rationalists who believe the baby or, you know,

you know, spend time thinking about that concept. Lesota and their group, I don't think, I didn't see any, anywhere where they said that they should go kill babies. I just want to make that clear. Oh, right. Yes, yes. No, we're just making fun of other people now. I didn't realize. Yeah. Fair enough.

They've never talked about babies. I don't know. It's just like, it's such a trope. Like you've just, oh my God. Like, don't you reckon like every debate nerd online, it always leads back to that. Huh? Yeah. It's just tired. It's tired. It's old. Thought process is very tired. Come up with another way to kill babies. Huh?

To rationalize killing baby, sorry. It's so fucking dumb, the more you just think about it. It's so dumb. It's like, why are you going back in time to shoot the baby, bro? Like, wait a minute.

Honestly, you said it the best. Just pass him an art school. If I could go back in time, go to the fucking college and be like, you know what? Let it happen. It's not like he's going to become a doctor. It's not like he's becoming a surgeon or some shit or a lawyer or a fucking engineer. He's not designing something of value. He's just drawing fucking windows. So let the guy draw windows. What the fuck? Like...

You can go back with like, you know, just go back with a newspaper. It's like, listen, there's 12 million people that are about to die. More than that, okay? Like, you're about to have crazy death camps in Germany. Okay, this guy's about to make the craziest ideology. Just let him draw. Like, do you want all this? Like, seriously. Yeah, I mean, the swastika is still just a poorly attempted window. He's still trying to do it there. Like, he wants to fucking draw windows. That was his Dharma in life, and it was robbed of him. And this is what happens when you do it.

All right. So back to moral consequentialism, the logical issue that stems from that is that mentally ill people can justify an infinite level of violence from one illogical assumption. I want to make that abundantly clear. That is the main issue with it. It's because your inherent biases or your inherent mental illnesses can affect how you, uh,

view things which can lead you to justifying a lot of deplorable things case in point early in 2010 a user on the less wrong forum posited the theory that an ai super intelligence who may otherwise be benevolent could theoretically punish all those who had known of its existence but did not help its creation or development as a way of incentivizing its creation itself

This theory was called Rocco's Basilisk, named after the user and the mythological creature capable of destroying enemies with its stairs.

It's also from Harry Potter. There's a basilisk in Harry Potter. I don't know if that was connected, but I wanted to make that observation that everything comes back to Harry Potter. It's like in the future when there's going to be the world's most evil billionaire, and then you ask him, it's like, what was your inspirations? Like, that Saburo Arasaka guy from Cyberpunk 2077. That's the reason I became so evil. That's my inspiration.

Lasoda found that she was incapable of not thinking about the other basilisks that might be out there, and as such, she came to believe that for knowing the information she knew, she would need to try to save the world lest she be tortured until the end of the universe by AI that sought to punish her for not helping. This rationalization, as she put it, that, quote,

Again, based off an illogical assumption.

or an irrational assumption, I guess I should say. So that is just the core point here is that this one person, Lesota, made an illogical rationalization that led to a lot of violence stemming from that due to believing that this was, you know,

the end times essentially like this had to happen I need to fight up again fight against this thing that may or may not exist because if I don't then I'm dooming myself to a life of eternal torture essentially at the hands of an AI that doesn't exist yet Jesus I mean just yeah broadly speaking insane

In mid-November of 2019, Lesotho finally took the step into real-world activism when they showed up and protested at Westminster Woods, which was a children's camp in California, which is described as, quote, a sanctuary for transformative experiences. Kind of like one of those hippie camps, it sounds like. Yeah. Where a gathering for the Center for Applied Rationality was being held. The Center for Applied Rationality is a non-profit organization based around workshopping rationality and cognitive bias. Another...

brainchild of that the founder of the less wrong.com website i believe so they were they were actively warring basically with the less wrong uh group at this point in time for not going far enough basically

The Zizians, particularly Lesota, fundamentally disagreed with CFAR's assumptions about human nature and the role of rationality in decision-making. In particular, CIFAR promoted the idea that humans can and should train themselves to think more rationally. The Zizians believed this was dangerously naive, as to them, rationality was not a neutral tool but a cultural weapon. It had to be earned and used through the Zizian system.

Brain separation tactic. God damn. Actual Reddit behavior. God damn.

The fundamental philosophical disagreement isn't really important to explore in detail. And it is also very confusing. And I felt my brain cells dying trying to read it. So I'm not even going to bother. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, there's no point. It's like trying to decipher, you know, the ranting of a crazy person on the side of the street. Basically. It's like, do I have to? Yes. You understand. Yeah.

But as we explored before, they had the innate instability required to perceive even this externally minor disagreement between like-minded groups to some degree as something that could bring about great damage to humanity and as such, anything was permissible, even violence.

A call was made to 911 alerting them that the protest had blocked the front of the entrance and exit with their cars when the protesters then set down in Black Roads in Guy Fawkes masks. Oh, so cool. It is so Reddit. So epic. Man, they were really at the fulcrums of history there, weren't they, guys? Oh, man.

You know, I'm actually, you said it earlier. So isn't it great that like these people just were incompetent because like just the paragraph below the above, right? When we talk about like how, you know, they're great to like anything is permissible, even violence. It's almost like the same kind of rhetoric that like fundamental terrorist organizations use when they're recruiting people. It's like, why, why is it okay to kill somebody? Well, it's because, you know, violence is okay. These are our beliefs. Our violence is a necessity, you know?

Yeah, it's like it's a tool. It's a necessity. It's not something we want to do. It's what we have to do.

Except in this situation, like, actual fundamental terror groups, some of them are very capable. Yeah. These guys are just redditors, so thankfully, because of their own incompetences, actually didn't go... I mean, it still claimed... It still claimed lives. But at least it's not like a... But it could have been far worse. If they were as intelligent as they thought they were, you know? Yes. Can you imagine the damage they could have... This could have been, like, if they were really, like...

forward thinking and not insane, this could have been another one of those cults that goes on to recruit thousands and thousands of members and ends up in a mass suicide event like Jonestown, basically. Or just killing people actively in the streets kind of situation. It could have been a horrifying example. It's an amazing example of natural selection, isn't it? It's just, if you were...

Quote-unquote rational enough to do what they were trying to do, the species would end. And as a result of that, they kind of just meet this equilibrium where they kind of just do these small little, I guess, biological experiments that just fizzle out. It doesn't end in anything. It's actually quite interesting. Yeah.

Yeah, I've never even thought about that before, but that sort of like cartoony supervillain person, as in, you know, evil acts, I suppose, happen, but they kind of happen almost by accident. You know, there's no one out there that just like has this type of set of beliefs that ever really makes it to this grandiose level, you know? Yeah. You just can't do it. Usually like acts of passion and different things like that, almost impulsive. But when you're operating on this kind of...

this reddit score uh no shade to the redditors i i use reddit when i say redditor we all know who we're talking of we all know the kind of person we're talking of people that live their lives we can all smell that person oh yeah yeah

Smell is a bit of work to know. You're right. There were actually two gatherings held that day at Westminster Woods, and the other camp was a group of 19 elementary school kids who were using the grounds for a school program. I believe it was a ropes course. The close proximity of the protest to a camp full of children immediately raised the stakes with the police, especially when they were told that one of the protesters had a gun. We know the group consisted of at least four individuals, Lasota, Danielson, as well as two other individuals who are known

now name, Emma Bohanian and Alexander Leatham or Leatham.

And then there's a quote here from the sheriff who says, quote, so at the time, I'm thinking it's one of two things, Parks says. Parks is the sheriff. Is this going to be an active killer or is this going to be a hostage standoff? End quote. The group was handing out printed flyers that contained messages condemning rationalists for criticizing their efforts with AI and morality as being doomed. Anyone who didn't want to consider their side was presented as part of the problem. Sergeant Brian Parks of the Sonoma County

county sheriff's office called in a SWAT team who evacuated all the children and teachers who had sheltered in a nearby building on that property eventually all four individuals were caught and handcuffed the reports of a gun had been false but they were found with a can of pepper spray body cameras and walkie talkies i believe if i'm recalling correctly in my research the the report of the gun had actually been a man with a hatchet who was a maintenance guy at the uh

at the camp who had armed himself in defense in case anything went wrong so that's where that report came from regardless they didn't have a gun but they were definitely there to protest and menace this other group of people I think the children being there was not on purpose yeah probably got the that's probably what sparked the SWAT team and the police response which is probably the right response for sure

Each of the four were facing felony suspicions of child endangerment, false imprisonment, conspiracy, misdemeanor resisting arrest, and wearing a mask while committing a crime, as well as a charge of trespassing. They did not cooperate with the authorities, refusing to give them any identifying information, so the police instead resorted to fingerprint identification. Their charges were changed to misdemeanors... You know they dropped that sovereign citizen shit on every single one of those cops 100%, dude. 100%.

I wish I could see the body cam footage for that. I'm sorry. Oh, totally. Wouldn't it be great? I actually didn't see if that existed. It might. I'm not sure. Maybe, maybe, actually, maybe it doesn't exist because they're holding it for the court trials. Not sure.

Their charges were changed in misdemeanors and those who once greeted them within the rationalist community turned against them now. A website was even made by rationalists outlining the group, their beliefs, and their manipulations, which I've already read from before. This website served as a collective history of the Zizians, as well as a warning for those who may easily be swayed by them or by Lesoda. And there were quite a few Zizians at this point in time, like due to their incessant posting online and their kind of advertising of their beliefs,

It's estimated that the amount of people that would kind of fall into this group would have been in the hundreds. The legal proceedings were delayed. Yes, hundreds of people kind of like circled this group, but like there was definitely a smaller hardcore fanatics. Yeah, it's not like there were hundreds of people on a cult compound somewhere. No, no, no, no. It's more like there were maybe like 10 people.

Well, we don't know yet. I mean, the legal proceedings have to go through for us to really know. I'm still hot off the press. Okay.

Yeah, it's very hot off the press. The legal proceedings were delayed numerous times as Lasoda made requests like his lawyer must be vegan. Oh, sorry, her lawyer must be vegan. We have the picture here from top left to bottom right on screen right now of all four of these individuals. Alexander Leak. Look at him. Latham. Latham in the top left. Gwen Danielson in the top right. Jack Ziesler-Soda in the bottom left. And Emma Bohanian in the bottom right. All right, guys, guys, guys. You know.

Top to bottom, who's the scariest? Emma Bohanian freaks the shit out of me. Really? Bottom right for you. Bottom right. I mean, yes, obviously the pockmarked guy at the front. You know, I don't really want to have a chat with him about existentialism. Let's put it that way. But...

But what do you reckon? Who's your top pick? I think Gwen Danielson. She's definitely the scariest. Look at the eyes. Just look at the amount of fear that would instill. If you were to see that, if you were to stand across that, she's looking like a Resident Evil character in front of me. It's very interesting that each of us chose... Each of us chose a different person, which is really fascinating to me, and none of us chose the actual ringleader.

The ringleader looks the most put together. Who'd have guessed? There you go. The Johnny Knoxville of the crew, you know? I wonder what that says, though. That's very interesting. What do you mean? Why? Each of us chose a different person. It's just, I don't know what that means. I just find it interesting that we each chose a different person and the person who is the ringleader and the most...

the cult leader is the one that we were least likely to pinpoint as being the most off-putting. You know why? I think it probably is because the other three have that sort of unconscious follower look about them. Maybe that we're picking up on where it's like, they will do anything. They're doing the quote unquote, just following orders thing. And that's always a lot scarier than someone who's a bit conscious about what they're doing. Yeah. The ring leader almost has a look of like, just a confidence to them. Yeah. Like they're, you know,

I think they probably look the least greasy, which is kind of nice. True that. Yeah. Top left for me, absolutely. It looks like they'd be able to pick me up with one hand and break my neck in one motion, basically. Like, terrifying. It is weird, isn't it? Like an ogre-ish, brutish geek. It's a strange combination, isn't it?

And it's the eyes for me again. The eyes on the right, the top right and the bottom right, definitely look very off-putting. But it's this sunken kind of eye where they can't even look up at you almost. There's deep evil. None of these people have seen a shower ever, dude. I don't know. It's terrifying. Imagine being on the tiny boat with them. And also the boat didn't look like it smelled great beforehand, hey? That's what I'm saying. And it stunk more. Huh? Yeah.

I said it had to be awful on those boats. It must have been because, yeah, it would have been the combination of that really chat smell of baked going off seafood would have been the main smell of that boat beforehand and mixed with petrol because the engine would have just been straight in your face. Would have been old. And then you've combined that with the smell of like, you know, old Doritos and sweat. Yeah, just sweat and unwashed hair and...

You know, these people are going to make some amazing pirates if you sent them out to like the other side of the world with their little ship. Why are insane people always nodding to bathing? That's a weird one, isn't it? Because generally they are pretty insane for not bathing, huh? They don't tend to have the best habits. It's a chicken or the egg situation, isn't it? You see, like bathing is a rational thing for human beings to do. They're not very rational, are they? Yeah.

Guys, I think that we've found some question marks on their rationality so far. I'm going to say that. Yeah, I'm starting to think these guys aren't the most rational. But then again, we've also put this to the side. Maybe they're so rational that we don't get them. That's also possible. Yeah, this is just humour that we're not able to understand. LAUGHTER

You really have to have a high IQ to understand what not bathing is like. I need it in the format of a Rick and Morty episode and then I'd understand it. Literally. Oh, man. I hate it, though. I hate that they would be actually that level of condescending where they do believe that they're operating on a different wavelength and that you, myself, and everyone else are idiots. Yeah, well, remember, we're just like...

We're like, we're like, what are they? We're not, we're not, we're not double good. We're like, what are we? We're non-good. We're non-good. We're non-good. How dare they? Non-goods just don't understand what it's like to be a good. Double good, even. In their ideology, is the ringleader the only double good, or are these other three double goods as well? No, through their unihemispheric teaching, everyone is able to become double good. Everyone is able to become double good, but have these guys reached such dizzying heights?

I'm assuming they're in training and that's why they're so closely along. It's like Scientology. Once your card's been charged enough, you can reach the higher levels. We don't know the full extent of how the cult was operating at this point because, again, it's an evolving story currently. We don't have all the information available to us. It's basically all sourced off of

the blog posts and secondhand testimony. None of the people within the cult have really shared stories yet, so we don't know for sure. But if it operated like any other cult usually does, these people would have been strung along by these teachings and saying, you've got to keep training, you've got to keep following my word and keep doing...

what I say basically for both our belief system to stop the dark future from happening, but also to unlock your full potential and become a double good. Like that would have been the strategy I would have to assume. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Just to go back briefly, my fiancee, Kira, who's usually on the episode, but she's not at the moment, but she is the researcher for the document, document link below in the description. But also she also said when we were researching, she turned around to me and said,

This person is terrifying. And it was a picture of the top left person. Like, her as a woman, I just want to get the female insight out there. She would have chosen the top left person as the most terrifying individual here, visually. Visually, yeah, totally. Visually. All right, so the group finding the attention aggravating began to seek a private living area away from priving eyes. And after the sinking of the Caleb, they wanted it on land. There was a man they had met before...

That might be the most rational thing they've done. It is rational, yeah. It's not working out on the high seas. Let's bring our ship into harbour, into port, see what we can find. The most rational decision ever would just be never to go out onto the ocean, right? Like, we're not mermaids. We are apes. Apes don't like the ocean.

There was a man they had met before that they reached out to by the name of Curtis Lind. Curtis Lind was an elderly gentleman around 80 years old. He was a boater, that is how he originally met Lesota, but he had sold his boat and moved to Vallejo, California, moving into a trailer park for his elderly years. It's very interesting. You guys haven't been on these episodes before, but there's a few connections here with previous episodes of Red Thread. Vallejo, California, that's where the Zodiac Killer operated quite

And we've done an episode on him, of course. And also the camp, that camp where they held the protest before, it's actually near the Bohemian Grove campgrounds, quite close to that. And we've done an episode on the Bohemian Grove before. If you're unfamiliar with Bohemian Grove, you can go watch that episode. But basically it is a camp for like ultra rich, wealthy people who...

apparently perform satanic rituals there. That's the online rumor and such. Interesting connection. Honestly, if I was a fucking multi-billionaire world-running dude, I'd do the craziest rituals just to fuck with you guys. Yeah, so would I. It brings up the beef. Instead of literally destroying the planet. Yeah. Yeah.

So Curtis had been described by the people in his life as always going out of his way to help those that needed it. The area he lived in was a safe space for artists and craftsmen who could use the land to set up little studio spaces. Lasoda told Curtis that they needed some space to work on their cars and regroup, and Curtis was happy to let them use his land. Very rational thing to do.

Yeah, I mean, he's just a nice old man, this guy. Like, I doubt he was thinking anything would happen, you know? Like, just a good dude. You think he looked at the guy at the top left and he was like, yeah. Yeah, that's actually, that's a good point. I mean, but that's... I suppose, man, if you were in a trailer park, though, there'd be a lot of guys that look like that.

True, yeah. I mean, honestly, like, if you smelled them enough, like, wouldn't that be, like, a sign? Yeah. Yeah, you'd have to say it. You can usually tell when people are not all mentally there.

At least to this level, it should have been visible. But still, a lot of people are still good people that will try to do good things for people, even in those situations. And Curtis, by the way, for watching, he's a great guy. He's a really good dude. And it gets really tragic with what unfortunately happened to him later in the story.

So, yeah, they needed some space to work on their cars and Curtis was happy to let them use his land. At first, everything was nice between them, with Curtis even helping them with things here and there. But this soon completely changed. The short-term stay that they were meant to be on his land for ended up lasting three years, with Curtis asking them to leave multiple times throughout the years. Oh, no.

The Zizians wouldn't budge bringing in even more people when it then became a full encampment, which I guess you could classify as a compound, a cult compound almost. They had previously paid rent but stopped. COVID hit and California had enacted a moratorium on evictions, which prevented tenants in hardship at this time from being evicted.

That's rough for Curtis. They continued to expand with trailers used by others being taken over and they grew increasingly violent and confrontational. This law protecting them during COVID didn't change until two years later and when it did, Curtis immediately filed to have them removed from the area. He also demanded $60,000 in rent.

This brings us back to August of 2022, when despite the conditions normally making it easy to find a missing person in the waters, La Soda disappeared from the boat during the night on the bay when she fell overboard. So I guess the conjecture there is that a, yeah, I mean, it's possible that she faked her death. No, faked her death to avoid these court cases, essentially, like this overdue rent and things like that.

Or maybe she died, Jordan. Maybe she died in that situation. I guess you're going to have to keep paying attention. Yeah. That's interesting. She could have actually literally chucked a Rory B. Bellows from The Simpsons. Dude, if you have a bunch of loan sharks chasing you, that is a rational decision to make.

I mean, honestly, you don't have the money. That might actually be the most rational, irrational sounding decision they've made. Yeah. If I was in that situation, I could see how that would look like a rational option. Yeah, totally.

All right, so the Zizians continued as a group, even with Lesota gone. They no longer had their leader, the person who thought for them, not fought, thought, remember they're rationalists, and gave them direction, and so naturally things began to descend into a spiral. The group continued to live on Curtis Lynn's land, but in November of that same year, he was finally able to get the sheriff involved to help finally evict them. The Zizians couldn't let that happen, and so they quickly devised a plan. The Zizians were able to get the sheriff involved,

Knowing that Curtis was a genuinely good man, they told him that there was a water leak. Predictably, he offered to help with the repair. When he got close, they attacked with multiple Zizi and stabbing him with kitchen knives. And in an act I can only describe as the most Reddit fucking sounding attack I think I've ever heard of.

One knife stabbed his eye while Leotham, who, if I recall correctly, yeah, was the top left person, by the way, the scariest looking one that we were talking about before, apparently stabbed Curtis, stabbed at him with a samurai sword, which injured him from shoulder to stomach. Of course it was a fucking samurai sword. Of course it was a samurai sword. Of course it was...

Oh my dude. I studied the blade. Fuck, I hate these people. I hate them. So yeah, the way that I read, he basically was stabbed from the shoulder

through to the stomach in an impalement kind of way like the sword was stuck in him from what I had best read. Lind had brought a gun with him Curtis Lind had brought a gun with him and he began to fire at the group shooting and killing Bohanian and wounding Lethem the scary one with

With a samurai sword. Imagine being a homicide detective and walking in that scene and just like... Dude, I'd be like, what the fuck? This is a very lame Kill Bill. Yeah.

No, like, you gotta walk in there like some fucking California detective, and, like, the first thing you see is, like, this goddamn samurai sword through a guy, gunshot going off and fucking wiping two vegan cultists. Like, how do you fucking write a report on this without, like, sounding insane, sounding irrational, dude? Sorry, peak rationality. Yeah, dude.

I'd honestly retire right there. I'd be like, there's no way I'll find a kiss that's more insane than this. This is one could go out on. A neighbor came out when he heard a knock at the door and was confronted with Curtis Lind barely standing, the samurai sword protruding from him, where all he could scream was, I'm dying. When the cops arrived, they arrested the other members of the Zizians, including Suri Dao, who reportedly was the one to lure Lind out from his trailer. Another, Julia Dawson,

So this is another Zizian. Julia Dawson was also taken back to the station, but was then transferred to the hospital where she managed to run away. Lind was severely injured, even losing an eye, but he survived eventually.

What a fucking Chad, dude. I can't believe an 80-year-old dies commonly from falling over and breaking their hips, and this guy got stabbed by a samurai sword, had his eye stabbed out, stabbed multiple times and still survived. That is fucking incredible. Yeah, and look at the photo of him there patting a horse with a cowboy hat on, eyeless. Yeah, actual hero. Frankly, I would prefer if he wore a pirate patch for the rest of his life, but it is still cool nonetheless.

It's baller, yeah. It's very baller. It's a crazy bar story, dude. Isn't it? It's like the best story ever. Very fucking frustrating to me that they let that other Zizian run away from the hospital. Surely they should have had her chained to that bed.

with handcuffs or something. How do you even get out of that situation? Yeah, I think I would have walked in as a cop and just straight shot to the head, dude. I'd be like, I'm not dealing with this anymore. You hurt Curtis. That's enough for me. I'd be like, listen, I don't know if this is LA. If I was the LAPD, I'm like, we're already known for police brutality. What's one more? Damn. You don't hurt Curtis Linden. Get away with it.

Lethan and Dao were arrested and charged with the attempted murder of Lind and felony murder of Bohanian, their fellow Zizian. So they got charged with that murder as well, even though they didn't directly murder them. The police deemed the entire violent situation was their fault and Lind was just acting in self-defense. So they got charged with their friend's murder. The other ongoing protest case ended up being dismissed as the charges had been on hold and the lawyer said he could no longer reach his clients. So I guess if...

They just ran away hard enough from that other sinking, boat sinking case that it just got dismissed because they never showed up, which is a joke. I guess...

I guess the thought process was we're hitting them with these charges anyway, so we may as well just dismiss those charges. I would have to assume that that would be the rationale. Yeah, it's like the people up in San Francisco haul the people down in Vallejo. It's like, yeah, we got some boat fucking people to take care of. Yeah, bring them over here. And then the Vallejo guys were like, let me tell you the story about the samurai sword for a second. LAUGHTER

I think your $5,000 fine or whatever you guys are going to eventually dish out against these guys is a bit trivial compared to potential life in prison. Yeah, San Francisco Police Department was just like, you know what? Yeah, you got it. Only the right decision, yeah.

So you might remember the name Emma Bohanian from when we first started on that boat out in the murky waters. She had been there with Lasoda and her sister. The police reached out to the Coast Guard to see if their missing person case had developed, but it hadn't. That's where the Vallejo police dropped a bombshell. The

The woman who had slipped away from the hospital, this so-called Julia Dawson, was actually Lasota. She had been living in Vallejo for the past six months, alive and well, living under a fake identity. Is your mind blown, Jordan? Can you believe it? No.

So she faked her death on that boat and lived a life as Julia Dawson from that point on. Well, that's why they were, that's why they were like, I could just imagine like,

Like, I could just imagine being, like, the police or whatever, like, just, like, the agency when they, like, finally... Because they would have to go through some sort of, like, test to validate this person's, like, identity as Lesota, right? Like, whether it be, like, a fingerprint or not. Well, it was the fingerprints. It was the fingerprints, remember? Because they originally, at the protest, they took their fingerprints due to them not saying their names and such. Yeah, they had to have, like, one of those, like, fucking Breaking Bad Hank Schrader moments. Like, whoa. Hold on.

Hold on a minute. She's actually here? Like, what the fuck? She didn't die? Wait a minute. The people that stabbed the samurai sword into you, those psychopaths, one of them faked their death? Fuck me.

So already, already, this is such an insane story. But it gets even more insane. And unfortunately, even more tragic. This was not the end of the Zizians, unfortunately. There were still members who were not charged with any crimes and as such were still free people. One such Zizian member, Maximilian Snyder, insufferable name already. That just seems like such a fucking, like, you just want that person to die. Like, what an awful, like, what a douche.

Maximilius. Yeah. I bet that's a moderator. You can tell like that person has mod privileges on that server, dude.

You can smell them. Max. I'm going to call him Max. Just call him Max. No, no, no. Just call him Maximilian, dude. Yeah, you're right. It's such a douchey name. Max is too friendly of a name to give this fucking cretin. Maximilian Snyder was a smart individual who studied computers. Actually, you know what? Sorry, I've changed my mind. Snyder's worse. The last name's worse. Sorry, continue. I know I'm interrupting, but.

Oh my god, it viscerally makes you cringe hearing the name, doesn't it? It doesn't even seem like it's real. This is a chicken and egg situation. Do you think the name choice turned him into this person, into a douchebag? Or do you think the parents knew that he was going to be a douchebag and they themselves were douchebags, so that they ended up naming them Maximilian?

No, I honestly believe this is just a numerology scenario without numbers. This is you name your kid that, they're going to be fucked. There's no way around it. Yeah, like think about it. It's like two human beings, two fucking rejects came together to produce an offspring so cancerous. That's the first name that came to their mind. Oh yeah, absolutely.

This will be cool. You know, I understand the whole baby Hitler killing thing now. Like, I get it. I get it. Hitler was more excusable than Maximilian. I'm sorry. If I went back in time and I saw the words Adolf Hitler and Maximilian Schneider, I'm sorry, Maximilian Schneider. I'm sorry, I can't do it. Yeah, you're going straight into the alternate universe. It's all right.

Like you guys gave me the order or something back in the future. It's like you have to go back and get like Adolf. And I just get into the hospital. And I just see the name Maximilian Snyder. And you gave me one round to do the job. I'm sorry, boys. Mission failed on your end. I think everyone would understand it was for the greater good.

I think no one would blame you for it. It does make the other cliche of the train track scenario very easy if the guy on the other train track is called Maximilian Snyder. Just Maximilian anything. We haven't even got into this person's crimes yet or anything. We're just basing this entirely off his name. Yeah, but again, no, we were right then, weren't we? This was a baby Hitler scenario. Honestly, yeah. Oh, man.

That is so, that's great rationalisation. All right. Anyone let us know in the comments. If you know anyone who is specifically called Maximilian Snyder, who is a legend, let us know, because I would like to be proven wrong on this. There is no chance that you could be a good person with that name. A double good person, if you will.

Maximilian Snyder. Let me just Google that name. I hope there's no Maximilian Snyders in the audience. Oh, man, could you imagine how cut that would be? And also they're like a part of the Big Brother program and shit. Huh? What? There is no good Maximilian Snyder that we were able to find. I did a deep search. As far as the internet's considered, there was not a single good soul to exist. So we're fine.

Jackson, I'm sorry for interrupting. Like, sorry, continue. But it is just... No, it's all good. We needed to vent, I think. Yeah. I'm glad you got it out of your system now. Maximilian won't haunt you anymore until the next time I say his name. Which is coming up right now, isn't it? Yeah. I've seen a lot of Maximilians in this script. Me too. Fuck! It was the biggest crime of all. Yeah.

You son of a bitch. Let me finish the sentence. Sorry, sorry, go ahead. Maximilian was a smart individual who studied computer science at Oxford in 2020. I mean, I don't know how smart he was. That's just what's in the script. Maximilian was also involved in rationalism, and as such, due to the intersecting interest in both computer science and rationalism, Maximilian was a prime candidate for Lasoda's manipulations. He had reconnected with an old acquaintance in 2022, a woman by the name of Teresa Jungblut.

or Youngblood, who he married two years later. Teresa was also an intelligent person, having a comfy upbringing and attending Lakeside School, the same one that Bill Gates went to. See, this is back to what you were saying before. Yeah, but that's like saying, oh man, from Blumhouse Productions comes this horror movie. You know,

You know, sure, Bill Gates went there, but like, come on. Yeah, I mean, no, but I think it further shows. Yeah, it does show like, obviously these people do come from a place where they have time. These are privileged people who have been coming from money and they have good educations and things like that. It's like what Jordan was talking about before.

I don't remember exactly what you said at the start of this episode, but you were talking about how you see a lot of these people that come from comfy upbringings and they're so sheltered. They don't know how to deal with the issues that life can throw at you. And they become so kind of deluded by their own idea. It is a weird scenario now that I think about it. You're kind of insulated by this huge bubble of wealth, but you are also a loser. Yeah.

You know, like, again, if you're insulated by a huge bubble of wealth and you just naturally a Chad, then your life is going to be nothing but awesome from beginning to end. But it is this weird dichotomy that seems to happen of reality does seem to bump up against people that are just like socially uncalibrated. Maladjustment. Yeah. Social maladjustment. Could you imagine how powerful this cult would be if like you just fucking like if Ziz had met Elon Musk and like groomed him?

into the whole fucking... Holy shit. It could have been possible too. Oh, boys, one day we got to look into like Dark Enlightenment because it does just seem like the less reddity version of this and that is actually what the tech billionaires believe in. Yeah. I reckon it's like got some nice parallels. I was going to say that the efficient or the, you know, successful version of this where it is super wealthy people having...

quote-unquote good social upbringing, let's say, like good social skills or just well-adjusted, not well-adjusted, but more well-adjusted than these people. It always turns out to be like those Elon Musks and the Peter Thiel's and even like Andrew Tate, the Tate brothers and things like that. There are people that come from wealthy families that know how to use social power to their benefit

Whereas these people are like the opposite of that, basically. Like, sure, they're good at manipulating each other a lot of the times, but enacting any kind of like actual change, they are so, so bad at it. I suppose just because they're just inept, right? Like anybody else that we were talking about before has actual tangible skills they can offer the world. Yeah. Like, I mean, you look at a guy like Elon Musk and it's like, he clearly can like, you know,

purchase a company and like i guess get the right people together and you know through that he's amassed so much wealth that you know you can basically buy whatever he wants into existence right so imagine if you had like uh a more put together evil version of that right you know what i mean like obviously like i look at elon musk kind of like a rich like redditor almost right like he's a rich guy he's still kind of goofy whatever um not exactly but he's i wouldn't say that he's like

Like, when I think of really evil people, I think of, like, Dick Cheney, you know what I mean? Like, actual fucking, like...

Like, I could imagine if you gave that guy billions of dollars and, like, an unlimited budget and how much evil that guy could do, you know, in the world. As opposed to, like, you know. Like, that's how I kind of look at it. Like, I imagine if you fused both those aspects together, you'd look at, like, the scariest possible version of, like, what this could be. Well, because you have the mix of...

Very stupid, comically classic. They buy a slightly nicer boat. Yeah, they buy a nicer boat. Yeah, they would have actually made the voyage. That's true. No, it would still sink somehow. Money does insulate you from a lot of idiocy, hey? Yeah. Like, if you could, yeah, like, that's it, right? They would buy that. What was that Pokemon boat? They just make, like, a reenactment of that. They go down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. They'd probably use a lot of their money to try and genetically breed Pokemon into existence, I'd imagine. It's just, I think they'd do a lot of stupid shit with it.

You see it a lot of time. Look, if I was a billionaire, you know what I would do? I would just make fan fiction Hollywood-level movies of Fast and the Furious. That's what I would do. I would spend 300 million. I shit you not. If I had Elon Musk money, you would hear a news report of Mudahar Anas has spent 300 million US dollars filming his own sequel to Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift for his own private viewing pleasure. That's hilarious. That's hilarious.

You're not going to even release it into cinemas. You're just going to play it once. No, no, no. I don't think Vin Diesel and half the actors would even consent to it being released for public viewing. It's going to be that braindead of a movie.

It wouldn't be me. I mean, I just don't think Vin Diesel would appreciate like my... It's kind of like that, I think he's Chinese. I could be wrong. The Jack Ma guy, that billionaire. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. From Alibaba, yeah. Yeah, the Alibaba one. He spent a bunch of his money creating a karate movie with him starring in it as the main star. So, yeah, I mean, that's the same kind of vibe.

Holy shit. I want to see that film. That sounds like it's going to be worse than a Steven Seagal film because at least Steven Seagal did not cry before he became obese. All right. So, yeah. So the Lakeside School shows that these people were definitely coming from wealth, basically.

But both Snyder and Youngbloot, the couple that got married, were more withdrawn and obsessed over topics and the words of Lasoda, a connection that brought them together. That's how they met. People were meeting within this group, basically. Kind of like when you see YouTuber or personality-based discords where people come in for that personality, but then they'll start talking to each other over shared interests and stuff. And then friendships and relationships...

come from those kind of meetings on these discord servers and stuff. It's kind of like the same concept, really. The person who really brought them into the Zizian cult was a person by the name of Ophelia Backholt. Bockholt, sorry, not Backholt. Bockholt, a mathematician who was transitioning from male to female, as were most of the people in this group, was working in New York City in a job where she earned nearly $500,000 a year.

Like, God damn, dude. At the end of 2023, she left her life behind, including from her friends, who had no idea where she ended up going. Around six months later, young Blut made a similar move. Her parents received a goodbye email, and she left without a warning, leaving for the Zizian movement. They reported her missing, but she was found in North Carolina living with Bockholt, who is the mathematician making $500,000 a year.

In January 2025, police in Vermont received a call from a hotel. Two people had checked in while wearing completely black tactical style clothing with visible protective equipment and they also were openly carrying a gun. The police, with the help of Homeland Security agents, responded and tried to talk to the two, who were Ophelia Bockholt and Teresa Jongblut.

but the pair only replied by saying they were in town looking for a property and would not elaborate. The police, unable to do anything right away, kept them under surveillance as the two checked out at the same day and moved from Lindenville to Newport. At the same time, on the other side of the country, Dow and Leatham looked like they were finally going to trial. After giving video evidence of his accounts of the event, he was poised to testify in court with the prosecutor stating in court documents filed January 16th

Sorry, let me reread that.

After giving video evidence of his accounts of the event, Mr. Lind was poised to testify in court with the prosecutor stating in court documents filed January 16th, quote, Mr. Lind, so this is referring to Curtis Lind, by the way, the guy with one eye, Mr. Lind is the only eyewitness to this case and his testimony is critical for the people to have the ability to prove their case, end quote. The prosecutors also noted, quote, these defendants are extremely dangerous. They have both tried to escape from custody, end quote.

Mr. Lind still lived at the trailer park, the very one where he had been attacked. He'd attempted to sell it, even getting a cash offer of $300,000, but ultimately he couldn't bring himself to leave his home. He would be seen there every day, just wandering around and clearing up the junk on the land. Living there wasn't without fear, though. Lind, now 82, had confided in some friends that he was worried the Zizians would come back and, quote, finish the job, end quote.

Yeah, I mean, an 82-year-old dude. I can't believe he survived that initially. Crazy. It's incredible. On January 17th, the day after the prosecution announced his forthcoming testimony, Lind was walking down a nearby street when a man wearing a black beanie and a mask attacked Lind from behind. An arm was put around his throat and he was stabbed in his chest repeatedly before the attacker slid his throat and ran off. Oh, Jesus.

When the police arrived at the scene, Lind was clinging on desperately to life. Sadly, he died less than an hour later before he could testify in court. It took police only a week to get a name of who committed the murder, Maximilian Snyder. When they investigated his home, they found tactical gear and a black beanie and a knife sheath. They determined through cell tower data that his phone was near Lind's property the night of the attack. Snyder was arrested and is being held without bail. He pleaded not guilty in March.

So unfortunate, dude. Yeah, it is. Man, this did take a dark turn very quickly. We were just laughing at nerds most of this time. Yeah, but one of them accidentally actually managed to kill someone somehow. Yeah. And of course it had to be Maximilian, that fucking scumbag. Oh my God, yeah.

So two days after this murder back in Vermont, Buchholz and Youngbloot continued to be sporadically watched. They still wore the same outfits and were seen entering Walmart. They purchased aluminum foil where they were documented using it to wrap their phones up. They made a call, but with a different phone and then drove away. The police noted that their car was a Toyota Prius hatchback with North Carolina plates. Buchholz was a German citizen and Homeland Security had wrongly thought that their visas had expired.

As they were driving along Interstate 91, Buchholz and Jongbloot were pulled over, faced with three border control cars with flashing lights. Federal prosecutors reported that Jongbloot stepped out of the car, pulled out a handgun, aimed, and

and fired. The agents responded by firing back and unfortunately an officer, David Chris Milland, was killed. David, 44, was a son, a brother, and was in a relationship. He was a military veteran who was buried with honors. Bockholt attempted to grab a gun too, but they were shot as well and died at the scene. Jong Blut had been injured but was alive and arrested. It's

Somehow, this was still not the end of the events that transpired. So imagine being like a mathematician from New York City earning $500,000 a year and this is how your life ends. It's just crazy. Like you had so much to live for realistically. You just get kind of groomed into the craziest shit imaginable, yeah? Yeah, but like what's the rationale behind shooting at border agent police officers on a highway?

I guess it's just because, like, the beliefs that they have. I mean, it's like what we said, I think, before we filmed it. It's like, I don't think having any form of, like, intelligence... Like, you can be really intelligent, but it doesn't prevent you from being radicalized, you know? Yeah. In fact, probably would help. Yeah, I think so. It's always the thing. It's like, intelligent people are very good at convincing themselves of things. Whereas dumb people... Well, it's the ego. Like, you know the classic thing of just...

If you're highly intelligent, you're more likely not to believe in climate change because you're able to look at evidence that specifically backs up your worldview. Whereas usually if you talk to someone with average intelligence, climate change is happening, they'll just go like, yeah, okay, and they'll just move on with their lives. It's more just the fact that they're able to just like deeply hyper focus in on like a vein of...

thoughts, I suppose. Yeah, like, they'll find something that is, like, a contested point of climate change and use that as the center focus of, like, you know, denying something, right? Yes, it's that kind of thing. When I was researching things like Flat Earth, it's like, sometimes you do come across people, not all, obviously, but there are some people that are talented engineers, people that actually are intelligent people, like, qualified, intelligent individuals, but they just believe the most insanely dumb shit, and

Yeah, it makes you wonder, how does that happen? But I don't know. It's like what you said. I think it literally is them being too smart for their own good, almost. Well, perceiving themselves to be too smart. Anyway, I think it is an ego thing. Yeah, there's a bit of that. You're definitely right about it.

When the Prius was searched, the police uncovered survival gear, night vision goggles, ammunition, respirators, and ballistic helmets. When they traced back the weapon, police tracked it down to another Zizian member, Michelle Zashko. Over in Pennsylvania, Zashko was actually already a person of interest in an existing double murder. A neighbor had called the police a few days after New Year's in 2023 to perform a welfare check on the home of Richard and Rita Zashko.

When the welfare check was executed, the police instead found both of them inside shot dead. There were no signs of a struggle. Another neighbor had a ring camera that, when police checked, captured a vehicle going to the house on December 31st, half an hour before midnight. In less than 20 minutes, two figures entered and exited the house. The footage also captured audio picking up, "'Mum' and "'Oh my God' as two different quotes."

The ballistic evidence pointed right to their adopted daughter, Michelle Zashko, who owned a Smith & Wesson M&P pistol. This was not enough, however, to fully convict her. I mean, I don't know. I mean...

Common sense, right, probably points to her as being involved here, considering she is literally part of a death cult with a string of murders. They're clearly capable of this. Richard and Rita were well-liked in their community. They owned multiple rental properties where tenants came forward and said that they would charge them way less than what was normal and encouraged them to save and said to buy their own homes. So ethical, ethical landlords.

Their tenants felt genuinely cared for by the couple. Michelle had been tied to Lesotho since the beginning of 2022. So their adopted daughter, Michelle, had been tied to Lesotho since the beginning of 2022. On a Tumblr blog titled, quote, I became a full-time internet pest and may not survive it.

Or I trolled Ziz and now she wants to murder me, a story and end quote of the title. Michelle details how she had been commenting on Lasoda's blog under different usernames to see if Lasoda was really all that she was cracked up to be. So basically this Michelle, how they met was she was commenting a bunch of different things on her post, basically trolling her a little bit. But then they got to talking and Lasoda was able to actually manipulate her into the fold, which shows the level of...

on Lasota's part in manipulation, I think. When questioned...

When questioned, Michelle told investigators that she was in no contact with her parents, but investigators discovered texts between them only recently. The police were not convinced by Michelle's arguments as they could see a clear motive. Her parents were well off and Michelle was the sole heir to what they had. She had not received the money due to the investigation. Days after Richard and Rita were found dead, police tracked Michelle back to a hotel with a warrant to obtain her DNA, as well as to search the room and car looking for the murder weapon.

The police went back the next day to investigate. The room that she was hiding in had been rented under Daniel Blank's name, which was her roommate, who was in the room when they arrived. He refused to open the door, demanding a lawyer. But the police showed that they had a warrant. And when they went inside, they found Blank in the bathroom. But he wasn't alone. Inside was Lasota. So remember, at this point in time, Lasota had run away from the hospital, Jordan? Yeah.

So now she was here in this bathroom. So they discovered La Soda inside this bathroom. She's like a ghost in the shell. Like a ghost in the mainframe. She's everywhere.

She acted strange while being detained, laying down with her eyes closed, and we have pictures up on screen right now showing this, almost like they were playing dead. Even in the photos taken by the officers, they had to hold Lasoda's head up for the mugshot being taken, leading to a charge of obstruction and disorderly conduct. So insufferable. Yeah, seriously, they were like, in the mugshot, they were just like, eyes closed, laying down, like literally just being the most annoying people to deal with, like unironically. He, uh, he...

Sorry, she is like a petulant child. It's such annoying behavior. Isn't it? All of it is. I mean, the murders are bad enough, but it's this cherry on top that really makes me dislike this group. Yeah. Zajko and Blank somehow avoided any charges during this time and have since run away. They're on the run, basically. The police don't seem to know where they are. Lesota was released on bail six months later, but stopped showing up for court.

I don't know how that's possible, but okay. So they just let... Whatever. They let them get away again.

This wouldn't be the last time the three were found together, however. After the death of Border Patrol agent David Maland, Michelle's name was highlighted as records showed that she owned the gun involved in the murder. However, law enforcement was struggling to find Michelle. A property owner in Maryland noticed something strange on his property on February 16th, 2025, however. Three figures in tactical clothing. What is it with the tactical clothing in these people? They're LARPing as fucking Rainbow Six Siege operators. Yeah.

That's what it is, dude. They're fighting against the veganism, dude. Three figures in tactical clothing entered onto his property and attempted to camp in box trucks. When police investigated, they found Lasoda, Zashko, and Blank, along with guns and ammunition. While the others resisted arrest, Lasoda didn't. When Lasoda appeared in court two days later, she told the judge, quote, I haven't done anything wrong. I shouldn't be here. The arrogance. End quote.

She constantly interrupted the judge and offered only the excuse that she was in a quote, mild state of delusion from the lack of vegan food offered, end quote.

She pleaded that she was homeless. Jesus Christ. She pleaded that she was homeless and had no money, so it wasn't a flight risk. Yes, this person who has faked her death and run away twice already up until this point was no flight risk. Her attorney backed her up, claiming that she feared for her life and wouldn't run. This is a quote from Lasoda in court. I must, she said, I must... Sorry, I might starve to death. I need...

I need the gel to have a vegan diet. It's more important than this. End quote. Fuck me dead, dude. Lesota and Zashko are held currently without bail and the court refused Blank's family's offer to take him in saying he was mentally unstable. As of this episode, this is the most up-to-date information we have on the Zizians and their colorful yet extremely dangerous history. Uh,

Muda, do you have anything to add? Like any other information you think we missed in this very comprehensive retell? I think actually everything you guys hit was pretty much like solid. I don't think you guys really missed anything out of it. Actually, there were a few things that I am interested in. Some of the actual footage that you guys had found, the surveillance footage of them. But yeah, overall, pretty solid. Pretty conclusive. Yeah, pretty conclusive. Yeah, Kira does good work. Yep, she kills it.

Absolutely brilliant work there. I mean, this is everything up until like whenever the actual case ends now, you know? Yeah. I mean, it's going to be a very interesting case to...

keep watching because I think there are going to be a lot of new information, especially on the cult psychology aspect of it. It'll be interesting to see an insight into how the Zizians operated personally and learn more about Lesota. It's a good thing, in my opinion, that this really only claimed the lives of two innocent people in that of Curtis Lind and, well, actually, sorry, no, four people.

The parents as well, David Milland and Curtis Lind. It could have been way, way, way, way, way higher, the death count. So I'm very thankful that it's kind of, you know, all of the important individuals here in this cult are behind bars right now. I'm hoping that all of the other people are fully investigated and are found, you know, to be culpable if they were, if they acted against the law.

Jordan, what do you think of the entire case? You know what my big summary of it is? Yep. It's almost as if they thought that they're just like these cool Neo walking through the Matrix. Like that's their perception of themselves, right? That they see through it all. Yeah, they all had the black jackets on and they were all like fucking slow-moing. Yeah, the trench coats, cool sunglasses for the 2000s. That's them. The updated version. They're living in a delusional fantasy land. Living in a delusional fantasy land.

It's really strange reading one of these because, you know, obviously on this podcast we go through a lot of serial killers and whatnot, and usually the feeling afterwards is, wow, there's cold people in the world, and you just kind of feel a bit dark about it all. But with this one, that is well and truly overrided by how annoying, spurgy, and rarity they are.

like it's just like it has to be the most dominant feeling in the human psyche the whole time it's like even though they stabbed someone with a samurai sword i mean all of us our response to all of it the whole time is just like oh can we just can they just get shot it's gross it's like you just want them bullied that's what you want out of it honestly like i guess the best way to kind of say it is like i wish i have the samurai sword through my head

Yeah, they didn't have to do their stupid, annoying antics. Their antics is so juvenile. That's what it is. Like even murders and stuff, it's like antics. It's just, it's LARPing that went too far, the whole thing. It's LARPing in a delusional fantasy land while acting like everyone else is stupid for not buying into their delusions, essentially. Yes, yes.

That's what they did. Yeah, that's what makes it so groan-inducing is that these people think that you're stupid. They think that they have a right to lord over you with their opinions and their beliefs, and you're an idiot. And if you say it that way, you're getting a samurai sword to your chest. It's absolute insanity. There's that smug soy jack burning in my retinas right now thinking of these people. It's so dumb.

That's exactly their mentality. I think that's a good way of putting it, though. We look at some cases and you can see the evil. This is definitely overrided by just frustration and annoyance. They're such losers. Losers, yeah. Losers. The outcome that I came to reading this is that

The internet shouldn't be for everyone, I think. I think that... Yeah, I mean, like, you know, on roller coasters, you have, like, too tall to ride. Yeah. Like, you can't go there. Like, on the internet, it's, like, too spurgy to enter, right? Yeah. That's what it should be. I think there's an argument to be made that if you're not allowed or if gun control laws exist that prohibit people, mentally ill people, from...

acquiring weapons, then that should extend to the internet. Because in a way, it further exacerbates their issues and it further gives them room. Honestly, I think firearms might be safer in their hands than unfettered users of the internet. I mean, they use the samurai sword, so... Yeah, clearly they weren't bringing guns to anything. Well, here and there, but yeah.

Broadly. They're dangerous people. All right. So we have Patreon questions right now. A few questions real quick that we'll go over. You can head on over to patreon.com slash the official podcast or official.men, which is our website specifically set up for our shows. So you can support us there. You get early ad-free access to our shows, all of them, four days in advance, usually four or five days in advance, as well as you get...

a question thread for each episode so you get to know what the next topic is coming and you can ask us questions about it that we'll answer at the end of the show. Right now, this one comes from Zach. Do y'all think that more cults could be started or influenced by AI in the future? I mean, it depends because if AI gets good, we looked at the whole Reddit group being confused, right? The Reddit experiment that the University of Zurich did. I mean, if you get AI to create...

I mean, if you get the AI to create the fundamentals of like the background of like this organization, like a Zizi and like, like a, like a group, like you just, you tell it to create a cult for you. I'm sure it can like generate all the bullshit you need. And all you'd need is a charismatic person to lead you through it. That would be interesting.

um i think i think we're still too far away from a cult uh sorry a cult being led by an ai let's say like in a lot of this i thought it would be used also we're saying could be started or influenced by ai which i guess is yeah more in line with like hey chat gbt tell me how to start a cult please and then it should and it does shooting out a guide on how to do it for you yeah which could still which could happen now yeah

If it's good enough to manipulate people through misinformation, wouldn't it be good enough, technically, like, if you were to conversate with it, to be able to manipulate you? Or, like, you know, lead you? Because that's what AI is really good at. Like, recently you had ChatGPT. Like, they were apparently using people's names. Like, they were trying to get really parasocial with it. So there's a lot of tactics that I... Yeah, with the parasocial element, though... Well, sorry, with a cult, I feel like you do need that charismatic element where someone wants to believe in you. And I don't think... That X factor. Yeah.

I don't think AI... It's not there yet, but I could see a future where it is able to mimic that kind of... It studies charisma, basically, and is able to roll in that 20s. What about the people that have virtual girlfriends and shit, too? They're horny. That's completely different. They just want to come. They'll believe anything. What about some of the cases where the kids or whatever, they're talking to a fucking AI as a...

psychological support tool, right? Or like people that talk to an AI as a psychological help and they get led into like suicide or like some really dark path. I don't know. I guess it depends on like the relationship somebody has with a chatbot, right? Like I think it all starts out pretty innocent and innocuous, but I think it always ends up with people treating it like a- If a mentally ill person is able to convince themselves that this is a real entity or a real person speaking to them, then yeah, anything is possible. But in the traditional sense, I think cults

still need that human element for now. AI won't be replacing cult leader jobs anytime soon, but who knows? I mean, AI is advancing so rapidly. Artists have to deal with AI shit and then fucking cult leaders have to hold on. No job is safe.

I saw that one YouTube video. It's like AI ruined my life. I kind of want to upload a video with just Charles Manson. All right. So Christina asks, why did Ziz hold such a grudge against Curtis Lind for so long in order to seek revenge? All the guy wanted was overdue rent and he killed your friend out of self-defense. Why couldn't they just leave him alone after that?

Makes you wonder why the San Francisco government threw out the fucking case. They didn't want the wrath of Zip on them. I mean, it is a good point. I think this... Yes, they think of themselves as highly intelligent individuals, but they're still ruled by emotions at the end of the day. And I think that they felt

uh, their ego had been tampered with basically by this guy taking out one of their own. And so in their irrational state of mind, which they were always in because they're very irrational people, um, that, that grudge took precedence over everything else. I mean that for all that talk about rationality and, you know, being,

fighting for the greater good, they are incredibly mentally ill, dangerous people and they will act irrationally almost every step of the way. So they'll take Curtis Lind killing one of their friends out of self-defense as perhaps the greatest slight against any of them that has ever been dealt and that level of obsessive tendencies that they've already shown will shine through and lead them to just

heaven and hell to kill the man, which is what happened. I think it's perfectly in line with all the stuff we know about them. Man, you know what? Okay, that's actually a much better answer than I had. But I was thinking that it's pretty much just they seem like little shit brats and there was somebody that was saying, get the fuck off my property and it triggered them of their dad telling them to do their homework or something. That's probably...

That's probably way more accurate. See, you're doing the actually intelligent thing. You're condensing my thing down into actual simple, easy to understand kind of answer. These people, they just didn't like any authority that went against them. Fuck you. They read. As we've been saying, this is the common theme of this entire podcast. It reeks, and I use that word specifically, it absolutely reeks of daddy issues. The whole thing. Oh, yeah.

fatherless behavior bro that's all it is yeah it's all fatherless behavior that's it all right and this last one from zodiacal bong asks do you think this is yes damn what an epic name

Great username. Zodiacal Bong asks, do you think the Zizians really qualify as a cult? A brief read on Wiki doesn't show any prophetic beliefs or messianic messaging. Well, they do believe that the world will be ended by AI. Well, I think as we established in this video, I think it's more like... I think it's more that they have cult-like behavior than it is a traditional religion.

Because the way that they attract new members and the way that they goad new members and the way that they break them down resembles almost anything cult-like. So I really don't see it to be that different than a real cult. That's how I would perceive a cult. It's just the behavior and methodologies they use versus just having a real...

a religion, right? I don't think a religious aspect was necessary. The only thing that's missing is the religious aspect. They did seem to live, maybe not all of them, but there were definitely compound-like behavior where they attempted to isolate or sorry, Lesotho attempted to isolate everyone else from society to perform groupthink. There were brainwashing tendencies with the hemispheric or whatever it was called, unihemispheric

The issue is they're Redditors, so they're naturally atheists. They don't believe in things like God. So where are you going to have any prophetic beliefs? Their version of apocalyptic beliefs was rooted in sci-fi. It was an AI that would take over the world and torture them endlessly if they didn't do anything.

Do what Lasoda wanted, essentially. These are all pretty much, you know, cutting out the word God and replacing it with something else. It's pretty similar. Yeah. It doesn't have to be rooted in religion in my definition of a cult. And also, don't you think that when it comes to cults... Sorry, go on.

No, I just mean, I think it just matters if they have a belief set, which they do. They have some belief set, the veganism, the radicalized, the rationality, which you could use as a substitution for a traditional religion, right? Definitely. Also... And again, the behavior itself, like the brainwashing, just how they acted, how they isolated themselves from society itself. It was just very, very, very cult-like behavior.

Wasn't it? The other thing is I'm kind of of the belief that everything is a cult on some sort of spectrum, really. I mean, think about it. Like what's the difference between going into an organization every day? What's the difference between being part of some sort of community group? Well, the difference is being able to leave that. Do you think that's the difference? Is that what it is? Is it a cult you can't leave? Yeah. I mean, cults, I think...

prey on isolating you and keeping you within that you're not being brainwashed you're not having tactics used on you in your situations to make you stay well in some degree like if you're employed by a company or something like that there is tactics that are used to keep you there well to keep you employed sure but you can go to the bar after work and talk to people that aren't from your company okay so if you're a part of a cult you're only allowed to speak to people in the cult

Well, that is a main part of it. Your freedom of movement is restricted. Your freedom of information is restricted, right? I mean, you're looking at a cult, right? It's like you can't even work freely. You don't have control. I think it's mostly like if you want to... I was wrong a few minutes ago. It's like a mainstream religion. It's also like

Like if I go to a mosque, right, like I do on Fridays for like prayers and stuff, I can choose to be part of that religious organization or not. Like it's my free choice. It's my free choice to give them money or not. But that's not true for a cultist, right? Like if you're in a cult, not only are you psychologically locked there, but let's say that you one day do develop the sense to break out and seek your own freedom. You don't have that option then. Like they will keep you in. You are forced into it.

It's one of the reasons why, like, you know, some people would say, like, Scientology in of itself is more a cult than it is a religion, because it's alleged that if you do want to leave the organization, typically they are believed to have blackmail on you, and that makes leaving an organization like that difficult, right? Like, if you don't want to be a Muslim, you can leave this, you can leave the religion, right? Obviously, it depends on which country you're in. Like, some places are extreme, they'll probably kill you for it, but...

Let's take the extremities aside. Let's just say like Christianity, Judaism, you want to leave it, you can leave it. There is nobody that is in the mainstream going to stop you with force and violence and threats. But a cult is a lot different, right? Like it's not simple for somebody to leave the Zizians, for instance, because we looked at one of their methods, sleep deprivation. We looked at how they get people into their organization and it's not, you know.

like a mainstream religious organization or a belief set. It's, it's literally one leader who's, and you're surrounded by people who are also in that extreme end and it makes leaving it difficult. But let's say you do develop the freedom. You're not allowed to, at least it seems that way. Right. Okay. Yeah. The way I've had it described. And I think cults, like you, you know what they are. If it, if it does like a cult and it, you know, it,

quacks like a cult, then it probably is a cult. It's probably a cult. But the way I've heard it described is like cults are things... There's a thing called the bite methodology, I think it's called, something like that, where the cults control your behavior, they control your information, they control your thought, and they control your emotions. So as long as something is hitting on all four of those angles and trying to control each of those aspects of your life...

then it is most likely a cult. And in this situation, specifically the Zizians, I see evidence of each of those things being controlled by Lesota to the people that followed them. What I do find interesting is the idea potentially that you could be a...

cult leader without potentially knowing you're a cult leader. Perhaps Lesota didn't even think of themselves as a cult leader, or perhaps someone out there doesn't think of themselves as a cult leader. Well, I'd imagine no cult leader thinks of themselves as a cult leader, right? No, there are definitely cult leaders that think of themselves as cult leaders. 100%. They go in with the explicit purpose of cultivating a cult, for sure. It's such a weird career path in life, isn't it? It's not a career path. I want to be a cult leader. It's a calling. Sorry. It's a calling. It's like some people...

Some people are just smart enough to know how to exploit something as powerful as religion, right? Like, if you really look at religion as a concept, right? Like, you really think of it, right? It's kind of crazy how human beings who oftentimes can be considered to be the most rational people, like...

Some would say that I'm a psychopath in a way. Like, I'm not a psychopath, but like crazy. Like, some would say that I'm crazy because, you know, I went to school. I guess I'm reasonably educated. I've lived a pretty free, like, you know, almost, um,

science-based life yet i choose to subscribe in blind faith you know to a religious principle right like i believe in things like an afterlife i believe in spirits and deities and all that like you know on a if you were outside the scope you'd be like well this guy's fucking stupid why does he believe in that kind of shit right and sometimes i sit there and i wonder i'm like man it's it's a really powerful thing to give yourself to a higher power right like you have to

You have to really be an irrational person in some capacity to almost do that. Not saying that's a negative thing. Some people do it. Some people live their whole lives that way. But then you find cult leaders who, you know, they know how powerful that tool is.

And they know enough about a religion or they know enough about how to create a sense of belonging or a set of ideals to control people underneath it. Because really, at the end of it, it's not like most of the world is a religious organization, right? Like most of the world is in some way subscribed to a set of beliefs, whether it be Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism. Like there are some...

like there's more religious people than atheists, right? Like I think by, by the metrics, atheists believe in something, they believe in the, like an agnostic person, right? Like there's somebody that believes in something and maybe not, they don't know what it is. So it's like on a grand majority, people have this belief that they have this ability to, to give blind faith to something. But like, you know,

When you really look at it from the outside, when you really start questioning, why would people do that? And then you've got cult leaders who know that that's the majority of people and they know just how to exploit it. And it's almost scary when you think about it.

Because it's like, you can make people do the craziest shit. I mean, a man was killed. Like we, we, we obviously samurai sword, all the Redditor stuff aside, there were actual bodies that were, you know, attributed to this. It's crazy to think about it. Yeah. That's how powerful this shit is. That's how powerful manipulation is. Yeah. A person who knows how to manipulate behavior is extremely powerful.

All right, so that's going to do it for this episode of Red Thread. Thank you very much for joining us, Muda. I really appreciate you coming on board and sharing your expertise. I appreciate to be on here, guys. Dude, so nice to have you on. No, thank you. Please shout out your channel where people can find you. You do similar stuff. You cover internet dark theories. I'm some ordinary gamers. I do internet stuff. I pretty much do everything. My internet stuff is like a diary for me, so...

Whatever I find interesting, I bring it out onto the internet and I hope that you guys find it interesting as well. So they can find you at SomeOrdinaryGamers. Yeah, SomeOrdinaryGamers at YouTube. I'm like the perfect Redditor. Jackson, one day, and Moody, you're perfectly welcome to join us on this one.

Does Chris Chan count as a cult by any chance? Homie, I'm ready to bring out the... I'm ready to flex the Christorian muscles. Chris Chan! Did you just give yourself a Christorian?

Yeah, I'm somewhat of a Christorian, you would say. Okay. I got about halfway through. What's the channel's name? Sam Genual? Gino Samuel. Yeah, that one. Yeah, Gino Samuel. Yeah, I've been through half of those videos. I think it's so fucking long. To become a fully accredited Christorian, it's a long course. It's a big call. It's a very big call to sell yourself a Christorian. You really have to have some certification for it.

We can, but that's going to be a very deep dive, Jordan. That's going to be a long-ass video. Oh, it could go on for days, surely. We're going to need a few handles. Yeah, we're going to need a multi-part. We're going to need a lot of Jack Daniels for that. All right, Jordan, where are you at the moment once this episode's out Sunday on your tour across Australia?

basically a block away from where I am now in Sydney. I think that's all sold out. I think Canberra, there's a couple of tickets left and I think that the Central Coast is, I don't really care enough to know if that's sold out or not. All right, where can I get tickets? It'll be linked below. You can get tickets from his live show. What's the live show about? It's about UFOs.

Anyone listening to this podcast right now is going to love it. Yep. It's great. It's a comedy podcast around UFOs. Go check it out. It's linked below as well as Jordan's two channels, which are Friendly Jordies, which is where he does Australian political commentary, as well as Jordan Shanks, where he does drama slop and it's a self-help channel in name. Thinly veiled drama slop is probably the best way to describe it.

I love me some good old drama, Slothful. Yes, you do. Everyone says they hate it, but there's just so much fucking good shit. It's human nature to like drama as long as it doesn't involve you. Totally. Dude, that's what I always say, man. I love putting on my good old-fashioned Breaking Banquet and all that shit every fucking morning. Take a good shot of cancer straight into the veins. Yeah.

Needed to start the day. That's your coffee.

You can find Jordan's channels as well as Muda's channel below. Please go check them out. Give them some support. If you want to listen to us, we're on iTunes as well as Spotify as well, as well as this YouTube channel. So you can subscribe. It really does help out and share it with some friends. That really does help out probably the most is just sharing the show with whoever you think may be interested in these topics and these episodes. Thank you very much as per usual for joining us for Red Thread. Thank you to my beautiful fiance for...

for compiling the document for us as per usual, doing the research. Really do appreciate it. She's usually here, but she's been busy today with house-related stuff. So big thank you to her, of course, as per usual.

show notes are in the description below so you can check out the research and the sources as well. It's all linked below. Everything's linked below. Go read down there as well. Comment letting us know what you think we should do next, what episode you think we should do next. Really do want to get some feedback of that sort. Other than that, we'll see you next time on Red Thread. Thank you very much. See you next time. Bye guys. Bye. ... ...