hey, are you vegan yet?
preparing for the end of the world
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by your best friend erin griffith
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Buddies have you been obsessively reading everything you can about the vegan AI doomer / rationalist murder cult known as the Zizians? I have, and this week we got a whole new angle from New York mag.
The Zizians and the AI rationalist communities they split off from are fascinating because much of their activity takes place fully in public online, BUT, the message boards, blogs, books and Discord chats are so convoluted, difficult to parse and even more difficult to explain that it turns the journalists covering it into forensic scientists. A line from NYM that conveys just how of the internet this entire thing is.
Some rationalists fell into occult practices like tulpamancy, a practice ostensibly derived from Buddhism and popularized by My Little Pony fans on 4chan, which involved using meditation exercises to apparently create independent sentient entities that live in one’s brain.
A key belief of the Zizians is the fear that once AI becomes sentient and all-powerful, it will treat us the way we treat farm animals, sparing only the vegans. So cult members are constantly pressuring everything they know to become vegan.
This NYM piece skips very quickly over the murders and faked deaths, so if you haven’t been following, here is some prior reporting:
A Silicon Valley Intellectual Society Kicked Them Out. Now They’re Tied to a Killing Spree.
The Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of the Zizians
In other news
It was impossible to avoid this week’s space tourism sponcon, aka the world’s shortest influencer trip, and the internet has done its duty in providing appropriate memes, mockery and commentary.
Katy Perry is “the perfect pop star for a dumb stunt.” Katy Perry regrets her dramatics. “They took up space, all right—space in our psyches that we will never get back.” “If this flight is to have any world-historical significance, it will be for achieving previously uncharted levels of tastelessness.” “If the flight proves anything, it is that women are now free to enjoy capitalism’s most decadent spoils alongside the world’s wealthiest men.” “This morally vacuous space stunt should be another nail in the coffin of celebrity feminism.” An all-female trip to the men’s bathroom. “You can’t rebrand oligarchy as feminism.” “For Perry’s class of people, nothing is at stake and nothing ever has to change, so concepts like empowerment, hope, and resilience have no material reality.” “No wonder they came back so quickly.”
The Secretary of Transportation weighed in to say the women “do not meet FAA astronaut criteria.” Even Wendy’s got in on the mockery and is not backing down.
Important Business Matters
Startup everyone’s into: OpenAI is launching a social network.
Startup everyone’s over: Fyre festival 2 is cancelled, lol
Reason to go on living: Twinkies finally embraced its core audience: Stoners
Reason to take up residence under your weighted blanket: Actors regret selling their likenesses and voices to AI that’s being used for scammy stuff.
Grim: Using AI to turn yourself into a doll, reducing your personality to a handful of accessories that symbolize your favorite consumer choices! Humans are commodities to be sold!
Grimmer: Trump’s deregulation of the FCC will mean lots more robocalls for everyone!
Grimmest: AI that calls your parents for you. Outsourcing human connection!
Latest crush: Influencers who promote “underconsumption.”
Latest heartbreak: What will happen if we eliminate flouride from the water.
Latest thing the kids are into: Facebook is Craigslist now.
Latest thing the olds are into: Everyone’s Clint Eastwood now.
Latest thing the rich are into: Seasteading.
Latest thing the oligarchs are into: “The most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating.
a dall-e summary of this newsletter:
“turlpam”
(i asked the ai like 5 times to make something with less text, but the latest version realllly wants to show off its improved capabilities.)
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