Zyzz Was the Original Looksmaxxer. His Rise and Untimely Death Feel More Relevant Than Ever
Zyzz Was the Original Looksmaxxer. His Rise and Untimely Death Feel More Relevant Than Ever
Zyzz 是最初的“颜值至上主义者”。他的崛起与英年早逝在今天显得比以往任何时候都更具现实意义
“We’re all gonna make it, brah!” That was the aspirational rallying cry of Aziz Shavershian, better known by his online alias, Zyzz. Once the shy and skinny son of Kurdish parents who struggled to find his place in Sydney, Australia, where the family had moved from Russia, he’d thrown himself wholeheartedly into fitness, spending hours at the gym every day and frequenting the infamous Bodybuilding.com and 4chan forums.
“我们都会成功的，兄弟！”这是阿齐兹·沙弗希安（Aziz Shavershian）那充满抱负的口号，他更为人熟知的网名是 Zyzz。他曾是库尔德裔父母眼中害羞瘦弱的儿子，在随家人从俄罗斯移居澳大利亚悉尼后，他曾一度难以融入当地。后来，他全身心地投入到健身中，每天在健身房挥汗如雨，并频繁出没于臭名昭著的 Bodybuilding.com 和 4chan 论坛。
In time, the teenager’s chiseled physique gave him the confidence to develop an online persona that had little in common with the gentle and goofy kid that his friends and family knew. This would be Zyzz, a brash raver who strutted, mugged, danced, and flexed shirtless in front of his webcam while asking if viewers were “mirin’” (that is, admiring his body) and exhorting other men to chase their self-improvement goals. By 2010, his videos had made him an Australian celebrity with fans around the globe. And as of August 2011, he was dead in Thailand, at the age of 22.
随着时间的推移，这位少年的健美体格让他获得了自信，并塑造出了一个与亲友眼中那个温和、搞怪的孩子截然不同的网络形象。这就是 Zyzz——一个狂妄的锐舞客，他在摄像头前昂首阔步、扮鬼脸、跳舞、赤裸上身展示肌肉，同时询问观众是否在“mirin’”（即欣赏他的身材），并激励其他男性去追求自我提升的目标。到 2010 年，他的视频已让他成为享誉全球的澳大利亚名人。然而，2011 年 8 月，他在泰国去世，年仅 22 岁。
Shavershian’s brief and tragic life is the basis of a new documentary, Poster Boy: Becoming Zyzz, now available on Apple TV and Prime Video. But this keenly nuanced film is more than the familiar tale of an ambitious youth who pursued fame at all costs. It also reckons with the digital forces that could produce a person like Zyzz in the first place, and how his preternatural instincts for navigating a brand-new media ecosystem anticipated an entire generation of masculinity influencers.
沙弗希安短暂而悲剧的一生是一部新纪录片《海报男孩：成为 Zyzz》（Poster Boy: Becoming Zyzz）的基础，该片现已在 Apple TV 和 Prime Video 上线。但这部细腻入微的影片不仅仅是一个雄心勃勃的年轻人不惜一切代价追求名利的老套故事。它还探讨了促成 Zyzz 这样的人出现的数字力量，以及他如何在全新的媒体生态系统中展现出超凡的直觉，从而预示了整整一代“男性气质网红”的诞生。
Depending on your perspective, Zyzz can be regarded as the original “looksmaxxer”—though the term had yet to be coined—or one of the earliest forefathers of the manosphere as we know it today.
根据你的视角，Zyzz 可以被视为最初的“颜值至上主义者”（looksmaxxer）——尽管当时这个词尚未被创造出来——或者被视为我们今天所知的“男性圈”（manosphere）最早的鼻祖之一。
“I really see this as a cautionary tale,” Poster Boy’s director, Selina Miles, tells WIRED. She notes that Shavershian’s meteoric rise and untimely death left a huge impression on Australian millennials, and that his legend continues to reverberate today. “He had his transformation, and his story has really resonated with a lot of people,” she says. “We have to stay curious as to why. Why has he had this impact on men?”
“我真的认为这是一个警示故事，”《海报男孩》的导演塞琳娜·迈尔斯（Selina Miles）告诉《连线》（WIRED）。她指出，沙弗希安的迅速崛起和英年早逝给澳大利亚的千禧一代留下了深刻印象，他的传奇至今仍在回响。“他完成了自己的蜕变，他的故事引起了许多人的共鸣，”她说，“我们必须保持好奇：为什么？为什么他对男性产生了如此大的影响？”
Through a mixture of Zyzz’s archival content and interviews with close friends as well as his older brother, Said Shavershian—a professional bodybuilder to this day—the documentary circles the question of his outsized appeal during a key shift in human communications. At that moment, few imagined YouTube (launched in 2005, when he was 16) or Facebook (first available to him the following year) as a means to notoriety, let alone financial success. Indeed, Zyzz’s earliest videos amount to little more than a kid playing around in his bedroom; later, he and his pals experimented with showing off their abs and biceps at music festivals and nightlife hot spots, hoping for reactions of any kind.
通过 Zyzz 的档案素材以及对他密友和哥哥赛义德·沙弗希安（Said Shavershian，至今仍是一名职业健美运动员）的采访，这部纪录片围绕着他在人类传播方式发生关键转变时期所展现出的巨大吸引力展开探讨。当时，很少有人能想象 YouTube（2005 年推出，当时他 16 岁）或 Facebook（次年他开始使用）能成为获取名声的途径，更不用说获得经济成功了。事实上，Zyzz 最早的视频不过是一个孩子在卧室里胡闹；后来，他和伙伴们开始尝试在音乐节和夜店热点展示腹肌和二头肌，希望能获得任何形式的关注。
While Zyzz promoted values of inclusion and mutual support for men looking to become the best version of themselves, he also began to feed off those who insulted him, online and off: “U mad?” and “Come at me brah” were two of his recurring catchphrases. He understood sooner than most how controversy drove clicks, and even maintained fake social accounts to amplify the war between himself and the haters. “He made this page on Facebook that was, like, ‘10,000 likes and I’ll bash Zyzz,’” Miles says, describing an incident that didn’t make it into the documentary’s final cut. “When the page was doing well, he switched the name of it to be promotion for his protein brand.”
虽然 Zyzz 提倡包容和互助的价值观，鼓励男性成为最好的自己，但他同时也开始利用那些在网上或现实中侮辱他的人来获取流量：“你生气了吗？”（U mad?）和“来啊，兄弟”（Come at me brah）是他反复使用的口头禅。他比大多数人更早理解争议如何驱动点击量，甚至维护虚假的社交账号来放大自己与黑粉之间的战争。“他在 Facebook 上建立了一个页面，写着‘一万个赞我就去痛扁 Zyzz’，”迈尔斯描述了一个未被剪入纪录片最终版本的情节，“当页面火起来后，他把名字改成了他蛋白粉品牌的推广页面。”
His rhetoric turned homophobic and misogynist, contemptuous of anyone who had not optimized their physical form. A 2010 post on his Facebook page read: “id rather be dead than ‘normal.’” By then, we learn from the film, Zyzz had more followers on the platform than the prime minister of Australia at the time.
他的言论变得恐同且厌女，蔑视任何没有优化自己体型的人。他 2010 年在 Facebook 上的一篇帖子写道：“我宁愿死也不愿做一个‘普通人’。”据影片透露，到那时，Zyzz 在该平台上的粉丝数量已经超过了当时的澳大利亚总理。
Behind the bravado, however, Zyzz seemed psychologically unprepared for the limelight. In addition to using steroids to sculpt his Renaissance-worthy physique (he and the fitness personalities in his orbit were known as the “Aesthetics Crew”), he took Xanax to deal with the stress and paranoia that came with being mobbed in public, where he was also frequently menaced by young men looking for a fight.
然而，在虚张声势的背后，Zyzz 在心理上似乎并未做好迎接聚光灯的准备。除了使用类固醇来塑造他那堪比文艺复兴时期雕塑般的体格（他和周围的健身网红被称为“美学团队”），他还服用阿普唑仑（Xanax）来应对在公共场合被围观带来的压力和偏执，在那里他经常受到那些想找茬的年轻男性的威胁。
And while acolytes copied his basic workout routines, his own methods grew ever more extreme. In one video, he bragged about obtaining clenbuterol, a prescription drug used to treat asthma in horses, prized by bodybuilders as a supposedly performance-enhancing substance despite the likelihood of dangerous cardiovascular side effects in humans.
虽然追随者们模仿他的基础健身计划，但他自己的方法却变得越来越极端。在一段视频中，他吹嘘自己获得了克伦特罗（clenbuterol），这是一种用于治疗马匹哮喘的处方药，尽管它对人类有严重的潜在心血管副作用，但仍被健美运动员视为所谓的“增肌神器”。
Today, manosphere streamers and podcasters can make millions hawking supplements and classes to vulnerable young men looking to take charge of their life in one way or another. Zyzz, Miles says, was “right on the cusp” of that economy, reportedly making about $20,000 in the last three months of his life, which would now be considered a drop in the bucket by major creators. “It makes you realize how much has changed, because you look at how it works today, and it’s extraordinary, it’s just a gigantic pyramid scheme,” she says.
如今，男性圈的直播主和播客主可以通过向那些渴望掌控生活的脆弱年轻人兜售补剂和课程赚取数百万美元。迈尔斯说，Zyzz 正处于那种经济模式的“边缘”，据报道他在生命最后三个月赚了约 2 万美元，这在当今的大网红眼中不过是九牛一毛。“这让你意识到一切发生了多大的变化，因为当你审视今天的运作方式时，你会发现它非常惊人，简直就是一个巨大的金字塔骗局，”她说。
Poster Boy leaves it up to the viewer to decide the extent to which Zyzz served as a template for the likes of misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, who flashes onscreen in one sequence. (He and his brother, Tristan Tate, are currently fighting extradition from the US to the UK on charges of rape and sex trafficking that their attorney has claimed are without merit.) Setting aside some provocative aspects of behavior, Zyzz did not appear to preach from a place of nihilism or cynicism, and he had a genuine community.
《海报男孩》留给观众去判断 Zyzz 在多大程度上成为了像厌女网红安德鲁·泰特（Andrew Tate）这样的人的模板，泰特在片中曾短暂出现。（他和他的兄弟特里斯坦·泰特目前正在抗拒从美国引渡到英国，他们面临强奸和性贩运的指控，其律师声称这些指控毫无根据。）抛开一些挑衅性的行为不谈，Zyzz 似乎并非出于虚无主义或愤世嫉俗，而且他确实拥有一个真实的社群。
“Aziz did have friends, and I think that male friendship is one of the beautiful themes of this story,” Miles says, referring to the members of the Aesthetics Crew who sat for interviews and remain in touch today. She wonders if they collectively make the case…
“阿齐兹确实有朋友，我认为男性友谊是这个故事中美好的主题之一，”迈尔斯在谈到那些接受采访并至今保持联系的“美学团队”成员时说道。她想知道，他们是否共同证明了……