The brief life and sudden death of Zyzz: why did the bodybuilding influencer die at just 22?

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Long before looksmaxxers, Aziz ‘Zyzz’ Shavershian was famous online for posting workouts and rage-bait – until he died in Thailand in 2011. A new documentary reveals what really happened Decades before the extreme aesthetic trend of looksmaxxing, there was Zyzz. Aziz Shavershian was an Australian teenager who became a fitness influencer in the 2000s, filming his workouts and thoughts about the world on his Nokia and posting them to YouTube. Zyzz was big in all senses of the word: many of his videos would see him flexing into unabashedly vain bodybuilding poses, hair feathered like an anime character, as he mocked his audience’s envy with slang straight out of bodybuilding forums: “U mirin’, brah?” He was skilled in rage-bait long before anyone had heard of it, creating accounts to troll himself in case the haters ever forgot to hate. He started an anonymous Facebook page, titled “10,000 likes and I’ll bash Zyzz”, and, when the goal was reached, switched the page to one advertising his ...
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‘It has become a sort of silver bullet’: why are rap lyrics being put on trial?

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In compelling documentary As We Speak, a controversial legal practice that uses rap lyrics to secure convictions is explored

In September 2001, McKinley Phipps Jr, also known as the rapper Mac, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for manslaughter. It had been a year and a half since gunfire erupted outside a club where he was slated to perform in Slidell, Louisiana, resulting in the death of 19-year-old Barron Victor Jr. Phipps, then 22, maintained his innocence, and the case against him was weak – there was no gun linking him to the crime, several witnesses recanted their testimony and another person confessed to pulling the trigger. And yet, prosecutors had their trump card: Mac, a former New Orleans rap prodigy who began releasing music at the age of 13, had rapped about murder.

“Murder, murder, kill, kill”, Phipps recites in As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial, a new documentary on the criminalization of rap lyrics. Prosecutors spliced that line with one from a different song – “Pull the trigger, put a bullet in your head” – to create the portrait of a killer; Mac’s art was the evidence that DNA, solid confessions, or a missing weapon couldn’t provide. An all-white jury bought it. Phipps served over 21 years in prison before being granted clemency in 2021.

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