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 protein brand.
