u mIRCin', brah?

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This was a wide-ranging conversation.

We talked about mIRC WWE roleplays, the impossibility of creating a genealogy of bodybuilding forums, how trolling evolved from Usenet to Twitter, the implicit similarities between Aimee Terese and Zyzz, why the digital invites body modification, male-to-male transsexuals, and the lasting impact of what the New York Times’ once dubbed “the male fitness internet.”

Read Oliver’s EXCELLENT reporting here:

* The Unheard History of Bodybuilding Forums

* Steroid Solidarity

* Muscle, Smoke, Mirrors

* The Life of a Jacked Guy in 2019

* How Selfies and Social Media Shaped Modern Bodybuilding

* What Could Have Triggered Elliot Rodger?

Books referenced:

* Muscle, Smoke, and Mirrors by Randy Roach

* Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder by Sam Fussell

I would love to do a follow-up episode dedicated just on Zyzz. If anyone has any guest recommendations, feel free to let me know below.

I needed to add something below the line to create the paywall. Here’s more Zyzz. Your dollars will go to me getting a fake tan today.

And for the heterosexual gentlemen, of which there are maybe two, here’s Paris Hilton in a bikini:

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