Zyzz Was the Original Looksmaxxer. His Rise and Untimely Death Feel More Relevant Than Ever

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.

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.

Aziz “Zyzz” Shavershian and brother Said “Chestbrah” Shavershian.

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.