Mystery seems to have long since faded from the world. It was bound to happen — with the rise of the information superhighway, anyone can have knowledge of almost anything in just a few clicks. The boom in smartphones meant that the largest collection of human knowledge ever assembled is now stored inches from everyone’s crotch.
But there’s something magical lost in the ether when the wealth of mankind’s understanding is so democratized. Years of falsified content on the Internet have conditioned us to live in disbelief whenever we encounter something that may not be true. We live in a time of “Pics or it didn’t happen”-based logic, even when Photoshop consistently reminds us that seeing isn’t always believing. Only the most captivating of tales would allow us cynical Internet seekers to suspend our disbelief and un-ironically indulge in fiction.
This is where the Zola story comes in. If your modem cable got run over by a Ford Model T and you couldn’t get to a Circuit City to replace it, then you probably have no idea what the Zola story is. For the uninitiated, the Zola story was told through a series of tweets by Twitter user @_zolarmoon, also known as Aziah Wells, about her ridiculous trip to Florida with a girl she barely knows. It covered everything from prostitution, kidnapping, murder and a dramatic suicide attempt. Needless to say, it captured the hearts of millions and turned its author into something of a star overnight.
There were a lot of reactions to the story floating around online, most of them awed by the absurdity of the situation and even one claiming that it was a document about sex workers’ lack of rights. Whatever your takeaway, it was clear that something mesmerizing was lying just beneath the surface of Zola’s tale. Maybe it was her descriptive yet colloquial diction, or her irreverent tone or some other transcendent force between the tweets that makes the story so enthralling. Regardless, Zola’s story got at the very heart of good storytelling, despite being borderline unreadable at parts.
Many wary readers were hesitant to believe Zola’s recollection of events as entirely accurate. The validity of her yarn has been called into question repeatedly since it went, dare I say, “viral.” However, all of the skepticism misses the point entirely about why the Zola story is so widely loved. True or not, the story is an indulgence, a temporary ceasefire of all your immediate suspicions upon encountering anything online. The Zola story exists in a strange limbo in which nobody knows for sure how much of it really happened or if the creator made it all up for 15 minutes of Internet fame (which roughly equates to 11 seconds of real fame). Either way, nobody seems to care. It’s a folk tale for the digital age — something entirely modern that feels like a relic simply because it lives outside the realm of the verifiable. A Google search can’t tell you for sure if the Zola story really happened, just as it can’t tell you if Paul Bunyan really existed. It was likely an exaggeration based on real events and people, but that in no way should take away one’s enjoyment of it.
The folk stories of yesteryear tried to capture some idea of what was important to the people who told them. Old-fashioned American values are sewn into the fabric of every legend. Zola’s story breaks this mold while also fitting into it — we’re living in a time where so-called “family values” are quickly becoming passé, as young people realize that the traditional American sensibilities we were raised to believe do not hold up as promised. The reality Zola has created is one without objective morality or rules of any kind, which is sort of how it feels to come of age in a turbulent era like this one. As a folk hero, Zola plays the part beautifully: she’s young, a go-getter and almost comically above the fray at all points in her story. These are all traits that all millennials can see in themselves, or at least strive toward. While we may not be in Zola’s particular line of work, we can relate to being thrust into a world that we have no control over, while still trying to own our s—.
The Zola story is the closest thing to a legend the Internet has seen in a long time. It’s something in the zeitgeist that everyone is aware of and we regard as being not quite of this world. It has inspired fake movie posters and reached everyone from the average Imgur user to Missy Elliot and a host of other celebrities. Like any good myth, the Zola story captured our collective imaginations and made us set aside our cynicism to revel in such a ludicrous story.
CORRECTION: This story previously said the Twitter handle @_zolarmoon belonged to singer Zola Jesus.
