The World According to ZANDLAND - Issue #1
Gooners, Gaza, and the shifting reality of modern media.
Welcome to the first edition of The World According to ZANDLAND, a weekly-ish update from inside our adventurous little corner of the media world.
At ZANDLAND, our whole mission is to take you to places you wouldn’t normally get to go, whether you’re a media professional, an audience member or someone who just likes to understand the world. From current-affairs to popculture to the strange corners of the internet, our job is to open doors that are usually shut and tell the stories people don’t realise they need to see.
I’m Ben Zand, the founder of Zandland, and this newsletter is our way of bringing you along for the ride: taking you inside the stories we’re chasing, the worlds we’re stepping into, what we’re learning as the world shifts under our feet, and how we’re building shows across two lanes at once, the traditional world of broadcasters and streamers, and a direct relationship with audiences online.
1. Inside the Gooners — Our Latest HUMAN Film
Last week we released our latest episode of HUMAN… Inside Gooning: The Porn Addiction Taking Over the Internet, one of the strangest and most revealing HUMAN films yet. Watch the film below:
For anyone new here: a big part of what we’re building is direct-to-audience storytelling. HUMAN is our latest show in that space, a series we can make quickly, creatively, and put straight into the world. It only launched in October and has already had over 11 million views across platforms and a genuinely engaged community forming around it.
The Gooning episode sits inside one of the biggest unsolved shifts on the internet:
the industrial-scale porn ecosystem and its impact on masculinity and intimacy.
Some context:
Porn is bigger than Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu combined in global bandwidth
One in three of the world’s most-visited websites is porn-related
Average age of first exposure: 11
70%+ of young men consume porn before age 15
Porn sites receive more monthly visitors than Twitter, TikTok, Amazon, Spotify and Netflix combined
Gooning is the extreme edge, where novelty, dopamine and online identity replace real intimacy, connection and confidence.
The film explores:
how overstimulation reshapes desire
why many young men feel lost and disconnected
the tension between emotional needs and digital habits
loneliness, masculinity and the intimacy gap
what a generation raised online is really searching for
The reaction has been huge — fascination, discomfort, recognition and debate.
2. HUMAN — Over 11 Million Views Since Launch
Since launching in early October, our documentary series HUMAN has now crossed 11 million views.
It’s one of the most energising things we’ve done, fast, direct, audience-first filmmaking. We’ve also very quickly built a growing number of paying subscribers (more below).
More episodes are released every 2-3 weeks.
3. Exclusive HUMAN Content on Patreon
With every HUMAN episode, we now release exclusive Patreon content — extended interviews, deeper dives and behind-the-scenes moments.
We have two membership tiers, and a very promising number of viewers have already joined. Genuinely, thank you to those who have.
Why it matters: supporting our journalism directly keeps us independent and fearless.
More perks coming:
extended cut interviews
early access to new episodes
private Q&As
live screenings
HUMAN BTS features
Join the Patreon → https://www.patreon.com/cw/ZANDLAND
4. Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War
On Thursday we screened Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War at the Frontline Club.
This is a film built on rare testimony from Israeli soldiers returning from Gaza, testimony that exposes a breakdown in discipline, norms, oversight and rules of engagement.
Our mission with content is always impact and scale. With that in mind, we’ve made the full film available internationally here (UK viewers can watch on ITV). Here’s an article from deadline on why we did that: https://deadline.com/2025/11/itv-doc-breaking-ranks-inside-israels-war-youtube-zandland-1236627080/
A very brief snapshot of what the soldiers revealed:
Accounts of unprovoked firing on unarmed civilians, including people running for food
Soldiers describing that official IDF rules of engagement were not followed on the ground
Ordinary behaviour being arbitrarily branded as “terrorist indicators”
Buildings in civilian-safe areas destroyed on assumption rather than evidence
Testimony alleging use of human shields (“the mosquito protocol”)
Deep emotional and psychological fallout among some soldiers
Clips from Breaking Ranks have now passed 6 million views on social media.
It made for a powerful, challenging screening with a Q&A that was emotional, and very, very real.
5. Untangled — The Intimacy Recession
On this week’s Untangled, a new Vodcast from Channel 4 and Zandland in the UK, Stacey Dooley and I explored what many are calling the Intimacy Recession — a collapse in sex, relationships and connection among younger generations.
Key points:
Sex is at a historic low
Relationships are declining
Men and women now want very different things
Porn is reshaping emotional expectations
Loneliness is becoming the norm
It pairs with the these explored in the Gooners film, and begs the question, why is finding love so hard? This is a topic area that generates a lot of reaction and response, and we think there’s a lot more to explore (as evidenced by our work into masculinity, our previous films on Incels (Watch on Hulu and Channel 4) and Looksmaxxers, and now Gooners!)
Listen here →
6. Behind the Scenes — The Team That Makes It Happen
A few thank yous!
BREAKING RANKS TEAM
Tom Giles — ITV Controller of Current Affairs. His relentless pursuit of this story is the only reason the film was made.
Maya Rostowska — producer and editorial architect
Matan Cohen— secured access and led the soldier interviews
Josh Reynolds — EP and compliance backbone
Secunder Kermani — hosted the screening with calm authority
Rhiannon Mayor & Tom Laws-Brown — editors who shaped the story inside the chaos
HUMAN TEAM
Callum Isaac — highly-talented digital producer on the series who’s given his all to get us where we are.
Ben Mulley — researcher and editorial backbone of the show and fought hard for the gooners episode to come to light!
Freddie Newman — pivotal for us seeing the growth we have on socials
7. What We’re Thinking About
• How do you tell a story when even “truth” is contested?
• Why is intimacy collapsing for a whole generation?
• What makes a thumbnail succeed or fail?
• Can documentaries be both serious and wildly watchable?
• Should we show more of our behind-the-scenes chaos? (Probably yes.)
Let us know what you think of any and all these questions, the more ridiculous response the better.
8. Another Perspective — On the Media Itself
Last week I spoke at Content London about something shaping how audiences view journalism and documentary: the changing relationship between viewers and legacy media brands.
My slightly apocalyptic analysis was covered:
To give a bit more context, here are a few of the ideas I discussed:
• Big broadcasters still matter, but for younger audiences trust has shifted, and that’s a major issue that needs radical thinking.
• Broadcasters can benefit from creating sub-brands with distinct identities, tones and values that feel closer to the communities they want to reach, and less tied to a single overarching corporate identity.
• Digital factual, journalism and documentary need to feel platform-native, creator-led and audience-connected.
• Media is now democratised in a way it never has been, which is exciting, but algorithms increasingly reward extremes over accuracy. ZANDLAND’s mission is to sit at the intersection: fair, accurate documentary and journalism that’s also exciting, modern and commercially ambitious.
And all of this is happening whilst Netflix has announced a $72bn deal to acquire the film and streaming businesses of Warner Bros Discovery, a reminder that the industry is reshaping itself at every level. At one end, giant players are consolidating to survive; at the other, audiences are choosing smaller, creator-led brands they trust. Both trends point to the same shift: people follow stories and voices they believe in, not the institutions that happen to own them.
Read the full C21 article here:
👉 https://www.c21media.net/news/zandlands-ben-zand-laments-nightmarish-lack-of-trust-in-mainstream-legacy-media/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=linkedin
For us, the big opportunity is to build zeitgeist documentaries that feel authentic, modern and community-driven, and to make exciting films that speak directly to people, not at them.
9. What’s Next
Next issue: on Untangled we’ll be talking about Australia’s new social media ban in schools and what that means for the rest of us, there’ll be new HUMAN content, content announcements, thoughts on development, and more battles with airline baggage allowances.
We’re also shaping The World According to ZANDLAND into a proper digital home, a space where ideas, obsessions and stories live long before they become films.
More soon.
Ben Zand
Founder, ZANDLAND
You’re on this list because at some point you’ve crossed paths with ZANDLAND, collaborating, talking, commissioning, or just being part of our world. If these updates aren’t for you, feel free to unsubscribe at the link below.