What’s the deal with VICE? I’ve read a lot of internets about it, and I’ve learned that it’s worth over a billion dollars, but when I read articles from it, they all sound like dumber, douchier, more bro-tastic versions of stuff from Reason (example). That comparison may be unfair to Reason.
What makes the people who write for it think they’re so cool? I don’t understand it at all. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. Is there some large cohort of young Ayn Rand-loving VICE-reading idiots who keep the operation afloat or how does it sustain itself?
I ask all of this as someone who understands how the Daily Beast and Free Beacon exist.
Omnes Omnibus
What a terrible sentence. In so many ways.
Baud
I have never heard of VICE before now.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Omnes Omnibus:
And here I thought it was just garden-variety narcissism. But, no, even the explanation for Randian idiocy must be grandiose.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Starting a sentence with “But.” Tsk, tsk.
(I don’t follow that rule either.)
KG
@Omnes Omnibus: i think this is the only appropriate response to reading that sentence.
Davebo
Good job. You just gave VICE at least a few hundred clickbaits.
There is a way to avoid that you know. Right?
Trentrunner
@Baud: But it’s not a rule. It’s perfectly fine to begin a sentence with a coordinating conjunction. And you can watch me do it, here. See?
bvernia
The only thing worth saying about Rand was said by Raj Pate:
“There are two novels that can transform a bookish 14-year-kld’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs.” – from “The Value of Nothing”
Baud
@Trentrunner:
OMG, I’m feeling faith. Don’t. Do. That. Again.
Omnes Omnibus
If you could explain to the rest of us, it would be appreciated.
DougJ
@Omnes Omnibus:
The writing is so bad. It makes Nick Gillespie sound like F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Baud
I’ve always wanted to read Rand’s novels to see what all the fuss was about, but I heard they were quite long.
Omnes Omnibus
@DougJ: Damn, that’s cold.
DougJ
@Omnes Omnibus:
There’s a lot of dumb people who like reading warmed over conventional hot-takes and a lot of Glenn Beck viewers.
KG
i honestly tried to read through that, um, review? and just couldn’t do it. it hurt my brain too much, and i’ve read ganesh knows how many supreme court decisions…
DougJ
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nick G isn’t that bad of a writer. Once you get past the Cruising attire and the smug glibertarian attitude, he’s reasonably adept.
Baud
@DougJ:
But why would you ever want to?
El Caganer
What a mess. Author claims that Rand’s work gives socialists, feminists, and whatever other tiresome categories he thinks of a case of terminal butthurt with its slashing wit and devastating logic and whatever. Except that one paragraph before, he made a big deal of his contention that people who don’t like Rand’s work haven’t read it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I’ve read the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars novels, but I can’t get more than 20 or so pages into Atlas Shrugs before my literary gag reflex is triggered.
Bubblegum Tate
I used to write for Vice. This was back in around 1997 up through maybe 2001. At the time, it was on tabloid newsprint and based in Montreal–I wrote music articles for them. In 2000, they gained more distribution and became a proper glossy magazine. They moved to NYC. And then the trouble started. Vice was started by three guys: Shane Smith, Gavin McInnes, and Suroosh Alvi. Suroosh was the legitimately cool one–the one who was fine being snarky and ironic and funny, but also did want to talk about some real stuff. Gavin was and remains a horrendous douche (he left the company a while ago and is an MRA now). Shane is…meh. Kinda hipsterish, no real editorial vision, but fairly smart at the business side and at building the brand.
So, Gavin’s gone, Suroosh doesn’t really do much anymore, and Shane’s running the show. He got a nice investment from Fox Media, which sort of “legitimized” Vice in the sense of moving it from a bunch of hipster Canadians doing silly shit to having the attention of a major media company. So the result is kind of the melding of those two things (hipsters doing silly shit/major media conglomerate).
It was rough going for a while, but in the past couple of years, Vice has actually done some pretty solid journalism. They value first-person stuff. So, if they want to do a story about, say, buying military-grade weapons on the black market, they’ll have a guy go do that and talk about the process. Suroosh returned from hiatus to do a very interesting report of what it was like to do his hajj. Stuff like that. There is some merit there, though the tone can get ridiculous sometimes.
But there is a downside, which is the hipster contrarianism. It’s not as bad as it was during Gavin’s reign of terror, but it’s still a part of the company’s DNA.
That said: MILO! This guy is not an actual Vice journalist. He’s a D-level Breitbarter whose only claim to fame is whipping up GamerGate stuff by (poorly) trolling people on Twitter. It’s kinda funny but not totally surprising that Vice would have him write an article. Do note, though, that he’s being eviscerated in the comments. Your average Vice reader might occasionally revel in online dickishness, but he’s certainly not going for the kind of shit Milo’s shoveling.
Walker
They have captured the millennial libertarian market. Which is, unfortunately, a lot larger than it should sanely be.
Schlemazel
@Trentrunner:
But allowing it will mean the end of English just as surely as using a preposition to end a sentence with.
Omnes Omnibus
@DougJ: Thanks.
DougJ
I liked this
And other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, why don’t you like Ayn Rand?
Gimlet
Lots of crazy stuff in the news roundup tonight
Raw Story
The notoriously Bible-thumping judge, Ray Moore On the recent SC decision – “Despite what they think, it’s not their doing. Satan drives us. He’s out there destroying everything God created including us as human beings.”
Moore went on to blame the ruling on the decline of morality dating back 50 years ago when he was still in high school.
“By the time I was a senior in high school, they started to take away our rights by creating rights of privacy which led to the sexual revolution we are now experiencing,” Moore said.
According to Al.com, Moore stuck around after the church meeting, signing autographs and hawking copies of his book “So Help Me God,” for $20 a pop.
Walker
Also, David Carr vs. some guys from Vice.
BGinCHI
I thought it was the internet start-up of Miami Vice.
No?
sharl
You’re probably not completely wrong about VICE, DougJ. I remember freelancer Charlie Davis’ account of his short tenure as a West Coast editor, and how it came to an abrupt end. Don’t make the money people uncomfortable!!!
If someone is going to work with VICE, best to keep a measure of independence and/or bring your own strong personal #Brand to the relationship, so you can easily afford to walk away if need be. Molly Crabapple seems to have pulled that off successfully. Charlie Davis came to VICE with no strong name recognition beyond a relative handful of online readers; he was…expendable. That’s how VICE rolls.
beltane
Up until five minutes ago, I had never heard of this publication. Now I am a little resentful that I have been made aware of its existence.
Omnes Omnibus
@beltane: Learning can involve discomfort.
Mike J
@Baud:
And that’s not the worst of it.
the Conster
I’m so happy you’re back DougJ with the best BJ posts. No one does song title posts like you, and never will. re Vice: they’ve had some hits. They did a good job reporting on the Baltimore riots, but their twitter feed heds are worse than the worst Slate contrarian click bait abortions. I won’t click on them so I don’t know whether the reporting is any good. I guess there’s so much competition for douchebros that you have to double down on the douchbro attitude. Maybe they’re trying to find the next Chris Hughes.
Bubblegum Tate
I guess one thing I should’ve emphasized in my longish comment above is that no, Vice is not a libertarian dudebro publication. Hipster, yes. But Reason it ain’t. This freelance piece by an Internet laughingstock isn’t representative of Vice‘s regular stock in trade.
Omnes Omnibus
BTW for you Manhattanites, today is the last Manhattanhenge of 2015
Gimlet
More crazy. This time passing for mainstream news and commentary
Politco
Bernie Sanders’ Senate colleagues have come to know him as a bit player in the Democratic Caucus, a gruff, rumpled protest voice to the left of even the most liberal senators. Now the Vermont socialist is drawing crowds by the thousands seemingly everywhere he goes — and his cohorts in D.C. can hardly believe it.
they fear the stronger he gets, the more he’ll pull Clinton to the left, hurting her chances in the general election.
“I just hope they don’t move Hillary so far left that people believe she is out of the realm,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, a moderate West Virginia Democrat who supports Clinton.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), an early Clinton supporter. “I just don’t believe that someone who is a self-described socialist is going to be elected to be president of the United States.”
KG
random thought/laugh as i wrap up the work day… with Jade Helm starting, what are the odds that one of these idiots “monitoring” the action to prevent the obvious attempt to conquer Texas (apparently it needs to be conquered a third time) that they send up one of those annoying drones to watch troop movements and have it shot down? I’d say the odds of one of these idiots getting arrested for interfering with the training exercise is close to even money…
jl
I remember several names from the bits of Atlas Shrugged that I tried to read. but I couldn’t tell most of them apart.
Most distinctive character I remember from The Fountainhead is Gary Cooper.
Looks like people who read VICE are the kind of people who would be interested in the story on China’s most profitable bitcoin mine (it makes $1.5 million a month!)
Elizabelle
Didn’t President Obama just sit down for an interview with Vice? Like over the weekend? Vaguely think I heard that …
Baud
@Gimlet:
Expect many more concern trolling pieces between now and election day.
Bargal20
@bvernia: That quote is from screenwriter John Rogers, published on his blog Kung Fu Monkey in 2009.
Matt Smith
@DougJ: Did you quote Free To Be… You And Me on purpose, or by accident?
(The line, “I’ve never seen anything quite like it before” is straight from the sketch Ladies First.)
beltane
@Omnes Omnibus: You are right. Just to show that I am willing to eat my intellectual veggies, I actually read the piece DougJ linked to. It would seem that the author of this bit of Ayn Rand adulation is a socially awkward 16 year old boy, neglected by his wealthy parents and all but invisible to potential love interests. In an attempt to fill his spare time, of which he has an overabundance, he has memorized every word of Atlas Shrugged and despises all those who just don’t give a shit.
Comrade Mary
VICE is a mixed bag, but some Canuck journalists I respect, like this guy, work for it, so I cautiously assess any VICE links but don’t assume right off the bat that it’s going to be awful )although there is definitely awful there.)
OTOH, you couldn’t pay me to read the HuffPost.
gogol's wife
All I know about them is I read that Nadya Tolokonnikova (of P. Riot) is going to write for them. I cannot figure her out.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
“Manhattanhenge”? Pish and tush.
Infinite Corridor for me!
@Schlemazel:
That is something, up with which I will not put.
jl
@Elizabelle: I think Obama did an interview with VICE News, which is different from VICE magazine. I think owned by same parent corporation. Stories I have seen by VICE news have a totally different tone than what I saw in the link above to VICE magazine.
Major Major Major Major
I went to a Vice party in Brooklyn once during the Book Expo.
It was awesome.
But yeah they’ve always bugged me. I think you’re being a little harsh though, DougJ. The Rand thing is kinda cherry-picked.
But this is what you get when you hire people under 30.
But I’m not supposed to start sentences that way, apparently.
sorrynotsorry
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Elizabelle: I think Vice is producing the documentary about Obama’s tour of a federal penitentiary
JPL
David Carr wrote an article about Vice in 2014. It was a follow-up article. link
I really wasn’t familiar with Vice at all. I probably won’t add it to my daily surfing, but competition isn’t necessarily bad.
@Bubblegum Tate: Why did you leave?
jl
@Elizabelle:
President Barack Obama Speaks With VICE News
youtube.com/watch?v=2a01Rg2g2Z8
SFAW
@jl:
What about the startup building a Turbo Encabulator? They into that as well?
Gin & Tonic
@gogol’s wife: Vice has had knowledgeable and interesting reporting from Russia and Ukraine these last couple of years. Simon Ostrovsky, for example, seems like a real journalist.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: How can you mention a Turbo Encabulator without the link?
Another Holocene Human
When I hear VICE, I think of the Hipster Grifter. I also think of Dov Charney but that might be a spurious mental connection.
Woodrowfan
@Omnes Omnibus: same here, and I enjoyed the Mars novels as a teen. But Ayn Rand? no way….
beltane
After perusing the site some more, I have concluded that I am too old and way too female to be the target audience.
Another Holocene Human
@Comrade Mary: When someone links me to Huffpoo it’s worse than a Rick Roll. Back button, back! At least Rick is on YouTube.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
I knew someone would do it for me?
Either that, or laziness.
Elizabelle
@jl: Thanks, pals.
But for the article, I’d have thought that VICE was the most popular vape these days.
jl
@SFAW:
‘ What about the startup building a Turbo Encabulator? They into that as well? ‘
Thanks for clip. I didn’t hear anything about how you could turn it into a bitcoin rig. But sounds like it could be adapted to turn water into gasoline, and be suppressed by shadowy evil and very powerful forces behind the scenes, so it might make a good story.
Another Holocene Human
@Gimlet: Moore then concluded: Fapfapfapfapfapfap.
Bubblegum Tate
@JPL:
Mostly because of staff turnover. I was just a freelancer–a regular freelancer, but a freelancer all the same–and all my regular contacts over there ended up leaving until eventually, I just plain didn’t know anybody over there anymore. I might’ve made more of an effort to form relationships with the new people, but the magazine wasn’t quite the same anymore, and it wasn’t as much fun to write for (it was really great back in the day), so I let it go.
schrodinger's cat
Never heard of VICE before this post.
danielx
@Baud:
I’d heard of and read it, but was trying to forget.
RSA
@Omnes Omnibus: And from the preceding paragraph:
God, libertarians…
mainmata
@Bubblegum Tate: Thanks for this analysis. Never heard of VICE before this. Sounds like a really strange organization but one that started out as an innovative one, which is good. We need more thinking out odf the box. Gawd knows the MSM is dismal.
sigaba
(FD. I’ve worked for Vice on some small projects.)
Vice media is a somewhat-big youth media/content creation company, it’s also a remarkably effective sponsored content operation. The vast majority of the stories and content you see in a Vice property is paid for by a client of some kind or another, they have offices full of directors and editors that you can hire to make a commercial that looks like an extremely slick, edgy news item/explainer/viral content. They then host these and distribute them through their platforms: Motherboard, Vice News, Fightland (their MMA platform), the magazine, whatever…
It’s house style is arch and ironic, philistine, and what Vice calls “raw” most other people would recognize as “exploitive” in any other context. If it has any raison d’être it is to sell you on the fact that life is meaningless chaos, your leaders are frauds, and the world is burning, so buy Old Spice.
The HBO show has a measure of independence but it’s the pet project of Bill Maher and is basically his personal 60 Minutes.
The shop is run mostly out of New York. HBO and Fox own equity stakes in it, as did Viacom (V may still, it’s privately held so no one knows.)
The founders of Vice were all college bros/buds in Toronto in the 90s; one of them is a contributor to VDARE and probably a sociopath. Spike Jonze and a few other worthy commercial directors head their creative department. It’s sortof a perfect storm of everything that’s going wrong in news.
Mike Adamson
Great title!
jl
@sigaba: Every story I have seen from VICE News seems to be straight up news, without any obvious editorial content or marketing pitch. Except for a generally progressive science-believing tone on for example, climate change.
sigaba
@jl: Ahhhhhh– all I would say is:
1) There’s very little distinction between the part of the business that shoots Budweiser commercials and the part that follows Dennis Rodman to North Korea. (Really two sides of the same coin.)
2) They can cover news stories but their editors have a stupendous case of either Oooh Shiny! or are terminal hipsters. They can do scandal, they can do hypocrisy, they can do freak shows; when they go to Syria they get tons of B-roll of ISIS fighters shooting machine-guns into the air and 9 year olds swearing martyrdom. That’s just what interests them. It might be true and important, but it’s still yellow journalism, and that’s not a bad thing necessarily, either, except the POV of the news is pervasively, unremittingly cynical and negative.
It may have progressive, skeptical coverage of science but all the human affairs reporting is almost designed to tear down the concept of human progress from the inside out.
Felonius Monk
@Schlemazel:
I saw what you did there.
jl
@sigaba: Thanks for advisory. I’ve mainly watched their science related reports and specials, some of which have gotten good reviews from experts in the fields. But I’ll consider myself warned.
gelfling545
@Gimlet: I believe that some people are willing hear things from an old white guy that they (Who can guess why?) would not be disposed to listen to from the President or Secretary Clinton. In the long run, should Clinton be the nominee this will I believe, help her. I doubt the “socialist” label will do him anywhere near as much damage as it did the President.
ASV
Reason is for Rand Paul; Vice is for Bill Maher. Does that clear it up?
the Conster
@sigaba:
That is a helluva shorter. Makes total sense, and aligns with my experience after consuming their product. Now I’m going to drink in total despair of any hope for a better alternative media.
DougJ
@ASV:
Yes it does
sigaba
@jl: I don’t wanna be too hard on the news stuff, I enjoy watching Vice on HBO too, it’s just that it’s mostly for entertainment purposes only.
It’s a lot like Michael Moore’s Roger and Me: the story is true, maybe in a moral sense, and it may have an important message, but you eventually have to reckon with the fact that a lot of the concrete events and story points that you thought you saw in the video package (or whatever) are in fact manufactured in editing.
In some ways I really respect their operation — I think they have some of the best photogs working in ENG today, their interviews are always interesting and their reporters and correspondents have an honest-to-god point of view. Mutatis mutandis Leni Riefenstahl.
Keith G
@sigaba:
Sweet!
cmorenc
Pardon me if someone already mentioned this particular quote from Milo Yiannopoulis’s article in VICE that DougJ linked above, but the level of perversely unintentional self-parody is hilariously astounding:
I do think the last sentence about Goldman Sachs earning reports getting the author might even be an attempt at self-satire – but one which fails because it’s impossible, given what else the author said in the article, to get any other impression than that he truly does wank off fantasizing about Goldman Sachs the way some other men fantasize about visiting an FKK Club in Germany or a soapy massage parlor in Patpong, Thailand.
Another Holocene Human
It’s so sad, when Bubblegum Tate mentioned Gavin McInnes the name was familiar. Then he says MRA. I off and on follow that shitshow (thanks to David Futrelle and sometimes Pharyngula but I have a grudge about the vile comment section … pun intended).
How sad.
Another Holocene Human
@cmorenc: Milo-boy is ALSO an MRA or MRA sympathizer, as I can’t remember if he identifies in some rival group. (Some MRA’s and PUA’s have mutual hate going on, plus there are MRAs who call themselves something different to distance themselves from Elam-malE.)
Another Holocene Human
I wasn’t going to get off the boat, still not, but Yiannopoulos was a YUUUUGE GamerGate supporter, you know, on the evil, harass women online until they kill themselves oh hee hee nobody said you should kill yourself why are you so sensitive side.
Joel
@Bubblegum Tate: that’s about right. VICE wins by being one of the few outlets that actually pushes their reporting. NYT has lots of great reporting but they’d rather people wank about some Brooks or Dowd nonsense. Cheaper, anyways.
SatanicPanic
VICE has some good articles every now and then. They occasionally investigate stuff that I’d never have heard about otherwise. And some of their people profiles are really interesting.
RandomMonster
@Comrade Mary:
Agree, I’ve read some interesting content there in the past.
And THIS!
cckids
@bvernia:
I’ve loved that since I first read it, but just this year found another (not quite as good, but still great)
From Flannery O’Connor – to a friend who told her she was reading Ayn Rand on the rec of another friend:
“I hope you don’t have as a “friend” the type of person who would recommend Ayn Rand to you. I’d rather believe that it was in your hands because you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage can. In my opinion, Ayn Rand is as low as you can go re fiction.”
I have a soft spot for good slams.
cckids
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’ve read Twilight (don’t ask).
I would read ALL THE TWILIGHT BOOKS before I’d read Atlas Shrugs again. Better story, more believable characters.
Andre Goulet
@Bubblegum Tate: Nice explainer. Growing up in Canada in the late ’90s, VICE was weird and underground and punk rock, almost like a glossy zine. It was druggy and perverted and cool. For teens and young adults in a proto-hipster age, having a new issue was like being the only one at your school with a bunch of records from Matador or Domino or a Fantagraphics comic. What’s amazing is that VICE as an institution was one of the key culprits in helping to incubate the now omnipresent douchey, sleeve-tat hipsterism that we see everywhere today. It’s become the gentrification of the underground culture. But they’ve also become a go-to for the new journalism and online content creation. It’s trashy, and I don’t go anywhere near it if I can avoid the clickbait and HBO promotions, but I can’t say they’re doing terrible work.
SFAW
@cckids:
Hell, any of the Marvel comics/heroes meets those criteria.
HeartlandLiberal
Wikipedia article goes into a lot of detail, including fact that Rupert Murdoch bought a 5% stake. VICE emphasized that they retained control, though, I guess to gloss over the infusion of money.
Having never heard of them, and having just now examined their front page, I am hard pressed to understand why anyone would bookmark their site for future reference. I am trying to forget it already.
Trinity
I really like VICE. I have been a fan of theirs for years. They make amazing documentaries. I highly recommend their work on North Korea and ISIS.
Daulnay
Like Politico, VICE got into bed with conservatives:
from this article in the NYT
That says all you need to know about where VICE is coming from, and how trustworthy it is.
Ian
@bvernia:
The originator of that line is the wonderful screenwriter John Rogers.
hart williams
This juvenile Brit writ wrote sheerest nonsensical persiflage glopped in word-centerpieces of astonishing irrationality. Other than that it’s er, a BRILLIANT defense of indefensible Rand.
Less sophistry, more substance: Ayn Nation Under God
amazon.com/dp/B00ANBWRSE
EthylEster
@sigaba wrote:
So I guess this is Fox News trying to youngen their viewer base.