The hipster ethos, as promulgated in Vice Magazine, is indistinguishable from Ayn Rand's Objectivism

Message Bookmarked
Bookmark Removed
Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (223 of them)
('Directness' is not incompatible with an Unreliable Narrator, though. No binary opposition there.)

I don't like the look of Heat because it's one of those faux-American British mags that came along with cluttered page layout and clunky faux-American typefaces and reviews of Hollywood rubbish. It's a classic 'inferiority complex exploitation' magazine for British people who wish they were, you know, Robert De Niro.

Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:29 (twenty years ago) link

Whereas Vice is a mag that came to New York from Canada and made Americans wish they were Canadian. A much more interesting development. Strike in the heart of the motherland!

Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:31 (twenty years ago) link

But Momus, Vice reads like a magazine written by a bunch of people who wish they were Americans! For true!

J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:33 (twenty years ago) link

No, it reads like a magazine written by people who wished they were Americans, then realised how much cooler they were when they got there, and proceeded to take revenge by turning the tables and making Americans feel totally inadequate.

Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:34 (twenty years ago) link

haha - riiight

cinniblount (James Blount), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:35 (twenty years ago) link

well we're gonna have to agree to disagree ¥et again 'cause to me it reads like people who either are American or are doing a pretty fine job of sounding like willfully ugly Americans

J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:36 (twenty years ago) link

you gotta love my yen sign by the way I did it special for you

J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:37 (twenty years ago) link

yeah, i can't quite figure out exactly what is the difference between vice's rich kid hipster xenophobia and, say, lost in translation's rich kid hipster xenophobia

cinniblount (James Blount), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:38 (twenty years ago) link

I think the difference is that Coppola really hates hipsters since her hipster hubby cheated on her, whereas Vice just pretends to hate hipsters because hipsters hate themselves.

Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:40 (twenty years ago) link

If Americans wish they were Canadians, it's only because they want to get away from the Republican regieme supported by the Canadians who run Vice!

hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:42 (twenty years ago) link

yeah but they also gave JAPANTHER a 10.

yes, i was about to say.

Whereas Vice is a mag that came to New York from Canada and made Americans wish they were Canadian.

it's a handy soundbite, but i don't think vice made anyone wish they were canadian. seriously.

lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:42 (twenty years ago) link

what're you talking about, the first time I caught wind of their whole race schtick I was like "fuck this, I'm goin' to Banff"

J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:45 (twenty years ago) link

but coppola doesn't remotely hate hipsters - in the film ribisi/jonze is seen as having betrayed his hipster heritage by hanging with 'common' cameron diaz, and the lounge singer is held up for ridicule and disgust for singing maria muldaur while bill murray gets a free pass cuz he digs roxy music. even japan is redeemed when the chick and the dude hang with some 'hip' japanese - not like them square tv people who can't even pronounce 'r' correctly! lost in translation is EXACTLY the same hipster rich kid bullshit as vice

cinniblount (James Blount), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:49 (twenty years ago) link

very good point. if anything, vice is more joyful and open about the whole thing.

lauren (laurenp), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:55 (twenty years ago) link

why can't we all just do some coke and get along?

cutty (mcutt), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:56 (twenty years ago) link

Well, I like Vice and very much dislike Lost In Translation. One day I will try to work out why, when a lot of rain falls from the sky.

Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:59 (twenty years ago) link

you posting from london momus cuz there's a lot of rain falling right now.

Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:02 (twenty years ago) link

re: this 'new journalism' thing: DON'T TRY IT. you are wrong.

g--ff (gcannon), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:03 (twenty years ago) link

there have been several 'new' journalisms to come along. in the 1880s, the 20s, wolfe used the term somewhat self-aggrandizingly in the 60s. vice isn't even a blip, and it's barely journalism.

g--ff (gcannon), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:05 (twenty years ago) link

But that's what people always say when New Journalism comes along!

Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:08 (twenty years ago) link

your command of this subject is supreme

g--ff (gcannon), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:11 (twenty years ago) link

(Hasn't this thread happened five times already?)

VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:15 (twenty years ago) link

Let's see, if the poster for Lost In Translation had been a broken tooth, a plastic pig, and a desert, that would already have been better than the poster they had. If the plot of LIT had been like the Contents list of Vice that would also be better. There would be a scene of a medical orderly with an old lady, followed by a jizz mopper scene and a funeral parlour scene. Then a careers advisor would give a heartfelt speech, followed by a whore telling us how to be a whore (a hell of a lot better than the demeaning whore scene Coppola gives us). Then there'd be a scene about giving kids in wheelchairs handjobs.

The fact is that Vice on the screen would clearly be Harmony Korine, not Sofia Coppola. In other words, it would be a lot closer to a Fassbinder film than an Air album.

Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:20 (twenty years ago) link

dont get us started on harmony

cutty (mcutt), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:24 (twenty years ago) link

Isn't Harmony Korine completely insufferable?

VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:30 (twenty years ago) link

(multi-x post)

Blount has never been more OTM than about Vice/LiT.

miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:30 (twenty years ago) link

oh come off it M., Vice isn't fit to wash Fassbinder's coke-spoon

J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:33 (twenty years ago) link

people do NOT miss the conversations going on in the "comments" under the Vice articles Momus has graciously linked to above - here's one from the "How to Be A Whore" one (which another commentator observes is written in a style startlingly similar to the in-house Vice norm):

ya'll fucking poop-dick canadians gotta get fucked somehow, eh? CANADA IS A BURNT BITCH

J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:38 (twenty years ago) link

Vice gets up your nose, doesn't it?

Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:40 (twenty years ago) link

yes, but as I'm forever wanting to point out, just 'cause something annoys doesn't mean it's good

here's Vice editor Chris Nieratko, by the by, doin' a li'l "racial, not racist" humor in the website's "About Us" section:

http://viceland.com/issues/v10n6/htdocs/staff/iheartnj.jpg

J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:41 (twenty years ago) link

no. this 'ooo .. ooo vice, vice' is almost as boring as the magazine.

doomie x, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:42 (twenty years ago) link

'Second-wave feminists like Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon made up this cruel stereotype that everyone in the sex industry got fucked by their dad. What do they know about it? Shit, that's not fair. I mean, I got fucked by my dad, and every single woman I've met in the industry (stripping, prostitution, internet, phone sex…everything) got fucked by her dad, but…oh shit, wait. It is true.'

Did you like that bit, J0hn? Did it sound like a whore wrote it, or the editor of Vice pretending to be a whore? Is it usual to read about Dworkin and MacKinnon in free mags? Do you think this article demeans women?

Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:44 (twenty years ago) link

um, it's incredibly usual to read about dworkin and mackinnon in free mags

cinniblount (James Blount), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:45 (twenty years ago) link

being pretty familiar with both Dworkin & MacKinnon, it sounds to me like whoever wrote it hasn't read either of them

J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:48 (twenty years ago) link

(that was needlessly snide, but Dworkin especially is quite complex and is actually an example of my own if-it-provokes-it-has-value button: right and left, conservative and liberal all love to take turns shootin' BB's at Andrea Dworkin, one of the easiest targets in the history of feminist thought - heaven forbid we should try to engage her line of thought!)

J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:51 (twenty years ago) link

Marks out of ten for this article on 'How To Be A Whore in 2004', then? Did you like it?

Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 17:52 (twenty years ago) link

Marks out of ten for this article on 'How To Be A Whore in 2004', then? Did you like it?

It was all right, I guess. When I lived in Portland most of my friends were prostitutes - guys, mainly, working near the Justice Building around 13th & Taylor. My own experience of their attitudes - toward life, their line of work, the people they met up with, and so on - does not closely mirror that of the article's author. Contempt for the tricks seemed limited to guys who'd entered the trade out of actual empty-stomach hunger; my closest friends were guys who whored because it was hard for them to find work elsewhere: the market for waiters being flooded, and my friends not having any professional training (my best friend, Brad, being dyslexic and unable to complete classes without severe kill-me-now level frustration), and job interviews being somewhat embarassing when your manner of speech outs you before you've finished saying "hello." Maybe all these are/were just excuses, I dunno. But the seven or eight working guys I was pals with and the three or four working girls who liked to hang around with them weren't real "In your face! This is what bein' a WHORE is like, yeeeah!" about it. The girls I knew talked more about going to community college and getting a CNA than about, say, the sort of thing covered in the "youth" section of Vice's A-to-Z.

Not to call into question somebody else's experience, of course - just wondering if the article mightn't have been better written as a "how it was for me" than as a "what it's like" sort of thing. Not un-entertaining, though. 6 outta 10.

J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 18:07 (twenty years ago) link

Did I fart or something? sure got real quiet in here

J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 18:42 (twenty years ago) link

All the Americans decided they wanted to be more like the Canadians.

Nemo (JND), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 18:43 (twenty years ago) link

john don't talk about real-life -- it just confuses and upsets momus.

yay vice! being a crackhead and whore is really really cool!

doomie x, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 20:09 (twenty years ago) link

I'd give the whore thing 3 of 10. Ignoring whatever political issues I have with their content, I don't like Vice because they always sound like they're trying too hard. Trying too hard to be shocking, trying too hard to be cool, trying too hard to be funny.

miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 20:12 (twenty years ago) link

is this an east coast thing? because I swear I have never seen nor heard of this magazine until ILX and then it's only you east coast people who talk about it (I'm in SF). I feel like I am supposed to have an opinion about it.

kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 20:13 (twenty years ago) link

and we all know if you are trying to hard then it just isnt cool, now, is it momum?

doomie x, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 20:13 (twenty years ago) link

it's always seemed to me like what really turns the people behind vice on is the simple lure of lucre. that the supposed transgressive and fetishistic nature of what they tend to cover is actually a bore to them. or at least a joke. but it's the money which ain't funny.

duke tautology, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 20:23 (twenty years ago) link

d'ya write for vice?

doomie x, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 20:58 (twenty years ago) link

Momus: here's why everybody's giving Gavin McVice a hard time: http://www.amconmag.com/08_11_03/feature.html

sexyDancer, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 21:12 (twenty years ago) link

is this part of the stuff that he later claimed he meant ironically?

kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 21:16 (twenty years ago) link

http://viceland.com/issues/v10n6/htdocs/staff/iheartnj.jpg

You know, when I first saw this pic I felt like my cozy liberal preconceptions were being challenged. Then a few seconds later I realized I was just feeling a little gassy. It happens.

Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 21:24 (twenty years ago) link

I have to agree with Dan's various sentiments at this point. As for the immediate above, that's more a stabbing pain in my abdomen.

Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 21:33 (twenty years ago) link

I totally want to Upper Deck that guy. I sure hope someday I get invited to a party at his house.

martin m. (mushrush), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 21:38 (twenty years ago) link


You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.