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

this has all been talked to death and i'm saying nothing new, but i thought i'd take another look at the online vice (my 2nd since the last mammoth thread). john d's right - it's the comments that seem important here. no matter what article you're reading, scroll down a bit and the "nigger"s "jew"s and "french"ies inevitably appear. i get the feeling that, if anything, the vice environment is one that completely does away with the need for critical thinking. it doesn't quite matter anymore who means what or to what degree - going by the comments, it seems that now more than ever we can don blackface without thinking too hard about it. as much as like i'd like to buy that (THAT being "we're beyond good and evil and we're working towards a better future so let's keep language moving towards avantopia you fags"), i don't really. i'm not pretending language doesn't and isn't changing, but i am pretending that it serves us well to think about which bits and how. maybe (hopefully, i'd say), we can find a kind of change that isn't just changing AGAINST political correctness (which sounds like a very simple and easy thing to hate when you write it out as a two word phrase or speak it as a soundbite but.. i suspect it ain't). sure, maybe vice's a historical inevitability (if ya still believe in history) - an intrinsically awkward, sometimes funny, sometimes horrible side effect of REAL ACTUAL CHANGE FOR GOOD, but that's a little too forgiving for me.

http://www.viceland.com/issues/v11n3/htdocs/ungrateful.php

Some are intelligent, some dismissive, some crude, some appreciative, some funny...

But while you can judge a board by its 'comments' (that's all a board is), you can't judge a magazine by them. It's written by professionals, curated, edited, it has a style and a mission. In Vice's case, a rather eccentric one which, while it plays all the positional games of 'hipper and harder than thou', is also a very personal vision of the world coming from Gavin and Jesse. It's not tied into product cycles like other mags. It really is a much more serious and ambitious magazine than most style press titles. It makes people think because of its unreliable narrator stance, its feisty contentiousness, its devil's advocacy, and the way it works with themes, not just doing a little theme section but turning over the whole magazine to consideration of a single topic, sometimes all the way through the reviews.

I said this before when defending Vice, but I'll say it again. I think I'm quite a good writer, but when Jesse solicits ideas for articles from me I often think my own responses are wishy washy, just below par. Sometimes I self-censor. For instance, I had nothing to contribute to the Jobs issue, mainly because I've never had one. Other times Jesse passes tactfully over the idea, and when I see the issue I accept that other people had much more lively or interesting ideas. That happened with the travel issue. Although I travel a lot, I didn't really know what to say about it.

From time to time, though, I find a pitch that just fits the Vice style, and Jesse recognises that it's good and works, and it runs. I'd say that happens with about one in five pitches. With all the other magazines I write for, my success rate is more like one in one. They tend to take whatever I propose, even when it's rather lame. So I must say I've developed some respect for Vice's editorial vision and process. They know what they are doing.

that said, i have no verdict on whether vice really is "objectivist," or if their credo is just so much third-rate nietzsche (which would, of course, make it a VERY CLOSE COUSIN to objectivism -- sorta like the romulans and vulcans).

According to the Cassandra Report (a trend-spotting “cool hunter” that charges corporations tens of thousands of dollars to tell them what’s hip), our magazine is the number one read for women aged 19-24 and for men aged 25-30.

I mean, what horseshit. The "number one read' for the Cassandra Report's friends and co-workers, maybe. But I guess corporations that pay the Cassandra Report tens of thousands of dollars deserve whatever they get.

why, M.! If I didn't know you better I'd say you were becoming downright American

(JUST TEASING JUST TEASING ALL IN GOOD FUN LOVE YOU SO MUCH ILX IS FOR THE CHILDREN ETC)

Rand is Comic Book Nietzsche.

I used to read 2600 - -- - - SHOCKA!

Remember Nynex?

(x-post)

God, I can't believe I was into 2600 so long ago.... ~1994-1998 I read it I think.

OMG

Jay, I'm afraid I'm going to have to puncture that theory. I more or less wrote Issue 10 of Bunnyhop myself, the Fake issue:

The fact is that there is a statistically signficant positive correlation between these zines being good and my being in them. (Certainly in my own mind.) I am also in Suicide Girls magazine, should Vice fail.

Two of my own early zines.

http://www.nodata.org/honey/sinister/picnics/ATP-Caleb-4.jpg

I also have an original copy of 'The Little Red Songbook,' the one that Momus had to withdraw when Wendy Carlos threatened to sue him. Coincidence?

It is awfully sweet that Momus will spend so much time defending his pals. I'd advise him to jump off that sinking ship, though.

fuck yeah. fuck the poor

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/ayn-rand-ideal-published-july-27364158

atlas is shrugging again, baby!

This exists.
Love the humanization of assholes like this by mainstream media and it's fun to imagine how this sort of blatant stupidity would've landed throughout history: "Nazi Leader: How He Went From Bold Hipster Mustache Choices to Genocide" ⁦@adamjohnsonNYC⁩ pic.twitter.com/rqge9f84xr

— Kyle Inabinette (@KyleInabinette) October 17, 2018

notice how NYT presents "Brooklyn hipster" as something inherently contradictory to racist and rightwing. Did any of these people actually read early VICE? https://t.co/CRuizqZ4Vp

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) October 17, 2018

a true shock pic.twitter.com/q5Zyy3cCIF

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) October 17, 2018