vice

This is disappointing

https://mobile.twitter.com/HarrietSalem/status/735180870244438016

Salem was the best thing about their overseas reporting and it doesn't bode well for 'serious' reporting in the future.

They couldn't capture the youth demographic with monetized propaganda so persuasion will be replaced by coercion.

https://www.spin.com/featured/vice-action-bronson-problem-new-york-office

“He smokes weed all the time, the whole building smells like weed when he’s there,” said one source. Said another: “He smokes pot all day long in the lobby of the fucking office. The whole lobby stinks.”

so many freelance journalists i know had Vice take a chance on them early in their careers. really difficult to see where new people coming up are gonna get these chances now which sucks! it is all really fucking bad news! https://t.co/9Ynl1Gw1hl

— Imogen West-Knights (@ImogenWK) May 2, 2023

Whoops.

https://www.mediaite.com/media/its-apocalyptic-vice-staffers-brace-for-worst-after-anonymous-tip-warns-site-will-be-deleted-entirely/

how the mighty fall

The real vice was the Proud Boys they made along the way.

How in the fuck did they piss away all the money that Disney and whoever else threw at them??

Also is there some extraplanetary force (aside from "savage capitalism", ha, but not really "ha"?) currently exerting itself in such a way that that's directly causing all extant journalism entities to be unceremoniously zapped out of existence? On the ilm pitchfork thread there was a post to the effect that it's not all bad when legacy institutions end, it's natural, etc. Well okay, sure. But this is getting really creepy! What is even going to be left aside from WaPo and NYT and whatever other billionaire organs?

How in the fuck did they piss away all the money

cocaine is a helluva drug

Good fucking riddance. Vice was a blight on our culture from the beginning, cancerous really. Me otm throughout this thread from almost 20 years ago: PRUSSIAN BLUE - White Power Folk Duo.... of 12-year-old twin sisters...

xxp no it's just regular savage late period capitalism

also Shakey otm

Zero percent interest was a helluva drug

Good fucking riddance.

I have no shortage of complaints about things they've done over the years, but at the same time you can't deny that genuinely valuable work has been done by some of their writers at various times, including stuff that other outlets for whatever reasons either weren't paying attention to or weren't bothering to cover. The fact that blue checks on musk's site w Roman busts as profile pictures are posting gleefully about vice's demise is a good indicator that they made the right (pun not intended) enemies.

And today it's DCist. I feel a bit like Cassandra here.

That Prussian Blue thread hearkens back to a more innocent time of sorts. Nazis, in the popular conception were kinda mostly still thought of as being skinheads in deep rural america, fodder for daytime talk show freak parades, and (other than the occasional David Duke type) not people writing policy for and whispering into the ears of guys/gals occupying some of the highest levels of government.

you can't deny that genuinely valuable work has been done

I can and I will, it's outweighed by their founders being active fascists who were more than happy to usher in the current era of actual Nazis in the highest levels of government. So long, fuckers.

the apologias for their "aren't these little nazis cute/it's all just laffs" on that thread are exactly the kind of thing that led to our poisoned discourse

not that milo learned anything in 20 years, he still can't properly identify Nazi dogwhistles

Yeah that old thread has some stuff even shitty for its time. “These Nazis aren’t hurting anyone! Let your freak flag fly dudes!”

I’m not referring to Milo, to be clear

lol completely insane thing to post from Shakey given the actual thread but hey guess someone’s still mad about being reminded of his ‘sexually assaulting Rachael Ray for laffs’ posts in 2020.

going off of (poor) memory here, but they did hire a bunch of ok-to-good writers in the ‘10s and these ppl fundamentally changed the character of the site. there was a pretty high turnover rate with these writers tho, and i suspect it’s bc… vice didn't seem like it had the best workplace culture

i do remember being v unsurprised that they had some nazis on staff as late as 2016 (that specific case was m*tchell s*nderland, who was revealed as a milo stan through emails??? i can only barely remember this)

anyway, i feel bad for the writers, as always!!!

ah there it is, ye olde slanderous chestnut you trot out whenever your terminal idiocy reveals itself.

I was equating to your recent inability to identify a 14/88 tweet from RFK as antisemitic with your posts on the PB thread about how Vice's coverage of them was no big deal in terms of exposure. never change, asshole!

Slander has to be untrue, IIRC. This current era schtick of yours is just weird when you made one of the more bizarre and repulsive jokes of the old days of ILX.

Vice’s (critical) blog post about Prussian Blue did not, in fact, lead them to crossover success or usher in the Fourth Reich, by the time we actually got an openly fascist mainstream movement they had long broken away from their racist mom and become completely normal anti-racist people.

Almost like Vice’s coverage was completely irrelevant.

Anyway, it's official: https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/vice-cease-publishing-layoff-hundreds-ceo-1235919843/

The thing that jumped out at me there was ... they paid $400 million for Refinery29?

I'm vaguely aware of Refinery29, and I realize I'm not their target audience, but wtf.

it is slander because it's just some bullshit that was deliberately and maliciously misconstrued and then repeated endlessly by a poster who is no longer here (thankfully) but now you're here to do the same and oh yeah go fuck yourself
xp

there's a direct line between Gavin McInnes' schtick with Prussian Blue to the Proud Boys and Trump. How is this disputable.

going off of (poor) memory here, but they did hire a bunch of ok-to-good writers in the ‘10s and these ppl fundamentally changed the character of the site. there was a pretty high turnover rate with these writers tho, and i suspect it’s bc… vice didn't seem like it had the best workplace culture

this is accurate. after 2008 they changed; I still avoided them for a while after that, but they were a different place, and they hired a bunch of good people. they worked out of a very expensive building that was all modern and kitted-out.

their reporting on Tim Ballard/OUR/Sound of Freedom was really good and valuable and I think it kinda sucks that the same vultures as always have destroyed another place that was publishing that kind of work.

““We create and produce outstanding original content true to the Vice brand. However, it is no longer cost-effective for us to distribute our digital content the way we have done previously. Moving forward, we will look to partner with established media companies to distribute our digital content, including news, on their global platforms, as we fully transition to a studio model,” the CEO continued.”

Where else have I heard this kind of talk, just recently

translations: “we’re gonna pay for on camera personalities, not writers”

No one miscontrued anything, you made a joke that was super bizarre and offensive (thus so memorable) even by the standards of the bad old days of ILX and don't like being reminded of it, which is one reason your schtick of bringing up old weird grudges is so strange.

There is no direct line between a Vice interview from the first Dubya admin era, not even available on the internet and forgotten by everyone but you with a band (that had already dissolved and the two people reformed by the early 2010s) and Trump. White nationalism didn't need an interview in a Canadian magazine to establish a foothold in the US, you might say it's a foundational aspect of the country.

xp - don't even know about paying for on-camera personalities, the HBO news show and cable channnel are both dead aren't they?