On Vice Magazine

...with a publication covering the sort of topics Vice does. I do have a problem with a PR firm using a faux-subversive editorial tone as a cover for their viral marketing efforts.

It may be a losing rear guard action, but it's still worth examining and paying attention to. Vice not only bothers me as far as viral marketing criticism goes, but advertorial publications such as it continue to degrade the credibility of the press as a whole. It's not only a consumerism-criticism issue, but also a journalistic issue.

It's an ad sheet that passes itself off as a independent-minded publication, yet has no editorial credibility whatsoever despite even--apparently--having pretenses to journalism. The "do lines and buy these products placed in here by our clients" lifestyle it advances has the patina of being subversive and piggybacks upon the allure of independent culture yet is, at its core, as nihilistic and self-serving as anything Ann Coulter has written.

But.

Journalism not something that should be held up as any sort of standard. Journalism is designed, first to maintain an official story against the spread of panic, gossip and mob formation. Second, as such it protects certain products and ideologies by its very nature. And third, it exists as the salable content of money making machines - magazines and newspapers.

Culture, no matter who is creating it, rarely rises above the shitpile. Meaning that Punk Planet, for all its fierce independence and all, still was promoting and selling products. And MRR is totally a punk mail order catalog for local bands around the world. I do not recall reading many interviews with bands that were not on tour, had a new LP out, or were generally active in trying to get fists in the pit or cassettes in tape decks.

Not that I support VICE or its fuckery, I just think that some of the critique you level against it, Paul, might in turn be used against us as well.

Everything Ann Coulter writes is calculated for maximum shock value, and for garnering more television face-time for her. Getting upset about what she writes or says is pointless. She's a clown.

As for Vice, there are myriad independent publications that are just as vapid and product-minded. I don't see how we can isolate Vice, just because Viacom funded it.

I hate that fucking rag. They're the type of assholes who will publish anything that titillates the yuppie/hipster/frat boy set's suppressed desire to live in the more chauvinistic, blatantly racist society of the mid 20th century, with all the hedonistic societal acceptance and celebration of prurience of the 21st century. And if you question it you just aren't hip to the IRONY and shit. Fuck them. I would try to avoid shit affiliated with Viacom (except of course The Price is Right), but really I just think their schtick is just obnoxious. Sadly it has become the mainstream attitude, so it's not even controversial or subversive for the sake of being controversial or subversive anymore. It's just a pile of shit.

And R.John's cynicism never fails to brighten my day.

"prurience"
are you saying prurience is bad, in itself?
i hope not.

I think he is suggesting that to the extent to which prurience is a celebrated characteristic of late capitalist consumer culture that encourages unchecked egotism and consumer indulgence, it is a bad thing.

I don't think he did.

Since the prurience that is celebrated in the 21st century is thoroughly commodified, it seems like a rather targeted anti-capitalist critique rather than an anti-modernist criticism of desire.

Though separating good old-fashioned prurience from comsumerist indulgence is fairly difficult, since even a number of putatively anti-capitalist expressions of prurience seem to follow the model of consumerist escapism.

When pornography is used as a marketing gimmick, it cheapens pornography.

Entities like Vice push a conservative agenda while masquerading as subversive and using appeals to the basest human emotions and cheap sensationalism as the sugar to help down the bad medicine. I guess it's the use of prurience as distraction from the hateful, empty consumerist message that I find most off putting. But I'm no philosopher or political scientist and my brain trips me up when I try to put it into words. Or in other words, what Aaron said.

weird

nearly every one of my friends
loves this show.

I have never seen it though.

I have to admit I am a part of
a lower breed of people than is represented
on this messageboard.

I am still ok with it.

and no jx
she wasn't a hipster and it wasn't
too ironic I don't think.

It was bret's couch.
If you remember him you would see
that that makes the whole thing spot on.