Let's talk about Vice Magazine

(I think nevaready and falling-on-a-bruise would liven this discussion up no end.)

From experience, the shortest way out of this for someone to claim that you're a middle class western white male who shouldn't speak for others, and you to huff off. If someone has to start that, I'm game.

Tom's post: I don't see how magazine ad departments are going to affect change that way. It's just not the way they do business. At best they can ask the agency, 'where else are you running it' and the agency may or may not tell the truth. What works is the actual accounts placing provisos with the agency, eg, 'sell to Index and not to Vice, we've had complaints'.

Andrew: it is possible to win the argument without resorting to name-calling, you know ;-p.

(I'm also not swearing at Tom, obv)

Suzy: No, I don't think it is. But I think it's the quickest way to end the argument.

I think 30-somethings are more likely to be reading Vice than teens.

Also if 12-year-olds were reading Vice in any large numbers, they'd lose the booze and cigs adverts.

That I am seriously considering playing "you're in, you can't talk about being out, you can never understand my pain, which you must still respect" is an indication of how much this thread annoys me, as I abhor this attitude. And how glad I am that this thread has avoided this pitfall so far.

Though of course, it's in my advantage to hope that in-ers can understand out-ers: I'm still in on three of the axes :)

Perhaps that's a moral of the thread: outsider status that you can parlay into cool is a very different beast.

And the first time I went to that page the recommended products included mook-tastic Grand Theft Auto, which sums up what they (or at least their advertisers, thx Suzy) think about the nerd population.

("If Vice was based in Moscow & run by self-loathing ex-American nerds, except with the twist of Edward Limonov (& John Dolan, obv); + without the whole advertising thing & oh well I guess it isn't really like Vice at all"?)

Is this boycott thing real? I have never heard of anything like that, ever in publishing. seems like it would just generate publicity for them. "the magazine Maxim tried to BAN!" heh heh.

I wrote a few things for them years ago. Shit pay back then anyway. Suroosh is a very smart guy, Gavin and Shane are coked up tattoo jocks but cunning motherfuckers.

(a lot of people here bitching about Vice have apparently never seen a copy, so their PunkRock 'hate us' publicity campaign is working. why let em suck you in so easily? it's actually pretty fucking harmless, mostly about skateboards, hip hop, and boobs. just yr average larry clark baloney. so what?)

I've totally gone off the idea of the song about retards. Now I think I want to write one called 'The Biographies of Famous Mathematicians', because mathematicians are under-represented in song, and the math of curves is beautiful. Or something about lapdogs...

BTW Dan, I just recorded my Schubert song in German (it didn't sound right in English) and was thinking about you -- affectionately -- when I sang it, because I remembered you'd offered to sing it. I guess that isn't going to happen now...

we won't reap the rewards until oprah derides the latest martha stewart clothing line as being hella gay.

(Vaguely serious post on this thread by me to occur sometime tonight, perhaps.)

in what possible universe is "language" distinct and seperable from "writing"?

Momus: Because I don't believe in the status quo.

This is my problem, Momus: you never seem to bother to isolate the valuable parts of the status quo from the ones you disagree with. The western "status quo," insofar as it exists, frowns on things like racism, child pornography, spousal abuse, and incitements to violence -- and I don't imagine you'd see inherent transgressive value in taking any of those actions. It's for that reason that you can't simply fall back on the syllogism that any transgression against the status quo is an inherently good thing: at some point you're going to have to start looking at the individual transgressions and working out whether you think they're productive ones or not. What I'm seeing in a lot of this thread is you saying "it's a transgression, therefore it's good" and a lot of other people saying "it's a particular transgression that doesn't help anything and quite possibly makes things worse."

"nigga" isn't a stereotype, fritz. it's a collection of stereotypes as well as being a word, unlike "16 year old goth girl" which is just a collection of stereotypes (and isn't a racial or sexual slur no matter how it can be twisted.)

(nb: i don't think fritz is an idiot, and basically agree with what he sez.)

(also equating a public message board with a magazine is a bit more problematic.)

I had a huge argument with a Vce editor about this issue one night, and his basic argument was that there should be no difference between the way people talked to their closest friends and the way they wrote. they were arguing that it was just honest.

Julio: Glad to oblige.

I don't know if I should even get involved but Jess, I guess my point was more something like "Well, do you like the magazine otherwise?" Because there are other things going on in the magazine, with or without the smartass diction they use, which never struck me as the main point of the magazine. Some of the reviews and interviews are brilliant. The Andrew WK review was one of the main things that got me interested in him. The debate about using these slurs is relatively uninteresting to me - sometimes I talk like that with people who know me and think it's funny, mostly with my sister. If it offended you a great deal I probably wouldn't around you. I don't think it's that much worse than making jokes about dead babies or something - I don't take the latter as condoning child murder. It's not a big deal to me either way but I can understand why it could offend someone. If it offends you, fine, understandable, that's a general point about using these slurs that applies everywhere, not just Vice. But if we're going to talk about Vice, I think there's a lot more to talk about even if the vocabulary does offend you. I'd be more interested in talking about the reviews, interviews, articles, and columns. Unless you're so turned off by the use of words like "homo" that you never read further, in which case HOW DO YOU PEOPLE EVEN SIT THROUGH YOUR EMINEM AND G'N'R ALBUMS? It reminds me of the time I lent my sister a Public Enemy CD. She gave it back after only reading the lyric sheet and complaining about some of the attitudes towards women. All this said to me was that she had no interest in listening to the music itself.

stockbroker. beautiful. divorced. fat. busboy. German. singer-songwriter. rockist.

as i said before, i am friends (or at least "friendly") with almost everyone who has expressed a "dissenting" opinion from my own on this thread. including geeta, who tried to paint me into the reductionist "you disagree with jess" = "you are wrong" corner. if i had to stop liking them because i disagree i think i'd surely be limiting the enrichment of my life. but if my friends were as juvenile and purile as vice with little redeeming value, i'd feel no shame.

i like big black too, that doesn't mean i don't think steve albini is an idiot.