Let's talk about Vice Magazine

He's saying that its up to people to work out for themselves whether a transgression is good - eg against the status quo of British colonial rule - or bad.

Your 'Momus do you like Ashcroft?' point is silly, though. You can't be solicitor general and still be in any way 'transgressive' or 'against the status quo'. Power changes everything.

People on ILX oftentimes write in a hip, glib and cruel manner in the context of a conversation; one person writes something, someone responds (usually within minutes), someone else chimes in, the original point may be expanded upon or retracted, offensive things may be retracted or explained or pushed even further, but there is a constant back-and-forth that allows a community to form where certain turns of phrase become part of the common lexicon, usually because of a shared experience among the people using them ("grebt", "HEIN?", "U+K", "(and then they all lez up)", kitten pictures, "b*ngb*s", Ma$e vs William Henry Harrison, etc).

One is a formal mode of communication exploiting informal tropes to generate interest and controversy as a ploy to grab readers, the other is a group of people who enjoy talking (shit) to each other in a medium that happens to be viewable to a wider audience. One is a business venture that has turning a profit as its bottom-line goal, the other does not. One involves some amount of turnaround time on calling someone on saying something stupid, while on the other you can be brought to task immediately if someone disagrees with you.

These differences, particularly with respect to Vice being a captial-driven venture, make comparing the way people write for Vice to the way people write on ILX completely nonsensical and illogical to me.

As for Ashcroft, I can't think of any way in which thinking of dancing as an inherently sinful act doesn't constitute a massive break from the conventional wisdom of the vast majority of people on the planet, let alone in this country. Go ahead and remove Ashcroft from the equation -- are you any fonder of the dirt-poor Pentecostal in Missouri who believes the same thing?

'So (insert year here)' is a joke Nick and I have. To bring you up to speed, we are very good friends and to his credit, Nick doesn't call people twats, assholes or any other name if they don't agree with him or piss him off on message boards.

I don't much like the names Gavin Vice calls his 'friends' but he is spot-on about Williamsburg, if a hypocrite for living or working there. I think it perfectly creditable to criticise that place for those reasons and can remember when the only things there were Domsey's and a steak house.

OK, vice & ilx are apples and oranges, but you can compare them under the broad category of fruit... and these two don't really taste so different to me.

also, people don't get paid much to write for vice if that matters. and I think you're making a big mistake to give paid writers any more authority than unpaid ones

Hm. Well, a VERY random comparison here, but it might have something to it -- I get paid for my AMG writing, but I think it's pretty clear that you'll find a lot more of everything from the personal touch to to really in-depth discussion of music or songs or what have you on any number of blogs written sheerly for love. Certainly I think so.

Momus: "n-a" WAS the context for a good 200 years. Then something called the civil war happened. You may have heard of it.

The whole "paid vs unpaid" thing isn't so much an issue of giving paid authors more authority as much as it is a personal feeling that if you're going to be paid for something, it shuold be produced to a particular standard. This goes back to the comment I made (or intended to make) earlier about the problem not being with the writers per se as much as it was with the editors for letting them get away with writing shit.

Relevant indeed.

I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one Fritz. I think instant right of reply completely changes the context of writing; you don't. I think that in the idea "bits of ILX are like Vice" the "bits of" part counterbalances the "like" part; you don't seem to. Fair enough but I can't think of anything either of us can say now to convince the other.

Jess - thanks for your contribution to the masterplan ;)

Oh, so the people who write for Vice have no power, do they? And if I'm a black person and I know what's in Vice and I see a bunch of beery loudmouths coming down the street at 3AM wearing 'Vice' t-shirts, do I offer to shake their hands in the spirit of love and multiculturalism? You're absolutely right that power changes everything, and with a large readership and a burgeoning media empire, I'd say the Vice boys have racked up a significant amount of it.

The article says 'In the old days, being on the side of nerds was subversive. Now, when Bill Gates rules the world, it isn't. So to be subversive, we need to do something else. Reset your watch, pay attention to the changed context!'

After reading the article several times, this line of thinking did occur to me. Except that it's interesting how you're deliberately vague in your categorization of the 'new way to be subversive', because the new way they're proposing in that article is to return to the violent persecution of the weak. Even if you don't take it as literally as I just did, the whole attitude still reeks of proto-fascism.

(I was going to tell Momus off for making slippery and untenable arguments, but hell, at least it keeps the conversation going. When was the last time I dropped all interest in school work to argue on ILX? Probably Spring 2001, actually.)

If....

shall we sing ebony and ivory?

Those may have been the only things there of interest to a white middle-class visitor from Manhattan, but they were hardly the only things there. That is where the thread started: Vice pointing out the limited, discontinuous viewpoint of people who can't imagine using the N-word but who are blind to class boundaries because they can afford to be.

Vice may willfully insult people based on their race, but it never ignores the poor, never mocks the poor, and never kowtows to the rich. I can't think of another magazine with a comparably high profile of which the same is true.

Maybe, but why do bullies care about nerds? Without nerds, bullies would have to turn their misdirected loathing towards themselves. I'm not saying people who give wedgies are necessarily proto-fascists. I'm saying that the attitude of that article, ie. 'if you're not LIKE US, you deserve a beatdown' extends to the whole damn magazine, an attitude which I think is disgusting.

P.S. I love you guys, especially Momus. Can you show up to the FAP this Friday? Come on, Japan's only what, a 10 hour flight?

Insulting people's race or sexuality from a position of privilege (if you have a media outlet such as Vice, you are undeniably privileged) is still a form of oppression which contributes to continuing inequality (which means poverty too). And in the "don'ts" section of Vice I see just as much mockery of the poor subjects as I do the rich ones. Why don't they just come clean and say they hate everyone? I can admire an honest misanthrope, if only for the honesty.

And also: this whole middle-class thing. I'm just not. Educated, yes, privileged in the eyes of others for having a role in the media, sure. But I weave in and out of solvency and I still usually feel like the (need-based) scholarship kid I was when I went to that desolate and deserted part of Williamsburg in the mid to late 1980's to buy the only clothes I could afford at the time.

If you weren't middle class, Suzy, you wouldn't be on the net right now but breast feeding six screaming kids. (Although you'd still shop at Domsey's, probably.)

Also, I find it very troubling when people start making apologies for the phrase "back then, you knew your place".

I'm sorry, but I think printing a lifestyle and fashion magazine is inherently ignoring the poor and kowtowing to the rich. (I also don't think there's anything wrong with that, but let's not pretend Vice is the fucking Urban League.)