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I used to love vice. They had some of the most engaging content covering things I'd never see. But then it all started to unravel when the platform mostly turne
by GlacierFox 3y ago
I used to love vice. They had some of the most engaging content covering things I'd never see. But then it all started to unravel when the platform mostly turned into cringey hipster New Yorkers telling me about their preferred way to consume weed 10 times a day.
- trendoid 3y agoyeah, if you think this is what they have been doing for the past few years, then you haven't really bothered to check out their work. They have been consistently doing some amazing international reporting that none of the mainstream media channels were/are interested in.
- prepend 3y agoIt’s not the only thing, but it’s the mostly thing. Looking at their front page right now, over half the articles are buzzfeed-quality rubbish: -“America Has Decided That Homeless People Aren't People” -“5 Experts Tell us What They Think a Healthy Relationship Looks Like” -“This Week's Coolest Drops, From Hoka to 'Seinfeld' x Percival” -“Russia Wants to Build a MAGA Colony for US Conservatives, Lawyer Claims” -“THIS WEEK ONLINE – Who's Afraid of the Proletariat?” -“I Went to a BDSM Convention With My Ex” They still have some original reporting, but I stopped going to them years ago because I don’t want to filter through dreck, and certainly aren’t signing up for their updates, in order to watch for decent items. It does seem like hipster stuff and I don’t understand who would want to consistently read this and who their target market is. They seem to hire lots of people to write this stuff and are looking to be a “lifestyle news” brand but who wants to be into their nihilistic, negative lifestyle?
- trendoid 3y agoOh, I didn't even think of their website articles because I barely go there. I might be wrong here but when most people think of Vice today, they think of their shows or the content on Youtube. Their news show was consistently doing great original work (some of which they would post on Youtube).
- prepend 3y agoThe same comment applies to their YouTube channel, just with different specific titles.
- JeremyNT 3y agoIt's similar to Buzzfeed (News) really. Vice always did clickbait / lifestyle, but they also invested heavily in real hard hitting stories that other outlets ignored. Of course they also continued the clickbait / lifestyle stuff alongside it. For a while the Real Reporting was surfacing frequently, but not so much these days, even though they're still doing it. For whatever reason, people just don't seem to see / care / value that Real Reporting as much (I have my theories...), and these outlets are struggling.
- rvz 3y agoWell this is what happens when you appeal to the 'Cringey hipster New Yorkers' and alienate your old viewership of showing underground or under-reported investigative journalism before 2012. Now it seems like the readers have punished Vice when they went down that route in 2012 and all that got them was into bankruptcy much faster than they tried to predict Twitter's collapse. Given that they chose to do that to themselves, nothing of value was lost. Henceforth: Good riddance.
- KingMob 3y agoYou've got the order backwards. Vice was started by three Canadian junkies (they literally called themselves that), and for years was only available in print in the hippest neighborhoods of major cities, while printing salacious material that later became published as books like "The Vice Guide to Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll" and "DOs & DON'Ts 2: 17 Years of Street Fashion Critiques". Very little reporting. Then slowly, over the years, the reporting arm emerged as a force to be reckoned with, but it was for "cringey hipsters" first. The old, OLD readership.
- steveBK123 3y agoYes I'd say Vice was.. 10-15 years ago, "dirtbag left" city hipster media. It converged on consensus left mainstream media after that.
- user_named 3y agoNo, more like 20-25 years ago.
- steveBK123 3y agoI'd argue it ended around the GFC, so say ~15 years ago. They did some interesting reporting leading up to the crash, the occupy movement, etc.. and then blanded out for sure.
- the-printer 3y agoThe thing is that Vice’s main appeal was always to the cringey NY hipster crowd.
- thr-nrg 3y agoIt really wasn't. They just showed and and took over because their trust funds let them work without a salary.
- the-printer 3y agoVice was/is basically the media equivalent of the outward perplex of when Joaquin Phoenix grew that beard and Sean Penn interviewed El Chapo.
- steveBK123 3y agoHey you just described my Brooklyn neighbor who works there!
- steveBK123 3y agoThanks for the downvote but I literally have an actual CentiMillionaire trust fund neighbor who works there :-)
- InitialLastName 3y agoI hope you mean hectomillionaire, because CentiMillionaire (~$10,000) is not what most people think of when they think of the trust fund crowd.
- newsclues 3y agoDid you read the magazine in the early days, or just get to know Vice when they got into video?
- deltarholamda 3y ago
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoThat's literally how they started before they became a "news" organization. The "serious media org" era happened after the hipster content.
- PM_me_your_math 3y agoIt has always been "news" for Brooklynite hipsters. I turned down a job with them after the interviewer asked me "you are a democrat, right?"
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoWell, it literally started as a Montreal hipster magazine. And yes, it fairly early moved to NYC but it was still kind of an indie cultural/hipster magazine for stuff like funny fashion "dos and don'ts" and music and cultural scene stuff. It wasn't really left-political at all. The shift to an American liberal news orientation happened post-9/11, and probably in the context of Occupy Wall St etc.
- greenie_beans 3y agoi thought they've been doing that since forever?