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> Vice is nothing but quality. I agree that they have lots and lots of quality stuff, but they also have a quality control problem for good parts of their port

by skore 13y ago

> Vice is nothing but quality. I agree that they have lots and lots of quality stuff, but they also have a quality control problem for good parts of their portfolio. The great ones offset the bad ones by leaps and bounds, for sure. But for every documentary like this one, there seem to be a couple hipsterish driveltaries that I close after a few minutes. Sure, I suppose you cannot break new ground without landing some misses and sure, it's not like everything has to be mindblowing and perfect or even deeply valuable. But some of these misses make me wonder how anybody ever thought they were a good idea in the first place. I think Vice has an aversion to "self censor", trying to get as much stuff out there as they can simply for the heck of it and as a means to retain credibility - and I applaud them for that. But it's not as black and white and doesn't help when your expectation of quality gets rather deeply disappointed at times. It's a form of brand dilution that might become a problem in the future.

subsystem 13y ago
A lot of their ealier stuff was more 'spectacular' than insightful. It wasn't just the style either, it really was lacking in quality.
- skore 13y ago
  Absolutely agree. I think what bothers me with some of their recent content is that it is still produced with the same aspiration to quality, but it's simply wasted on the subject matter.
  - rdl 13y ago
    What do people think of the Ibogaine episode (S01E07)? I'm sort of familiar with the politics and some of the pharmacology, but have never been an addict, particularly to heroin, and aside from MAPS, don't know much about the ibogaine anti-addiction groups.
    - skore 13y ago
      I found that to be kind of a mixed bag. I definitely think that to get rid of addiction, you cannot simply take addiction away from a person because you leave a hole that they filled with drugs precisely because they are unable to fill it with anything else (if only at that time in their lifes). Whether it is a good idea to fill it with some curious mix of African rituals and some even more curious psychedelics is questionable, but I think it's reasonably straightforward why it works. Snap them out of it, bring them into an empathetic community. A lot of approaches go like that. It's probably mostly placebo, but hey, placebo works 20% of the time.

by skore 13y ago

subsystem 13y ago

A lot of their ealier stuff was more 'spectacular' than insightful. It wasn't just the style either, it really was lacking in quality.

skore 13y ago
Absolutely agree. I think what bothers me with some of their recent content is that it is still produced with the same aspiration to quality, but it's simply wasted on the subject matter.
- rdl 13y ago
  What do people think of the Ibogaine episode (S01E07)? I'm sort of familiar with the politics and some of the pharmacology, but have never been an addict, particularly to heroin, and aside from MAPS, don't know much about the ibogaine anti-addiction groups.
  - skore 13y ago
    I found that to be kind of a mixed bag. I definitely think that to get rid of addiction, you cannot simply take addiction away from a person because you leave a hole that they filled with drugs precisely because they are unable to fill it with anything else (if only at that time in their lifes). Whether it is a good idea to fill it with some curious mix of African rituals and some even more curious psychedelics is questionable, but I think it's reasonably straightforward why it works. Snap them out of it, bring them into an empathetic community. A lot of approaches go like that. It's probably mostly placebo, but hey, placebo works 20% of the time.