Vice

I feel lucky to have grown up when I did. To have experienced the fleeting moment of time when the internet seemed like the place where anything was possible and anything could happen.

I’m thinking of this because Vice has popped up in a few different places this week with stories about how they are likely going bankrupt. I have no idea if that is true or positioning or propaganda, but regardless Vice is fallen and has been for a long time.

What happened to Vice reminds me of what happened to the one king who was possessed in LoTR.

I remember finding out about Vice for the first time while I was in university. I don’t remember which video it was, whether it was the Liberian Cannibals one, the North Korea trip, or the Siberian Train journey. But it was mind-blowing. It was something that I’d never seen before. It was adventurous, courageous, stupid, irreverent, and was about going somewhere 99.9% of people are afraid to go and show you what it’s like there.

I think the decay and decline of Vice mirror well with the overall internet and the cool, optimistic, possibility-driven, companies and businesses that turned from renegade entrepreneurs into bureaucratic rent-seekers.

I think about Airbnb or Uber during their early rise, using technology to do something that wasn’t possible before to where they are today, office buildings full of lawyers negotiating taxation plans with governments.

I think about using Ninjavideo to watch tv shows and movies and how incredible it was to be able to access all of that in one place. And compare it to today and the mess of streaming subscriptions businesses pumping out garbage and making it hard to watch the few actual good shows and movies that are created.

I’m not close to unique in noticing this, but it is something that feels worth taking a moment to reflect on.

Is this the natural course of institutions? That they grow large, decay, become bureaucratic, and revert to serving rather than challenging power? Or is this something about the time we live in? That there are only so many people with principles that corruption happens because to grow you must bring in corruptible people?

Regardless I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on how awesome those early Vice videos were and what a shame it is that the institution that created them became what it was. I don’t know if they are going bankrupt, but I hope they do so I don’t have to think about how grotesque they’ve become.