Pregaming Annihilation—This Week on VICE: Members Only
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For anyone in the business of having opinions, the last few weeks must have felt like an all-you-can-eat buffet, most likely with the same end result (feeling sick on a spiritual level and also like your heart might explode at any moment). Kanye West has been banned from entering the UK, which prompted Wireless (which he was due to headline three nights in a row) to cancel the entire festival. Jake Paul did ayahuasca and now thinks metal is alive. And against the background hum of potential nuclear war, Pitchfork’s Best Albums Bracket contest entered its final stage, with the two finalists being OK Computer by Radiohead and Kid A by Radiohead. Which didn’t help at all.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Donald Trump threatened that “a whole civilization will die” unless Iran agreed to unblock the Strait of Hormuz. Neither of those things happened in the end, but his “likely war crime” comments drew criticism from the UN Secretary General, a former U.S. Navy commander, and the Pope. They also inspired a “TACO Tuesday” shindig at the home of entrepreneur Dryden Brown, whose network state hopes to “revitalize” Western civilization.
Regular readers of VICE will be familiar with our roving reporter, Nick Dove, for his anthropological adventures into some of the most off-key social gatherings in North America—he previously gatecrashed the disastrous opening night of Polymarket’s “situation monitoring” bar, and attended a private party thrown for Nick Land. So, obviously, no “Will Trump nuke Iran?” party would be complete without his presence. In his latest report, he spent the evening with the cluster of tech bros, right-wing hipsters, and e-girls eager to “pregame annihilation.” Here’s one scene from Nick’s dispatch, in which he is approached by a “dancing edgelord.”
“Earlier, I’d overheard him declaring that ‘It’s time for the wiggas,’ and opining ‘We’re gonna need more white rappers if we’re gonna save civilization.’ He looks up at me and says ‘Yoooo’ and I reply ‘Hey, what’s up?’ Cocking his head, he tells me he met me at Nightclub 101 last weekend, that he’s new in town from LA, and that I mog, I fucking mog. I reply thank you, that’s kind of him to say. Then he asks for my Instagram, grabs my phone to inspect our mutuals, and then informs me about what he’s done with various shared female followers. Oh shit, I fucked this one, damn, I want to fuck that one, fuck, boy, she sucked my dick in a Von’s parking lot. I can’t help but laugh even as I cringe. This is the elite vanguard meant to ‘revive’ the West? As I’m trying to escape him, yet another person comes over and tells me I mog, then invites me to come mog on stream with him and Dryden.”
Read the full report below.
In an essay published by The New Atlantic, Robert Mariani identifies the emergence of what he considered to be a new demographic in America. He calls it “dinergoth”—“‘diner’ for provincialism, ‘goth’ as lazy shorthand for alternative aesthetics,” he explains—but it’s basically an adult who dresses like a 2000s Hot Topic kid and hangs out on Discord.
The piece went viral not only for being full of clunky vulnerabilities, written as it was in the aftermath of Mariani being dumped by a “dinergoth” himself, but for misdiagnosing a long-standing confluence of subcultures as a new social type. Hugo Hansen’s essay published on VICE’s Members Only area this week gets into just that. Rather than the story of a failed romance between a tech worker and a vape shop employee, Hansen argues, Mariani’s essay reveals “a society that remains composed of different classes, struggling as always to understand each other.” He continues:
“The real story here isn’t the emergence of the dinergoth as a new cultural type, nor is it the death of the regional cultures the dinergoth has supposedly destroyed. More pressing, I’d argue, is the creeping domestication of the internet in the 21st century—and the evolving appearance of that slippery thing called class, both online and IRL.”
Read the full counter-essay below.
Emma Garland
Deputy Editor, VICE
To get past the paywall, sign up for VICE membership. A Digital Only subscription is $2 a month (or $20 a year, if you prefer), while $70 a year gets you the full digital package plus 4 issues of VICE magazine, delivered straight to your door. (All three kill all the ads on this site.)
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