All We Care About Is Ass and Violence—This Week On VICE: Members Only
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It is not uncommon that something will make me think of Dizzee Rascal. Anything bumblebee yellow, the word “vexed.” Even telling someone I love them is a struggle without chopping up the “you-ou-ou” at the end. Reading behind the paywall of the VICE: Members Only area this week, I was reminded of the lyric: “All we care about is sex and violence,” a god-tier bar in what is otherwise the most aurally demented song released before the advent of Skrillex.
As social media becomes an increasingly bizarre, polarized place, so too does society. Titillated as we are by a rolling broadcast of people crying, screaming, and showing hole, gathering up your mates and hitting the Pizza Hut buffet just isn’t cutting it as an exciting Wednesday night anymore. One of the most flagrant examples of the timeline’s impact on reality is the transformation of Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens, from urban green space to doomscroll ultraviolence factory. For the recent The Not The Photo Issue of VICE magazine, Clive Martin visited the square in northern England that has become famous for churning out a non-stop stream of fist fights, crash-outs, general provocations, and police altercations—all uploaded to the Big Four social media accounts and watched by millions, like America’s Funniest Home Videos for the age of influencer boxing. Clive reports:
“At around 8PM, we see our first incident. A 30-something woman is lying prostrate on the pavement. She screams for her mother at the top of her lungs, the whites of her eyes beaming through the morass of combat trousers, and onto a dozen or so pointed screens, as the rubberneckers are held back by outsourced security.
“A youngster gets in a copper’s face with his phone and demands to know what’s going on. But this is no Good Samaritan; he is visibly amused by the woman’s distress, and intent on winding up the police. For every moment of human misery that takes place here, there is a band of vultures looking to capture it. To me, it looks a lot like voyeurism disguised as citizen journalism. But then again, what are we doing here?”
Read the full piece below.
Representing the other side of the spectrum, London just got a co-working space that you can have sex in. Billed as a “human connection HQ,” STÜCK is brought to you by the people behind the long-running fetish night Klub Verboten, and one of many “boutique” co-working spaces popping up around the city. While there’s nothing really stopping you having sex in any of them, STÜCK has the distinction of being the only one with a designated space for it, and hands out free care packages containing condoms, lube, and a pamphlet about PrEP. What does an office space that lets you do butt stuff between checking your emails look like, you might ask? Great question. We had the same one.
Thankfully they invited VICE staff writer Amber Rawlings down to check out the space for free, so we were able to find out. A dispatch from Amber:
“I’m fiddling with the packet of lube when Hanny appears. It’s time for the tour. First, the cloakroom, where a man nervously clutching his tote bag asks if this is where he leaves it. Hanny points vaguely in its direction and moves on. Then it’s the room where the sauna will eventually live. ‘A sauna just makes sense here,’ she explains. ‘Especially if you’re sober. If you do a cold plunge, it gives you a few seconds where you feel high.’ At present, the room contains a man sat alone at a table, surrounded by more FUCK PACKs.”
Read the full piece below.
Emma Garland
Deputy Editor, VICE Magazine
To get past the paywall, sign up for VICE membership. A Digital Only subscription is just $2 a month (or $20 a year, if you prefer), while $70 a year also gets you 4 issues of VICE magazine, delivered straight to your door. (All three kill all the ads on this site.)
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