Brooklyn hipsters invade North Korea
Recently, a colleague turned me on to Vice Magazine, a Brooklyn-based project that writes about the underground music scene, extreme sports, and all things counterculture. Increasingly though, as Vice‘s notoriety grows, it’s venturing into territory that is decidedly less fluffy. Incorporating international reporting on areas most people only hear about in wonkier publications like The ...
Recently, a colleague turned me on to Vice Magazine, a Brooklyn-based project that writes about the underground music scene, extreme sports, and all things counterculture. Increasingly though, as Vice's notoriety grows, it's venturing into territory that is decidedly less fluffy. Incorporating international reporting on areas most people only hear about in wonkier publications like The Economist or The Washington Post, Vice manages to open up new worlds to its urban hipster clientele by maintaining a cynical and subversive edge.
Recently, a colleague turned me on to Vice Magazine, a Brooklyn-based project that writes about the underground music scene, extreme sports, and all things counterculture. Increasingly though, as Vice‘s notoriety grows, it’s venturing into territory that is decidedly less fluffy. Incorporating international reporting on areas most people only hear about in wonkier publications like The Economist or The Washington Post, Vice manages to open up new worlds to its urban hipster clientele by maintaining a cynical and subversive edge.
Through print features such as "Moldova: Mental Asylums and Psychadelic Gravestones," their recent interview with the Iraqi Minister of Tourism (um, Iraqi tourism?) and now their new online venture VBS.tv, Vice founders Suroosh Alvi, Eddy Moretti, and Shane Smith have moved into territory previously uncharted, something they themselves have summed up best as "60 Minutes meets Jackass."
VBS.tv’s slogan is "Rescuing you from television’s deathlike grip," and features mini-documentaries by staff members exploring news-y topics such as the lost boys of Sudan, or Palestinian media campaigns aimed at luring women and children into committing acts of terror. A documentary of their trip to North Korea features comical mash-ups of North Korean propaganda with creepily orchestrated Pyongyang tour stops and drunken noribong with government chaperones. It is at once inane and fascinating — the Vice trademark. Check it out.
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