Deserved? Want to support me further? I now have a Patreon. / kirayt ------------------------------------------------------------ #vice #2023 #documentary
Early vice would literally just be some college journalist dropped into some war zone or drug den with a Craig’s-list camera man and would have incredible stories
@@G3EE2FII5TTTTED yeah they all seemed really new too and didn't know how to process some of the stuff or just be like "wait THIS is a meth lab? oh gosh"
Vice had once the best war journalism. It's crazy how hard vice went down. Good video. I always questioned why it turned so bad, we needed that journalism on the ground. I miss it
There was a sweet spot around 2016 where they made the same 2011 provocative content, but with production levels on par to today. If they just kept that up without scaling too fast, they would have absolutely thrived on Netflix.
The Onion's videos that parody Vice (called "Edge") are absolutely pitch-perfect and probably the best video content they've ever made other than Sex House.
It was SO uneven. Sometimes you would get a video that was both educational and beautiful, covering obscure yet interesting and important topics. Other times, it was like "Guy in London who dresses like a unicorn and takes a lot of drugs." More like reality TV for stoners.
Vice used to seem to me to be a very "independent", we'll cover what we want and say the things we want to say, to a company that became the EXACT opposite of its upbringing and turned into a corporation instead of a voice of people who wants to learn/investigate interesting things.
I mean they still cover the things nobody else dares to touch which is crazy. Just this week they put out a video critisizing israels ultra-nationalist front... Their reports in the chinese run jungle exploitation was also top-notch too. Yeah they have some stuff I really don't care about but just don't watch that?
All media exists at the behest of the Elite; Vice was created to push subtle propaganda. It was what a normie thought of as 'edgy' and 'provocative,' when it wasn't really any of those things. Also, the info it gave out was stuff that people already knew about, but stupid millennials saw this for the first time and went "wow, this is so cool, not like the 'mainstream' journalists and news, when that was exactly what it was. I guess doing coke with some drug dealers is so cool and edgy when all vice has ever done is spread degenerate crap
Thanks for making this! I'm right in the center of your story regarding the audience Vice used to have and that they lost. Such a shame, but great video man!!
i wil never forget about vice.i have so much gratitude for alot of content of theirs i have consumed. its has definitely exposed me to so much stuff i would have never been too otherwise. they may be going down. but i hope it means the rise of a future generation of something similar, hopefully future adventurers into this niche world, can be done better learning from vices mistakes..
I honestly still can remember Isabelle's documentary on North Korea and China because of how incredible they were. It really showed the power of what journalism could do by giving information to people that needed to be told.
I remember discovering VICE as a university student in the early 2010’s. Good memories watching their documentaries on my broken laptop till the early hours of the morning 😢
Vice was such a great news source back in the day. Like "The Hermit Kingdom" was absolutely insane and the most hardcore journalism I've ever seen. They made so many hard-hitting documentaries that exposed the worst and most interesting parts of humanity. I had so much respect for them, and IMO it's the type journalism this world desperately needs. Thankfully, a few of their amazing staff are still fighting the good fight and making great content to this day.
@@Sabotageking People still unironically say "woke" in 2023. Sorry to burst your bubble, Barbie is the highest grossing movie of 2023, so clearly going woke doesn't go broke. But hey, that doesn't fit the narrative of Internet man childs who can't think for themselves.
@@Aliens1337 what did I say about Barbie ??? Goofy. Anyways, I’m pretty sure Barbie flopped along with little mermaid. But I don’t know if you’ve heard about the new snow white movie that’s coming out… with Brett Cooper looks like a great movie. I would check it out if I were you 🤗 Don’t get angry wokie I’m just being facetious.😉
This has been coming. I was a freelance writer for one of Vice’s niche sports sites from 2013-2017 and they got rid of all of us freelance writers working on that site without warning. It was also an absolute nightmare getting back the money I was owed. It was fun while it lasted but things have been going downhill and pretty fast.
I can remember being really big into vice media 2010-2014 because of their investigative work - hell the quote from the Brazilian drug cartel enforcer “people are corrupt because money speaks the loudest” is still ingrained in my head to this day. In 2015 I started to drop off it due to returning to study and it becoming a bit….bland and then I stopped watching all together in 2016 and 17. I felt that whereas before it would explore both sides of the story really well or explore the other side of the story that we don’t often see (especially in the drug trade and ISIS) it just explored one side and one side only and became framed as though that was the *only* view and it was the *right* view.
Funny thing about the illegal drug trade is that it uses the same tactics to control people as militaries do. They target people when they're young, and offer them a ridiculous amount of money in exchange for loyalty. If your options are making $200/week in a dead-end job, or making $1000/week if you do everything that Sergeant Joey says, you'd pick the latter, even it means risking death and killing others. There's a Mexican rapper who said that's pretty much how he got involved with the cartel. It was either dissolve corpses in tubs of acid or work at McDonald's, so he chose the former.
@@kemist578 Yes your technically right but obviously thats what the OP was referring to, telling "both sides to a story" doesnt have to literally mean only 2 sides its more like a saying, Telling both sides to a story mostly means not only looking at it from one direction of course its almost impossible to cover a story from every angle and every aspect but doing at least 2 perspectives is a million times better journalism than doing it from 1 perspective and portraying that perspective as the right one.
I remember seeing Vice videos like Inside North Korea and their other sort of real renegade journalism "old Vice" style and it being my dream job. I actually used to admire how cool that sort of content was and it made me want to be those people who did that. Then we got the clear political slants and constant garbage articles about things like "How to Make Delicious Cocktails With Jizz" and I noped the fuck out. Whoever used to be the higher ups there who made the decisions kamikazed what was a once absolutely awesome company into the ground at such a high rate it was incredible and I can't believe they didn't even remotely try to course correct until it was far too late.
Imagine opening a small traditional Italian restaurant that all the locals love. Soon after you expand to a chain restaurant format (you lose a few customers, but the sauce still tastes the same). Then, without notice, you convert all your stores to Costcos (that’s the vice story). Vice was interesting when it was neutral and making light hearted social commentary , once it started taking a side it was game over!
@@matf6661 It depends on your timeline of what “left leaning” means to you and your personal distinction of what you define as appropriate satirical boundaries. Something like “The vice guide to Picking up Chicks” from 2005 would have made the left laugh in the late 90s (based on similar Vice magazine articles of that era, that I own). In 2000-2010, there seemed to be a narrowing of personal satirical boundaries with the growth of the internet. At this point people are starting to pick apart the article online and expressing their grievances with specific personal cliches, while still acknowledging broader positive sentiment for the article itself. The start of this Reddit comment from 2010 is a good example “As entertaining and painfully truthful as this is, a few bits bother me” (google the quote and you will find the thread). If that article was released today, the writer would be cancelled and the publisher disowned… by the same group who would have laughed at it over 20 years ago. This one example sums up much of todays social and political confusion to me.
It was never worth a billion as an on-going business. It was pure speculation and hype. This is common with over-hyped start-ups or one-trick companies with marginal products that become short-term fads.
@@alext8020 Every single use of the hyphen is correct though. To not use it would be grammatically incorrect. Now I wouldn't use it myself but I wouldn't call out someone for using it correctly. Also it's likely it was all autocorrected.
I remember when I found vice like 6 or maybe even 8 yrs ago and was super impressed by their North Korea and Middle East videos along with some others, I mean I haven’t been looking at anything vice related videos in a few years because I just thought they dropped in quality and maybe even became biased and some stuff like that but I mean I think they left at least a decent legacy. There are some really good documentaries and stories by them.
@@tomlxyz I don't think so. They surely could have implemented some kind of monetization model where fully uncensored versions of their documentaries and investigations were available for a monthly fee. Or they could have partnered with places like Nebula. But they chose not to, they decided to just sell to big companies instead.
@@0002pA Patreon covers rent and groceries, for the big performers. It's a hobby for wealthy dilettantes. Its advertising or nothing for the scale they were working at, or otherwise make an attractive portfolio to rope in some marks at big corporations, who'll later, inevitably, have concerns of their rate of investment not meeting expectations.
When vice was in his prime nothing could stop it. But sadly everything comes to an end. I will still remember when they made some of the best documentary I have seen still to this day
Shit, they had a doc about non-offending pedophiles. One about sex workers who worked exclusively with disabled people... So many good pieces. They really went down the drain in recent years though. So, at this point, there is no loss at all.
@@salvadorpalma8173 those were all fire my favourite one is when they buy guns from the black market and test them after and when they had an interview with a isisi fighter those were the best I have seen and they presented them with a funny tone
@@KarlJames1 or the one about chinese corrupt exploitation of the jungles where they just go undercover in the middle of the jungle pretending to be rich chinese businesspeople. I mean one slip up and they'd never ever left that jungle. Or when the one journalist calmly reported on his own torture in the Donbas!! That was crazy. Just calmly going "yeah here they hit me but it was alright I mean". Like wtf lol
Their Ukraine/Russia reports in the last 5 years have been amazing. I think you are just emotionally raging about their prime. They have had shitty videos and good videos every year since they started.
Vice was great. Absoloutely amazing documentaries about stuff nobody else DARED to even mention existed. Then, well, the "we just had sex" sh*t was badically thr beginning of the end.
They also had a track record of some really shitty subtitles, sometimes to the point that it totally changed the context of what the person said. And this has been pointed out time again in the comments section
@johan13135 can't remember if it was vice or buzzfeed who did that with someone working at a maid cafe in Japan. She said she loved her work, whereas the subs went something like "I've been groped and men seem very demeaning". Was incredibly confusing to watch, as someone who speaks both English and Japanese.
I remember seeing one documentary where this woman went to Afghanistan and talked to taliban and the people there. I just thought holy shit, the balls on this woman. Hopefully those journalists found better jobs.
While it's a shame Vice has ended the way it has, it will remain a fond memory for me. I followed them for a little over 10 years and watched them produce some really great stuff during that time and how it has inspired others to pick up the torch. Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. :'^)
They were a propaganda machine aimed at stupid people. They became so obviously one sided and posted so much easily verified lies that the only reason they stayed in business is because of funding by people who wanted to push their political agenda.
Given how many employees Vice had and the number of global offices, their production value was meagre, and the amount of content they put out didn't match the size of their operation. I've seen independent one-man operation RU-vidrs who put out more content and of a higher quality so the real question is why did they need so many employees and why such a big network? Something doesn't add up.
Kira, your documentary videos are truly great. I really appreciate the amount of work and effort that goes into them and your narration style really makes it something special.
Pity. I used to really like Vice. They did some truly impressive journalism. But it seems they lost their way. I only hope more journalists can do what they attempted to do, and don't fail the way they did.
I use to like vice once upon a time, but when they did some docs about South Africa and it was so bias, (U know all the stuff about BAD WHITE PEOPLE!) and deliberately showing camera angles to make the lie real. That is the day I hoped for the destruction of vice. Cure them into hell!
@@MeatyZeegI agree. Hopefully they continue down the path they’ve created and don’t sell out and sell if they grow to that point. But it seems that is inevitable at this point
At a certain point a company does need to grow. If you've grown to the point where you cannot grow further without investors, STOP growing. Just own the company, make profit, and put it in your pocket. Investors demand growth at all costs until the company begins to lose face, quality goes down and the customers leave. Its the same story over n over n over. OR if the investors can't buy, they'll copy you and undercut you. They'll take a loss until they take all you're business then jack the prices up after you close your doors.
@@Marauder1981 You realise you are a SJW right? You are just fighting for the rights version of it. Constantly complaining about them also puts you in the same game. You are just the opposition.
@@Jartran72 Absolute horseshit. This is typical blue team vs red team drivel. You can clearly be a regular socially liberal dude who calls out virtue signalling and woke crap when he sees it. I have never leaned politically right my entire life and have witnessed Vice's transformation throughout the years and I can tell you that it adopted a certain agenda post-OWS.
The irony is that the ads on youtube are usually worse than creators content. I get bombarded with ads about dodgy gambling companies and dodgy dating websites that are probably just scammers. RU-vid just wanted to hoard all the wealth as always.
I have fond memories of getting the free magazine from a local record shop. The themed issues (sex, war, drugs) had amazing articles with the vice staff putting themselves in very real & often dangerous situations for the articles.
As an older guy who has seen media change, I am looking forward to seeing these Vice journalists move into the "evening anchor" positions. I recall watching ABC's late night news program and being charmed by this young rapscallion "Anderson Cooper". It will be fun to see how the Vice crew will change journalism in the next 30 years. Also: I first read Vice with the "Kill Your Parents" issue. Those were better times.
You think Anderson Cooper is a journalist? Vice produced sensationalist nonsense for Libtards with zero critical thinking skills. Keep getting your boosters as soon as you qualify. The FDA just approved a new booster for a particular variant. Their logic was that was the variant they'd done the most research on therefore that's the one that should be given. Keep mindlessly following your masters and we'll all be done with you soon enough.
This makes so much sense, vice content has turned into something that’s an absolutely embarrassment to journalism. Now I understand why all their journalists these last few years just seem like they have just been hiring uneducated street kids.
They really want the young demographic but the ones they had were in their 40s and have better things to do than read listicles and quizzes. Neither are attracting gen z audiences
Vice crashed because they hired a bunch of young glorified bloggers to be their next generation of journalists. Vice went from cool stories to woke agenda pushes mascarading as journalism. I miss the old school late night channel 7 show up here in Toronto...just another sign of the times
Vice ran head first into the same problem that companies that primarily cater to millennials and Gen-Z always do: broke customers. Their type of content was impossible to sustain within the traditional ad driven business model for media companies. They eventually would've had to move to a subscription based model to continue producing content, but the people who would have subscribed are also historically less wealthier than previous generations, burdened with debt, insane rent, and overall higher costs of basic living. Vice won't be the only company to go down because of this, trust me.
Unfortunately I think Japan has already demonstrated the worrying path we're on - no opportunities for the youth to build wealth - the economy slowly withers aways and dies. Capitalism played itself
It’s a major issue of capitalism and greed. Gen Z and Millennials are significantly poorer than previous generations. And while boomers and gen x like to say it’s because we’re lazy they ignore more nuanced and dark reality of wages being stagnant, while rents, and cost of living raise dramatically. It’s near impossible for young people to get a home and raise a family like their parents and grandparents did. This is the primarily force contributing to population decline. Soon there won’t be enough people to pay for their parents/grandparents pensions and we will see an even more crisis to come. the world is really really poop right now :(
Isnt capitalism great guys!? we have all this technology to offer a higher standard of living for less work but somehow nobody has money? it's almost as if the entire system is rigged against itself in the guise of modern tech liberating people from the need to make money to survive. it's almost as if we need a better economic system to support the growth of technological unemployment/poverty that wont funnel all the wealth into the hands of the very few. everyone alive today is lazy by comparison to previous generations...the luxury of being lazy and doing the things you enjoy is the whole f'n point of technology.
Really great video! I remember being wowed by vice years ago. Thinking how are they able to reach such desolate places and report on the things that other news outlets either ignored or skimmed over? But vice in the last few years has turned into this neo-liberal fan fair. Staying their hand from "real" news stories and reporting on smut. It this steady downturn that made me turn away from them in the first place. It used to be "on the front lines of Ukraine's civil unrest" in early 2014 or "visiting north Korea" but now is more "these are the top onlyfans models". The company has clearly fallen from grace, and I don't see a way back for them.
I kind of got a slight pro russian vibe from them during the 2014-2016, if I remember correctly, there was as even a female vice "reporter" on JRE talking stupid things to promote the "oppressed" donbass people, my guess is they were fishing for money, and now they simply got used up by the money that needed them and threw them into the dumpster to make example of this sort of thing happens with politicians and other sellouts very often
true, there's more independents around now that are doing great reports and essays, thankfully, while very good, they don't 'usually' go out in the field like the old Vice used to do. they should've stayed as a medium co rather than have illusions of grandeur that cannot suit their content style, smh
I miss old journalists and writers Vice had back then. They were authentic and poured their heart into it. Now they have journalists worsted than typical bloggers. Shame.
RU-vid progression into a rougher demonetisation for the past 3 years have not only killed Vice but also many other content creators with "controversial" content, whatever that mean to them (they have also demonetised channel that talk about plastic surgery). Its taking a toll beyond repair to many.
Whether your liberal or conservative Americans love cancel culture and as a result advertisers attempt to appeal to certain market segments, often with disastrous results. Now advertisers are doing whatever they can to play it safe and RU-vid is beholden to what these advertisers want. In other words RU-vid and advertisers want nothing to do with anything remotely controversial. It’s all about money.
There was a time where I would tune in to watch vice docs anytime I had free time and I used to throughly enjoy them. It must’ve been about 3-4 years since I done it so and I was wondering why. They def sold their soul for cash and started flooding us with nonsense haha. Thank you for very informative vid mate
easy; sell a product. Not a service. Nobody know how to do both at the same time. Like I dunno, maybe if billy mays was alive today he would be streaming and selling his shit
Only if you sell out. Subscription models work too, and there are plenty of sponsors who are willing to sponsor " controversial" content. Look at all the alt media that is huge right now, they got that way because they weren't willing to sell out like vice was. You don't need huge brands to sponsor you to be successful. Vice tried to grow too big too fast, they didn't have to hire thousands of people in dozens of countries. They could have stayed small and independent and not had to bow down to their investors
Vice used to be so good, their quality with regards to their documentaries were among the best there was. Now, it's like they fell off a cliff so hard they left the Earth's atmosphere through the other end.
Exactly, they used to and some of them continued to make really good documentaries with top of the line journalism. Then they jumped head first into the shallow pool of super divisive activism.
@@stereomachine Ah yes, the recent video on sub Saharan Africa where they blame the lack of gay pride parades in the Congo on 18th century colonialism. Truly hard hitting stuff. Vice is shit, cope harder.
@@stereomachine the damage was done, no one's going to go back to your site if they know you post, "wow you're a grown man and you eat cookies? Why are you such a baby?"
@@stereomachine lol you seem to be a passionate fanboy cuz i litterly see you in every comment protecting vice. i mean i get your point but iff tons and i mean tons of people always say the same thing (as you mentioned) then maybe just maybe there is some truth to it. i think this video hits the nail on the head VICE just became to mainstream because they sold out... like even freaking disney owned a share in the company. it just became another soulless corporation with the occasional hit piece in the sea of uninteresting content.
I'd say at least half of their downfall can be laid at the feet of the growing social media landscape in general and reddit in particular. They had two options for growth: either get advertisers on board, or ask for a subscription, and why would anyone do the latter when you could get the daily news for free on Facebook, and as for the more “gonzo“ style reporting, it will show up on one of reddit's boards, so why bother paying a subscription fee for it? In the end, that led to mellowing out, fluff pieces, and pandering to the investrors.
While business lifecycle is definitely a thing, I think this is more a tale of how bad management can ruin everything about a good company. Something we see over and over again. Prof. Damodaran from NYU has a lecture on this, if you have the time and energy to watch an informative albeit sometimes boring college lecture.
Size has nothing to do with it what are you on about. Vice made the sin of selling out, if they had stuck to their roots as an independent news company and didn't start shoveling out absolute garbage material they'd still have the large viewerbase they had of the early 2010s.
I didn't consume that much of Vice's content, but I remember them having some great documentaries. I stopped keeping up with it seven or eight years ago and sort of just assumed it was already gone, so hearing it went bankrupt this year was a surprise.
American exceptionalism through the urban liberal, hipster yuppie lens. That's what VICE became, which allowed it to thrive and attract so much investment and interest. The initial magazine was pure reactionary misogyny and 90s edgelord stuff, nothing of value. It is quite remarkable how they grew to serve the US media narratives so strongly for so many years. Almost a decade of mainstream buzz and production, that's something.
I remember a fiction issue that was absolutely stacked with high quality work. It was well over ten years ago and i can think of a number of writers i still read that I first encountered there.
I gotta shout out Remap Radio, the rebrand for Vice's gaming arm, that has successfully spun off in response to the bankruptcy. While they were at Vice they started up a subscription model of their own which enabled them to keep running as the company went through more and more layoffs. Now they're totally listener funded, hopefully sustainably for plenty of time to come!
Unfortunately for Vice they came of age when direct appeals to viewers for financial contributions was akin to PBS. Online content consumers are now more financially literate, and in today's market Vice could have easily monetized via Patreon or another premium monthly membership scheme. Even then, however, survival in a world dominated by legacy media would have required the founding triumvarate to unapologetically prize quality over quantity (i.e. Bellingcat, which Disney has no interest in, and 'vice' versa), and I'm not sure that's a paradigm this particular trio of egos could have ever tolerated.
Good analysis and the things you point to as reasons for the downfall make sense. I think a less tangible force is that different generations of internet users hang out on different sites. I can't see Vice's irreverent tone being popular with gen Z in a way that it was with millennials.
as everyone else has already said, vice used to be awesome and its a real shame that it went to shit. they put out so much good stuff but ended up dying a sad death trying to pander to the same morons all other publications were trying to pander to except in the case of vice, nobody reading/watching their stuff was actually interested.
I first encountered vice when you'd find piles of their magazines distributed for free in pubs in London, and then a year later i saw Shanes documentary when he snuck into NK, its kind of sad that this has happened to Vice when they were so cutting edge at the start :/
It's really sad that vice got big by simply going to places and actually doing direct reporting. Journalism is done from behind a computer these days, the " journalists" don't even have firsthand knowledge of the things They are reporting on
Funnily enough, this episode clarified for me Dave Chappelle's reasoning why he walked away from Comedy Central's offer of $50M. If memory serves, he turned his back on the money because he felt he would become CC's property, and would be beholden to their wishes. With the Vice saga, this fear of Chappelle's, namely, one becoming essentially a slave to your rich masters, is now made real.
I remember being in high school and actually reading a vice magazine that I got from the hippie part of town. I was blown away at the gritty stories and how fat the magazine actually was compared to others. It was so alternative but, high quality compared to other alt zines on the stand. THAT was the essence. Eventually I saw they started a youtube channel etc and that's where this vid picks up.
I started picking up Vice in 1999 from the store I got my spraypaint. The early 00s Vice was great, before the internet journalism. I loved their coverage of the UK Grime scene. I also remember a great interview with Patrick Wolf.
@@reginaldfoley8803 I appreciate your narrative. It just seems like all the documentaries on Vice don't really have much to say about the magazine and that is the real essence of all the programming and aesthetic.
Vice also produced some of the worst, fake "documentaries" I've ever seen. One was supposed to be about people who supposedly smoked scorpion venom, but they only showed someone smoking some dried up scorpion without even separating out the parts that may actually contain venom. It was laughably bad and obviously fake.
