Pregaming Annihilation—This Week on VICE: Members Only
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For anyone in the business of having opinions, the past 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, prompting Wireless (who he was due to headline three nights in a row) to cancel the entire festival. Jake Paul made ayahuasca and now believes metal is alive. And amid the buzz of potential nuclear war, Pitchfork’s Best Albums Bracket competition entered its final phase, with the two finalists OK Computer by Radiohead and Child A by Radiohead. Which didn’t help at all.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday that “an entire civilization will die” unless Iran agreed to lift the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Neither of these things ultimately happened, but his “probable war crime” comments drew criticism from the UN secretary-general, a former US Navy chief and the Pope. They also inspired a “TACO Tuesday” shindig at the home of entrepreneur Dryden Brown, whose network state hopes to “revive” Western civilization.
Regular readers of VICE will be familiar with our roving reporter, Nick Dove, for his anthropological adventures in some of the most off-key social gatherings in North America—he’s previously crashed the disastrous opening night of Polymarket’s “situational surveillance” bar and attended a private party for Nick Land. So obviously no “Will Trump nuke Iran?” the 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 “destroy the game before the game.” Here is a scene from Nick’s broadcast where he is approached by a “dancing edgelord”.
“In the past I’d heard him declare that ‘It’s time for the wiggas’ and mean ‘We’re going to need more white rappers if we’re going to save civilization.’ He looks up at me and says ‘Yoooo’ and I reply ‘Hey, what’s up?’ With a cocked head, he tells me that he met me at 101 nightclub last weekend, that he’s new in town from LA, and that I I’m fucking mad. I reply thank you, that’s kind of him to say. Then he asks for my Instagram, grabs my phone to inspect our mutual, then informs me of what he’s been up to with various shared female followers. Oh shit, I fucked this, damn, I wanna fuck it, fuck, boy, she sucked my dick in a Vons parking lot. I can’t help but laugh even as I cringe. Is this elite vanguard meant to ‘revive’ the West? As I’m trying to escape him, another person comes up and tells me I’m a mog, and then invites me to come 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 a grown-up who dresses like a 2000s Hot Topic kid and hangs out on Discord.
The play went viral not only for being full of clumsy vulnerability, written as it was in the wake 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 addresses just that. Rather than the story of a failed romance between a technician and a vape shop employee, Hansen argues, Mariani’s essay reveals “a society that remains composed of different classes that, as always, struggle to understand each other.” He continues:
“The real story here is not the emergence of dinergoth as a new cultural type, nor is it the death of the regional cultures that dinergoth supposedly destroyed. More pressing, I would argue, is the insidious domestication of the Internet in the 21st century—and the evolving appearance of that slippery thing called class, both online and in class.”
Read the full mod essay below.
Emma Garland
Deputy Editor, VICE
To get past the paywall, sign up for VICE membership. A Digital Only subscription costs $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 right to your door. (All three kill all the ads on this site.)
