VICE Mail

BEARY SCARY

Hello,

I was just wondering what your safety policy is or what you recommend we do in situations that could yield greatly in the name of

Vice

but could probably and would probably end in our absolute death.

I was waiting for a bus back to campus at a stand on the outskirts of Chicago with a few friends and I saw these two horribly

ghetto

black men hanging around at the bus stop.

They looked horribly hardcore and this one had a facial expression that was frozen in some sort of R. Kelly-esque squint. They both sat down talking jive or ghetto or whatever lingo they speak and I felt like taking a picture because they were both holding boxes from Build-A-Bear. That is the place where you can build your own teddy bear.

I just thought it was fucking hilarious because they looked horribly, horribly hardcore and one of them had a tattoo of an AK-47 on his neck.

Anyway, I surely would have perished if I took a picture of them to send it in. Should I have taken the picture?

Tanks,

MICHAEL BLUM

Chicago, IL

Is it just us, or is it physically impossible to read this aloud without falling into a lispy Scarlet Pimpernel voice?

YOUR AD HERE

Dear

Vice

,

Thanks but no thanks for your newest Photo—I mean, Advertisement Issue. This was one of the crappiest things I have ever seen you put out, not due to the photos, which were amazing by the way, but for the multitude of advertisements on EVERY page. I mean, fuck, the first 30 pages were advertisements.

Vice

used to be a magazine where I would be happy about not seeing shit thrown in my face at every second. But no no no, you had to fuck this up for us too. It seems like you even cut out photos just so you can have an advertisement for “Anon”—whatever the fuck that is—on the other side of the page. Plain and simple, YOUR SHIT SUCKS. Fuck you. Stay Republican, you rich pricks.

BRIAN BALL

Via email

Wow, if you’re that angry about our ads I hope nobody ever shows you a copy of something like Vogue or you are really going to shit.

OVER THE EDGE

Dear

Vice

,

Thank you for using your position of social comfort (in your own small way) to normalize our lifestyle choice. We’ve taken subscriptions to your magazine so next time one of our members is kneeling over the edge of a bath, arms deep in whore blood, they’ll see the funny side and laugh at those uptight moralists. It’s nice to know that there’s now a slick, mass-produced, internationally distributed media outlet that understands our impulses and relays them with the appropriate postmodern objective cynicism. Keep on the cutting edge!

From,

THE SOCIETY FOR SERIAL TORTURE, MURDER, AND SEXUAL DISMEMBERMENT

Humour Failure House

Val Solanas Cul-de-Sac

UK, 0 HWE L6UGHD

Leave it to the Brits to once more get so overinvolved in their convoluted attempts at “satire” that nobody has any idea what the actual point is.

YOU AIN’T GOT NO ALIBI

Vice

:

I recently returned home from a lovely weekend in the country. Relaxing at home that Sunday afternoon, I finally had the opportunity to pick up your recent Photo Issue, which I had brought with me that weekend, didn’t have time to read, and was eagerly anticipating.

I’d like to comment on the pervasive ugliness of the entire publication. Every page, every image seemed intent on capturing only ugly subject matter, in the hyperbole. I’m curious—was a creative brief sent to all contributors calling for only grit, grunge, and freakishness? Have you recently conducted a study that has convinced you that the majority of your readers only respond to that which is grotesque?

I felt sad after reading the issue. There really is too much ugliness in the world. Why do you want to cut down trees, and waste ink, water, and energy to reproduce ugliness on a mass scale?

I don’t think the issue had valid artistic integrity, no social commentary was provided, and I don’t even consider it edgy, in the true sense of the word. Without any content (that stood out to me) demonstrating the redeeming qualities of the human condition, I can’t help but now think that

Vice

is a vehicle of nihilism.

Sorry for the harsh opinion, but you should know, your Photo Issue has caused me to write my first letter of complaint to a publication in my four-plus decades. So I guess my question to you is: Why?? What was the point, the objective, the rationale?

Otherwise, I think

Vice

is a consistently worthwhile publication and I have been a regular reader for years.

Thanks for reading this note!

SEAN FARRELL

Vancouver, BC

Um, if you really consider subjects such as kittens, boobs, teenage punks and metalheads, goofy Japanese kids, indoor pool parties, skateboarding, and pizza examples of the world’s “ugliness” and “grunge,” you might want to do your sensitive little self a favor and never open the door to your house, look out the window, or turn on the TV for the rest of your life. As for the rest of it: Tough shit, old man.

PRALINES ‘N’ WHA?

Dear

Vice

,

Please tell me you didn’t actually use a “food stylist” for the cover of your Sundaes Issue. A fucking “food stylist”?! You used to go on about how boomer media were shit because they wasted their budgets hiring as many people as possible to do every little task and now look at you. You’re paying a grown, presumably gay, man to arrange an ice cream sundae and banana split in a little pair of bowls for your camera. This is the EXACT same thing they pay 15-year-olds $4 an hour to do at the Jersey Shore in summer. Hell, I probably would have done it for you if you’d let me have the ice cream at the end of the shoot. Fuck only knows how much you paid this chotch.

The only way you could possibly redeem yourself in my eyes is if Matthew Vohr was just the name of some teenager you found at the beach and calling what he did “food styling” was just a little publishing joke. Please say this is what you meant. You didn’t actually get a professional stylist to make you ice cream, right?

L. BEECH

Brooklyn, NY

We did, and we think the results are sinfully indulgent.

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