It was the best and the worst of all time. The age of limitless creativity and self -scene, the era of happy managers And cascading burnout, the season of economic layoffs and ping-pong tables in the middle of the office. A relatively close and yet so distant era, during which many of us believed that the pure players media would change the world for the best. Before seeing them collapse, financially, creatively, or both.
At the end of the 2000s, a second web bubble developed and many online media with a new or even irreverent tone were born: Buzzfeed, Vice, Gawker, Slate.fr, Politico, Huffington Post, etc. The objective? Dust the traditional media coverage using happy experiments and offer an editorial line more in line with the concerns of a young readership.
From popular start-ups, many of these young media will mutate into empires, attracting more and more investors and developing many international subsidiaries. Among these giants for the most part, there is vice, apostle of subversive and “embodied” journalism. Launched in the early 2000s before declaring bankruptcy in 2023, this online magazine for some time dominated pop culture and the “cool” web media. In a documentary entitled Vice is brokeAvailable on Mubi from August 29, Eddie Huang, former media employee, traces the inspiring, chaotic and absurd route on the website, to the tumble.
Who better than this elder from the house to trace with frankness and humor the fate of the media? In Vice is brokeEddie Huang skillfully imitates the vice formula, staging a very personal starting point: he believes that the media still owes him money, of which he will never see the color. As a remuneration and without being bound by the slightest confidentiality agreement, the chef and author then uses his contacts to try to tell with candor this special era.
Size, overbidding and decadence
It may be the most surprising when you see the documentary: the number of talents that went through vice before building their career. We meet the musician Chromeo, the author Josh Ostrovsky (better known on social networks for his pseudonym “The Fat Jew”), or Lesley Arfin, who has since become a series scriptwriter Girls,, Brooklyn nine nine,, Love Or Betty. Eddie Huang is also the author of Welcome to the HuangAutobiography adapted in series by ABC.
The documentary very well highlights the experimental spirit of the beginnings and the incredible pool of talents that constituted the pure players of the time, offering a pen and a means of dissemination to brilliant, eccentric or both, who did not feel heard in traditional media. “Many of us had felt rejected everywhere and had spent the majority of our youth looking for a place where we could be ourselves”explains the documentary maker. It is this youth and this creative freedom that made the editorial strength of vice (and other web media of the time, such as Buzzfeed or Gawker). But it is also the absence of a frame that will precipitate their fall.
Most of the contributors interviewed in the film share the same feeling. “It was largely a scam”; “There is nothing journalistic at vice”. Editorially, the media runs after the escalation, even if it means going. The documentary takes the example of a vice report in Liberia, focused on rape and cannibalism stories, while at the same time, chef Anthony Bourdain speaks in his vibrant community program, browsing the country’s markets.
However, this new model, fresh and little concerned with the rules, excites the world of the media. “There was a wonderful moment around 2015, where suddenly, all traditional media were interested in what vice did”tells Simon Ostrovsky, a award -winning journalist who enabled the company to gain respectability with its reports in Ukraine for Vice News.
“You had to be there”
But while the Vice Media group is developing, the financial issues change and the work atmosphere too. As the very first female employee of vice tells: “This is where things go wrong, because you have a lot of new people in the office who do not belong to your group of friends and you can no longer behave in the same way without offending someone.”
The documentary thus evokes the overflows of charismatic bosses, notably Shane Smith and Gavin Mcinnes, whose free and provocative spirit is gradually transformed into managerial aberrations. “Sometimes we continue to love people who hurt us, simply because they were the first to love ourselves”Philosopher Eddie Huang in voiceover.
Gavin Mcinnes, one of the founders who left the media due to “creative disagreements”, then founded the Proud Boys, a neofascist, supremacist and masculinist group (among others). Eddie Huang also undertakes to interview his former boss in Vice is broke. During the meeting, the two men toast repeatedly and try to debate without ever succeeding in launching a real dialogue.
In voiceover, Eddie Huang allows himself the kind of comments that no journalist could afford in a traditional media: “I met full, white supremacists. It’s my specialty to interview these stupid assholes! ” A funny, embarrassing, cheeky and undoubtedly less deep sequence than you would like to believe, which perfectly sums up the contradictions of the vice spirit.
Eddie Huang may not get justice or revenge, with his documentary. But it offers at least a striking overview of this short and intense period which has profoundly upset the media world. And concludes with the words that all the survivors of this crazy adventure will repeat you: “You had to be there.”
