Live data from Hacker News

Vice Media: A Company Built on a Bluff

nymag.com

21–30 of 78 posts

Re: Vice Media: A Company Built on a Bluff

#21
> taking over a 75,000-square-foot space in South Williamsburg occupied in part by Death by Audio, a local music venue

RIP, DBA! I always found it somewhat ironic that Vice, with roots in being edgy and punk, drove away one of Brooklyn’s top DIY edgy music venues. With Silent Barn also closing it’s been a sad five years for DIY in Brooklyn. :(

Re: Vice Media: A Company Built on a Bluff

#22

Being one of the few pre-Internet media companies to still be around in some form today, their story is pretty fascinating. It clearly hasn't worked out for the better though. Vice on HBO, while covering a massive breadth of topics, suffer from their presentation; their nasally-voiced mid 20s employees they send on documentaries are mostly boredom-inducing, and their various online news outlets are Buzzfeed-tier clic…

Being one of the few pre-Internet media companies to still be around in some form today... Wha?

Vice was a print skateboard magazine before its current incarnation.

Re: Vice Media: A Company Built on a Bluff

#24

Being one of the few pre-Internet media companies to still be around in some form today, their story is pretty fascinating. It clearly hasn't worked out for the better though. Vice on HBO, while covering a massive breadth of topics, suffer from their presentation; their nasally-voiced mid 20s employees they send on documentaries are mostly boredom-inducing, and their various online news outlets are Buzzfeed-tier clic…

I love what VICE was ~2005-2010. VICE and what it has become today (see: VICELAND) is... nothing what it used to be. I love their documentary style from the 2010 range. The NK documentaries on YouTube were my favorite. They've turned into like you said a buzzfeed-tier garbage.

I was a student in Montreal in the late 90s, and was on to Vice before it was cool, when it was just a free alt-weekly punk-ass print rag. It was from outer space. I read it religiously.

Re: Vice Media: A Company Built on a Bluff

#25

Being one of the few pre-Internet media companies to still be around in some form today, their story is pretty fascinating. It clearly hasn't worked out for the better though. Vice on HBO, while covering a massive breadth of topics, suffer from their presentation; their nasally-voiced mid 20s employees they send on documentaries are mostly boredom-inducing, and their various online news outlets are Buzzfeed-tier clic…

I love what VICE was ~2005-2010. VICE and what it has become today (see: VICELAND) is... nothing what it used to be. I love their documentary style from the 2010 range. The NK documentaries on YouTube were my favorite. They've turned into like you said a buzzfeed-tier garbage.

second for the north korea documentary on youtube. in my opinion it's still one of the best, even so many years later, at showing what lengths they go to in building the facade for tourists and the rest of the world.

sidebar: i still feel bad about that poor tea girl.

Re: Vice Media: A Company Built on a Bluff

#26

Being one of the few pre-Internet media companies to still be around in some form today, their story is pretty fascinating. It clearly hasn't worked out for the better though. Vice on HBO, while covering a massive breadth of topics, suffer from their presentation; their nasally-voiced mid 20s employees they send on documentaries are mostly boredom-inducing, and their various online news outlets are Buzzfeed-tier clic…

IFC's documentary parody series Documentary Now! ( https://www.ifc.com/shows/documentary-now ) did a great episode in its first season called "DRONEZ: The Hunt for El Chingon" that is an hilarious, pitch-perfect sendup of the Vice documentary style. It's on Netflix, if memory serves.

I somewhat prefer the parody Juan Likes Rice and Chicken from Documentary Now! to Jiro Dreams of Sushi, the fiction is sweeter and less cruel than the reality of a decade of training to get qualified to learn to cook an egg.

Re: Vice Media: A Company Built on a Bluff

#27
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love what VICE was ~2005-2010. VICE and what it has become today (see: VICELAND) is... nothing what it used to be. I love their documentary style from the 2010 range. The NK documentaries on YouTube were my favorite. They've turned into like you said a buzzfeed-tier garbage.

I was a student in Montreal in the late 90s, and was on to Vice before it was cool, when it was just a free alt-weekly punk-ass print rag. It was from outer space. I read it religiously.

The do's and don'ts to this day inform my acerbic wit aspirations.

Re: Vice Media: A Company Built on a Bluff

#28
The interesting thing in this is coming right out with how the company built its numbers with botted traffic and referrer-spammed traffic. This is generally under-remarked upon because everyone except for advertisers tends to want to not mention this common practice.

If you bot hard enough you can get real investors and advertisers to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars.

Re: Vice Media: A Company Built on a Bluff

#30

> When I asked Dominique Delport, the chief revenue officer, whether the company was profitable, he declined to say and suggested that dollar figures were the wrong way to think about Vice. “The company profit is to everybody who watches Vice, because they feel smarter,” he said. Investors should run away as quickly as possible. If that quote from the Chief Revenue Officer isn't a red flag, I don't know what is.

You're equating a conversation with a journalist (=the public) with one with an investor, though.
Post reply on HN