On Friday, it was announced that media publication Vice would stop updating its website and lay off hundreds of workers by March 1st. I can't exactly say that I'm surprised because Vice has been dealing with financial issues for a while (their content isn't exactly advertiser-friendly), but I still find the whole situation to be really dystopic for a lack of better words.
Within the coming weeks, literal decades of reporting on style, fashion, niche subcultures, politics, niche African warlords, and obscure drugs may vanish forever, all because a few greedy tech bros want to increase their profits. And I know people will say "good riddance," because, yeah, some of their articles were genuinely dumb. But how many news organizations were really sending scrawny Brooklyn hipsters to report on cannibal warlords and drug cartels on location? Where else could you watch Daria Morgendorffer’s long-lost Twink brother drug himself on toad venom in the name of journalism? There was no one really doing it like Vice. And even if you think hipster culture is annoying (like I do), you can't deny the impact it's had on our culture, which is why it's important to preserve institutions like Vice.
Anyways. The site is still up for now, so I've spent most of the weekend combing through articles and editorials to save as many things to the web archive as I can. Sadly, many of the articles already are full of broken links and lost images, which is a real shame, but at least we can preserve what is still left.
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