Scheduling note—the editor who usually writes this column has been away the last week or so, hence its late arrival and slightly more rear-mirror focus than normal.
There’s a growing feeling that the internet is becoming increasingly violent. It’s not just the endless reports of unspeakable wars flooding through our news sites. Platforms like X, once a forum for poorly thought out opinions and witty subtweets about the purveyors of said opinions, now seems to just be an endless video feed of men slugging each other on the New York subway.
Our latest investigative story published on the Members Only section of VICE this week shows that this phenomenon goes far deeper than you might imagine. Hayden Vernon’s report on the new rise of internet gore is an eye opening look at the darker corners of the internet where communities have been built out of a shared desire to watch footage of murders, accidents, shootings, and maimings.
While some watch for pleasure, others have surprisingly practical reasons for seeking out the videos. As one trainee mortician told Vernon: “I will look at gore subreddits or websites, because in some way the desensitization helps me disconnect at work.”
Elsewhere behind our paywall, writers Mattha Busby and Mark E. Hay have put together a brutal yet inspiring ‘VICE Guide to Rock Bottom’. The pair spoke to priests, authors and ex-fraudsters about the lowest ebbs of their lives and how they ultimately scraped themselves off the floor of existence and turned it all around.
Jules Riot
Journalist, culture critic, and digital troublemaker. Covering power, propaganda, and the strange theatre of modern life. Known for slicing through media noise with a rusted blade of clarity, Riot writes with the urgency of a deadline and the edge of a basement zine.
