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.”
Read it now.
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.
“Just before I got caught, after being on the run for over five years and being known as one of the UK’s biggest fraudsters, I knew that I couldn’t keep up all the shenanigans and lying to everyone. I went to prison, and when my wife and kids—who hadn’t even known I’d been on the run—came to visit, I said to myself, ‘It can’t get no worse than where I’m at now. I’ve just been fucking about and wasting my life. What can I do to change it?’”
And here’s another one from former stunt actor David Holmes…
“When you break your neck after a devastating spinal cord injury, the first thing you realize is that ‘rock bottom’ is far deeper and further away than what you had previously considered. In a split second, I went from having the body of an athlete to needing 24-hour care, 365 days a year—but for me this was the beginning of a quest to discover where my rock bottom exists.”
For access to both of these features and so much more, join the VICE members hub here.
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