Photos courtesy of Jelenajensen.com

The 21st century is a grim time to fuck on camera for money. Tube sites and piracy have diminished the demand for adult performers’ work, and thanks to webcams, anyone with a WiFi connection can become a porn performer. To stay profitable, porn star Jelena Jensen has taken control of her professional digital presence.

A film school graduate, Jensen runs her own website, manages other performers’ sites, shoots videos, and hosts The J Spot, a radio show on Vivid Radio. Working at home most days in front of a computer, she resembles your average one-person web entrepreneur—albeit one who works with titties and dicks.

Wanting to learn more about ways Jensen has combated piracy and stayed solvent, I called her to discuss the porn industry’s struggles, entrepreneurship, and why she calls herself a “webmistress.”

VICE: How did you start working in the adult entertainment industry?
Jelena Jensen: I was going to film school at Chapman University in Orange County, California. I was looking for a part-time job that would be flexible during the school year, and I came across this job and put in my application. When they called me for the interview, I asked, “So what exactly do you guys do?” They just said “internet fulfillment,” and I didn't want to ask what that was because I didn't want them to think I wasn't smart enough to work there. At the very end of the interview, they said, “Oh, by the way, it's adult, so if you have any problems with that, let us know,” and I was like, “No.” So I ended up working with them. I was their project manager, and then I became their marketing manager, and then eventually I worked for them full-time while I was in school. It wasn't until the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in January of 2003 that an employer said, “Well why don't you just do nude modeling, and you don't have to have sex with anyone?” Within a month I started shooting, and it became my only gig, just myself, solo for magazines.

Do you manage your own website? 
I'm one of the few who actually 100 percent runs her own website. The end of this month will be the ten-year anniversary of my site. When I first started my site, I started it with a webmaster, a friend of mine, and in less than six months, he started working for a big company. He pretty much said he didn't have time to run my site, but if I signed a contract with this company he could run it from there. I talked to them. They all offered me contracts to run my site, but no one would compromise—they pretty much wanted me to just hand everything over. As much as adult is more widely accepted now than it used to be, it still follows you everywhere you go, so if I was going to have this as a mark on my record, then I was going to make a career and I was going to make it worth it.

What’s your average workday like?
I spend most of my time in front of the computer. I don't really perform very much. I run two other websites: Maggie Green’s website MaximumMaggie.com and Aria Giovanni’s website, which is AriaGiovanni.com. So I spend the majority of my time working out, cooking, and sitting at my computer. Whenever I write on Twitter that I'm going to spend the day working, fans will crack jokes because they don't realize I'm talking about sitting at my computer and legitimately working.

Has piracy affected your business?
It affects me a lot. The only place that I release my content is online, and then people steal it and put it up elsewhere—obviously the tube sites. It has affected me, because people think, Why should I join your site when I can get it for free? I pay for a service to send out legal notices to take my stuff down—very rarely will stuff of mine that's put up on a tube site stay there very long—but there's still torrents and other stuff that are a big problem. I would say I probably only make a third of what I used to running my site.

Does camming help you combat the financial blow?
Yeah. When I first started camming, there was no audio and they could only see me, and now we have audio on both ends and video on both ends, and it's definitely made camming a bigger industry. Camming and also custom videos—that's where everything in the business is leaning towards. I come and go with camming. I don't do it all the time, but there will be times—like for instance I am saving for a house—so if I want to save up for a down payment, I have to work more, which means more camming because obviously my site's not going to bring in that money like it used to.

What do you consider your main job title?
I'm a performer still, because obviously the camming and stuff like that. I'm also a webmaster—that's one thing that I spend most of my time doing. On my Twitter profile, it says Webmistress. I have my own photography equipment. I also work as a photographer, and I shoot video. Recently Brazzers had their ten-year anniversary, and they did a big shoot day and hired me to shoot all the BTS [behind the scenes] video. It was funny. It was like ten of the top female stars, and I'm still someone in the business in front of the camera but that day I wasn't. It's just strange sometimes because they get confused, like, “Oh you're here to shoot?” Or the makeup artist will see me and say, “I thought we only had this many girls.” It's like, “Yeah, I'm not in front of the camera today. You're not doing my makeup.”

For more information about Jelena Jensen's radio show, visit Vivid Radio. 

Follow Sophie Saint Thomas on Twitter. 

Illustrations by Berkeley Poole

In the grim light of Eric Garner’s death, Michael Brown’s death, and the ensuing protests in Ferguson, New York City, and other cities across America, we at ADULT, the independent magazine I edit, have decided to publish online one of our first print issue’s more memorable pieces: Katie J.M. Baker’s guide to sousveillance, or copwatching. Although memorable seems like the wrong word, the kinds of events that impelled her to write the article never seem to stop happening long enough for her guide to be forgotten. 

Baker became interested in sousveillance when she interviewed a sex worker named Raven, who called herself the “coparazzi,” for Jezebel. Many of Raven's 100-plus videos on YouTube were interviews with teenage sex workers describing their abuse at the hands of the LAPD, while others featured cops either hassling Raven or refusing to help her deal with a hassling client.

“The minute you mention sex work in the context of a real crime, cops don't want to hear it,” Raven told Baker at the time. "They'll blame you for whatever happened to you.”

While working with Baker on this guide, we watched a jury in Florida acquit George Zimmerman of killing Trayvon Martin, 17, in the gated community where Martin was living. We watched as a judge in the Bronx dismissed the manslaughter charges against Richard Haste, the white NYPD officer who shot Ramarley Graham, 18, in Graham's home. Had we also been able to watch both of the boys’ deaths on video, would the courts have decided differently?

Nearly a year later, we’re witnessing a rise in awareness of police brutality, thanks in large part to smartphone-armed citizens. Without the video recording of Darren Wilson standing over Michael Brown’s body, #Ferguson may have stopped trending, and without the video recording of Eric Garner's murder, citizens may never have protested in Times Square, sparking a national media scrum.

“If the marginalized community members I interviewed for my guide in ADULT don't watch the cops,” says Baker, “no one will hold the state accountable.”

Marginalized or not, we should be prepared to police the police. That's why ADULT is making Baker’s article, which we previously, stupidly printed in a $20 niche erotic magazine, available on VICE. We want this material to be used. What follows is a web-friendly version of “Watch Yourself!” which was originally fashioned as a four-page primer in the black-and-white tone of a Cold War era Civil Defense brochure.

The irony could not be more pointed: When the US government’s public alert “CAN AMERICANS TAKE IT?” hyperbolically warned “regular Americans” that, in a nuclear age, “the backyard may be the next front line,” it wasn't referring to the risk of abuse, illegal arrest, or state-sanctioned murder that many black Americans, transgender Americans, homeless Americans, sex-working Americans, and many other Americans face today. Nor did the government mean to predict a militarized homeland police force, storming the cul-de-sacs in camouflage and all-terrain vehicles. In a strange, accidental way, the government did warn us, and there is no hyperbole sufficient for the danger of the current situation.

In our proud nation, constant WATCHEDNESS IS THE NEW WAY OF LIFE. A cop may, without a warrant, not only stop but also frisk you. An armed and xenophobic vigilante may shoot you as you walk home.  Patriots—BE ALERT! BE READY! AND BE READY TO PRESS RECORD!

WHAT YOU CAN DO
In times of crisis, the only antidote to watchedness is SOUSVEILLANCE: When the many (YOU!) watch the few (COPS!). This guide takes into account tips from the “many” from—Occupy protestors to sex workers to teenagers of color—on how to hold YOUR STATE accountable. Social networking has turned recent large-scale disappointment in the criminal justice system into a critical mass of angry, skeptical citizens. Too often, we wait for a Trayvon Martin or an Oscar Grant before we prepare. But copwatchers can take practical, direct action to deter police terrorism. Here’s what you need to know before you copwatch.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW

YOUR HISTORY
A citizen must be historically informed in order to copwatch. This practice has existed in our nation as far back as the 1850s, when fugitive black Americans made their own WANTED posters, urging fellow slaves to keep their “TOP EYE open” for slave-catchers. When slavery was abolished, the slaves did not become free. In 1991, members of the Los Angeles Police Department were caught, on tape, beating Rodney King. Were it not for the sousveillance of a few on behalf of the many, the cops might still be cops. But, thanks to video that pushed racist cop assaults into the national spotlight, they became prisoners. Rodney King was awarded $3.8 million in civil damages.

Sousveillance, however, is rarely but a Pyrrhic success. We would not know what had happened to Oscar Grant at Fruitvale Station, in 2009, had so many bystanding citizens not been armed with cameras. Yet our compatriot Oscar Grant still died. Last year, one LA sex worker named Raven Nicole Masterson has uploaded over 100 videos, filmed using her smartphone camera, that document captures dozens of legal arguments with cops and interviews with teenage sex workers claiming cop abuse, and yet THE FIGHT IS NOT OVER. There is always a fear that cops may become smarter, or even sentient.

YOUR TOOLS
If you know the tools, you can subvert them. Many of these tools can, and should, be carried in your pockets—and not only in America, but everywhere an American goes. In the 2011 London riots, protestors used a smartphone app called Sukey to report and share police activities that were anti-protest so they could be everywhere the police weren’t, thus turning the state’s gaze and tactics on its head. On a global scale, the infamous, patriot act of WikiLeaks is an example of technology-enabled sousveillance. Yet, for citizens of America, sousveillance begins at home.

PASSWORD. Whether it’s a smartphone, a laptop, or a regular camera, a copwatcher must always have a password and, if possible, a screen-lock timer on the device. PLAN FOR THE WORST. A cop may demand to see what is on your device, so do not make it easy.

ENCRYPTION. From default, some smartphones encrypt the information stored on the devices, but others do not. If you do not ensure your information is encrypted, the police can and may connect a special device to your phone that will copy all its data. First, you want to make sure they cannot delete anything. Secondly, you want to stop them from seeing it in the first place. Citizens, enable encryption. (Even with encryption, a cop can still download your data if he possesses the actual, physical device. But, as the Supreme Court ruled in Riley vs. California this past June, police need to get a specific warrant to do so, even if they've already arrested you. This is one more right for you to know.)        

BACKUP. If the only copy of the video or the photograph is on the device, and then if something unforeseen happens to that device, you lose the photo. Use a service that automatically loads your new video to the web. This does not mean it needs to be available for everyone else to see, but merely that if it’s automatically backed up, you have an alternate way of accessing it if your phone is stolen, smashed, or compromised.

YOUR COMMUNITY
Whenever it is possible, citizens, prepare in groups and copwatch in your group’s own neighborhood. Copwatching is about community. You must want to change your own conditions and you must be held accountable. If you go into another community, the police might retaliate against people in that neighborhood. DO NOT overstep the boundaries of your experience (if, for example, your community comprises well-intentioned middle-class white kids with smartphones). REMEMBER: The more support you have from people in the community, the harder it is for the police to isolate you.

YOUR STRATEGY
Copwatching is confrontational. The police in our nation are not yet accustomed to having citizens observe them, so they might quickly move to their own defense.

Pay attention to detail, because the cops will. For example: Park a couple of blocks away. You don’t want your car to get targeted so you can get stopped later. Don’t do anything illegal, even if it seems minor; do not, Americans, allow yourself to be arrested for spitting on a sidewalk.

And, remember: How “arrestable” are you? Don’t copwatch unless you can get arrested. If you’re a sex worker or someone traditionally targeted by law enforcement population, who is working and surviving in a street economy, it may be a risky decision.

YOUR RIGHTS
The police may try to intimidate you, so it is crucial that, as an American, you know your rights.

Recording laws differ state by state—for example, in some states you can’t record someone without their knowledge (but you can without their consent)—so call the ACLU or visit their website before copwatching.

At least two federal courts of appeals have recognized the right to record on-duty cops on the basis of first amendment right violations. Still today, cops know they can intimidate people, and they might tell you to stop, ask for your camera, or otherwise illegally scare you.

Always say, “am I free to go or am I being detained?” You do not have to talk to the cop or even stick around unless the cop says so and has a reasonable suspicion to detain you; they cannot just say you look like “you’re not from around the area.” Question their purpose and scope. You do NOT have to consent to a search of your pockets or badge, and you do NOT have to provide anything other than your name, your identification, and your address.

THE LAW
IF you are planning on copwatching, it will be helpful to reference specific codes, such as Penal Code Section 830.10, which says that cops must give you their name or wear a badge. Penal Code Section 841 informs citizens “the person making the arrest must, on request of the person he [or she] is arresting, inform the latter of the offense for which he [or she] is being arrested.”

Copwatchers may be charged with resisting or obstructing an officer. Penal Code Section 148.a states that “Every person who willfully resists, delays, or obstructs any public officer... in the discharge or attempt to discharge” of his or her duty will be arrested. REMEMBER, you have the right to observe as long as you’re not interfering. Catching your non-interference on camera will make that clear.

Ask the cops for their names and their badge numbers, and write that information down. Local copwatch organizations can often give you a fuller list of rights. Memorize them, Americans, and DO NOT FORGET.

SOURCES
Dr. Simone Brown at the University of Texas, who specializes in surveillance; Joaquin Cienfuegos, a member of the Guerrilla Chapter of Cop Watch Los Angeles; Kade Crockford, director of the ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Project; Kahn Miller, executive director of project SAFE; Chris Soghoian, ACLU principal technologist with the speech privacy and technology project; Steve Mann’s article “Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments.”

ADULT's second issue goes on sale next month. For more information, visit their website. 

Follow Katie and Sarah on Twitter. 

The "Baker" explosion, part of Operation Crossroads, a nuclear weapon test by the US military at Bikini Atoll, Micronesia, 1946 (Photo via)

The history of nuclear technology isn’t all drawn-out military stand-offs and catastrophic power plant disasters – there’s also a load more depressing stuff you’ve probably never heard about. Did you know, for example, that John Wayne – as well as 46 members of crew – died of cancer after shooting a notoriously bad B-movie named The Conqueror in a contaminated canyon near a Nevada nuclear testing range? Or that around 40 nuclear weapons just disappeared during the Cold War, some of them in populated areas of the US?

Rudolph Herzog – writer, producer and director (and son of Werner) – released a book charting some of these little known stories last year. And considering the documentary adaptation of A Short History of Nuclear Folly just aired on TV in France and Germany, I thought it made sense to have a catch up. Over the phone we spoke about how governments got away with a century’s worth of damage and the potential for a nuclear-free world.

VICE: Hi Rudolph. At the start of the book you say your childhood influenced your interest in nuclear history.
Rudolph Herzog: Yes, the nuclear threat was very much on our minds. Germany was implicitly designated as the nuclear battlefield number one, so if there had been a nuclear conflict, Germany would’ve gone first. We were really keenly aware of that. I remember watching this cartoon about an elderly couple in England during a nuclear war – they suffer radiation poisoning and they get these spots on their skin – and thinking, 'Golly, that could happen to us, any day.'

People had nuclear bunkers in their front yards. I remember a classmate of mine had a rich dad, and they basically dug this nuclear shelter in the garden. Of course, we had no such thing at all. But yes, that does inform why I’m so interested in it. It’s hard to imagine nowadays, but I can tell you it’s very depressive.

You call the centrifuge – a seemingly innocuous bit of lab equipment – the world’s second most dangerous invention. Why so?
One of the major obstacles when you build a nuclear weapon is what kind of material you use. If you’re using enriched uranium, that’s extremely difficult to extract from natural uranium. One of the only ways is using centrifuges. They’re cylinders that spin gasses at a supersonic speed – like a drum that does your washing. Nowadays, centrifuges are being used in all sorts of smaller countries to make that enriched uranium for bombs. It’s basically allowed for the “poor man’s bomb”.

A room full of gas centrifuges at an American enrichment plant (Photo via)

What would larger countries be using?
There’s a thing called SILEX, which is much more effective than centrifuges, that uses lasers to isolate the isotope. It’s smaller and very compact, so if you wanted to conceal that you had that technology that would be the way to go. We don’t really know how far it’s developed or how it works exactly, but there appears to be a quantum leap in technologies that will make centrifuges obsolete.

You also talk about how the sea has essentially been used as a nuclear dumping ground since day one.
Dumping nuclear waste into the sea was a widespread practice, unfortunately. People thought at least they’d be superficially rid of it. Of course, it gets spread and disseminated in other ways and into the food chain. One effect of this would be substances like plutonium getting into the food chain through algae and fish to humans. That’s a huge possibility. That wasn’t as far as people were willing to think at the time.

And now it's set to affect everything in the long term.
Yes, unfortunately. Once you’ve put waste down there, it’s almost impossible to get it back up. That decision has kind of been taken, for better or worse. Sadly, there’s no telling what the effect will be. We just have to hope that it’ll decay. The half-life of the radiation causes it to become less active over time, but we’re talking long periods of time here – thousands of years.

A nuclear shell being tested at a Nevada test site in 1953 (Photo via)

The effects on people in Utah, for example – after the US tested bombs in Nevada and the cloud drifted east – was disastrous.
It’s scientifically proven that certain types of cancers – bone or blood cancers, like leukaemia, for example – are far more common in parts of Utah that were affected by fallout than in any other place in the United States. There’s a woman featured in my film called Claudia. She didn’t have cancer in her family at all, but when they moved there, there was this big massing of cancer, which she blames on the nuclear testing. Many people have tried to claim compensation for what’s happened to them. Claudia is one of them. Of course, it’s just money and it doesn’t bring these people back to life.

What's stopping more from being done about it?
It’s partially a cultural thing. That area is largely inhabited by Mormons. Generally they are law-abiding citizens. They believe in the state. I believe that, for them, the state has some legitimacy from God. It’d take a lot for these people to stand up against the state.

Obama says he wants a “nuclear free world”. What do you think about that?
It’s totally unrealistic. While I don’t think there will be a Cold War between the powers, there are these little regional conflicts that could erupt. In Asia they’re actually stocking up on weapons. It’s the countries like Pakistan that are maybe less mature in their understanding of nuclear weapons and haven’t had to learn the lessons of the Cold War that are a concern. We don’t know what’s going on in North Korea, even.

We should be worried about how safe these weapons are in terms of how they’re stored and maintained and how they’re moved about between states. There’s a danger of terrorism or of mishandling weapons and them going off accidentally. All of these things aren’t just possibilities, they’re real things that could actually happen.

So there's nothing that could make the world disarm?
No, it’s impossible. Unless there was a vast catastrophe, you know, or a vast exchange that would make everyone stand down and try to abolish all nuclear weapons. But I don’t even want to think about that frankly.

Neither do I. Thanks, Rudolph. 

@hannahrosewens

Collages by Marta Parszeniew

It makes sense to read a review of something before you put it inside your body. Unfortunately, if drugs are that thing, it’s unlikely you’ll have been able to do much preparation—those guys driving tiny plastic baggies door to door tend not to publicize how boric acid-y their cocaine is. However, buy your drugs online—from deep web marketplaces like Silk Road 2.0, Agora or Evolution—and you’ll be able to read exactly how euphoric your MDMA is going to be, or what Japanese Happy 5's are and why anyone would ever want to take them.

The most prolific reviewer on the Agora and Evolution forums was a British guy with the username HydroBlowBack. During his time reviewing products for various online vendors, HBB was sent thousands of dollars worth of drugs for absolutely free, most of the time in mixed goodie bags containing some of the standards and a bunch of rare or untested chemicals. I’d link you to all his reviews here, but you’ll need to download Tor to open the link, and that’s a whole other thing. For now, here’s the chat we had over email (he wanted to stay anonymous for obvious reasons). 

VICE: Hi, HBB. How long had you been writing reviews before people began sending you stuff for free?
HydroBlowback: First off I was paying for everything I ordered, until one day I messaged a vendor—whom I later went on to purchase from—enquiring about a sample of crystal meth. He agreed instantly, and a small sample of crystal arrived the next day completely free. Wanting to give something back in return, I offered to write him a review.

I did the same thing a few times and slowly began to get noticed. I made it clear I’d review any drug, which was attractive to vendors with more than one product as they could just chuck in what they liked and I'd review it. After a while I had quite a few “followers” who’d occasionally comment on my reviews. I was known as having a no shit approach to reviewing, which is what people want to see on the marketplaces.


When it got to the stage where people would send you big packages, would you initiate that every time?
I’d often message with information about who I am, what I do, and a link to my review page. As time went on, vendors knew who I was and would regularly be very keen for me to review for them.

Did you get any negative blowback?
I got some responses saying I was begging for drugs, etc, but I saw it as offering a service to both the vendor and the buyers. One of the last reviews I wrote had nearly 2,000 reviews last time I checked, so I think they gained a fair bit of attention. A lot of times I’d be asked by the vendors to review chemicals for them—or test two batches of the same drug in exchange for more when I’d tested them—and to just give my opinion with no review.  

What kind of stuff were you sent?
Forgive me if I forget a few, but all the drugs I had for free—bearing in mind I'd review lots of different batches from different vendors, especially popular drugs like cocaine, crystal meth, heroin, and MDMA—were [a list of 37 substances, from crack, LSD, heroin, weed and quaaludes, through a bunch of research chemicals and stuff with names like 3-meo-pcp and Japanese Happy 5’s].

How much do you think that all came to, money-wise?
Thousands is the only thing I can say really, as it’s impossible to figure out. But it’s a lot—put it that way. It depends on how much I requested, but sometimes I’d get one package a day, sometimes five and sometimes none. I think eight separate packages in one go was the most I had.


Did it make you want to do more, the fact you were getting all this for free?
Yes it did, completely. I was hooked as much on seeing what I could review next as I was the drugs I was receiving. I spent an unnatural amount of time on the forums and marketplaces chatting to people and arranging reviews, and in the end it became a huge problem in my life.

Were there any specific drugs you were asking to review more than others?
As far as reviewing was concerned, it wasn't really to feed a certain addiction, it was just addiction to abusable drugs. It was a bonus on the rare chance I did a ketamine review, as I was addicted to K and alcohol at the time. I'd usually ask more for cocaine, heroin and meth reviews, as in my opinion they’re three of the most popular drugs, along with MDMA and cannabis, so vendors always wanted to have a good review behind them.

Is this becoming a trend at all, people requesting a complimentary mixed bag of drugs to review?
It is and it isn't. Don't get me wrong, a lot of people write the odd review, and some people write a few reviews, but there was never a constant on the markets. There was never a go-to reviewer, so I saw the opportunity and took it.

I noticed one guy getting pretty aggressive with you about a review. Was there a lot of that?
Yep. I made a lot of friends and a lot of enemies. I fell out with nearly every ketamine vendor on there for reviewing for a so-called scammer, who wasn’t a scammer at all—they just wanted to ruin his name and remove the competition. I’ve had childish hate threads made about me, people stealing my username on other marketplaces to trick people into thinking they were me.

At one point there was a rumor on the Agora forums that myself and about eight different people were all the same person, and that we owned Agora and my reviewing was a cover up for being a mod or admin of the forum. Madness. But, to be fair, when you have a whole load of drug dealers and users in one place on a non-moderated forum, shit’s gonna kick off at some point, and it regularly does.

What was the high point of your reviewing?
My best experiences were having the bundles of packages to open in the morning and seeing what goodies I'd been sent. The best combined package I reviewed was probably 10 grams of speed and eight of MDMA. Or another large combined sample was three Miffy 2C-B pills, 85 percent purity cocaine, two LSD blotters, MDMA, and two types of ecstasy pills. The worst was a guy who shipped a sample of S+ isomer ketamine from Italy with expensive postage, and when it arrived it wasn't even enough for a line. I asked how much he sent and he said enough for a night.

Reading some of your reviews, it seems like you’d go through stages—doing a lot and then dropping off for a bit.
That was because of the amount of different drugs I was taking. I still had a regular ketamine and alcohol habit at the time, and because of the nature of the drugs I would review—especially stimulants like crystal meth, which can keep me up for over two days at a time—I decided to do my reviews in bursts; I'd message a lot of vendors, then have a cool down week or two, then review again.

What are your thoughts on the culture of deep web drug markets? I’m assuming it’s something you enjoyed being part of.
There are a lot of positives and negatives involved here. On one hand, I've received a lot of drugs and never once sat face to face with another person; there was no chance of me getting harmed in the exchange. Drugs are often more expensive online, but you get what you pay for. Heroin ODs are often caused by the cuts the dealers have used—the average purity percentage of heroin in the UK is 30 or 40 percent, whereas up to 90 percent is available on the darknet markets.

I also don't have a clue who the person is I’ve ordered from, if I'm going to receive anything at all, or if what I'm going to receive is even the drug advertised.

Were you ever worried that something could go wrong? Did you have people there with you when you were taking the untested or stronger drugs?
I occasionally got worried about things like that, and no matter how good of an eye you have for drugs you can’t tell what cuts they have. I had an allergic reaction to a batch of heroin I was reviewing, and of course had to mention this in my review as it’s a serious health risk and could have been a lot worse than it was. Nine times out of ten I’d be alone when I reviewed drugs—a very risky way to do it that I advise against. Thing is, once addiction takes over, caution goes out the window and you take risks. It’s not wise and accidents do happen. I was just lucky to get out of what I was doing before anything serious happened.

Why did you decide to give up reviewing?
I gave up reviewing to give up drugs. A few personal life events happened, and a couple of hospital visits. My depression and anxiety got unbearably bad. Also, a very good friend of mine died from similar things to what I was doing. It all made me realize I wasn’t having fun any more, was extremely addicted to drugs in general, and needed help.

I started attending my local drug service again and this time stuck to it. As of now, I'm clean of any chemicals for a month tomorrow, and will be attending rehab at the end of next month for two months. I’ll then be volunteering at my local drug service with the intention of becoming a counselor and using my knowledge and experience of drugs to help others in similar situations to me.

Thanks, HBB.

@jamie_clifton / @MartaParszeniew

(Photo by Stuart Sandford)

According to a survey last month, more than 30 percent of men in New York have faked an orgasm. That seemed, at best, improbable, and, at worst, completely unrealistic. Because of basic human biology, there are certain constraints – as a guy, at least – when it comes to faking it. The main one being the exact thing you're thinking of right now.

To figure out whether London's men are as dishonest as their New York counterparts – and to get a grasp of how doable it is to fake an orgasm as a man – I had a walk around Shoreditch and popped the question.

VICE: Have you ever faked an orgasm?
James: Is it possible for a bloke to fake an orgasm?

Well, apparently a load of you have been at it.
Um, no. I can’t see how that’s possible.

You’ve never considered trying it?
No, because [makes ejaculatory hand gesture] there’s evidence, isn’t there, you know? You either have or you haven't. They’d just know. And what’s the point of having sex if you’re not gonna orgasm?

Fair point.

Has there ever been an occasion where you’ve pretended to come?
Malcolm: I don’t think so.

Are you sure? You don’t sound very sure.
Okay, probably. Yes.

How did it happen?
Do you need me to draw a picture or something? I was tired. The whole thing just petered out, and yeah… it was just this one particular time.

Did she know you’d faked it?
Yes. She wasn’t particularly angry about it. In fact, I think she was quite glad – neither of us were in the mood.

Thanks for your honesty, Malcolm.

Andy (left) and Martin

VICE: Hey guys, have you ever pretended to come? 
Andy: But the woman would know, wouldn’t she? Yeah, she would...
Martin: That’s a good point. There’s…*makes ejaculatory gesture* you know?

I do know.
As long as you know, that’s alright! I don’t see how that would work. Is it a really ugly woman?

I don’t know – I'm asking about your own experiences.
No, that’s never happened to me. I’ve never been like, "Oh, I better fake one."
Andy: I wouldn’t screw someone that meant I had to fake it.
Martin: Yeah, innit! Well, I think those men are lying or sexually deficient. Have you ever known someone to fake it?

I hope not.
Well, now you need to backtrack through your life and work that out.

Daniel (left), Anthony (right) and Fernando (who didn’t want to be pictured)

Ever attempted to fake an orgasm?
Anthony: No. You just pull out.

So you’ve never faked one whatsoever?
No, can’t say I have. You, boys?
Daniel: You kidding me?
Anthony: Have you?

No. But I have friends who do.
Anthony: Girls do all the time. Why is that?
Fernando: It’s like that film When Harry Met Sally. You know where she fakes it in a café? If a girl has to fake it, I feel sorry for her.

Have you ever been with a girl that’s faked it?
Anthony: She hasn’t told me, but I hope not.
Fernando: I’m gonna tell you something right now, yeah? Basically, you can tell when she’s faking because the eyes don’t roll back. Every chick I’ve been with, the eyes roll back. That’s cos I hit the spot.

VICE: Have you ever faked an orgasm?
Colin: No.

Do you know any male friends who have?
Done “it”, or faked an orgasm?

Faked an orgasm.
I don’t think so, no. I don’t think I’d ever consider faking. If you wanted to finish it off earlier, you just finish it off earlier. Have I got to the point where I didn’t want to? It’s happened.

What do you do at that point?
Just say, "Thank you, see ya later. Thank you very much and see ya later."

As easy as that?
No, it’s not quite as easy as that. I do let them down a bit easier than that, yes.

Thanks, Colin.

@hannahrosewens

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Files at the FCO archives in Hanslope Park (All images courtesy of the author)

In 2013, The Guardian revealed that Britain’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) had illegally withheld 1.2 million (later revised to 600,000) historic documents from the public, in flagrant breach of the UK Public Records Act. The documents – which include the desk diary of Soviet spy Donald Maclean; case files from Nazi persecution compensation claims; and masses of material removed from Hong Kong – were being held at Hanslope Park, a secretive, high-security compound in Buckinghamshire that the FCO shares with intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6.

The whole document saga began in 2009, when a group of elderly Kenyans brought a historic lawsuit against the FCO, claiming damages for abuse they suffered under British colonial authorities (which, in the case of these particular plaintiffs, included rape and castration). At the time, FCO officials denied having any relevant documents that might shed light on the crimes. Only two years later, in 2011, did the FCO admit it was unlawfully holding 1,500 Kenya files at Hanslope Park.

Later, it confessed to possessing 20,000 undisclosed files from 37 former British colonies. The documents include incriminating evidence of murder and torture by British colonial authorities. (An embarrassed British government began releasing the so-called “Migrated Archives” to Britain’s National Archives in 2012.)

In May, for the first time ever, the FCO invited a small handful of reporters (including myself) to see the archives of Hanslope Park. We were shown shelves and shelves of numbered boxes, but not allowed to peek inside. Curious, I decided to seek out someone with an understanding of British Empire paperwork.  

Dr Mandy Banton worked for 25 years at Britain’s National Archives as a specialist in Colonial Office records, and agreed to be interviewed for the first time in August. Banton, now a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, spoke to me about Britain, its Empire and FCO efforts to hush up imperial crimes.

VICE: Last October The Guardian revealed that 1.2 million files had been unlawfully retained by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) at Hanslope Park. Were you surprised by that news?
Dr Mandy Banton: I was appalled. Shocked. Staggered. But I’m most concerned with the files secretly brought to the UK from the former colonies. The question is: Why did the Foreign and Commonwealth Office not do anything with them over all these years? Why did it just leave them sitting there?

A government-commissioned report on the matter admits that, early on, some Hanslope Park staff members knew the files contained “potentially sensitive/interesting material”, but that most people were in the dark. Effectively, the report blames bureaucratic incompetence. Do you believe that?
No, I don’t. I think there was an element of that… but really, I think it was deliberate concealment. And who knows what secrets may still remain. The Kenya files that were released, for example, spelled out how badly the British had been behaving in Kenya. But there is still a little batch of Kenya files that have never been found. Of course, whether that's genuine – whether they really have never been found, or whether they are secreted away somewhere – I have absolutely no idea.

Shelves full of files at the FCO archives in Hanslope Park

Going back several decades, to the end of the British Empire, we now know that British colonial governments destroyed a lot of documentation when they left the colonies. Why?
I have an extract from a circular, sent out to East Africa in 1961, which says that colonial governors were asked to ensure that they did not pass along, to successor governments, documents which “might embarrass Her Majesty’s government or other governments", or which “might embarrass members of the police, military forces, public servants or others”.

Colonial governments were told not to pass the files on, but not what to do with them. There were stories that came out of India – when India achieved independence in 1947– claiming that a great pall of smoke had hung over New Delhi for weeks because they had burnt the documents! That obviously stirred up local interest.

In Malaya, officials wanted to avoid this. There was one suitable incinerator in the country, but it was at the railway depot, which was staffed by Malays. They couldn’t incinerate the documents there without people finding out. An alternative – one that the Colonial Office always suggested – was to package documents in weighted crates and dump them at sea. But they couldn’t do that in Malaya either, because the customs staff would have found out.

So, in the end, they borrowed five army trucks. Can you imagine five army trucks filled with documents? Documents were selected and packed by European expatriate staff. They were then loaded into civilian lorries by Chinese labourers. And then, I assume, transferred into the army trucks and driven to Singapore to be incinerated at the British naval base there.

Were documents destroyed in Britain, too?
Other papers – internal Colonial Office records – were destroyed later, in Britain. For instance, records related to the Batang Kali massacre [in which British troops killed 24 unarmed villagers in 1948, at the height of the so-called "Malayan Emergency"] were destroyed in 1966. Two years ago, there was a case before London’s High Court about the massacre, and the High Court of Justice wrote on its website that “files on law and order during the Malay Emergency had been destroyed in 1966, as the files were not considered worthy of public preservation”.

But we’re talking about a massacre carried out by British soldiers.
I know! It’s extraordinary, isn’t it?

What's the latest date at which Britain was destroying colonial files?
I found a very interesting file: FCO 141/19933. It includes a redacted copy of an internal FCO email, dated 18 April 2012. The email references a list from the 1980s, which records Kenya boxes 668-678 as destroyed. The box numbers indicate to me that the files were originally held in London, and so were destroyed in London around 1980-81.

Papers at the FCO archives in Hanslope Park

Do we know what was in the boxes?
No.

In a recent academic presentation, you mentioned an FCO minute dating back to 1999, which instructs FCO officials not to reveal the existence of the Migrated Archives. What’s that about?
I found this document in a file that was recently made public. It refers to the BIOT [British Indian Ocean Territories] commissioner’s office in the Seychelles, and says: “Do not disclose existence of the migrated records without express permission of senior RHS staff.” [RHS refers to "Records and Historical Services", a unit of the FCO.]

The "not" in "do not disclose" is underlined three times.
Yes.

So as late as 1999 someone at the FCO knew about the Migrated Archives and consciously made the decision not to disclose that.
Yes. 

Is there any effort, within former British colonies, to get these kinds of files back?
The Kenyans have wanted them back forever. But elsewhere, I’m not sure that there is a great deal of interest. I find that surprising, and in a way disappointing, because I don’t believe that these are UK public records. I don’t believe that for a second. They belong to the former colonies.

This is probably an unusual position for a former National Archives archivist who specialises in colonial files to be taking.
[Laughs] I think you should look back at the 1958 Public Records Act. It was not intended to cover colonial governments, which were treated as separate. In fact, in 2011, the FCO asked for a formal legal opinion on whether colonial files belong to the UK [as opposed to the former colonies themselves]. Lawyers judged that they are, in fact, UK public records. I put in a Freedom of Information request asking for the wording of that legal opinion, but my request was refused.

Old tapes at the FCO archives in Hanslope Park

You must be either very disappointed or very relieved that you're now retired and not working through those 20,000 migrated colonial papers?
Oh, I’m relieved! When this all came to light, I was so angry. I was absolutely furious.

When you were working at TNA, did you ever suspect that the FCO might be holding documents back?
I had no idea.

Do you feel like you were misled?
I was misled. I was definitely misled. The reason I’m so angry about it is because, in concealing it from me, the FCO forced me to mislead my readers. The file that I referred to earlier – the one from April 2012 – contains correspondence between the FCO and The National Archives, which shows me that some of the people I worked with at TNA knew about the Migrated Archives.

And there was me, the expert on the Colonial Office, and I didn’t know about it! In my opinion, that has to be a deliberate concealment. 

Thanks, Dr Banton.

@katieengelhart

Competitors at the 2014 Evo Champion Series

Playing video games competitively can make you a millionaire. Of course, that won't come as much of a surprise if you've been paying attention to the increasingly lucrative world of eSports. The prize pot for the fourth international Dota 2 tournament, for example, was set at $10.5 million (£6.4 million) this past July, up from just under $3 million (£1.8 million) a year ago.

While some might believe that a multiplayer battle arena game like Dota 2 is still exclusively the preserve of barely washed basement dwellers, the millions of people following eSports worldwide suggest that perception is a little wide off the mark. People pay good money to see the very best Dota 2 players – and those of Riot Games’ League Of Legends, and a smorgasbord of one-on-one fighting games – in the flesh, at massive, arena-held tournaments.

In June, 10,000 punters made their way to London’s Wembley Arena to watch week five of the European League Of Legends Championship Series, a big enough turnout to attract coverage from the BBC, alongside the usual games-focused outlets. In 2013, around 71 million people watched competitive gaming, so you'll understand why it’s been suggested that these eSports heavyweights could ultimately feature at the Olympics. 

Guests at the international Dota 2 tournament in 2012

Such players were on parade at the annual EVO Champion Series, held from the 11th to the 13th of July at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort and Casino. EVO is a fighters occasion, inviting the very best from around the world to compete in matches across myriad beat ‘em ups, from Ultra Street Fighter IV (SFIV) to Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 via Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Super Smash Bros. Melee (SSBM). What’s interesting there is that not all of the games are new releases; unlike the big gaming expos held globally, where the excitement is reserved for the freshest reveals, events like EVO highlight only the very best games of their kind.

These games comprise the bedrock of their genre – Super Smash Bros. Melee dates from 2001, and is so closely tied to its native controller, the GameCube’s oddly proportioned official model, that Nintendo are making the next entry in the series – out for 3DS and Wii U on the 3rd of October and late November, respectively – compatible with the GameCube pads. It’s a game that hasn’t been outclassed in 13 years. The same can be said of Ultra Street Fighter IV, merely an extension of 2008’s initial iteration in the IV strand, itself part of a series that dates back to 1987.

EVO’s top Ultra Street Fighter IV participant, Frenchman "MD|Louffy" (playing as the character Rose here), took away over £10,000 for his win. For triumphing in Smash Bros, "C9|Mango" scooped the best part of £3,600 – the pay-out lower because there were fewer entrants in the category. Still, not bad for a weekend’s work.

So why have these games continued to prosper? Says top-three-in-the-UK Smash Bros. tournament player Robby Gee, previously featured on VICE, “It’s due to the rich, deep engine and physics of the game. It’s unlikely developers knew they were making something so deep, though I think they’ve tried to claim they were aware. There are so many small details that make it brilliant as a competitive game, which you only start to discover when you raise your level. I’ve been playing it for 13 years, and I still want to go back to it every day.”

Kotaku UK editor Keza MacDonald is clear on why Smash Bros. not only continues to appeal in its GameCube version, but why the next iteration will be so important to the fortunes of its Wii U platform.

“Smash Bros. is the ultimate Nintendo fan-gasm,” she says. “Every kid who has played something on their NES, SNES or Nintendo 64 – whether it was Mario, Zelda or Starfox, or something obscure like Fire Emblem – knows at least some of the characters. The whole universe-crossover thing will make big Nintendo fans excited enough to type a bunch of exclamation into comments boxes across the internet every time there’s a new character reveal. Smash Bros. is like the Mario Kart of beat ‘em ups – it’s easy to learn, hard to master and fun wherever you are on the skill spectrum.”

“As for Street Fighter IV, that’s a different story,” says Robby. “The game is less rich in terms of flexible options than SSBM, though the more rigid confines of physics and engine may mean that more players are able to develop robust strength at the game. SSBM has high barriers for player skills – it takes three to four years to really understand what you’re doing there, whereas new and skilled SFIV players can pick it up relatively quickly. That’s its positive side.”

Which explains why the Ultra Street Fighter IV winner took home the bigger prize for their effort: more players, more entrants, more money. The way Robby talks about these games makes them seem pretty simple – expertly engineered, no doubt, and above the pack, but ultimately bound by a set of rules to be understood before any bending of them can be undertaken.

Great games don’t get old, then, aesthetical lapses aside – and that extends beyond competitive play, as something like the Super Nintendo’s The Legend Of Zelda: A Link to the Past, or Team Ico’s wondrous Shadow Of The Colossus prove, both as transportative today as they were on release in 1991 and 2005, respectively. It’s why Tetris is perhaps the most popular videogame in the world some 30 years after its creation.

When it comes to fighters, like those featured at EVO, gaming history is littered with a litany of losers, titles that unsuccessfully went up against opponents like Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct and the ubiquitous Street Fighter. Here’s a rogue’s gallery of the very worst.

Dangerous Streets (1994)

“And they say Shaq Fu was bad,” reads one YouTube comment. Oh, it was – and we’ll look at that game and its forthcoming "sequel" in more depth another time. But Dangerous Streets, for the Commodore Amiga and its awful spin-off CD32 console, was perhaps even worse. I mean, look at it. From the awful packaging to the grossly disproportioned character models and jerky animations, everything stinks.

Amiga Power – a monthly magazine for Amiga fans – awarded Flair Software’s attempt at emulating some of that Street Fighter magic a whopping 3 percent. If you had a cracked Amiga copy of this, picked up from a car boot sale, and played it once before copying over the game with anything else, you’re forgiven for giving it a minute or two. But if you bought it? Nah. There’s no coming back from that.

Capital Punishment (1996)

I was an Amiga owner, so believe me when I say to others out there: I feel that same pain – the system barely had a decent fighter to its name. Parts of Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat were sluggish, and platform-exclusive releases like Team 17’s comparatively sprightly Body Blows (1993) and Full Contact (1991) were always hamstrung by having just a single trigger to play with. But not even the greatest pirate of Amiga software deserved to witness Capital Punishment, a game so utterly unplayable that its dire mechanics nearly obscured the brazen fact that makers clickBOOM were trying to almost exclusively trade on having knockers out in their knock-about.

Seriously, the character Demona, the sole playable female, as seen above – what the hell is that about? Amazingly, Capital Punishment didn’t review too badly on release, but anyone covering Amiga games by then was presumably doing whatever they could to keep themselves in beans on toast.

Rise of the Robots (1994)

Notoriously abysmal, multi-platform scrapper Rise of the Robots was all looks and no hooks – be they left, right or of the kind to keep you playing. While Super Smash Bros. Melee can still entertain and engross despite its outdated visuals, Rise of the Robots developers Mirage put all of their asset eggs in the basket marked first-impressions visuals and forgot to actually programme a halfway tolerable fighting game.

You can play as just one character, Cyborg, and he/it controlled like an errant hound in a park full of dogs on heat. That said, master the protagonist’s flying kick and victory was almost always assured. I have no idea what CVG's reviewer was thinking when they gave this rusted heap of scrap a 91 percent rating, but I'd hope the memory lives in their nightmares to this day.

Pit-Fighter (1990)

I was fascinated by Pit-Fighter because it seemed somehow exotic, developed by Atari for arcades that I was, at the time, too young to hang around in. It promised a new realm of realism, its marketing highlighting the game’s “DIGITALLY PROCESSED GRAPHICS” in all-caps, as if the words wouldn't make sense otherwise. Having three players participating at once was a neat quirk, too – something that the original Street Fighter couldn’t offer.

But then came the home ports, for the consoles of the time and computers alike (I had it on the Amiga), and they were diabolical. Characters were charmless and moved like cardboard cut-outs, controls were stiff, moves uninspiring and the whole thing felt like the biggest anti-climax to a kid who’d been drawn in by the promises of a fighter unlike the others.

Mind you, in a way, it was a game apart: quite removed from any semblance of quality. Listen to the sound effects on this Amiga footage – those hard-man kicks sound more like zits popping. Just put it out of its misery, already.

- - -

There are no hard and fast rules to making a great fighting game, though some elements – memorable characters and accessible special moves – help towards reaching out to the greatest possible audience and avoiding being quite as shit as those outlined above. Could it be, then, that we see Mario smashing several bales out of Princess Peach at a future Olympic Games, as a legion of Nintendo-loyal supporters scream for their favourite? It’s unlikely. I mean, if you’re putting videogames up for the Olympics, why not darts? 

@mikediver

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Illustration: Cătălin Banu

My name is Alex Nedea. I'm a journalist and I narrowly escaped death by getting “hit with the pointy part between my antlers”. No, you won’t find the expression on Google. It's the kind of phrase which will never make it onto the internet (OK, except in this article). You can only really hear it in a Romanian forest near a village called Dămuc, which is where I found out about it.

It was 2009 and I was there over the summer to do a report about the mysterious disappearance of hundreds of hectares of trees from the woods around the village. To be precise, the whole area was cleared out. Like it had been close-shaved with a chainsaw. The forests which used to fan out over three mountain tops and seven valleys now had fewer trees than your local pub garden.

Dămuchad had become a sort of kingdom for wood barons. You were the village idiot if you didn’t have a cutting tool in your back yard to process the lumber on yours days off. (Or nights off, rather, because that was when the illegal cutting happened). Some axe owners had become so rich that they built small palaces next to their farmhouses.

In their backyards you could see that they had exchanged their horse-drawn carts for 18-wheel big rigs, like the one Santa drives in the Coke Christmas advert. They drove them on the village dirt roads day and night. At night they would transport the goods, and during the day they would be driven through town like cars. They drive a rig to the other side of the village just to have a few beers with their friends. The rigs were also a good vantage point from which to see if there were any police around.

Before I went in the woods to film the devastation, I spoke to the people in the village for two days to see how they ended up in such a catastrophic situation. I found out that there was a multicultural aspect to it: Dămuc was on the border between Neamţ and Harghita counties. So, where I was there were Romanians, and on the other side of the county line they were ethnic Hungarians. Between them there was a forested mountain.

At first, they started a verbal war: the Romanians yelled at the Hungarians that they would steal their wood and the Hungarians told the Romanians that the forest belonged to them. This went on for about ten years. Then they entered phase two of the war. The Romanians climbed the mountain and started chopping down the wood, so the Hungarians couldn't do it before them. The Hungarians, of course, wouldn’t be outdone by the Romanians, so they also started cutting down the forest too. When I arrived, they had finally reached a truce. They were satisfied: the Hungarians weren’t stealing the Romanian’s forest and vice versa, because there wasn’t anything left to steal.

We had filmed most of our story, and we were going in the woods to tape the final scenes. The team was comprised of me, my assistant, the camera operator and two foresting inspectors who were pulling their hair out after they’ve seen the local tree massacre. Their mouths were opened so wide from shock at seeing the devastation that two bears could hibernate inside.

When we were returning to the roadside where we had left our cars, we found ourselves in a scene right out of The Lord of the Rings. What looked like an army of howling Orcs was running down the hill after us. There were about a hundred villagers armed with pitchforks and axes. They yelled something which I didn't quite catch, but I think was “Te omor” (I will kill you).

The crowd caught up to us and basically carried us off. I could hear two old men fighting over who got our necks first. They all smelled of plum brandy. One grabbed my neck, the other grabbed my hair and the third grabbed my neck and my hair. I heard one scream: “Waaaagh, what are yous doing in the forest?” I don’t know if it was from fear, but my tongue was paralysed. I tried saying something, but the words came out all wrong.

They soon found a solution to the situation: they would kill us. Each had his own proposition. Some wanted to behead us. Some to crush our skulls with the axe, but most just wanted to “hit ’em with the pointy part between their antlers.” I didn’t know what that meant, but it didn't sound great.

Hours of interrogation and slapping followed. I told one guy who had his hand around my neck what we were doing in his woods. I told him that we were journalists and wanted to film the local scenery. The guy seemed to be OK with that, but I then another guy yelled, “You can go to hell with your fucking television! The hell you doin’ in ma’ woods?”

I tried to call the police. I didn’t have signal. One of them took my phone and threw it in a puddle. Then he said, “I’ll behead you, you know.” Another took my glasses and crushed them. One of the foresting inspectors got punched in the neck. The other was trying to protect his saddle-bag from all the people who were tugging on it. His feathered forester hat was crushed by fists. He looked like a freshly plucked chicken.

In all this chaos, I remember two people: a one-legged old man with a crutch, who yelled, “Let’s kill’eeeem!” every time things seemed to calm down and all the youngsters would follow his lead with expressions like: "behead, crush, slice and dice". Or, “Feed them to the pigs!” There was also a blue-eyed blonde guy, who was silent like a wildcat. You could see him darting between the angry members of the mob and slamming his fist in the camera operator's head, or in the forester’s chest. He punched from behind and backed away quietely.

After two hours, they took us to a shed. There, I got an idea. I climbed a beer crate so the people could see me. “Sit the fuck down,” one of them said while pulling me. I broke away. I began my speech, saying, "Just let me say one thing people, kind people!” Then I tried to use every regional term I could remember from my childhood in the countryside. I told them that we were sent to the forest by the owner of our television station, the famous media tycoon Vântu. “Vântu must come!” “Vântu must answer for this!” They yelled all this with their fists high like at a rock concert.

I told them that if they let me go to make a call somewhere, I could call Vântu to pay them. That he would come there with the helicopter they sometimes see on Realitatea TV. “Make Vântu come with his helicopter!”

That’s how I escaped, but I had to leave the rest of my crew as collateral. After calling my office, they came. Not Vântu with his helicopter, but the police with their van. Specifically, two vans of riot police ready to hit them with the pointy part between their antlers. Only, you know, with batons.

When it was all over,we went to the police station to identify our assailants. The police told us we got lucky. “If you’re not home in a body bag, you’re OK. They wanted to hit you with the pointy part between your antlers and leave you there”. The pointy part was a tree cutting instrument. Given lack of trees, it now needed a different use.

Follow Alex on his blog.

Screencap via the Chinese web forum nx123*

The Chinese Northeast is flooded with meth from North Korea. But with crackdowns from the authorities, Chinese chemists are now cooking up their own batches. Many of the raw ingredients are produced domestically. Motherboard previously reported on the state of meth in China: just like in the US, there are plenty of open spaces in rural areas that are perfect for setting up makeshift meth labs. In a labor-intensive country where blue-collar workers need to work long hours and consecutive shifts, some see meth as a welcome stimulant that helps them earn overtime pay.

Purer meth is packaged as something a bit more luxurious. Visit a karaoke bar in China and you might be offered an “ice-skating” package. “Ice” is the common name for meth in China, and “ice-skating” is the common expression that means doing meth. Some karaoke bars are fronts for brothels, and since users insist that meth heightens their sexual arousal and strengthens their stamina, it's no surprise that the drug has made its way into the escort and entertainment industries. Managers make extra cash by charging johns for narcotic voyeurism. Apparently, some men get off by watching young girls do meth.

Even though the meth karaoke girls of China undergo severe health risks to make money, they are not compensated well. Jingjing is from an agricultural village in Jiangsu, a province on the eastern coast of China. Like many young people in China, she had dreams of living in one of the major cities. After she turned seventeen, she made it to Shanghai, where a friend from her hometown helped her land a job at a legitimate massage parlor. But she wasn't making that much money, and the bills were stacking up, so she moonlighted as a karaoke hostess at night. It wasn't long until her manager was pimping her out as a meth girl, and once she was hooked, the karaoke lounge was the only place where she knew she could get meth. Every time she “ice-skated” with a client, she was paid ¥350 (less than $60). Falling deeper into addiction, she needed more than what she was getting at work. She located a meth dealer by searching online, and told her boss that she could start sleeping with clients for extra income.

Drug education in China is nearly nonexistent. The Department of Propaganda produces numerous “drugs are bad” banners, but they are summarily ignored as the countryside is blanketed by the same red cloth with screened slogans like “Park in a civilized manner,” or “One child is enough.” Information about narcotics comes in the form of dry statistics, like the number of arrests and quantities seized by the security apparatus, but the actual effects of harmful drugs are not commonly known. Jingjing said she had no idea what meth would do to her body because she never learned about it from her parents or teachers. Questions about drugs were met with responses like, “Don't ask about bad things.” She didn't know that once the euphoria wore off, she would be unable to sleep or eat. Her boss kept her groomed but she was losing a lot of weight. She was always tired, and the reason to show up for work was no longer to earn a paycheck, but to keep up with her addiction.

Jingjing said she was eventually fired for “not looking pretty enough.” Even though her boss was the culprit who introduced her to meth, he blamed her for losing weight and not keeping up with her appearance. “What man would want you?” he asked.

Ashamed to return home in her emaciated state, she became a camgirl to make ends meet. She met men online, who paid her to do meth with them via webcam.

Screencap via a news report posted on v.youku.com 

In July, a Chinese journalist went undercover (link in Chinese) and managed to snap some photos of karaoke meth girls at work in Xi'an, the city that marks the beginning of the Silk Road.

Chinese authorities have been on a heavy crackdown, seizing stockpiles of meth wherever it's found. A January raid in a southeastern village involved more than 3,000 police operatives who confiscated over three tons of meth. Last month, China executed two South Korean citizens who smuggled North Korean meth into China with plans to move it into their own country. In fact, China has singled out synthetic narcotics in their war on drugs, much to North Korea's chagrin

Jingjing was nabbed too. In my attempts to reestablish contact with her, I discovered that she was arrested by Chinese police in a sting operation. One of Jingjing's old colleagues from the karaoke bar told me that a police officer posed as a john and enticed her to use meth on camera, then asked her to meet him at a hotel for sexual services. When Jingjing showed up, she was arrested. Responding to my enquiries by phone, a police officer in Shanghai said, “We can't talk about this, but if she was using 'ice,' then she is a criminal. We can't talk about criminals.” The police officer was unable to confirm whether Jingjing was actually charged with a crime.

There is no doubt that meth destroys lives, but the Chinese attach extreme stigma to drug addiction, so the punishment for users who are caught can be disproportionately severe. On paper, China abolished its “reform through labor” programs last year, but the reality is that the labor camps were converted into forced drug rehab centers where inmates perform unpaid factory work and can be incarcerated for years without trial—an arrangement previously reserved for those arrested for political or religious reasons.

Addicts in China are not offered rehabilitation or therapy. Instead, they are treated as enemies of the state—a fate that Jingjing will suffer until she is released from secretive incarceration.

NOTE: The thumbnail image was deleted shortly after the author obtained it, so it cannot be authenticated. It is not "Jingjing," who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Photo courtesy of Mike Kulich

Mike Kulich would like to be known as one of the good pornographers. When "the Fappening" occurred on Saturday, it was still being called "Celebgate," and the nude photos of such celebrities as Jennifer Lawrence, McKayla Maroney, and Krysten Ritter were still being called "alleged nude photos." Before they could be authenticated, much of the internet rushed to masturbate rapturously, tweet dumb shit, and then make jokes. This time though, there was a louder-than-average outcry against the leaker who apparently exploited a security hole in Apple's iCloud in order to peak at the nipples of people who act in movies. 

One seemingly unlikely condemnation is coming from the porn site SkweezMe.com. On Sunday, when the news of the leak was still fresh, they issued a press release stating not only that they "want this hacker brought to justice as much as the women who are the direct victims of this hack," but that there would be a "very generous cash reward to anyone who can provide us with any information on the perpetrator." 

We caught up with SkweezMe.com Managing Partner Mike Kulich to find out what burns him up so much about leaked celebrity nudes, and to find out how to collect this reward.

VICE: What made you decide to offer this cash reward?
Mike Kulich: Consent is one of the keystones of the Adult Entertainment Business. Regardless of what anti-porn organizations claim—for instance, that we are all human traffickers and pimps—every girl that appears on film for any production company is there of her own free will. She is consenting to everything that happens on screen. The adult industry feels very strongly about consent, which is why it has been heavily involved in our support for legislation banning revenge porn, which has become illegal in a number of different states. 

Jennifer Lawrence's pictures were meant to be private and whoever hacked her computer or phone had no right to ever see those pictures, let alone leak them to the world. We want this person brought to justice.

How much is it and how will you fund it?
We will fund it with revenue generated from SkweezMe.com. We have thousands of users who use our site. After our payouts to our studio partners, we will be taking the money out of our cut, and giving the reward to whoever provides us with the information leading to the apprehension of the party responsible. The reward will be based on the validity of the information and the coordination with law enforcement. We expect to get a number of inquiries because people see dollar signs, but we will only be rewarding someone who gives us pertinent information that is valid, and leads to an arrest.

A screencap of some of the consenting performers on SkweezMe.com

If the nude was sold instead of leaked, how much would it be worth? Millions?
I don't think the pictures are worth anything in terms of monetary value. They have already been spread all over the internet, and the photos cannot be sold and marketed without Jennifer Lawrence's consent, which she obviously will never give.

Is it wrong to jack off to a leaked photo?
That is an interesting question. I am sure there's a fair share of internet users who have already busted their loads to Jennifer's leaked photos, but the bottom line is that they are jacking off to something that was distributed without Ms. Lawrence's consent. This coincides with piracy. One example of a performer who has expressed an opinion on this is Carter Cruise and the #PayForYourPorn campaign. Carter has stated "If I am willing to go on camera and do sexual acts for your enjoyment, the least you can do is pay for it. Watching pirated, stolen, and unauthorized content is the equivalent to being a peeping tom."

Do free celebrity nude photos effect your business?
No they don't. Celebrity nude photos are a flash in the pan. If you look at Kim Kardashian, she would never be where she is without her sex tape with Ray J. Obviously that formula hasn't worked for everyone else who has gone down that same path, but at the end of the day, I think these users look at the pictures, say "wow," and move on to something else.

What's the difference between professional porn and amateur nudes?
Professional porn stars make their living on what they do. If they are not getting work or shoots, they are not able to pay their bills. Amateur nudes are grainy photos with no makeup and, again, usually unauthorized photos which—every time you look at—you are violating that person's privacy. There's a reason so many of these revenge porn sites have been shut down, and so many states are creating legislation to make revenge porn a felony.

Piracy affects porn a lot. Do you see similarities between the leaker and the porn industry's enemies?
There are a number of similarities. In terms of piracy, there are people who have made it their full-time job to rip off legitimate production studios, and upload their content for free to tube and torrent sites. I think the leaker of the Lawrence photos is just flexing his muscle and trying to make a name for himself and hoping for some big payday.

Some critics would say this is ironic—a porn company trying to catch the thief—but there's obviously a difference between 4Chan trolls and porn industry employees. Could you explain the difference?
Porn industry employees are trying to make a living. We are a completely legal business that generates 5 billion dollars a year in the US economy alone. We employ so many different people from your next-door neighbor who handles lights, to editors, authors, directors, warehouse workers, and obviously the actors. I think this 4Chan troll is flexing his muscles and trying to make a name for himself. There is not one media outlet that will offer him any money for any of the celebrity nudes that he may have hacked, nor will the porn industry.

How can we combat sexism, and also sexism in the porn industry?
I think that in terms of sexism we have come such a long way over the last decade. When on a porn set, the only person that is in charge is the female talent. Not the studio owner, not the director. Everything that happens on camera is dictated by the female talent. I actually think the mainstream could take a cue from how we treat our performers, and how we have battled sexism in an industry that for years was portrayed as run by the mafioso guy wearing the big rings and gold jewelry.

Is this part of your sites broader mission?
Skweez's grand mission has always been to make a difference in the porn industry. I have said in past interviews that the Adult Business loses over $4 billion a year as a result of piracy. Our main goal has always been to sweep up 3 to 4 percent of that lost revenue, and bring it back to the production companies. That 20 years from now, people aren't on tube sites watching the same clips over and over, because there has been no new content produced. We want to set a positive example and be a voice for all the good that the Adult Industry brings to society.

Thanks Mike. Good luck catching the culprit!

If you've got information that could lead to the "Fappening" leaker being brought to justice, you can send it to Mike via the SkweezMe contact page, and they'll pass it along to law enforcement.

Follow Mitchell Sunderland and Mike Pearl on Twitter.