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Photo via Twitter user @BraveTube

There's a fun new billboard sitting on the corner of Davenport and Avenue Road in Toronto. Rumour has it that if you stare at it long enough, ten dudes wearing "#meninist" sweatshirts will drop from the sky and yell at you about how the pay gap is a liberal myth.

Yesterday, men's rights activist group The Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE) unveiled its latest symptom of delusion in the form of 4-by-14-metre billboard. The ad features an enraged woman screaming at a cowering man while telling us in mismatched font: "HALF of domestic violence victims are men. NO domestic violence shelters are dedicated to us." It then urges Torontonians to join the conversation with a PR savvy hashtag: #LetsTalkMen.

My mind raced with questions when I first saw the billboard disseminate across Twitter. Why did what appears to be the eldest Hanson brother agree to be a part of this? Does the woman know she's literally berating a pop music icon?

The billboard is CAFE's response to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne's new anti-sexual violence campaign that is one part of a much-needed update to Ontario's sexual education curriculum. Widely lauded as being progressive and honest, the video entitled "#WhoWillYouHelp" challenges bystanders to intervene in situations where they see examples of sexual violence.

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The video, which is as ethnically diverse as the landscape of Canada, outlines four common scenarios of sexual violence including workplace harassment, sexting, and examples of young women being taken advantage of at both a party and a bar. In each scenario, the perpetrator is male and the bystanding audience is told that by remaining complacent, we are helping "him" and not "her."

This blatant male-shaming was simply too much for the good folks at the Canadian Association for Equality, who immediately slammed the campaign for being sexist and harmful. In its claim, the organization cites a 2009 Statistics Canada survey that presented almost equal rates of male and female spousal abuse. But the group omitted key information from the same survey, which also states that women were seven times more likely to fear for their lives during these abusive encounters.

Premier Wynne's campaign is focusing on common situations where Ontarians—particularly young Ontarians—can make a difference. Despite what MRAs would like you to believe, women are still the overwhelming victims of technology-based abuse, workplace harassment, and date rape: three of the four major scenarios highlighted in #WhoWillYouHelp.

It's absolutely important not to diminish the experience of men who have suffered domestic violence but nowhere in Wynne's campaign does it do that. It's widely acknowledged, by many feminists in particular, that male abuse victims face a unique set of barriers imposed by a culture that still values hyper-masculinity and teaches men not to be victims. In a statement to the National Post, Ontario Minister for Women's Issues Tracy MacCharles echoed the same sentiment and went one step further to assure critics that the Ontario government does fund the Support Services for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse program.

Predictably though, none of these larger cultural concerns about challenging masculinity are being addressed by the Men's Rights Movement, which instead chooses to focus its dialogue on painting men as possibly The Saddest People Ever.

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In this dramatic CAFE video earnestly titled "The Disposable Man," we are faced with a man in some sort of torturous existential pain. He looks morose as the window of opportunity slams shut in his face through a series of vivid flashbacks. He ponders: That same window which opens with ease for so many others—women, minorities, gays, immigrants—why does the injustice of life keep it closed for him? He'll never know.

I initially assumed the video was a satire pointing out the absurdity of portraying a well-dressed white guy as society's most vulnerable member. But I've quickly learned that the Men's Rights Movements knows no bounds when selling its victim-complex doctrine to its members.

And although much of the MRA movement in Canada exists online with the occasional real-life blip, the numerous violent rampages against women should serve as a sordid reminder of the consequences of this mindset.

The #LetsTalkMen billboard only further proves that movements like CAFE, A Voice for Men, and men's rights groups in general are really only interested in one thing: shock value and recruitment. For example, their press release states that Wynne's campaign "ignores violence against men, gays, and lesbians..." and yet their website makes virtually no mention of LGBTQ advocacy or even links to any resources.

Combing through CAFE's site proved to be a tiring task. Their doctrine is an inconsistent patchwork of arbitrary statistics, theories, and ideologies—often conflicting—all matted together to create a disembodied political ideology with misogyny at its focal point.

Which is why, out of all of the parts of the billboard I found absurd and egregious, one thing bothered me the most. The female "abuser" is clearly not wearing a bra.

In other scenarios, that might not be a big deal (you do you girl), but it's obvious that in this case, the men at the CAFE are attempting to send a very clear message. They're implying that they believe women are excited, aroused even, when they are berating a man. It's a subtle but highly misogynistic message that paints women as sadistic, domineering, and downright cruel.

Despite its loaded implications, CAFE's latest stunt will likely prove to be only briefly successful. A live feed of their hashtag reveals a few depressing tweets about women ruining the world for men. But there are also a lot of rational people using the hashtag to start meaningful discussions about gender.

Typically, grand overtures are the hallmark of movements that are in trouble. And if CAFE's latest billboard tells us anything about the future of the MRA movement in Canada, it's that they're desperately craving attention.

One year from now, I predict we'll return to the corner of Avenue and Davenport and laugh hysterically about the time a bunch of dudes tried to convince us that the greatest threat to Canadian men was women.

Follow Neha Chandrachud on Twitter.

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A Fernando Botero painting. Photo via WikiMedia Commons

I recently stumbled upon a book from last year called XL Love: How the Obesity Crisis is Complicating America's Love Life, written by health-policy reporter Sarah Varney. The book details, through personal stories as well as scientific studies, how being overweight negatively affects men's and women's romantic lives. One chapter focusing on overweight and obese teenage women in particular struck a chord with me. As it turns out, a whole bunch of science professionals are curious about the sex lives of young fat females, though the conclusions they've reached aren't exactly shocking.

One study, conducted in 2006 by researchers at Cornell University, dispelled the popular myth many boys are raised to believe in—that is, "Fat chicks are easy." The truth is, heavyset girls are less likely to engage in sex than their thinner counterparts. Varney references this study, and adds that overweight and obese individuals are more likely to enter early adulthood without any intimate relationship experience. (Hey, that sounds like me!)

If you're familiar with my column, you know by now that I am SAF (single as fuck). I've never had a relationship last longer than a few months, yet thankfully—at this point in my life—I could truly not care less. Even so, I still can't help wondering why it hasn't happened for me the way I've seen it happen for every single person on the planet who isn't me.

In order to solve this, I've taken to searching inward: Am I too shallow? Do I even know what I want in a man? Am I relying too much on the internet? I take pleasure in being my own therapist, which I know is not as healthy as actually having a therapist (though it is cheaper). But perhaps the reason I haven't been in many deep romantic partnerships is the reason I refused to consider for so long: my weight.

Here's the thing: While heavyset young women are less likely to engage in sex, the ones that are doing so are engaging in "riskier" sex than the thin young women. Multiple studies found that bigger sexually active teenage females were more likely to have more than three sexual partners, less likely to use oral contraceptives, and more likely to have anal sex. Varney references a 2010 study conducted by three economists, which claims that obese females attending schools with less fat students were 43 percent more likely to engage in anal penetration. She also quotes a male high school student named Mason, who says: "Many guys will have sex with an overweight girl but won't date them."

Wait. Did a goddamn teenager really just answer the question I've been plagued with? Is this what happened to me? My searching inward, my self-reflecting—has it all been pointless? Could it really be that I was unable to be in a worthwhile relationship simply because of my lack of thigh gap?

I've written about my weight before, and emphasized that even though I'm overweight, I do not feel unattractive. I never have. But when I was in high school, boys never chased after me. I experienced what most heavyset teenage girls go through—zero romantic prospects. Before I gained weight, I had my first kiss. After that, the most I'd done was give a blowjob to a boy who went to a different high school, but that didn't go so well. I had no idea what I was doing. His flaccid dick kept falling out of my mouth and flopped about like a fish out of water. I didn't lose my virginity until my 21st birthday, and even then it was to an EDM-obsessed hippie. After about three minutes, it was over with. Thanks, Kevin.

After college, I found myself in a city surrounded by the type of men I fantasized about. These were the men I was waiting for. They were smart and sensitive, self-proclaimed feminists who refused to be with vapid women no matter how attractive they were. Finally, men who saw past society's bullshit. Finally, men who would yearn to be with me.

Of course, I was wrong. No matter how much we had in common or how well we got along, relationships never blossomed after a night or two of sex. Am I supposed to believe that no matter how many Gloria Steinem quotes these deeply poetic souls scribbled in their moleskin notebooks, they were still not down with fat chicks? A lot of them were overweight too, and many were not conventionally attractive. Are men so base that no matter how they look, they still can't commit to a woman who weighs an extra 30 pounds? When they told me I was beautiful—what did that mean? That I'm thin enough for a fuck, but still too fat to be seen with in front of their friends?

I refuse to believe it. I want it to be more complicated than that. For their sake. Perhaps it's not though; maybe this really is what's been going on. Now I'm left wondering, has my inability to see my weight as a problem been a mistake? Should I just accept the notion that I'm unattractive even though I personally don't feel this way? Is this what Varney's book, as well as the studies she references, want me to conclude?

Truly stumped, I turned to fat activist and blogger Marilyn Wann for some more insight. According to her, society deems it OK to be hateful toward fat people, because we have all these things allegedly wrong with us. "That's the logic of oppression," she explained. She went on to say that it's unethical make fat people feel like they're inherently unattractive, and that "it's not possible for there to be no attractive or desirable person in an entire demographic group. In any demographic group there is going to be someone who is awesome that you might like to get to know. Deciding that there's no one in a group that is worth getting to know is not about aesthetic, it's simply prejudice."

I also asked Lara Justice, a Los Angeles based family therapist, who added the obvious-yet-still-necessary-to-point-out fact that self-esteem issues in women are not limited to just those who are overweight. "Low-self esteem amongst young girls is an overarching problem that affects many young women regardless of height, weight, hair color, body shape, etc."

Then why is it still the case that bigger teenaged females engaging in sex are having more dangerous sex? "Some of the overweight clients I have worked with have suffered from self-esteem issues that cause them to put other's needs in front of their own and have difficulty setting limits," Justice told me.

Both Wann and Justice agreed that losing weight is not going to solve the problem, which also seems to be the overall message of Varney's book. Wann thinks that a book like Varney's, which throws around terms like "healthy weight" when referring to thin women, reinforces bigotry against fat people.

"The first thing that I want for young fat people who are considering their own approach to sex and romance is for them to feel awesome about themselves," Wann said. The sad truth is, most of them don't. They are discouraged from such thoughts, much like I was.

In my early 20s, I was quick to sleep with men because I badly wanted to be loved. Sex was the only sort of affection I could get from the guys I fell for. That's not the case for me today. I now know who I am, and don't hide it from men I'm dating. I'm a dominant, fat bitch. I no longer need a man's affection to determine my self-worth, and because of this, my sex life has never been better.

The best part? I didn't need to lose weight. This is the sort of thing I wish I knew when I was younger. I wish that I wasn't raised to define my self-esteem by how men felt about me. Sexually active fat teenage women are being coerced by men—who, on some level, know that they have control over her self-worth—into taking risks they don't want to take. Yet few people who have mainstream media–granted clout are telling them to stop. No one is telling them to think about the consequences of their actions, and to hold themselves accountable.

Not enough people are teaching young straight women how to empower themselves in ways that don't rely on a very narrow form of approval from straight males. Instead, we just kept being told to lose weight. That's a problem.

Follow Alison Stevenson on Twitter.

Some people really like pot. Alexandra Drewchin must be one of those people, or she's really trying to win over the stoner demographic, because this video from her electronic project Eartheater shows the artist naked in a big bed of nugs. The song is called "Put a Head in a Head" and it's off Eartheater's new record, Metalepsis. The synths are drowning in reverb and the vocals are nearly unintelligible, and the demented atmosphere it conjures pairs nicely with the images of naked bodies melting in weed.

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Photo of the author with the dreamachine

As a committed pothead, I've recently noticed that the wondrous, mystical wavelengths, which would arise in my brain like bubbles in a carbonated drink, have been increasingly harder to access. I suppose that's what happens when your tolerance for ganj goes up and that blast of dopamine and cannabinoid receptors are like "yeah, naw, we get it, not much else we can do here." Rather than see it as a negative, I've decided to use this shift in body chemistry as a challenge to experience other realms ...completely sober. For the past year, I've actively set out to find natural ways of feeling trippy shit through alternative experiences. I present to you my findings.

A recreation of Brion Gysin's dreamachine by John Nicholson. Video via Flickr user Hrag Vartanian

The dreamachine
Last July, I attended an adult science fair the Museum of Vancouver. Amongst the wear-your-weight-in-water jacket and the mysterious green ray recreation experiment was a replica of Brion Gysin's dreamachine, which was built by my friend Katie Webster. Gysin sold it as "the first art object to be seen with the eyes closed." This contraption is basically a large lampshade with slots cut out, lit by a dangling light bulb, which twirls around on a record player.

To experience its powers, I was instructed to close my eyes directly in front of the light bulb and chill out for a bit, while Brian Eno jams droned spookily in the background. The second my eyes shut, I saw a kaleidoscope of colourful patterns and shapes, morphing and melting into the blank space behind my eyelids. It was like my mind was cozily being tucked into a quilt dipped in acid, and then taken for a ride on a merry-go-round set at lightning speed. These visions moved in such a quick pace, they instantly filled what felt like the entirety of my brain. It was unquestionable that I was seeing visions, just nothing concrete, like a spirit bear or an oasis. Instead, it was all impossible to distinguishing shapes and colours, spinning in such a rapid succession that if forced me to stand very still and take it all in. It was entirely a visual experience—I could still hear the music and people talking in the background, though for a brief moment, time stood still.

Unfortunately, there was a line of people waiting to experience this stroboscopic mind trip, so I couldn't linger for too long, though I did sneak back a few more times. (if you want to learn more about the dreamachine, the National Film Board did a whole documentary on it called Flicker. The trailer shows Iggy Pop dancing around one with his arms flailing.)

My takeaway: Though the dreamachine is a visual stimulation overload of an experience, it didn't feel particularly spiritual. More like a novel and momentary, holistic acid trip. Don't do it if you're prone to seizures.

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Sensory deprivation tank. Photo via Flickr user Clarence Risher

Sensory deprivation tank
I recently did my first float in Vancouver, where I lay in a mini submarine-like tank full of saline water for 90 minutes. Since I meditate daily, I was thrilled to experience another way of reaching a different wavelength, sober.

When I first got into the tank, I had a hard time fully relaxing, since my neck felt kinked and unsupported. After a few unsuccessful attempts with a pool noodle under my neck, I tilted my head back and relaxed into a comfortable position. I alternated between stretching my arms out over my head and leaving them to float by my side.

The tank was so dark I couldn't see my hand in front of my face and it felt like meditating with my eyes open. I could feel my breath and clearly hear my heartbeat. My thoughts were undoubtedly beginning to slow down, without much effort on my part. It was dream-like.

The consistency of the saline water reminded me a bit of those nuru massage porn videos, which felt nice (and somewhat arousing) to slosh around my body. Even though the tank is said to be at body temperature, I felt chilly. Yet, when I felt my boobs, my nips weren't erect, which probably just means I'm a cold-blooded bitch. I dunno.

Although an hour and a half seems like an exorbitantly long time to spend alone, deprived of most of the senses, it didn't feel boring or trying. Rather it was serene and otherworldly. It felt somewhere between napping with my eyes open, meditating with my eyes open and floating in the Dead Sea. Unfortunately, I didn't experience any visions, as I'd hoped.

My takeaway: I left the tank certainly feeling like I'd been incubated, but also severely dehydrated. Despite not being a drinker, it was the closest experience I'd had to being hung over since my teens. However, it was unlike anything else I'd ever done and I've been told that each session is completely different. I'll definitely give it another go.

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Centre of a shamanic journeying circle. Photo via Flickr user ECP

Shamanic journeying circle
At the suggestion of my naturopath, I attended a monthly shamanic journeying circle at a Toronto community centre at the end of December. I was told these ceremonies were like the bunny hill of the shamanic world, which has intrigued me for some time.

When I arrived, a lovely lady with grey hair and good vibes smudged me as I gathered with a smorgasbord of about 40 other people in a circle. I was told to bring a mat, blanket, and water, along with a pen and paper to document my experience. Before getting started, Jeannette, the shaman, an older, bright-eyed white woman who looks like your elderly bohemian aunt, talked about the upper and lower realm. If you wanted to visit the lower realm, you had to visualize a place that exists low to the earth, like a cave or ravine; if you preferred to go to the upper realm, you were to imagine a place high up, like a mountain or rainbow. Which realm you choose was a matter of preference, though she warned that if you were brought up with negative associations of hell, the lower realm probably wasn't a good idea. Once the spot was chosen, we were instructed to wait for our spirit guide with a specific question. Jeannette advised those new to journeying to ask the generic question: What message do you have for me tonight? We were to have two rounds of journeying, guided by drumming, and broken up by a round of discussion.

The lights were dimmed and most of the room lay on mats, while others sat in chairs. Jeannette started drumming on one of those flat, circular hand drums, and we were told to relax. During the first round, I felt nothing. I chose to journey to the lower realm, and visualized my favourite beach in Vancouver. I thought I had a brief vision of an eagle, but it wasn't enough to convince me any of it was legit. When it ended, people in the room started sharing their journeys, and I was baffled and frustrated to hear about intense, powerful visions and messages mostly everyone had experienced.

When I mentioned my frustration, the woman next to me just told me to focus on what was popping into my head, rather than what wasn't. For the second round, I chose to visit the upper realm, and visualized a mountain I've climbed on the Sunshine Coast. I asked the question again and this time, had a vision of me, tucked under an eagle's wing, soaring through the sky. Then I clearly heard: "Be who you are. Think about you." It was overwhelmingly emotional and profound. When I made my way home that night, I focused on the brightness of the moon and started to cry.

My takeaway: I totally found my jam, my version of church. It helped me believe in the possibility of different realms and finding guidance within myself. I plan on attending these circles regularly.

Follow Elianna Lev on Twitter.

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"Tommy" (left), a KII meter, and an unnamed doll

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

"Most of the time, the reason a doll becomes haunted is because of unfinished business," said Jayne Harris, paranormal investigator and haunted-doll trader. "It could also be a fear of passing over, or sometimes there's somebody on the other side that the spirits don't want to reconnect with."

I'd stumbled across the online trade of "haunted dolls" in eBay's Everything Else section. Among the listings for used vape pens and handcrafted male chastity devices, I spotted an ad for a "nasty perverse possessed doll," the description warning that this seemingly innocuous, ginger-haired child's toy should only be bought by "experienced, adult collectors." It eventually sold for just over £1,000 [$1,500].

Curiosity is the lifeblood of the internet—it's what leads us down 3 AM Wikipedia holes, or inspires us to spend far more time than we should watching competitive-archery videos. That same curiosity took hold of me when I discovered this cyber subculture; who were these people listing cheap plastic dolls for up to thousands of pounds? Why were people actually paying these asking prices? And did they truly believe they were inhabited by "sexually sadistic" demons?

A bit of digging revealed that there's been a rise in the selling of ghostly items online ever since a supposedly haunted wine cabinet was sold on eBay in 2004 (there's even a witchcraft section of Etsy now, too). The box is said to be possessed by a dybbuk—a malicious possessing spirit in Jewish mythology—and has come to be known by the highly inventive name of "the dybbuk box." The item has been bought and sold several times at online auctions, and the various owners' experiences have been chronicled online, inspiring the Sam Raimi–directed, Matisyahu-starring 2012 horror The Possession.

With this well-publicized cabinet came an abundance of purportedly possessed objects; plenty of online vendors were suddenly keen to shift the dozens of devilish dolls they conveniently had stored away in their garages, some for £30 [$45], some for £300 [$450]. Within this gold rush, I thought, there must have been some disingenuous undercurrents: Discover you can make 500 percent profit by ripping off a stranger on some piece-of-shit toy, and the basic theory of capitalism dictates that some optimistic chancer is going to have a crack.

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The original eBay listing that the author stumbled across

To find out more, I spoke to Nancy Oyola, an online seller from New Jersey who had listed a job lot of haunted dolls on her Etsy page. Soon into our conversation she told me that she'd inherited more than 300 of them from her late grandmother's estate and swore to me that she'd had paranormal experiences with nearly all of them.

I asked her why she had decided to sell them. "People are fascinated by them," she told me. "Many people who work with black or white magic are in need of a particular spirit to help them with their spells and rituals, so I can help."

Nancy went on to add that her advice to buyers is to always check a seller's feedback before purchasing a haunted item. I took her up on her tip immediately, checking what messages had been left by those who'd bought dolls from her page. Despite my initial skepticism, it seemed that her operation was legit: Her buyers were very happy, with nearly all of them confirming the dolls' haunted qualities.

Buyer feedback, paired with a spooky backstory, is one of the only guarantees a seller can really offer. The two other methods of "proof" are readings by electronic voice phenomena (EVP) devices—which create recordings that appear to contain supernatural voices, often hidden within static—or KII meters, which measure fluctuations in the electromagnetic field, but also often pick up radio frequencies.

Clearly you need to have a certain amount of belief in the paranormal to put any faith in these devices, but it's fair to assume that people looking to spend thousands of pounds on a haunted doll have already firmly made their minds up as to how invested they are in the supernatural.

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Jayne Harris and a couple of her dolls

After more than a year of trying, I eventually arranged a time to meet up with a British haunted-doll collector for a chat.

Jayne Harris is a big name in the world of possessed children's toys: Through her website, haunted-dolls.com, and her ever-growing Facebook page, she sells (or helps to facilitate the sale of) at least one doll a week, and is highly regarded and well liked in the community. This community—as I soon learned—doesn't "buy" or "sell" possessed objects; it adopts, as if the figurines and the lost spirits living inside are orphans in need of a loving home.

As a teenager, following the death of a close family member, Jayne found herself searching for answers at her local spiritualist church, dissatisfied with what she was being offered by the Catholicism she'd been raised with. After befriending a woman there, Jayne was invited round to meet the her doll, Maggie.

"She didn't seem crazy, so I eventually decided I'd go," Jayne told me. "When I arrived I was told to introduce myself to Maggie, and as I said hello the TV came on by itself and played the film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? I was shocked!"

Jayne wasn't how I assumed she might be. She's married and has two small children. She's chatty, friendly, and didn't seem overly rigid in her beliefs, or introverted in any way.

"I've always said that I don't expect anyone that hasn't had a paranormal experience to believe in [haunted dolls]. I probably wouldn't," she explained. "I've got an interest in UFOs, but I'm still not convinced because I've not had any experiences in that field. But whether you believe or not, things like ouija boards do actually work."

Jayne told me several times that she no longer dabbles in ouija boards, citing the fact they're used to communicate with demonic energies, as opposed to the human energies she deals with. She also seemed certain that a spirit from a doll could never possess a human.

"Possession is demonic because [demons] have never and will never have a physical body and presence," she told me. "Demonic possessions don't usually end well. People don't tend to make it through in one piece. Psychologically it can be very damaging."

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Jayne's KII meter

Our conversation meandered between concepts I could grasp and others I found slightly trickier to comprehend, so I decided to speak to an expert to help me make sense of things. The appropriately named John Sixthsense is a parapsychic medium, 2012 winner of Spiritside Medium of the Year and founder of the (now defunct) ghost-busting team UK Paranormal.

"I can't see how this mass production of haunted dolls is feasible," he said, after I told him about the wealth of figurines available online. "We don't get to choose where a spirit will reside or what it's attached to. They've got free will just as we have."

From John's experience, he explained, hauntings are usually specific to houses, not objects. He added that in the rare event of a spirit attaching itself to an object, the owner of that object should contact a professional like himself to banish the lingering specter, not sell its host on the internet. The problem with blind buying, he clarified, is that it's "very irresponsible" because buyers don't always know the "velocity" of the spirit they're about to allow into their home.

I agreed that a haunting doesn't really seem like something you'd actively invite into your life. However, some sellers—like whoever was behind that first eBay post I saw—claim that their dolls are "evil" and "extremely negative" as a kind of sinister selling point, meaning there has to be a market out there for that kind of thing.

So what compels people to buy them?

"There are some people who are interested because they don't have children of their own. They ask if I've come across any spirited children that are in limbo," Jayne explained, adding that adopting a haunted doll isn't always the right course of action for someone in that position. "There's a lot of pressure on me to get it right," she said. "I don't give them out to just anybody."

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Some of Jayne's haunted dolls

Jayne also told me that there's the appeal of companionship for some new owners, with many simply compelled to adopt through a need to connect with any spirit available.

John, however, believed that paranormal investigation groups were behind a lot of the purchases, searching for props to take along on ghost hunts.

From their assessments, it became clear that there are two dangers to prepare yourself for when buying a haunted doll. One: that you'll spend a bunch of money on a dud and won't be able to get a refund (good luck finding "hauntedness" in the Trade Descriptions Act). Two: the danger that when you adopt a doll, bad things start to happen—or at least you attribute negative things in your life to the doll.

Of course, this might not be such a bad thing in itself: If all of your negatives and faults are projected into an inanimate object, it might ultimately make them easier to deal with. It also might be another reason why people seek out the dolls in the first place.

The fact I have very little money in my bank account put a stopper on my plans to buy a doll of my own, but I did get as far as " The Common Sense Guide to Buying and Selling Haunted Items," an instructional how-to posted on eBay.

The last point of that guide reads:

Have a plan of action of how you are to dispose of the item if it starts wreaking havoc in your home! Some of the activity we have witnessed from haunted items [is] banging on walls, scratching noises, walking sounds, moans, knocking, whispering, displaced objects, bed shaking, scents, ectoplasm...

I put all this to Jayne, because despite her veil of levelheadedness I wondered whether she had ever experienced anything darker than what she initially let on. She told me the story of a puppeteer's doll that she'd recently removed from somebody's house, due to the upset it was causing there.

"The day I got it back home I put it in the cabinet in my basement and closed the door," she said. "Five minutes later, when I was upstairs, I heard a bang. A tin of paint had fallen and smashed the cabinet, and there was paint all over the floor. The doll was just sitting there. It looked really creepy."

Jayne explained that she then started having headaches and was finding it hard to sleep, which are both signs of demonic possession.

"Days later, my three-year-old daughter started saying, 'Shhh, mummy, John is asleep.' When I asked who John was she told me he was her friend. I thought, OK, children have imaginary friends, it's not unusual. Then, a few days later, she came running into the kitchen crying and said, 'Mummy! Mummy! John shouted at me...' This made me feel really uncomfortable, so I passed the doll onto my medium friend, Hazel."

I think what fascinates me most about the community is the people, not their dolls. Everyone I spoke to was sincere and—perhaps a little anticlimactically—pretty much completely normal. They just so happen to believe that the figures they have sitting in their homes are inhabited by the spirits of dead children.

Jayne was matter-of-fact and grounded as she chatted about poltergeists and demons. John was the same, talking about the inconvenience of exorcisms as if they were on a par with emptying the dishwasher, or someone stopping still, right in front of you, as you try to get on an escalator.

It's always harder to build a rapport with someone if you don't meet in person, which might explain why Nancy from New Jersey was slightly cagier. However, she shared the same passion for—and belief in—the haunted dolls as Jayne.

I tried to assess what my thoughts were about these two big-time collectors and came to the conclusion that investing that much time and money into objects you truly believe to be haunted is only going to prompt your mind into further validating those beliefs. It would be easy to suggest that this is a symptom of the power of suggestion and the crafty work of conmen, but—in Jayne and Nancy's cases, at least—I don't think that's true.

At the heart of it, it's the believers breathing life into this international subculture. Ghosts might not exist if the right people weren't there to see them, and those in the doll-collecting community don't seem to mind that the lines between fact and fiction are sometimes blurred. And, in fairness, why should they? Followers of religion all around the world put their faith in the make-believe, and that's widely accepted as a logical, sane thing to do. How is this any different?

Either way, I don't think I'd ever stretch to spending three months' rent on a creepy, "sexually aggressive" doll to watch over me while I sleep. I'll leave all that to this lot.

Follow Jak on Twitter.

[body_image width='670' height='428' path='images/content-images/2015/03/10/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/10/' filename='ireland-quick-take-a-load-of-ecstasy-before-it-becomes-illegal-again-655-body-image-1426001116.jpg' id='34704']Absolutely no suggestion that this man is on drugs, btw (Photo by Gavin Watson)

Ecstasy, ketamine, and crystal meth are all currently legal in Ireland, after a Court of Appeal fuck up regarding the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977.

As The Journal reports—and if you don't like extremely dry retellings of legal goofs, we're sorry, but this is the backstory to why it's legal to crawl around Dublin in a K-hole right now– a Court of Appeal ruling made this morning, March 10, declared the 1977 Act void, effectively rendering ecstasy, ketamine, just a little taste of crystal meth, and Methylcathinone (also known as, strangely, "cat" and "jeff") legal until emergency legislation can be passed overnight.

Basically, the ruling found that additions to the 1997 Act were being made without recourse to Irish Parliament (Oireachtas), an act deemed unconstitutional by the Court of Appeal. With the Act now void, all the drugs it shakes a matronly finger at and tells you not to ingest are legal until emergency legislation can be patched together by Seanad, the upper house of the Oireachtas.

With members not being able to meet until tomorrow—and a provision tacked on to the bill stating it can only take effect the day after it is signed into law—it's legally OK to get absolutely Bezzed off of your face until midnight on Thursday, at which point you must abruptly stop being high.

In case you haven't checked already, afternoon flights from New York to Dublin are currently sitting at around $700.

@joelgolby

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Gary Glitter performing at Lea Valley Park in the 1990s.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

The recent trial of Gary Glitter saw witness after witness recount cases of abuse by the former glam rocker—enough to convince a jury that he is guilty of offenses including the attempted rape of an eight-year-old girl. And this is just the latest in a string of cases related to child abuse that Glitter has faced. Sufficient, you would think, to repulse even the most diehard fan, and to shake off any affection felt for Glitter. But a band of hardcore fans is determined to stand by Glitter. They have taken to the web to show their support, kept fan clubs active, and supported him from the public gallery at his trial.

"I stick by him, because he has given me a great deal of pleasure in my life," says John, a benefits caseworker from Newport, Wales. "I would not let him look after my children, but then again, I would not let anyone I didn't know very well look after my children. I stick by him because I feel that his life is deliberately being made a hell by the hypocritical media and by the hang-'em-and-flog-'em brigade. And I don't think that's fair."

John's response is typical of Glitter fans I spoke to, many of whom accept that the former musician is at the very least guilty of some of the allegations thrown at him over the years. Indeed, in 1999, Glitter himself admitted downloading images of child sex abuse. But many followers see this, as one fan put it, as simply "a silly mistake" that has meant he has been unfairly hounded ever since.

"I think the media have always treated Gary with ridicule even before the computer business. There has been a witch hunt against him, and the press will not be happy until they have finished him off," says a fan who would like to be known only as Julia.

"They have constantly bullied him... made sure he will never work again, while others in favor have escaped unscathed. No one likes a bully. I stick by Gary, as I have great affection for him and I would stick by anyone who I felt was genuine in the same way."

Most of his remaining fans have been into Glitter since his early days, when he strutted his stuff on TV and drew in a fanatical fan base. For many people, this formed an emotional connection that they have been unable to cast off despite the revelations that dogged Glitter as he fell from stardom. Mick Connor, a health-care housekeeper from Hertfordshire, is one such case. He discovered Glitter in the summer of 1973 shortly after he had been shipped off to boarding school 100 miles from home.

"I was very lonely and upset," he says. "Then I saw Gary singing on Top of the Pops and went to a shop in Cheltenham and bought my first record. Gary and glam rock really brightened up my then unhappy days at boarding school... I will always be grateful to him for that."

"I thought it was bad enough when I found out he wore a wig. But this—it ripped me apart as a fan."

However, some fans have found it harder to reconcile their love of the music with the revelations that have emerged about the man behind Gary Glitter. One male fan who wishes to remain anonymous tells me of his extreme disappointment when Glitter first admitted to possessing child sex abuse images.

"I was devastated, angry, and felt so let down. I thought it was bad enough when I found out he wore a wig. But this—it ripped me apart as a fan. I had the piss taken out of me constantly by my friends and family. I threw his autobiography in the bin, and all my Gary Glitter records went in the loft. That was it—he was removed from my memory, or so I thought," he says.

But once online video streaming took off in the early 2000s, he once again found himself drawn to the music of Gary Glitter. He ended up establishing a YouTube channel dedicated to the former glam rocker and feels that appreciation of the music should be separated from the crimes of the man.

"It's not your fault if you like certain songs. Mine just happen to be Gary Glitter's music, and boy do I get stick for it. But I just think, Sod 'em. Who the hell do they think they are? Yeah, I get a hard time, but that's the way it is—it comes with the gig so to speak," he says.

Of course, Gary Glitter is just the on-stage alias adopted by Paul Gadd, and this helps some fans justify their continued adulation of their icon while distancing themselves from his crimes. "With his recent conviction I feel that if he did actually commit the crimes, he needs to pay as anyone else would. But as Paul Gadd not as Gary Glitter. People need to separate the man from the music," says Nigel, a 54-year-old teacher from Norfolk.

But while many fans accept that Glitter is guilty of some crimes, and feel able to forgive him due to his apparent contrition, most are unwilling to accept that he ever went beyond looking at images of abuse and acted out any of his fantasies. This is despite numerous allegations in the UK, his latest conviction, and a conviction in Vietnam in 2006.

"I do not believe the current allegations. Over the years I have spent some time with Gary, and I have never experienced any inkling of the allegations I read about. He is a genuine man. He has been most welcoming and adores his fans," says Julia.

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Photo by Flickr user David Sim

Some fans still cling to the fantasy that he could return to the stage. "I thought about doing a charity gig and getting Gary to do it, but I think it would be a logistical nightmare because you wouldn't be able to tell who was a genuine fan and who's just there to cause trouble. I would love to see it happen, it's a nice thought and something that people like me would absolutely love to see," says John Hughes, 50, from Bristol, who performs with a glam rock tribute act called Fab 208.

Whatever they think of his guilt or otherwise, there's no doubt that many fans suffer for their adulation. Antipathy from family, friends and particularly the online community is commonplace when they reveal their love of Glitter.

"Being a fan is not easy, you are faced with hostility all the time. I keep it to myself mostly and just let all the negative comments from friends, colleagues and family go over my head. I get great comfort from belonging to certain groups on social media whereby we have a common interest, however after the latest conviction these sites have had an influx of new comers and I fear that most will not be genuine fans—again another form of sabotage," says Julia.

Others are less accommodating when it comes to criticism. Klavs, from Denmark, has been a fan since 1972. "I'm six foot four and a former bouncer, so people don't give me much shit, but my friends kindly tell me when our leader is in the 'papers again," he says. But even he doesn't wear his support on his sleeve now. "I've got some T-shirts but I don't wear them very often any more," he adds.

There are, of course, numerous examples of other prominent rock stars who have been accused of sexually abusing children. And many fans are quick to jump on this to justify their admiration of Glitter. "Jimmy Page had a 14-year-old girlfriend, and no one said a word," says Tim Potter, a Glitter fan from Australia. "Bill Wyman from the [Rolling] Stones had sex with Mandy Smith when she was very young [14 according to Smith]... so it is hypocrisy at its worse."

(Warning: Spoilers about the third season abound.)

We interviewed the creator of everyone's favorite Netflix political drama to catch up on the third season and ask him what it's like to work with David Fincher, Kevin Spacey, and Pussy Riot. We also had to ask him who he shares his Netflix password with.

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Last night I made a smoothie at 3 AM, despite knowing that all of my housemates were asleep and unconsciously preparing for another day at their soul-sucking, meaningless jobs. I did it anyway. I let that blender rip, and I couldn't care less about waking everyone up in our 1,200-square-foot apartment that we somehow squeeze four adult men into. I wasn't trying to be malicious, but I honestly hadn't even considered their well-being until the deed was done. Then again, they haven't taken the trash out in months, so really, it's par for the course.

As of 2012, one third of working-age adults were living with at least one other adult with whom they were not married. That could be because the median age of marriage is steadily rising in America (as of now, it's 29.2 years for men and 27.1 for women) and young people like me simply can't afford to live all alone.

Living with roommates has definite financial benefits (at least, if you live with people who actually pay rent on time), and there are social upsides, too: Data suggests that people in communal living arrangements are less prone toward depression and suicidal thoughts. If nothing else, it means that you have someone there to binge-watch House of Cards with, which is significantly less depressing than spending hour after hour on Netflix by yourself.

But having a roommate can also be fucking annoying. I've had some terrible ones (one used to leave half-eaten McNuggets in the folds of the couch and once jumped through our apartment window naked while tripping on 2C-I), and I, in turn, have been a shitty person to live with. I've neglected to buy toilet paper for months at a time, I've ignored dirty dish pile-ups in the kitchen sink for far longer than is appropriate, and my mother visits more often than I can really justify.

Becoming a good roommate is like wearing training wheels in the struggle toward becoming a decent and well-adjusted person. It's difficult, but it's important. And since having a roommate is an inevitability for many of us, we've got to learn to get along. Here's what I've learned from my past shitty roommates about how to be a better roommate in the future.

Keep Your Friends Close, but Not That Close
It's fine to have friends over, but be mindful that they don't overstay their welcome. If you have a one-night stand, try to usher that person out before you leave for work the next morning, lest your roommate finds her pouring a bowl of his Captain Crunch and asking if you guys have any almond milk.

Also, consider the type of people you have hanging around. For instance, do you commonly associate with people who don't tell you their real names, pass the time by smoking synthetic weed and discussing the numerology, and aren't allowed to see their children? If so, maybe you should go to their places when you're going to spend a few hours looking at a dollar bill with a magnifying glass.

Nobody Likes Your Pets as Much as You Do

If it's your pet, then it's your responsibility—so don't pretend not to see that huge pile of animal defecation that little Izzy made after eating a pound of trash because you forgot to feed her. Clean the fucking litter box. Do not expect your roommates to pick up the slack, or to take care of your pet when you're visiting your parents for the weekend—to you your pet is the light of your life, but to everyone else it is a sack of fur attached to a mouth and a poop hole.

For instance, there's a cat freeloading in our apartment right now who will piss on any article of clothing left on the bathroom floor and likes to climb into the washing machine when bored, and mostly I worry that it'll break the washing machine one day.

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Photo by Michael Rababy

With Roommates, as with Sex Partners, Communication Is Key

You're out of toilet paper and you bought it the last four times? Well, why didn't you just say so! When you live with someone, you've got to be open and straightforward about what you want or need. Don't leave passive-aggressive notes taped to the refrigerator and expect anyone to know what they actually mean. Because they won't.

If the presence of that half-eaten and week-old Greek yogurt is driving you to thoughts of mass murder, then just say so. Tell them you're sick of cleaning up after their filth because they likewise might be tired of your bullshit attitude about everything and it's best to get all of that pent-up frustration out in the open.

If you're having trouble mustering up the strength to tell your roommates what's bothering you, take a page from couples' therapy and talk about how the problem makes you feel. For example: "When you left your dirty dishes in the sink for a week, it made me want to perform a lobotomy on myself with a rusty soldering iron." See? Communication is easy!

It's Not Your Fault if It Doesn't Work Out

Just because someone is a good friend doesn't mean they'll make a good roommate, and just because you live together doesn't mean it's going to be pleasant. My roommate around this time last year was a close friend until she swore to me that a brazen gust of wind blew her rent check right into the hands of a homeless person as she was getting off the streetcar. Needless to say, she didn't pay rent that month and we didn't live together much longer after that.

Another story: A friend of mine was living with a girl he met on Craigslist—a nice, liberal-arts-y type who was studying social work. She had two pet shih tzus: a momma dog and the smallest puppy from a litter the momma had birthed months before. My friend and the roommate had been living together in relative peace for a while when, one day, he left the door open while bringing in some stuff from Safeway. The momma dog ran out the front door and was quickly hit and killed by a neighbor's car.

The girl, walking home from a convenience store, witnessed the entire gruesome accident and was completely—and justifiably—destroyed. After profusely apologizing, my friend packed up all of his shit and was moved out the same day. Point being, sometimes really horrible stuff happens and that can make it really difficult for two people to continue coexisting. So you just kind of move on or move out.

Having Terrible Roommates Makes You a Better One

First, I'll qualify this: I'm not the world's best roommate, by any measure. But having some terrible roommates in the past has, at the very least, made me aware of what you shouldn't do when you're cohabiting with someone (smoothie incident notwithstanding). I do make an effort to treat my roommates with the respect that I expect from them, and that's definitely a win.

Nearly everyone I've lived with is struggling through various states of arrested development, learning to be more adult and less petty about things. And we'll get there, eventually—at which point we'll probably be making enough money to finally live on our own.

Follow Mason Miller on Twitter.

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Justin Trudeau. Photo via Flickr user Alex Guibord

While re-affirming his support of the government's contentious anti-terror bill, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is accusing the Conservatives of whipping up fear against Muslims in Canada.

Trudeau told hundreds gathered at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto Monday night that "the same rhetoric that led to a 'none is too many' immigration policy toward Jews in the 30s and 40s is being used to raise fears against Muslims today." The Liberal party leader made specific reference to the Conservative government's ongoing attempts to ban the niqab, a face covering worn by a minority of Muslim women, from citizenship ceremonies.

A press release from the Prime Minister's Office took exception to Trudeau's remarks, underlining Stephen Harper's speeches to the Muslim community, but the release added that "most Canadians would find it offensive that someone would conceal their identity at the very moment they want to join the Canadian family."

Defence Minister Jason Kenney, who is also in charge of the government's outreach to ethnic communities, slammed Trudeau's remarks.

"It is obscene to conflate the essentially public nature of the citizenship oath with an anti-Semitic bar on refugees fleeing the Holocaust," Kenney tweeted, adding that the Conservatives have admitted 300,000 Muslim immigrants in the last decade.

"You can dislike the niqab–you can hold it up as a symbol of oppression," Trudeau told the crowd of McGill alumni. "But those who would use the state's power to restrict women's religious freedom and freedom of expression indulge the very same repressive impulse that they profess to condemn." A receptive audience at the event, which was organized in part by Trudeau advisor Gerald Butts, gave the Liberal leader a standing ovation as he finished his remarks.

The speech was billed as a defence of Canadian liberty, and Trudeau focused heavily on the importance of women's reproductive rights and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But his remarks during the 40-minute address about what he called a state-sanctioned fear against Muslims served as his most direct attack against Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"It is always a short path to walk from being suspicious of our fellow citizens to taking actions to restrict their liberty," said Trudeau.

At one point late in the speech Trudeau seemed to reference Bill C-51, a controversial set of so-called "anti-terror" measures currently under debate in Parliament. "Our social contract sometimes requires us to moderate our freedoms in order to ensure we maintain them in the long-run," said Trudeau. When asked directly in a question from the audience why he has expressed support for C-51, Trudeau said the legislation contains "concrete measures" that will keep Canadians safe.

After the speech, VICE asked Trudeau if he is concerned about a disproportionate impact of anti-terror legislation on Canada's Muslims. Initially, Trudeau seemed to justify some scrutiny of Muslim communities. "I think one of the most important things we need to do, on top of any security measures, is to make sure we're reaching out to the Muslim community and engaging them, because they are the ones who are closest to the radicalization, and they are best able to help keep us safe from these young people who are getting radicalized for all the wrong reasons."

When I asked again if Trudeau believed Muslims are being targeted through current security measures, he replied, "One of the fears I have is that we have a government that is stoking fears and fomenting anxiety around Muslim Canadians by conflating fears about terrorism with fears about people who look different or sound different. That's the one things I'm really against."

C-51 would give intelligence officials and police broad new powers to investigate and detain Canadians under the suspicion of terrorist activity. It includes government powers to detain citizens on the suspicion that they may be involved in terrorism. The New Democratic Party, the official opposition in Parliament, has raised grave concerns about an apparent lack of government oversight in light of these potential new powers. In recent weeks, constitutional experts and even provincial leaders have joined a chorus sounding the alarm at the bill's potential restrictions on Canadians' freedoms.

After suggesting the government is targeting Muslims in his speech, Trudeau reaffirmed his conditional support for the contentious Bill C-51.

"I don't want to get into a political fight over this," Trudeau said flatly about Bill C-51. He suggested that his party would present its own platform on national security in the fall, and added that Liberals will push for amendments to C-51 to ensure government oversight.

Many groups that advocate for Canada's Muslims have raised concerns about the impact of Bill C-51 and other security measures in their communities. The Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association has argued that C-51 "grants the Canadian government with vague and unnecessary powers that pose a risk to the civil and privacy rights of Canadians."

CMLA has also expressed concern that current national security legislation has excessively targeted Muslims. "Given the disproportionate impact of anti-terrorism legislation in recent years on Canadian Muslims, these new proposals are of particular interest in our community," the group stated in a February press release.

Trudeau did not reveal any of his party's proposals on the issue of national security, but said that governments must "strike the right balance" between individual liberties and collective safety. While Trudeau argued the government has failed to strike that balance, he said Liberals will wait until the 2015 election campaign to offer alternative national security policies.

Follow Desmond Cole on Twitter.

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All photos via the official GDC Flickr

One neatly dressed coder cracks a joke to another about the polygon count of his colleague's creased shirt. Bright young things with harsh neon hair mooch around on beanbags below us, as the escalator slowly shifts us to a level where men in oxford shirts line up for Xbox-sponsored lattes. The Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the GDC, is a wonderful, eclectic mess. I've come to try and get a snapshot of the industry's current state in the hope of reassuring myself that my career isn't a total waste of time.

With the help of a bunch of bright game design post-grads from NYU, we're running a Shut Up & Sit Down board gaming lounge. Until quite recently something like this would have been regarded as little more than a frivolous curiosity, but in 2015 it's weirdly legit. Changing circumstances continue to force the games industry to step outside of its comfort zone, and that step isn't always one toward tech.

As someone who used to work in traditional games media, it's unusual to be exposed to such a broad slice of the industry. Glossy events like E3 are effectively just marketing turned up to ten. Well-tuned spokespeople broadcast key soundbites, old dudes in suits dodge difficult questions, and children wobble around in promotional capes and cardboard crowns while also wearing a lanyard that describes them as "PRESS."

Business expos are always a special kind of hell, and GDC's show floor isn't any different. Microsoft continues its ostentatious tradition of paying through the nose for double-thick carpet before covering most of it with a paneled wood floor, creating a zone of unparalleled luxury that honestly doesn't give a shit about your calves.

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Look past the cash-splash of the usual players, and the big money this year is almost laser-focused on the increasingly impressive realm of virtual reality. Oculus Rift and Sony's Morpheus continued to impress purely in terms of visual fidelity, but Valve's collaboration with HTC was the tech that had everyone talking. It uses mad laser-shit to map out your room and provide simple holodeck-style cues to let you know if you're about to walk into a wall.

It's difficult to walk away from these VR demos without experiencing an evangelical buzz, but it's impossible to ignore the vigorous uncertainty that bubbles just beneath. Movers and shakers and triple-A makers are almost uniformly enthralled with the tech, but there's a tangible sense that everyone involved can't forget that it's still a bit of a gamble. Everyone I meet seems keen to assure me that "virtual reality is happening," but I can't tell who they're trying to convince.

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Keeping an ear to the ground across the whole of the conference, this sense of uncertainty isn't unique. Large chunks of the mobile sector, for example, are increasingly worried about the monopoly of titles like Game of War and Clash of Clans, in which gigantic profits are cyclically invested on block-out-the-sun-sized ad campaigns that effectively smother all competition. Meanwhile, the guy behind Crossy Road is giving a talk about how that silly game has made over $10 million.

Nobody knows what the fuck is going on. It's a phenomenon that can easily be attributed to the wider market of All Life on Earth, but in this specific case it's hugely evident. The financial risks behind super-shiny games has put the future of consoles in a strangely sticky place, and Steam's previously curated selection of PC games has now become more of a grab bag.

Even if you've got a great idea and you've managed to navigate the current minefield of choosing a platform to sell your product, you've then got the decision of how to make cash. Is it full-price? Budget? Free to Play? Ad-monetized, or weighted towards microtransactions?

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This turbulence won't be resolved quickly. GDC will have undoubtedly provided many with the insight they need to try and make the right choice about what to do next, but most people have already pretty much made their beds. Practical business reasons aside, it felt like many of the people I met at GDC had come to the show for some sense of reassurance—a chance to anchor themselves both professionally and personally.

I'll admit that I felt a bit lost, too. Alongside the erratic mutation of the games industry that doesn't look set to settle anytime soon, the past year has seen the culture surrounding games play vanguard to an unpleasant new internet phenomenon that we've yet to learn to deal with—a digital equivalent of the way that Brutalist architecture ended up accidentally creating ghettos. To be fair, they fucked up in a dramatically bigger way: it wasn't until pretty recently that most people even realized that the internet was going to be a place where people would live.

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It was naturally upsetting and not entirely without blame that our house became the one in which the first shits were plopped, and many of the people I met at GDC had primarily attended for the same reason as me: in search of some concrete reassurance that the games industry wasn't wholly comprised of Total Chodes™.

As a man walking around without any real sense of what he was looking for, I seemed to almost exclusively bump into people in bars who also didn't really know why they were there. Myself and a fellow Brit had both inexplicably traipsed alone across town to enter a writing competition in a semi-awful sports bar. We were joined by two young Americans in ill-fitting suits. One was a software engineer, and the other looked alarmingly like a tiny version of Matthew Broderick.

None of us really knew why we'd ended up there, but when the software engineer won the contest I suspect he walked away with exactly what he needed. Baby-Brodders was drinking "Black and Blue"—a 50-50 mix of Blue Moon and Guinness. I don't think he'll ever really know what he wants. The rest of us dissipated into the night. I ended up in a nightclub that looked like Hotline Miami, listening to music from Hotline Miami, and gratuitously imagining exactly what I'd do if it actually was Hotline Miami. The only assurance I left with that night was that I wasn't the only one.

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I'd pinned my hopes on being reassured that everything was going to be OK on a party that was helpfully titled "Everything Is Going to Be OK." The wilfully wacky shindig is better known as the That Venus Patrol & Wild Rumpus Party, an annual celebration of loud music with strange games and very lovely people. If that wasn't enough to recharge the industry's collective hope-batteries, then everything was almost definitely not OK.

In the end though I bailed on it and watched Netflix in the bath, as by that point I didn't need a parade of chiptunes and unlikely hairstyles to remind me that games wasn't a big bag of dicks. The Independent Games Festival awards had fixed that beautifully. Tim Schafer's sock-puppet antics parsed better in the screen-grab land of Twitter, but the most powerful moment of the evening—if not the week—was far from a joke.

IGF host Nathan Vella capped off the awards by calling for the industry to better support those who put themselves on the line to protect the future of gaming culture. As you'd expect, it was a sentiment met with broad applause. The clarity and intention of the speech itself couldn't be faulted, but I found myself cynical towards the reaction from the crowd. It was a fucking massive room for starters—how many of the 10,000 people here actually care about the point being made? A round of applause at an awards ceremony doesn't always mean much, and doesn't cost much either.

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Then, in the distance, people started standing up. As the polite applause slowly died down, a second wave picked up with forceful sincerity. The vast majority of ten thousand people stood up and clapped for a full five minutes. I'm amazed but not ashamed to admit that, as a moment, it almost brought me to tears, despite being stood way back in the crowd and surrounded by a collection of total strangers.

After watching a number of frighteningly talented post-grad students get up on stage to collect their awards, I realized that what I'd been looking for had been around me all week. The industry doesn't have a clue what the future of games is, and there's a very real worry that the culture we've grown up with is being violently twisted into horrible shapes. For us, right now, it's a pretty rough time, but when you meet the people behind the games of the future it's evident that everything is in safe hands.

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These guys don't care about our current woes of trying to place all bets on one type of platform—they're super-holistic badasses who are prototyping board games, card games, and even RPGs. Their broad definitions of exactly what games can be makes the current offering look turgid and silly, and the talent and intelligence of the students I met throughout the week made me impossibly jealous and extremely happy.

They're lovely, they're brilliant, and the future is theirs. It doesn't matter if VR turns out to be a dead horse. It doesn't matter if Game of War causes all other mobile games to shrivel up and die. It doesn't matter what the fuck I think about the importance of standing up for diversity, and it doesn't matter what the fuck you think about the importance of standing up for diversity. These guys are the future, and the future is very fucking lovely. Everything is going to be OK.

Follow Matt on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany.

I know a bunch of alcoholics—habitual drinkers and binge drinkers. I also know lot of people who are children of alcoholics; I am one myself.

However, most personal accounts of living with alcoholism that I've read—especially since the internet has been around—cling to a certain ridiculousness. They often contain certain sensationalist tropes of abuse or neglect, and even when I share them online because something about them rang true or touched me, I feel like I'm an embarrassing cliche. But what can I do? It's my story.

My mother always drank a lot. When she was young, it was normal. Her friends called her "the queen" because she was always the center of attention. Both she and my dad were musicians and that meant they traveled a lot. I understand it sounds like a generalization but to me, her extroverted personality and routine-free lifestyle provided the perfect venue for her alcoholism.

Things got infinitely worse once she and my dad broke up. She loved me and wanted to take care of me, but was overwhelmed by the separation.

My first memory is of one Christmas Day that I spend crying because she has hit me. I'm sitting in the hallway of our apartment, thinking about how she's been beating me up every day for weeks, and how I'd hoped things would be different on that special day.

By this point, my mother has become a teacher. When I'm sick, she buys me stickers and candy. I like being sick, but she forgets about her kindness when she drinks. I lock myself in my room and she stands in front of the door for hours, cursing and yelling at me to come out.

In the mornings everything is OK: My mom buys me my favorite chocolate and if I bring up her beating me the evening before she says: "You're lying. I would never hit you. I love you too much to do that." She still believes that's the case today.

Her sickness gets worse with age. She still goes to work—she manages to keep it together that way—so I dread the weekends and her time off. During her time off, she drinks during the day and by the end of it, she often needs me to help her walk. As her condition worsens, she gets more paranoid. One day she decides to sprays insect repellant through the crack of our landlord's door, because she's convinced that he's poisoning our water.

Another memory I have is of walking into our living room once on a Sunday. It's a big, tidy, and light living room and my mother is sitting on the sofa staring at the cabinet on the wall. It's made of dark wood that's shining in the sunlight. "You," she says to the cabinet, "I can see it now, you're made of gold."

She constantly comes up with rules and then forgets them. If I come home half an hour late, she screams at me for being a prostitute. I'm 16, she's 43. We go to expensive restaurants and she drinks before and after the meal. She accuses me of overeating, then she complains I'm eating too little. She tells me that I'm fat so I stop eating. For about a year I eat half of a roll, a salad, and six apples a day. If I eat more, I punish myself.

I'm 17, and I go on vacation with a friend. When I get back, she's in the hospital. Apparently, while I was away she suffered delirium tremens—a kind of epileptic attack that alcoholics get from withdrawal. She almost died. I am told she had delusions that I had died, dressed in black, and walked from cemetery to cemetery, looking for my grave.

I visit her in the hospital, in the psych ward. She's sober for the first time in years. I don't recognize her. It's as if I actually have something like a mother instead of a monster. She paints me an owl.

It's autumn. She comes home and starts drinking again. I end up pouring the bottle of alcohol-free champagne she brings down the drain. We sit in a restaurant and she wants to order wine, but I ask her not to do it. "Drink if you want but not when I'm around," I beg her. She orders wine and I leave.

I realize that alcohol is more important to her than I am. I realize that I can't help her. I realize that the addiction is stronger than me and that it always will be. I'm 18 so I move out.

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Photo via Flickr user Viktor Nagornyy

The late-February arrest of two young Brooklynites on federal terrorism charges (a third alleged conspirator was nabbed in Florida) fanned the national fixation with "homegrown terrorists" and "lone wolves," reinvigorated as it already was by the bloody attacks on the Parisian satirical rag Charlie Hebdo.

Abdurasul Juraboev and Akhror Saidakhmetov, two green card holders from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, respectively, seemed to be leading ordinary immigrant working-class lives. That has only heightened public fear of what we have been repeatedly assured by a succession of government and law enforcement officials is an existential threat of an evolving, unpredictable, and often invisible nature.

After all, if a lettuce-chopper at a Brooklyn Gyro King (which, incidentally, also serves cheesesteak that's every bit as royal) can suddenly decide to join the Islamic State, then what does that say about our collective security?

And, implicitly, can they—Muslims in America—ever be trusted?

Law enforcement officials of all kinds have been tripping over each other to comment on the omnipresent danger of terrorism and, in passing, to justify the sprawling and expensive security state that exists today in America.

"This is real, this is the concern about the lone wolf," New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton told reporters after the arrests, while another anonymous official waxed taxonomical, distinguishing "lone wolves" from " known wolves" like the recent arrestees, who had been in the authorities' sights for some time.

In this debate—which we should just call a soliloquy—facts seem to matter little.

Take, for instance, the reality that the crushing majority of victims of organizations who resort to violence under the banner of religion, including the Islamic State, are Muslims living in such places as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan—not citizens of France or the United States, whose governments nonetheless seem to believe the danger flows chiefly their way.

Or the less than convenient fact, documented in a recent study by the Southern Poverty Law Center, that since the mass murder of September 11, 2001, more people have been killed in America by non-Muslim so-called "domestic terrorists" than by Muslim-identified actors.

But for those cases that do involve Muslims in America, always touted with great fanfare as "disrupted terrorist plots," there is a simple test that anyone can apply from the safety and comfort of their own home to decide if they should take what the government is dishing with a grain of salt.

So, without further ado, I give you the three questions to ask about any terrorism prosecution in America:

1. Was there an informant or undercover agent actively involved?

In the Brooklyn case, it appears that the FBI dispatched one of its estimated 15,000 informants to pose as "an ideologically sympathetic individual" and to coax and coach the men away from mere online ranting and toward acts in the offline world. Saidakhmetov's mother, worried that her son might try to travel to Syria, had confiscated his passport. Enter the paid government informant, who apparently suggests that Saidakhmetov obtain new travel documents and holds his hand through that process, even helping him fill out the paperwork.

Indeed, a hallmark of post-9/11 terrorism stings is the often central involvement of paid informants and undercovers, who are often there not just to act as the eyes and ears of the government but to actively provide ideas, plans, plots, religious justification, and the means toward execution. To do so, they often cultivate their targets over long periods of time—often months, sometimes even years—as they resort to various inducements, including money and drugs, to gradually push them over the legal line.

Shahed Hussain, for example, a now-notorious FBI informant who reportedly earned as much as $100,000 per "assignment," showed up in flashy cars to impress his poor and unemployed targets in Newburgh, New York, offering them a quarter of a million dollars to join him in plotting an attack.

In 2011, an NYPD informant plied a man named Jose Pimentel with marijuana to extract incriminating statements from him as they smoked together, and also supplied him with a turnkey plot involving pipe bombs. Pimentel was so inept that, even with close instruction, he was at least initially unable to drill holes into the metal tubes.

Perhaps what speaks most to the depth of informant or undercover involvement in many of these plots—and, by extension, the level of government control over them—is the disclaimer that federal agents and prosecutors often include in the self-congratulatory press releases announcing an arrest in a terrorism sting. Following a sensationalistic description of a"plot to attack the US Capitol and kill government officials," the agent in charge noted, quite anticlimactically, "that the public was not in danger during this investigation." In a separate case, the authorities added, almost in passing, that the explosives the alleged terrorist planned to use "posed no threat to the public" because they were disarmed by the law enforcement officials who had provided them and were managing the "plot" every step of the way.

By contrast, there is only one known case that bucks the trend, with government agents who identified themselves as such actively trying to warn the target and talk them out of plans to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State, instead of egging them along. The target in that case was not a person of color or an immigrant Muslim, though—it was a young white woman named Shannon Conley. Read into that what you will.

2. Does the defendant suffer from any mental health issues, dysfunctions, or deficiencies?

In our latest case out of Brooklyn, Juraboev was visited at home by the FBI in August 2014 and allegedly told the agents almost right away about his leanings towards the Islamic State, about his desire to travel to fight in Syria, and about his wish to harm the president of the United States. During an intercepted phone conversation, even his alleged co-conspirators wonder aloud whether he's "normal."

Meanwhile, Saidakhmetov toggled through an astounding array of potential plots, each one more harebrained than the last. He allegedly talked about buying "a machine gun" to "shoot all police." He mused about going to FBI headquarters to "kill the FBI people." He wondered if he might instead join the US military to spy for the Islamic State. He even fantasized about diverting a commercial aircraft "so that the Islamic State would gain a plane."

This case is only the latest manifestation of a larger pattern. Unfortunately, law enforcement has not shied away from targeting psychologically vulnerable individuals and exploiting their conditions to land splashy prosecutions, as was documented in a 2014 report by Human Rights Watch and Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute.

Take Sami Osmakac, a Tampa Bay outcast whose "lower than average intelligence" and "psychosis" made him a particularly inviting target for government agents, informants, and under covers.

Consider also Nicholas Teausant, a young man who after being arrested last year was treated for schizoprehnia—a condition that would have made him especially susceptible to online encouragement by a paid FBI informant.

Even the aforementioned Pimentel was described as "unstable" by anonymous officials briefed on the case, and reportedly tried to circumcise himself.

3. Would the defendant have undertaken whatever they are accused of if not for the government's involvement?

This requires a deeper level of thinking than the first two questions. As with any counterfactual, reaching a conclusive answer is difficult. But in the Newburgh case, a federal judge remarked on the record that "only the government could have made a terrorist out of Mr. Cromitie [the suspect], whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope." Then, in her written decision upholding the conviction, the judge lamented the fact that "[t]he Government indisputably 'manufactured' the crimes of which Defendants stand convicted. The Government invented all of the details of the scheme."

Assuming a similar investment of law enforcement resources and focus on any other community, would the results be any different? One suspects that the yield of "terrorists" would be comparable, as there's no shortage of marginalized and susceptible individuals in America these days.

Instead of resorting to predatory investigative tactics involving the use of aggressive and self-interested informants against often vulnerable people, the government should rely instead on the more nuanced approach it used with Shannon Conley. Detection, rather than instigation, led agents to Conley, and they then staged an intervention of sorts, attempting to reason with her and involve her family. All of it seemed driven by a desire to save, rather than crucify, her.

Of course, this recommendation ignores the cynical incentive structure that rewards investigators for the cultivation of informants and the disruption of plots at all costs. In the face of such overwhelming momentum on the part of a sprawling government apparatus to justify its own existence and expense, a paucity of legitimately threatening plots is no real obstacle.

Ramzi Kassem is a professor at the City University of New York School of Law. He directs the CLEAR project (Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility) as well as the Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic.

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The Classic Ezra Levant pose. Photo via Flickr User David Stobbe

Right wing writer and former Sun News Network host Ezra Levant rarely shies away from a good debate, especially when it involves anyone from the left of the political spectrum. But the idea that he would even attempt to square off against liberal Professor Noam Chomsky, arguably one of the most brilliant political thinkers on the planet, is as audacious as it is genius. Levant is, after all, deep into a crowdfunding campaign for his new online show, The Rebel, for which the YouTube clips so far consist of pieces like an interview with Defence Minister Jason Kenney about how far Canada will go to "fight Muslim terror abroad," euthanasia as "first degree murder legalized," and how "the Left" wants to take away the tax-free savings account. So engaging a Skyped-in Chomsky in a debate about freedom of speech and US foreign policy and Israel is something of a serious get for Levant.

And while a chat with Chomsky might not raise the ire of The Rebel's core demographic in the way that, say, an interview with Olivia Chow on universal child care or Thomas Mulcair on immigration policy, it's a decent boost for Levant's street cred. How many other Canadian right wing pundits can say that they've tried to argue with the man who wrote Manufacturing Consent?

"Noam Chomsky is interesting to me, since he usually presents as a free speech maximalist. So we had that in common, despite our other differences," said Levant in an email to VICE when we asked him why he wanted to talk to the professor. "Our producers asked him to come on the show, as they normally do with other guests. It was meant to be less than ten minutes, so he obviously enjoyed the sparring enough to stay for half an hour."

And what a half hour it was. The discussion ranged from US foreign policy under President Barack Obama to whether or not the UN's treatment of Israel constitutes anti-Semitism to Levant's raison d'etre, free speech. "I was curious to see if he would agree that the Left has moved away from free speech and towards censorship, in the service of political correctness," Levant said, not without adding his own assessment of that part of the discussion. "I think his answer suggests he's in denial about campus speech codes, 'hate speech' censors, 'trigger word' whiners, human rights commissions, etc. I thought his claim of being personally censored was unpersuasive." That said, Levant even attempted to draw the comparison between himself and his guest at the end of the interview: "We call ourselves The Rebels over here. So we're dissidents in our own way."

So, how did The Rebel fare against The Chomsky? Aside from cutting off the professor a number of times—to which Chomsky, usually in the midst of a complex example, was quick to cut back in with a "May I continue?"—Levant was clearly introducing ideas designed to back Chomsky into familiar Sun News corners. Sometimes these subjects led to in-depth analyses by Chomsky, most of which were perhaps far beyond the sort of rant-heavy editorializing that Sun News viewers might be accustomed to. At other times, Levant and Chomsky were simply talking at cross purposes.

Take this exchange:

Levant: "I think you're disregarding the democratization of the internet that allows anyone with a blog or a YouTube page or even a Facebook page to talk to literally millions. Do you discount that?"

Chomsky: "No, of course I don't discount that. In fact, I've written about it."

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/hIkFXf4LZT4' width='500' height='281']

Or this:

Levant: "You're more than just a grouch. You have particular philosophy. And I want to know if there's a place on earth that is more attuned to your philosophy... Is there a better society than America?"

Chomsky: "First of all, expressing criticism of society is not being a grouch."

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/8BMoMIGiZxk' width='500' height='281'] Or this:

Levant: "Do you think that the world's obsession with Israel, while ignoring similar prosecutions or examinations or condemnations of Bashar al-Assad or the Islamic State—do you think that's a sign of anti-semitism. And do you think that anti-semitism is on the rise in the world?"

Chomsky: "That's like asking me do I agree that the moon is made out of green cheese. First of all, it's not a fact. There's an overwhelming opposition to the Islamic State and Assad."

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But even Levant was forced to acknowledge his own penchant for non-sequiturs and imprecision, going so far as to apologize to the unflinching Chomsky and his regular corrections, "I'm sorry. You're very precise in your language and I should be more precise in my characterization of you."

At the very least, Levant is maintaining the dedication to lengthy debates we gave a shout-out to in this eulogy for Sun News. Still, it's worth keeping in mind the intended audience here: namely, Levant's followers. Though the calibre of Chomsky's presence gave the show some weight, it was ultimately a very simple David-and-Lefty-Goliath premise intended to bolster support for the host. "I have had a very positive reaction to the interview," he said. "People already know I disagree with him ideologically; so why not try to put simple but firm questions to him?"

The Rebel's crowdfunding action has largely been underplayed in the mainstream Canadian media, which might be read as an unspoken hope that, by ignoring Levant's efforts, his voice will simply fade from existence, like the Sun News channel in general. Despite the lack of coverage, The Rebel has raised approximately $100,000 since the campaign began in February, with donations dedicated to everything from camera equipment and a Middle East bureau to a haircut for Mr. Levant.

If only Levant would make a budget line for a Chomsky-style van.

Follow Chris Bilton on Twitter

This article originally appeared on VICE Serbia.

Levni Yilmaz is a San Francisco–based animator mostly known for series Tales of Mere Existence, in which he recounts personal anecdotes using static cartoons, which appear gradually, as if being drawn by an invisible hand.

I discovered the series a few years back and watched it obsessively, thinking I had stumbled upon a treasure that no one else knew existed. Then Yilmaz started using social media to his advantage and I realized he had actually become quite big in Serbia, where I live, so I called him up for a chat.

VICE: There is an episode in Tales of Mere Existence called 'How You May Fall for a Girl on Facebook,' in which you tell the story of a man from San Francisco falling for a girl from Belgrade and proceeding to form a relationship with her on Facebook. Was that a true story?
Levni Yilmaz: That is a true story, and a very silly one too, when I think about it. She was from Belgrade, and I think we corresponded for almost a year. Despite a few efforts, we never met face to face. We still keep in touch once in a while. I don't think there are any hard feelings from either side.

The main character in your cartoons is yourself. Was that a conscious decision?
No, it just happened. I made the first few episodes before I knew what I was going to do with them. Eventually though, I realized that it was a way—an outlet—for me to make fun of my own thoughts and emotions. The Lev character doesn't act the way I act, he acts the way I think—if that makes sense.

Who are the girls in your cartoons?
Most of them are composites of a few different people I have known. Sometimes, they are people that I overhear when I'm on the bus. It varies a lot.

Have you ever thought about changing your format?
I've been messing around, making episodes that are more dialogue-based. There are now five or six of those. When I change things, it's because I'm curious what would happen if I tried it. It's certainly not a marketing decision or anything like that.

What kind of paper and markers you use?
It's usually Faber-Castell pens for drawing. They're inexpensive and good. I made a conscious decision in school to always use cheap materials. I wanted to make sure I'd always be able to work, even if I went broke. My thinking was, If I'm dumb enough to go to art school, I'd better at least be smart enough to work inexpensively.

I read that you were inspired by this documentary called The Mystery of Picasso which shows how his sketches are created. Was Picasso's art a particular influence on yours?
I like a lot of Picasso stuff, but I don't have a single favorite artist in the same way I don't have a favorite musician or band. Some artists that really affected me though, were Egon Schiele, Arshille Gorky, and Giacometti but the single biggest influence on what I do is unquestionably Matt Groening's Life in Hell comic strip. I would read his books obsessively before I ever even thought about doing comics myself.

Have your topics changed over the years?
There probably is a difference but I'm not sure if I'd notice it. I think my outlook is still very much the same but I think maybe I've gotten more observant and possibly better at figuring out what people's words and actions may say about their motives. People tell you they are doing something for one reason, but I often suspect their actual reason may be very, very different—if that makes sense. I think the topics are pretty much the same but it's my approach that is constantly evolving.

I tend to go in phases, where I get serious for a few episodes, then get really in depth with things for a while and then I say, "The hell with it" and get very, very silly for the next bunch of episodes. The only thing I care about is accurately describing the thought, the emotion and most of all, the internal conflicts that occur.

One thing that does not change is that I like to keep my Lev character somewhat childlike—like he was born yesterday. This has nothing to do with trying to connect with younger viewers, it's more about this: With many adults—no matter how sophisticated, educated or dignified they are—sometimes you can look through the facade, and see that their motivations are actually pretty infantile. I know my motivations are infantile—there is no question about that.