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Alan Partridge, "hosting" a show about Norwich Market. Still via

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

If we were having a drink and I told you that I've never watched a full episode of The Office, I'm Alan Partridge, M*A*S*H*, The Thick of It, Community, Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother, Louie, Arrested Development, 30 Rock, or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, it's very likely you'd look at me as if I just told you my granddad was a Nazi.

It's one of the most embarrassing things to admit these days, I think, not having watched any comedy properly. It's up there with opening a first date with, "Now, I'm not saying Hitler was a good man, but you can't deny he was a great man." But, hey, my granddad wasn't a Nazi, and I've only said that during a date once. Rest assured she disappeared faster than the last platoon on the very last chopper out of Saigon. I'm weird.

I don't watch comedy, see. A group of guys performing hijinks in Philadelphia offers literally no relevance to my life as I live it now, and I'd rather watch a pigeon shit into Ashley Young's mouth on loop for 40 minutes. That's funny. That's relevant. That falling pigeon shit is an allegory for all our lives and it makes me laugh. But my lack of "proper" comedic references means I'm continually made to feel like not quite as funny or fully-formed as I should be as an adult—particularly when I meet new people. Why? Do I need years of comedy watching behind me to be a funny guy?

The internet, for me, has wooed comedy down from its ivory tower and made it communal. It's flattened everything. Now, a kid who can't keep his pants on when meeting Nick Clegg is the contemporary version of a slipping on a banana. The internet has turned the whole world into a set for ridiculous hijinks. Nobody is safe. There's a custard pie around literally every corner and, for me, it's made "traditional" comedy kind of redundant.

I used to watch South Park as a kid. All the time. Now, I think it's shit. Because if I wanted to see Canadian people making fools of themselves on a daily basis, I'd follow Toronto politicians. Truth is far stranger now than fiction ever has been and the beauty of living in this Content is King society is that you actually don't have to watch or experience anything older than a day's internet cache to feel like you know what's going on. If that sounds bleak to you, it's probably because it's true.

If you want to see something funny, watch this guy try to do stand-up comedy on acid.

Right now, you're spilling your coffee on your keyboard. "Dave," you're shouting. "Dave, you can watch any of those shows online, right now! I don't care if it's not relevant, it's escapism! It's art! People were being funny before the internet existed! Why can't you appreciate art?"

But hear me out. Put the coffee down, mate. Get a tissue and clean up your mess.

I am aware that not having properly watched any TV comedy makes me a really odd person. It might make me reprehensible in some people's eyes. But here's the thing: I'm not saying I'm above comedy at all. I can appreciate the sheer brilliance of Alan Partridge playing air bass guitar in a static caravan. Comedy and laughter is the reason I'm friends with the people I am friends with and if all my mates were like me, there may never be a joke again. I just find myself reacting with embarrassment when people start quoting The Office at me and I have to hastily change the topic to something like, er, books. Not that books can't be comedy—I just don't read many of the funny ones, either.

Maybe I spend too much time online. Maybe I am a lazy, feckless millennial who doesn't appreciate "the classics." But while we can—and do—argue plenty about how important it is to understand the importance of artful satire and comedy throughout history, the truth is that, today, right this second, we have the lazy privilege of living in an age where weird, funny shit can be instantly meme-fied. We can laugh at the world in real time, even if it is at dictators responsible for starving their own countries because—LOL!— he's fat.

Satire is happening second by second, on the internet, all around us. The days of the most astute, funny world analysis coming from actors spending weeks or months on television sets, performing a clever auteur's sharp vision of the world are long gone. Chris Morris's The Day Today and its pedophiles disguised as schools can't be replicated now because the real world is too fucking weird. The "there's no such thing as low culture anymore" argument is well-worn, too, but it's well-worn for a reason: There isn't. So why do people still take the piss out of people like me? Why am I such an easy target?

It's not like I'm alone in my naïveté regarding the annals of comedy. Loads of my generation are the same. For example, I have a friend who has never watched an entire episode of The Simpsons—yes, he exists—and is continuously vilified for it. He regularly browses YouTube with search terms like "the Best of Ralph Wiggum" without really knowing who Ralph is. Irony and humor is so ingrained in our share-all society that people now find things funny without having a fucking clue why. And, to be honest, I don't see the problem in that.

This person thought Ralph was Uter Zorker—which raises all kinds of fattist arguments—and, while the rest of the planet may as live chained to the fence of 742 Evergreen Terrace like hungry dogs with Stockholm Syndrome, lives in an almost entirely Simpsons-free world. He is a marvel. His brain should be preserved for science and studied for unique neural pathways.

But laughing at Ralph without knowing what Ralph represents is the epitome of the modern internet age gag and we can't fight it. We can't. We don't need to watch a whole show anymore to get the joke—people can just share the best, funniest bits and they can be appreciated, in isolation. "Normal" people are just as liable to be in front of a camera as an actual comedian these days, too, saying ridiculous things and becoming a clown. Which makes me think my Simpsons-shirking friend isn't in the minority, really. Maybe—probably—he's part of a growing majority relying on "best bits" chunks of the best comedy out there and maybe that's fine, even if we are made to feel ashamed about. Everything feels too saturated to be precious about what we should and shouldn't know before we laugh at something. And also, where the fuck do you start? At what point are you certified funny because you've seen X, Y, and Z?

As Frankie Boyle argued recently, isn't most laughter good? Even if you think it's puerile or "problematic?" Every fucker is a comedian these days. Even if you're not that funny in real life, you can now make someone, somewhere, piss themselves with laughter if you know how to cut a Vine of a dog dragging its itchy bum along the carpet to Big Sean's "Dance (A$)."

Yes, we've been looking at dogs dragging their assholes across carpets for years with shows like You've Been Framed, but we don't watch programs like that anymore, do we, except for on really hungover Saturday afternoons. We're online every single day, in front of our computer screens, laughing at stuff then clicking away to other stuff in the blink of an eye. I know so many lines from classic comedy not because I've actually watched them, but because someone has either shown me a clip of it or quoted it to me directly. I feel like I've seen them, when all I've actually seen is Saturday Kitchen and, in all honestly, I'm sick of being made to feel like some kind of social pariah because of it. That I can't possibly have lived by living the way I do.

In a strange way, not watching "proper" comedy makes every day a comedic adventure. I don't have a bank of scripted funniness because my reference points are constantly. People might quote famous comedy all the time to my blank, nervous face, and I might still promise people that I'll watch It's Always Sunny, but I know I but probably never will. Why isn't that OK?

Of course there's always room for brilliant, well-scripted comedy. Of course there is. Not everyone is like me. But can it evolve enough to keep up with the every day hilarity that is living online, when you can watch pigeon shit falling into a footballer's mouth again and again? I just don't know.

Follow David on Twitter.

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Claire. Photo by Jonathan Thirionet

This article originally appeared on VICE France.

For some unknown reason, dressing up like a mermaid has in recent years become a career choice. Originating in America, "mermaiding" mostly involves cramming your legs into a homemade fishtail, which you then frantically beat at aquatic shows and private pool parties.

But I was interested in finding out a little more about the sport, so I got in touch with 25-year-old Claire—a woman claiming to be France's first professional mermaid. Over the last five years, the pretty blonde has used her aquatic-hobby-turned-day-job to supplement her PhD studies. Currently she's busy finishing her thesis, which is entitled "The Myths, Symbols, and Archetypes of Disney Productions."

"Mermaiding is so much harder than you'd think," she assured me on our first meeting. "You have to swim around with a 15-kg [33-pound] fishtail strapped to your legs. If that wasn't stressful enough, you need to keep your feet held together and your eyes wide open in salt water."

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Photo by Alexa Maurin

After she finished high school, Claire went straight into the cruel job market. Being of an artistic nature, she first tried a bit of theater and modeling but neither took her fancy. After skimming through various American websites, she came across mermaiding—an occupation that combined her interest in swimming with her love of glitter. Unfortunately for her, she could only find one other woman living out the mermaid dream—an American girl named Hanna Fraser. Fraser is a self-proclaimed ocean activist and is best known for spending her time dressed up as a siren while swimming around with sharks.

Surprisingly, nobody in France had heard of mermaiding so Claire took it upon herself to get the scene started. Having found it hard to source a mermaid costume large enough to fit an adult, she was forced to assemble her own with a little help from a YouTube tutorial.

It only took a few photo shoots and the launch of a personal website for Claire to start making a name for herself. It didn't take long before she had Paris Aquarium on the phone offering her a show. All she had to do was get decked out and swim about in a pool full of stingrays and poisonous fish. Which was actually what Claire was after. The show quickly became popular and is currently one of the main staples of the aquarium's program.

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Photo courtesy of Paris Aquarium.

One day I tagged along to see how you prepare for such a spectacle. It seems quite arduous—two people are required to put her tail on and zip it up, then Claire needs to be carried up to the pool and dropped in by a colleague. What ensues is ten minutes of underwater choreography full of graceful rolls and rhythmic blowing of bubbles. While Claire is busy trying to be Ariel, a voiceover tells the story of the mythical half-woman half-fish creature. Sure, all the adults think it's bullshit but the kids love it.

Claire is very aware that her job isn't exactly rocket science but it isn't super easy either; she still has to make all the fishtails herself. That might sound simple but it really isn't. She needs to adjust everything just right so that the tail doesn't flood with water as soon as she gets dropped into the pool. After having made several of them, Claire sees herself as a bit of an expert. She doesn't use latex anymore; she's moved over to silicone, which is more water-resistant but also more expensive. Apparently, it's impossible to get a good tail for less than $1,500 these days. As they say in the mermaid circles—if you know how to make a good tail, it's not hard to make gold fins.

Check out our documentary on the "Kingdom of the Little People"

Sometimes Claire gets calls from party organizers asking her to come by and act as a human decoration by sitting in a shallow pond or on a wet rock or something similarly mermaid-y.

"The craziest party I attended was probably last year on this Greek island. Some billionaire was throwing a birthday do for his daughter and I was supposed to be sitting down by the shore, dressed as a mermaid welcoming the boats as they arrived."

Overall, people are pretty respectful. Claire's yet to be dealt an indecent proposal. "I'm lucky; that's never happened to me," she said. "But of course you hear about that sort of thing. There's a famous mermaid tail manufacturer in the States that's made a bad name for themselves by making tails for porno movies."

She's been asked to pose topless for a photo shoot but had no interest in it. "It's not the nudity that bothers me, really. But one day I want to be a teacher so I don't want to ruin my reputation," she went on.

According to her, some sirens spend their time being harassed by a broad array of deviants with offers of all sorts of mind-boggling fetish gigs.

Things are a little different for guys, according Claire's friend Alexis, a self-proclaimed "Triton." He recently invested in a few rather pricey tails, but is yet to dive into the world of mermaids. That didn't stop him from making the headlines of one of Germany's biggest gay magazines, though.

"Men have it a bit easier in this environment, I think. I don't get the same kind of salacious proposals that a lot of the girls get," said Alexis.

Currently traveling in the States, Claire took the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to Weeki Wachee Springs—a park that has been organizing siren shows since 1950. She had a chance to perform and even got a job offer. Unlike Claire, Alexis has no interest in making a career out of the whole thing—he just thinks it's a bit of fun. He says he'll be completely satisfied if he just gets to sit up on a Gay Pride float wearing his tail.

Things are moving fast in the mermaiding scene—France's first school of mermaids will open on May 23. Founded by Julia Lemmi Sardella and her husband Claudio, it will be run as a side project to their main company, which produces aquatic shows. "Mermaid schools are popping up all over the world right now. They're everywhere—Philippines, US, German, Spain, and France. They attract a pretty broad clientele of all ages, too. Our main ambition is to be part of developing a new sport that combines physical exercise with artistic movement," their press release boasted.

Mermaiding, as odd as it seems, is a booming business—two months after the opening of Sirenas Mediterranean Academy in Tarragona, Spain more than 500 students have already signed themselves up.

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Image from BC life-threatening emergency test

In the middle of our interview, Pelmorex executive Paul Temple is interrupted by a strident, apocalyptic alarm sound. He laughs and apologizes: "That's my phone, that's just my phone."

The nuclear-meltdown ringtone is fitting: after more than 15 years at Pelmorex, Temple has made it his business to warn Canadians of impending disasters.

Since the early 1990s, Pelmorex—which owns and operates a television channel called the Weather Network and its French equivalent Météomédia—has been developing a national alert system that gives authorities like first responders and government agencies the power to interrupt radio, satellite and television broadcasts to display emergency messages.

While some form of this has existed for years, participation had until recently been voluntary (and, according to Temple, rather unpopular). But the CRTC has just made the latest iteration of the program—dubbed the National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination System (or NAAD, with "System" wisely excluded from the acronym)— mandatory for all broadcasters.

So far, the list of possible emergency messages includes your run-of-the-mill earthquakes and tsunamis, but also makes provisions for geomagnetic storms (shortened to "MagnetStorm") and pyroclastic surges (volcano gas and rock explosions!). If the events represent life-threatening danger, then designated emergency service workers or government officials can use the NAAD system to send out geographically targeted messages that co-opt radio and television airwaves and immediately interrupt programming, replacing your Price Is Right rerun with a screaming red screen and equally blood-curdling sound.

Some Montreal-area residents got to hear the system in action on Tuesday afternoon, when a tornado warning (which was later lifted) broke through the airwaves to garble a series of unfortunately unintelligible instructions.

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Screenshot of general emergency test on weather channel

"I think Canada was slow in getting there but I think we're going to have a good system that's a model for others," Temple says.

But some broadcasters have expressed concern about the nature of these messages. Jarrett Mann, the president of University of Montreal student radio CISM, says he feels the program's mandate seems to have shifted.

"When the CRTC first approved this, they were talking about alerts in case of natural or industrial catastrophes," he says. "But since it's been implemented, there's talk of it being used for terrorist attacks and civil crisis, and that's a lot more subjective."

"You could have abuse, political manipulation, fear mongering," Mann cautions, a concern that could seem farfetched were it not for the imminent senate approval of Bill C-51.

The Pelmorex website's FAQ section provides little comfort or clarity on this matter, but rather states the list of possible messages is "endless" and "not limited to weather or environmental warnings." Still, Temple says he's confident no one would abuse the system or use it to spread partisan ideology.

"The first guy who tried to use it to flog a partisan thing would probably lose his job," he says. "It's a public emergency messaging system."

But who has access to this powerful communications system, and does it open the door for potential Max Headroom-type network hijack scenarios? In 2013, the emergency alert system in Great Falls, Montana, was hacked, sending out a warning about the zombie apocalypse (and prompting several people to call police).

Temple says that while "nothing is going to be foolproof," the system has been tested by third-party auditors and is as safe as possible. He explained the provinces' and territories' administrations are in charge of granting people authorization to use the NAAD System. "(They) have to take full responsibility for the content of the message, so I think they would be treating this pretty strictly," he says.

Then there is plain old human error: during 2011 CRTC proceedings, Temple recounted what he deemed "an embarrassing situation" during which an unnamed person or group "actually issued a test message and didn't follow proper protocol, and were issuing volcano warnings."

Today, Temple doesn't recall this anecdote, but says that issuing an accidental or erroneous broadcast-intrusive "threat to life" message would be complicated.

"It's kind of like online banking," he says. "You're asked a couple of times, 'Are you really sure that you want to do this?', and then once you get a final confirmation you have to put your password back in." The message is then sent off and broadcast with no further human intervention, he explains.

"Because we're dealing with threat to life messages, time is of the essence," says Temple. "So when that government, that authorized user presses submit for the last time, the time that it goes through our whole process here, assuming that they haven't violated any kind of technical standard, we're talking seconds."

Not an even price tag
It's also important to note that Pelmorex is a private corporation. Which means it partly relies on advertising dollars, in turn reliant on viewership, to exist. In a 2010 Globe and Mail article, titled "The Apocalypse is Good For Business," Pelmorex CEO Pierre Morrissette explained that audience numbers tend to spike during bad weather events. So would alerts—especially weather-related ones that send eyeballs to their networks—not be a boon for the company's television stations?

Temple says this isn't the case: "We have no advantage in that sense because everyone has it. We're making (these emergency messages) available free, to everyone, at the same time that it's made available to us."

Yet their role as the managers of the NAAD System does guarantee the Weather Network and Météomédia mandatory inclusion on every television or satellite subscriber's package, along with the handsome sum of $0.23 per user per month (roughly $0.10 more than the CBC / Radio-Canada). "That's the only way we'd have funds to invest to build and maintain (NAAD)," Temple explains.

For smaller broadcasters though, implementing the NAAD System came with a hefty price tag. Once the technology is updated, the alert system is free to use, but Mann estimates his organization would have to spend up to $10,000 on new technology. Luckily, his station, which serves a public of about 77,000 listeners a week, falls in the category of "campus, community and First Nations" radio stations that were given one extra year to set up the alarm infrastructure.

The total cost was much greater for the bigger players, whose operations are spread out across the country. The CBC originally tried to be exempt from the program, claiming the financial impact would be too great. The CRTC riposted that "holding a broadcasting licence is a privilege" and that broadcasters had a "duty to inform the public of imminent perils." CBC representatives told VICE that they had finally set up the NAAD System infrastructure "as soon as it became a condition of license" and that they viewed it as "part of the public service we are proud to offer Canadians."

Other networks—namely Bell, Bell Aliant, MTS, Shaw and Sogetel—have so far not integrated the new technology, and in their March press release the CRTC stated they were "disappointed" and "reluctantly" granting the companies a six month extension. Bell representatives told VICE they were currently working on the implementation.

Pelmorex is now testing the system across the country, though the absence of these big players seems to have led to patchy results. Temple seems confident the kinks will soon be ironed out. "Fingers crossed, touch wood."

Mann has less faith in the system's success. So far, he says the majority of the details he's received about the NAAD System rollout have come through vendors trying to sell him the necessary equipment, a disconcerting lack of communication given the system's mandate to inform. "This would be the first time in our 25 years of existence that someone could interrupt our programming," he says. "I'm holding off until I get more answers."

With files from Nick Rose.

Follow Brigitte Noël and Nick Rose on Twitter.

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Alvivi, aka Vivian Lee and Alvin Tan. All photos courtesy of Vivian Lee.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

As a couple, you've got to have a bit of notoriety to earn yourself a portmanteau. While they might not be a Kimye or Brangelina quite yet, the Malaysian sex bloggers known as Alvivi—Alvin Tan and Vivian Lee—certainly caused enough of a hot and sweaty scandal in their hot and sweaty homeland for Tan to consider it prudent to jump bail and flee the country. In her erstwhile lover's absence, Lee awaits trial under Malaysia's notorious Sedition Act, a sort of catch-all device to induce compliant, self-censoring passivity.

It would be tedious here to recount all of Alvivi's many ins and outs, but the whole affair is as much indicative of Malaysia's starchy discomfort around freedom of expression (sexual or otherwise) as it is about an exhibitionist young couple who opted to have sex in a metaphorical glass box in order to stimulate debate as well as each other. Either way, it is very much a story of the social media age (the pair met on Facebook), a sort of bottom-up approach to fame.

Alvivi started in 2012 as a low-key Tumblr called Sumptuous Erotica, where they posted their homespun porn to a handful of friends and a few international followers. Lee has said she merely wanted an outlet to be her true self, but their near-anonymity vanished when Tan—either to connect to likeminded swingers or simply to promote the "brand"—started to post links on Singaporean tech forums, after which a local newspaper, the Star, broke the story in October that year. As the Tumblr was shut down, Lee's family spurned her, and Tan (who has also lost touch with his own family) was stripped of his ASEAN scholarship to read law at the prestigious National University of Singapore.

Undeterred, the outcasts launched a YouTube channel and Facebook page where devotees could keep abreast of the soap opera's comings, not to mention its threatened goings. Those grainy, fixed-camera skin flicks were abandoned for "a more conservative path": swinger party call-outs; tongue-in-cheek posts about breaking Annabel Chong's world gangbang record; casting calls; a theory of how to reduce rape; competitions in which the best finish to the sentence "I love sex because..." won you a pair of Vivian's G-strings; merchandise offers, including $12 T-shirts announcing "sex is good"; and "Sexcussions," a series of talking head pieces covering such matters as foreplay tips and ways to get laid (a sort of Southeast Asian Dapper Laughs), as well as vox-pops in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore on homosexuality, vaginas, balls, and local sexual fantasies and preferences. Panorama it was not.

Nevertheless, their notoriety grew (so much so that Malaysians, fearful of "haters," became reluctant to participate in Sexcussions) and local media became interested in these "YouTube personalities." Vivian was interviewed by the local Marie Claire ("V Is for Virtue"), while the pair of them reprised John and Yoko's famous Rolling Stone cover for a feature with Esquire Malaysia. They were hot, the establishment was bothered.

Titillated? Why not watch our doc about the future of sex?

Having aroused a throbbing anger in their homeland (Vivian was even involved in a knife attack), what really brought the Malaysian authorities down on them was an injudicious Facebook post on the eve of Ramadan depicting Alvivi eating bak kut teh, a Chinese pork soup, with the slogan "Selamat Berbuka Puasa" ("happy breaking fast") and a halal symbol. A calculated insult of Malaysia's 62 percent Muslim majority—and, more particularly, of the ruling National Front coalition's tendency to cloak its diktats in the name of religious observance—it was a provocation too far, and the pair were promptly arrested and jailed.

It was while in prison in July of 2013 that Alvin claims to have begun to think about absconding. The pair were bailed a week later for 60,000 ringgit (about $17,000), and while writing his memoirs, Sex, Pork and Persecution, Tan started to research asylum in the USA. Then, last May, he persuaded the presiding judge to temporarily return his passport so he could go to Singapore to film a documentary. He never returned. Instead, he fled across the Pacific to Mexico, crossed into the US, and spent three months at the San Diego Correctional Facility. The duped Malaysian authorities were irate and clamored for his extradition, but he was one step ahead of them: Not only did he know that he could only be extradited for an act that was a crime in both nations, he realized that the more they called for the American authorities to return him, the stronger his case for asylum would grow.

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Alvin Tan

Meanwhile, back in Malaysia, Vivian was left to face the music alone. Unsurprisingly, Alvivi's following were appalled at this, calling him a coward, a charge he has vigorously denied. After a few months of keeping a low profile, during which time Alvin accused her of working as an escort, Vivian, in her "final act of love," took to Facebook to chastise "ALVIN TAN THE ALMIGHTY" for the callousness of abandoning her and for not replying—either to her or his mother—to any of the attempts to find out if he was OK. It was all lapped up by the local media.

Anyway, with the star-crossed lovers thousands of miles apart and no longer speaking, it seemed the storm of controversy had blown over, and that would be that. The final chapter would simply be the Malaysian court's verdict. Not so. After a short hiatus Tan has been more active than ever on his own Facebook page (URL: alvintan.yolo), regularly regaling his 20,000 or so followers—roughly the same amount as Vivian—with tales of his uncharacteristically orthodox take on the American Dream: living in LA, waiting tables, and pursuing a career in acting, "pure survival of the fittest." Indeed, he has described his Facebook postings as "a manual" to help fellow emigrating Malaysians follow in his footsteps. Only last month, while Lee was back in the dock and facing a potential five-year sentence for sedition, her erstwhile lover was ever so helpfully aggregating tips on how to black over the tiny swastika at the center of a large iron cross tattooed on his chest because he had an audition to play a gay Asian in a condom ad. Ah, the American Dream.

READ ON VICE NEWS: Malaysia Reintroduces Indefinite Detention to Stop 'Terrorists' – and Maybe to Quell Opposition

If the sex-centered content of Alvivi—who have since reconciled and discussed reprising their tag-team—was a sort of oblique critique of the prevailing values in Malaysia (the lack of freedom of expression, the increasing hold of Islamic morality on civic life) then Tan's posts from the USA have made that criticism explicit. He has gone on the offensive (definitely the mot juste in this case) against what he calls a "hellish failed state bat-shit-crazy Islam craphole," last month stirring fresh outrage with a garbled R&B cover version of the Azan, the Muslim call to prayer. The video went viral and prompted renewed calls for his extradition. He was interviewed by the BBC. Unrepentant and insouciant as ever, the former law student again goaded the authorities with their faulty understanding of the concept of "jurisdiction" and their attempts to charge him in absentia, while mocking the requests of Malaysia's "internet police" (MCMC) that YouTube and Facebook take his videos down.

In his own words, Tan is "trolling Islam," which he considers the greatest counter-democratic force in his homeland. However, he is adamant that his problem with Islam is not as a faith per se, but as a "political ideology," which, given its increasingly prevalent role in public life, makes it a legitimate target of political satire. "Sure, I'll respect your right to practice your religion," he has said, "but when you use your religion as a basis of government, your religion is no longer a matter of personal choice and personal faith. It affects everyone's lives, especially including non-believers, so your religion is now in effect a POLITICAL SYSTEM, A POLITICAL IDEOLOGY. You mean to say I can't criticize political ideas? What ass-backward horseshit is this? Suddenly, just because you slap the name of God on it, a political ideology becomes so sacred that it can't be discussed or criticised, even though in practice it's nothing more than a way to control people's lives?"

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Vivian Lee.

While Tan now sees himself as a "free speech Messiah" (of which sexual revolutionary would presumably be a pungent subset), not all his posts are unimpeachably progressive. There's the odd rape fantasy; some crude racial profiling of various ethnic groups' likelihood to tip in restaurants (more than a little ironic given Malaysia's bumiputra system of privileges for ethnic Malays), with borderline sociopathic hints on how to use emotion as a strategy; stereotyping of "a certain community" as freeloaders; a theory that lesbian sex isn't real sex; updates on his Tinder liaisons; and compulsively sharing a more serious squeeze's sweet nothings (if she isn't a giant fabrication, of course).

How much of this constitutes fearless free-speech advocacy and how much is pathological narcissism is a matter for more discerning judgment, although the apparent corroboration of his profile pic ("U jelly of my aesthetics, brah?") and page description ("I love me. If I weren't me, I'd wish I was") would suggest this is beyond ironic posturing, a notch up from exhibitionism. Regardless of the crude and dubious content—a storm in a teacup from a liberal, Western standpoint—what is certain is that Tan's attention-seeking—part business strategy, part compulsion, part provocation—is, by simple virtue of its existence, an important test of Malaysia's maturation, its ability to tolerate dissenting opinion. At times puerile, at others eloquent, Alvin's voice cannot be just dismissed as a mouthy irrelevance.

In many ways, he is the pathological symptom, the outgrowth of the repressive straitjacketing of sexual and political expression by mainstream Malaysian culture (he has said he's seeking asylum from "Malaysian ignorance" as much as its "political tyranny"). He may at times be a prick, but there's no doubt he is getting under the (thin, sensitive) skin of the authorities back home.

Follow Scott Oliver on Twitter.

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Custom Love Bailey trousers, Phillipe Adec jacket from The Neck Down, Old Gringo boots; Pink Payette skirt, Muther Pluckers jacket; Kyle Kupres dress, Prada shoes.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

PHOTOGRAPHY: LOUIE BANKS
STYLING: ELEANOR WELLS AND LOVE BAILEY

Assistant: John Allen
Models: Betty Bailey, Love Bailey, Brendan Cameron, Kyle Kupres, Simon Seapony, Eleanor Wells, Rich Cole

Special thanks to BJ Dini transportation.

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Love Bailey feather piece, tunic from The Neck Down

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Custom trousers, Moschino shirt, Old Gringo boots; Love Bailey dress, Kyle De'Volle shawl, shoes Betty's own

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Mishka Piaf choker, Ely B Eleonora Bruno headpiece, Vivienne Westwood skirt

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Adolfo Sanchez dress

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Dress from The Neck Down; Muther Pluckers jacket, Kukula tea cup; Jacket from The Neck Down, shirt and hat model's own; Kyle Kupres dress; tunic from The Neck Down

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Prada dress from The Neck Down, Miu Miu sunglasses, Outhouse Jewellery choker

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Prada dress from The Neck Down, Miu Miu sunglasses and shoes, Outhouse Jewellery choker

Almost every time I post an ass-centric photo to my Instagram account, I get more likes than any other photo on my feed. In the comments, strangers will leave emojis of peaches, or instruct me to direct mention them for re-posts and shout-outs. It's not a terribly surprising trend, given the simple workings of "putting it out there" on the internet. Yet, it still catches me off guard that there are people, many in fact, who are so tuned in, they are somehow alerted every time a stranger posts a flattering photo of her own ass.

Here's the thing about my ass: I am very fond of it. When butts started to overshadow breasts as the female body part that was socially acceptable to tirelessly flaunt, I rejoiced. Here was a social trend I could genuinely participate in. Unlike my boobs, my butt can fill several handfuls, and holds a similar consistency to those Serta mattresses onto which you can leave your handprint. Given how easy it was to attract attention on Instagram without even trying, I was curious to see if I could go about making my ass famous.

The logical step was to start an account exclusively for my ass, with the sole intention of getting as many followers as I could. There are countless accounts that feature cropped, close-ups of underwear wedgied up butts, which sometimes attract up to a million followers. I didn't suspect it would be that hard for mine to catch on. Turns out, I had a lot of to learn about the ins and outs of Instagram ass when it comes to policy, etiquette, and building a community.

#ass doesn't exist
When I started my account, I first tried to come up with a clever username. @Ass_Worship, @My_Ass, and @Worship_My_Ass were all taken. I settled on @My_Ass_My_Ass, which was awkward but the best I could do given the crowded market. Every morning, as I got dressed, I'd snap a shot in my bedroom or washroom mirror and directly post it to my account. Then I'd spend some time finding accounts with "ass" or "booty" in their name.

When I searched #ass in the hashtag search, nothing came up. That's because, according to Instagram, hashtag blocking targets terms that are typically used to attack users in a derogatory way. In a written statement (their PR person didn't want to be named), they said: "One of the signals we use to determine if a hashtag should be made unsearchable is if it's consistently associated with photos or videos that violate our policies."

In other words, #ass has the potential to lead to uncomfortable, potentially unwanted attention.

On the third day of @My_Ass_My_Ass's existence, I tried to sign into my account, only to receive a notice telling me it violated terms of the Instagram community. This was strange, since I had only posted photos in my underwear or leggings. I sent off an email to their press person asking for an explanation, then started another account, @thisasshere, as I didn't want to waste time.

A day after contacting Instragram, their PR guy sent me a short note, apologizing, saying my account was taken down in error. When I responded asking why, he didn't elaborate. It was too late, though. I had work to do. (After asking once more, he eventually responded saying that Instagram does make mistakes, as a result of getting hundreds of thousands of reports a week, and that they're always learning.)

Don't repeat yourself
My practice usually involved posting a photo of my butt in the mirror, then finding as many cropped ass accounts as possible that I could follow. Some of these included @Itsjustbooty and @Model_Booty, which will give you a shout-out for $5. I noticed many of the accounts specified if the administrator was male or female, and loads also advertised Kik and Snapchat accounts. A slew of accounts promoted themselves as adult hookup sites, or fitness inspiration. Many just flaunted ass, plain and simple.

I started to like and comment on as many photos as I could. To save time, I tried to leave the same comment over and over again—the waving hand emoji, my go-to conversation starter—until I received a notice with the heading "Duplicate Comment."

"It looks like you already left this comment. Try posting a new one. We restrict certain content and actions to protect our community. Tell us if you think we made a mistake."

Instagram's Community Guidelines states that their intention is to "foster meaningful and genuine interactions." Help us stay spam-free by not artificially collecting likes, followers, or shares, posting repetitive comments or content, or repeatedly contacting people for commercial purposes without their consent.

Ugh. This was getting tiresome. While my thirst to garner acclaim for my ass wasn't exactly for commercial purposes (though I've always dreamed of making a butt-centric calendar), I realized I had to go about this organically. So I contacted Matt Werner, who runs the Butt Blog, for pointers.

A space where spam is welcomed
The Butt Blog started a year ago and currently has 807,000 followers and counting. At first, Werner did it as a side project, but he's now building a website and finding ways to merchandize.

In the time his account has been active, Werner's managed to garner relationships with models and photographers with large followings. They'll tag one another and do share for share, a key move to building your butt on Instagram. Also popular, SFS or spam for spam, in which you like a bunch of photos on an account, so that they'll do the same in return. Apparently, this is how meaningful and genuine interactions are formed.

When I asked if, based on my dinky account, he'd be a doll and post my photo, he said sure, under one condition—that I pay him. Otherwise, my meek Instagram account, which currently has only 20 followers, would be considered hazardous to his brand.

"If I'm posting someone who has 100,000 followers, then people are going to look at the account as legit," he said.

His advice to me was to find someone else to take photos of my ass, ideally a professional, and if that wasn't possible, figure out my best angles. Also, the more skin shown the better.

It's been over a month since I started @thisasshere, and my asspirations of being an asstagram star have diminished. I was worried that taking photos of the same undies would be redundant and got lazy and uninspired by my angles. Also, absorbing countless photos of plump butt cheeks was exhausting and—let's get real—sleazy. The competition is fierce out there, and there are hundreds of thousands of posteriors that are thirstier for attention than mine. Maybe it will eventually gain a cult following. But for now, I will retire my muse, cover it up and keep it tucked away from my iPhone camera. At least until bikini season.

Follow Elianna Lev on Twitter.

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Illustration by Katie Parrish.

Being forced to live in a body that's not yours is not fun. I knew there was a barrier between the way boys and girls are supposed to look and behave. I knew there was a barrier and I wanted to cross it. I've always just wanted to strike out on my own but I didn't know about the whole beautiful gender rainbow until very recently. I'm 57 and I came out two years ago in 2013. I'm a baby as far as the trans community is concerned.

Growing up I was dealing with the stigma of being a disabled school student and also suffering gender dysphoria. Although those words weren't said back then; in my child mind I just knew I wanted to be a girl.

I was born with a condition called retinitis pigmentosa—RP for short. From the age of seven, my eyesight diminished into night blindness. There is no cure and I lost my sight altogether when I was 25.

I first noticed my deteriorating eyesight with videos; I was seeing less and less. Images started to fade and I'd miss details. It's really strange, like someone taking a movie you watch every day and splicing microscopic little things out of it. You notice it over time and then you get to a threshold and you think, shit.

I got so depressed and I kept the sadness inside. A lot of people do. It's like you're packing your heart with cotton wool. I sold my video player and tapes, and became much more insular. It was hard; I retreated into fantasy.

But strangely enough, it was losing my vision that placed me in my sanctuary and helped me overcome the self-image issues. I didn't need to worry about meeting my own eyes. My loss of eyesight became an unexpected refuge. My dysphoria continued inside, but my true self emerged and I began to let my identity grow and soothe me.

There were no mirrors to face and I was no longer gazing upon my body and finding it lacking. I saw my beautiful inner self as a girl, and a woman slowly pushing away the past. When I tossed out my boy clothing, I vowed to become a woman and would do anything to achieve my goal. I lost weight and got the body I wanted to use as a foundation to rebuild myself.

A wonderful friend helped me with make-up. She got me to the stage where I could do my eyes, lips, and face perfectly. She taught me grooming, dress sense, and much more. I got my ears pierced and wore tops and skinny jeans. I am so grateful to her for supporting me through this process.

It was a long and difficult journey to freedom. I used to loathe myself in my teens. I knew nothing about T blockers and about anything that would prevent me from changing from an androgynous child to a male.

Watch our documentary on gay conversion therapy

Exploitative employment during my teen years furthered my isolation. I was packing toys, show bags, and making door mats for a few dollars for a 40-hour week. I was suffering in silence until I quit and joined a disability activist group.

There's so much transphobia still. Transphobia is something that can be intentional—there are cruel and vicious people—but then there are also people who just don't know how to speak to you.

The worst thing about living where I do now is that everyone knew me when I was a boy, and a few harass me now that I'm presenting as female. I went to the supermarket yesterday and one of these douches in line said, "Oh they're so weird, they don't know if they're a woman or a man."

One time, I was poked in the groin by someone from behind. I swung around and started screaming. Someone threw alcohol in my eyes last year. Some idiot could come and kill me—I just don't know.

I've been through enough that now I'm made of titanium. If I could tell my younger self one thing, it would be: start to be who you really are now. Be brave and know that the future can be beautiful and made real, simply by making it your intention. Now that I'm out, I can be authentic. I can be me. I'm so much happier.

As told to Emma Do. Follow her on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

The start of university is the dawn of a new beginning. For most of us, it means all sorts of new experiences: the washing of sinks, the broadening of sexual horizons, the burgeoning comprehension of a lifetime of crippling debt, lots and lots of illegal drugs.

Of course, some of us will have tried drugs before—the solitary half a pill on A-levels results night, or the entirety of sixth form spent smoking weed while we should have been deciphering what Chaucer was really trying to say in paragraph three on page 51 of The Canterbury Tales. That said, the majority of us won't start supplementing our serotonin in earnest until we've finished all those weird ice-breakers lecturers insist on putting you through during freshers week.

Exactly how many of us, though, is hard to say for certain, as official government figures are notoriously weak when it comes to gauging levels of illicit drug use among university students. Fortunately, online student newspaper The Tab recently asked 8,000 students about their drug use, ultimately finding—among a few other things—that 70 percent of university students admitted to taking an illegal drug in their lifetime.

However, more intriguingly, it has revealed a kind of drug-taking A-Z map of British universities.

READ: The VICE Guide to House Parties

Top of the usage table is the University of Manchester, where 85 percent of students admitted to dabbling with illegal drugs—about three times the rate for 16-24-year-olds in the general population. The uni also takes top spot when it comes to the number of people who've tried cocaine, MDMA, and ketamine.

Leeds University—which outranked Manchester when The Tab did its last drug survey two years ago—came second, with 82 percent of respondents saying they'd tried some kind of illegal drug. The universities of Exeter and Sussex came joint third, with 80 percent each, and, in the battle of Oxbridge, Oxford remains just below average at 69 percent, while Cambridge is near the bottom of the table at 56 percent.

Durham University—or "Dulham," if you're the kind of person to assign derogatory nicknames to universities—has the fewest drug takers of the universities polled. A little over half of its students (55 percent) have ever taken an illegal drug, meaning the other 45 percent presumably either belong firmly to the Stella Squad, refrain for religious or personal reasons, or just really don't like the prospect of getting fucked up.

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Some students rolling around on the floor. None of this people are on drugs, it's just a photo to illustrate "students." Photo by Jake Lewis

The druggiest subject was history of art, followed by art, business, and English. Apparently Business students have very few lectures, meaning they simply have more time than anyone else to rub non-specific crystals into their gums, and art—well, "expanding your mind" with shit pills is kind of part and parcel of the course. The students least likely to take drugs were those studying dentistry, with only 45 percent having tried them.

Manchester and Leeds's dominance at the top of the table broadly reflects the official government drug use figures, which show that—London aside—the North West has the highest drug use levels in England and Wales. The two London universities in the survey, UCL and Kings, came mid-table, a result that possibly reflects the higher proportion of overseas students or those still living with their parents.

I asked Professor Fiona Measham, an expert in recreational drug use who has lived and worked in both Manchester and Durham, what makes a university full of drug users.

"Manchester and Leeds are the 24-hour party cities of the north—it's the M62 party corridor," said Measham, adding that she knows of students who drive from one city to the other between parties, from the drum and bass clubs in Manchester to techno and trance clubs in Leeds.

READ: This New England Town Is Trying to Help Opioid Users Instead of Arresting Them

Does Manchester attract drug-using students or does it breed them? "It's a chicken and egg thing," said Measham. "If you're looking for a lively student life, you are going to pick Manchester and its nightlife over Durham's rowing and rugby. Manchester is a cultural vortex. It is the dance capital of the UK. I've asked students why they chose to come to Manchester over other universities, and they have said it's because of the clubbing scene."

Manchester is an easy place to get started if you've never tried drugs before. Measham pointed out that, during freshers week, there are dealers freely handing out business cards. "That's mind-blowing for someone who comes from a small town," she said. "Availability of drugs is not a problem in Manchester—there is easy access to drugs." The same can be said in Leeds, where a student who wanted to remain anonymous told me, "I don't think it took ages for people to find dealers, because the first couple of weeks into term there were people handing out business cards and handing out fliers with deals on them."

If we're looking for the culture that accommodates drug-taking, it's important to note that there's been no real let-up on Manchester's music and club scene since the Madchester days of the early 90s. The Warehouse Project—one of the best known clubs in the country, and one of Manchester's biggest—has a massive student following and sells out 5,000 tickets every weekend during its autumn run. On top of that there's Transmission at Albert Hall in the spring and, in the summer, Parklife, a huge, 80,000-ticket festival in the middle of the city.

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Again, just students being students, not students doing drugs. Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

Katie, a 20-year-old from the Home Counties, is in the second year of a linguistics degree at the University of Manchester. She had never taken drugs before going to university. So what happened?

"The first drug I took was MDMA powder," she told me. "I freaked out a bit at first because of the rush, but my friend who had done it before sat me down and I loved it. The nightlife here is always about staying up late, until 5 AM. It seems bizarre to go out for a late one in Manchester and not take any drugs."

Katie says she's calmed down now and hasn't taken MDMA since January, but adds that her drug-taking never affected her studies.

Meanwhile, Arthur, in his second year at Durham University, says it's no wonder that Durham is bottom of the table.

"There are only a few clubs here—Durham is a small place, and a lot of students' socializing is based around university clubs, like rugby, netball, or the wine society," he told me. "They will start drinking in the college bar and move around Durham in large groups, so there's a kind of surveillance going on. It's very high risk to take drugs.

"A lot of people who come to study here are very academic. There are a lot of 9-5 days here, and not so many people can handle dealing with a comedown during four hours in a biochemistry lab."

Despite all this, Arthur reckons Durham may not be bottom for long: "In the last year there have been a few independent dance nights set up, which are getting bigger, and MDMA is getting a lot more talked about."

Want more sloshed Brits? Here are some drunk toffs at the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race:

Whether or not students went to private school doesn't appear to have too much of an effect on their drug-taking. Of the universities with the highest numbers of former private school pupils, UCL and Bristol were in the top half of The Tab's league table, while the other universities with a high number of private school entrants—Cambridge, Oxford, and Durham—occupied the bottom half.

The fact that Manchester's students are the biggest into party drugs wasn't too much of a surprise. What was perhaps even more predictable was Bristol taking top spot for the use of cannabis and nitrous oxide, and the University of Sussex—the nucleus of the UK's pot community—ranking highest for the use of the psychedelics LSD and magic mushrooms.

I asked Kris, who graduated from Sussex University last year, why he thought students there were so into their hallucinogenics.

"Brighton has a liberal scene, and I guess that breeds liberal drug use," he said. "It's probably something to do with the concentration of hippies, ex-hippies, and dreadlocked hippie-wannabes coming from private schools in London and being by the sea, [which is] especially relevant for [the] post-trip chill out.

"I remember, coming to Sussex University for the first time, that some degree of drug use is almost a rite of passage. I remember there were these huge forest raves during freshers week, deep in the Sussex Downs, that you could only find by either listening out for them and walking in the right direction, or by knowing the right people—that is, those who take drugs.

"Sussex attracts exploratory and hedonistic kinds of people, but, crucially, I think it's about being near Brighton, where there is a big influence of trippy drugs. You still get a sense of their influence walking around the city: It's colorful, buzzing, and slightly disjointed."

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This is maybe/probably what your kitchen table looked like during uni. Photo by Jake Lewis

It's long been a truism that university is the perfect setting for taking drugs: they're easy to get, you're surrounded by people your own age who also might be experimenting with them, and—more likely than not—you're free from the responsibilities of work or parenthood, meaning you don't have to sit through a 9 AM strategy meeting with your jaw still doing loops. All that might also speak to why one drug in particular—ketamine—is more loved by students than their counterparts outside university. Getting anything productive done on K is hard; during university, you're only really obliged to be productive during the essay and exam period.

A study published last year that compared drug use between students and non-students between the ages of 20 and 22 found that students who frequently visited pubs and clubs, who were not religious and who lived away from their parents were far more likely to use drugs than other students. It also revealed that students were over four times more likely than non-students to have consumed ketamine in the last 12 months. However, this is likely to have altered slightly over the last year, because a drought in ketamine has tripled prices in some areas.

So what have we learned? That students take a lot of drugs. And that stereotypes about certain universities—your Manchesters, Bristols, and Sussexes—seem to hold true. And, most tellingly, that a bit of drug use during your student years doesn't necessarily mean you're going to fail all your exams. While the University of Manchester may have the most drug-taking students in the UK, it's also ranked—alongside Oxford and Cambridge—as one of the 50 top performing universities in the world.

If you're worried about your drug use—or the drug use of a friend—you can seek advice from the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.

Follow Max on Twitter.

If you're a Republican activist in New Hampshire, you might feel like you've entered a year-long carnival season. A stream of presidential candidates has been ringing your phone and showing up at your conferences for months. And, with no sign that a clear frontrunner will emerge any time soon, the crowded field of candidates seems likely to keep up the courting for the foreseeable future.

For Democrats, though, the lead-up to 2016 has been more subdued. Hillary Clinton has a huge lead in the polls and a massive fundraising advantage over any other potential candidate on the left. In New Hampshire, she has 19 staffers on the ground, while the other candidates—or likely candidates—have virtually no presence. It's enough to make any activists hoping for an alternative to Clinton take their clipboards and go home.

But don't tell that to Elizabeth Ropp, an acupuncturist from Manchester who was an activist with Occupy New Hampshire and got involved in the state's electoral politics just before the 2012 primary. Occupy the Primary brought the movement's populist message outside GOP debates and appearances in the state that year, but Ropp said the effort didn't really get started until close to the end of the primary season.

This year, Ropp has already popped up at candidate appearances to ask questions about their military and prison policies, and about their stance on money in politics—a practice known as "bird-dogging." In the absence of a crowded Democratic field, Earlier this month she hosted a house party for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist who is challenging Clinton inthe Democratic primary.

"He's getting big receptions wherever he goes," Ropp told me. She added that Occupy veterans have joined up with old-school New Hampshire lefties, generating a surge enthusiasm for candidates who aren't named Clinton.

For progressives, one bright side of Clinton's dominance so far is that it appears to have scared other potential middle-of-the-road candidates out of the race, creating a space where a committed liberal like Sanders can run as the alternative candidate.

Don Trementozzi, president of a Communications Workers of America Local 1400 in New Hampshire, said most national unions and the AFL-CIO are holding off on endorsing a candidate, but Sanders has a clear appeal to rank-and-file union members. The Vermont Senator isn't just a veteran advocate for economic equality; he's also been a key labor ally in fights like a recent four-month strike against New Englandtelecom FairPoint by CWA 1400 and other unions.

"Our local's a big fan, our members are big fans, of Bernie Sanders," Trementozzi told me. "If I had my personal choice, it's Bernie all day long. It's not even close."

Burt Cohen, a former majority leader in the New Hampshire state Senate and a local radio host, is another early Sanders supporter. "He's exciting a lot of people," Cohen said. "I think a lot of people are tired, frankly, of having to choose the lesser of two evils. Not just progressives, but people across the board, are hungry for somebody that tells it like it is."

Of course, the chances of Sanders beating Clinton in New Hampshire—or anywhere else for that matter—are slim. But Cohen noted that at the very least, having a progressive in the race could push the frontrunner left. "Politics is theater," he said. "We've seen the media look for insurgencies. Here's a perfect opportunity."

WATCH: VICE founder Shane Smith interviews US Defense Secretary Ash Carter:

Further complicating Clinton's New Hampshire prospects is the ongoing effort to draft Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren into the 2016 race , a movement that's looking less and less likely to achieve its stated objective. Kurt Ehrenberg, New Hampshire director for Run Warren Run, said the group is continuing to sign up supporters and holds out hope that Warren will change her mind and decide to run after all. If she doesn't do that—which seems likely— the Draft Warren network will eventually have to decide whether to lend its support to another campaign—a decision that Ehrenberg says Warren herself may help determine.

"We listen to her very carefully," he told me. "We have a lot of respect for her opinions, and she could provide some guidance for us."

Regardless of which Democrats ultimately decide to challenge Clinton, New Hampshire voters are well known for their insistence that candidates take part in the state's retail politics, chatting one-on-one with voters and meeting with various minor local poobahs—something that Clinton has yet to do in the Granite State. As the Boston Globe reported Wednesday, Clinton's campaign has yet to hold a single New Hampshire event open to the general public. Democratic insiders told the newspaper that campaign aides have told them not to panic, that Clinton will eventually hold open forums in the state, but local activists are getting antsy.

"I have an encyclopedia of questions to ask Hillary Clinton," said Arnie Arnesen, another local radio host and former Democratic politician. She added that she believes Clinton needs to get out in front of issues that could hurt her on the left, and take questions about her hawkish foreign policy stance, as well as about the tough-on-crime legislation and financial deregulation measures championed by her husband two decades ago.

Clinton's lack of flesh-pressing could open up an opportunity for another Democrat to gain ground with voters starved for some candidate facetime. "We have a responsibility, I think, as the first in the nation [primary state] to give every candidate a look," said Jeff Woodburn, a Democratic state senator. He added that campaigning in the small state forces frontrunners to operate on a level playing field with other candidates.

Jackie Cilley, a Democratic state representative and former gubernatorial candidate, said that despite her desire to see a woman elected president, she has been actively sizing up alternatives to Clinton, meeting with Sanders and former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee, as well as former Virginia Governor Jim Webb and former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley. Cilley said she's taking a wait-and-see approach as she looks for a candidate to push for a progressive agenda, particularly a livable wage.

"I see that as so central to the issues that we're facing in this country," she said. "If we had a decent wage for our workers we could get rid of so many of the problems we have."

Related: How Bernie Sanders Shaped the Northeast Punk Scene

The message from the Clinton camp, not surprisingly, is that there's no reason for progressives to look further than the frontrunner. Jim Demers, a political strategist who returned my call right before walking into a Clinton strategy meeting, insisted that Clinton will soon be getting out on the ground in New Hampshire and start doing the one-on-one media interviews she's mostly avoided so far.

"I think her chances of winning are extremely strong," Demers said, "but I also know that she and the campaign aren't going to take any vote for granted and they're going to work very hard."

Follow Livia Gershon on Twitter.

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Image via Flickr user Robert Couse-Baker.

I love my fake internet friends, especially when we hate-read an article together. Retweeting and groaning in unison, we are warm and united, an angry mob pitchforking an awful thinkpiece or personal essay. It's easy to feel isolated on the web, where self-definition risks exclusion and sincerity is a punchline. But hate-reading lets us safely relate to others, only revealing a bit of ourselves: something we dislike. We don't really know each other, and no one shows up when we're pie-faced and happy, but our social networks come out and play for the flogging of an op-ed writer. I'll surf and send for days, sharing prolifically, but unable to answer, "Have you read anything good lately?" Of course not. I've been busy tearing down the pillars of the media establishment, thumbing my nose at some hapless scribbler of "actually"s and "but"s.

When you hate-read an article, you broadcast it, tweeting and Facebooking, putting its sad arguments on blast, ridiculing the writing with your friends. Hate-reading isn't some simple and stupid internet game. It's a dense and irregular communion that speaks to the strained effort of connecting with our online communities. Every published piece is a hate-read in waiting, and any misstep in language or logic, a reasonable motivation, an opportunity to reach out.

But there are many varieties of the hate-read experience.

Superficially, you have the linguistic hate-read. You hate-read the piece for its structure and word choice. The article is filled with pretentious language and contorted arguments, an Internet blogginghead hitherto-ing and alas-ing through thin ideas. You hate-read this kind of piece to attack the author's ego. "Who is this cut-rate Knausgaard struggling to eat a peach?" He's just a word-warrior, trying to stretch a 50-word idea into the kind of longform that supports multiple interstitial illustrations and several important headings.

Worse and more common are the pieces that earn their hate-reading through tortured concepts or offensive premises. " I'm sick of feeling ashamed for being privileged" is never a good look. There's a daunting burden of proof when you claim brunch is ruining America. Even Christopher Hitchens, witty demiurge of the intellectual fedorascape, couldn't spare an impossible pitch from ridicule, chucking "why women aren't funny" right into the hate-read meat grinder. These are your bread-and-butter hate-reads. You hate-read these pieces to drown out idiocy, signaling your taste level, that you share your internet friends' points of view.

Hate-reading is a ritual, almost religious, unfolding from a simple intuition and a blog post into a blessed union of angry, social souls.

After an author produces enough of the above species of hate-read, they sublimate into the assumptive hate-read. Everyone hates their work, sight-unseen. We can hate-read these authors and their opinions without reading at all. Pick a columnist at random from one of the two or three newspapers that still exist. They could publish wingdings under a hieroglyphic headline and still amass 30 comments reading "omfg I can't believe they did it again."

But, despite its neat taxonomy, hate-reading is more of a social art than a mindless routine. Hate-reading is about the experience of the hate-read, not just the content of the critique. Hate-reading is a ritual, almost religious, unfolding from a simple intuition and a blog post into a blessed union of angry, social souls.

A hate-read starts with inevitability. You know that you are going to hate-read a piece before you finish the lede. The initial sour notes—oh, God, that byline, that title—anticipate your bile. The here-it-comes is acidic, drowning out charitable reading and, eventually, the words themselves. From the first sentence, you know that you will skip and skim, strip-mining the piece for rant material. Careful comprehension would delay your pissed-off commentary. The social circle jerk demands a tight feedback loop.

A hate-read finds its teeth when it runs into its first outrageous quote: the straightest, whitest man gurgling about his unique perception of race, a New York socialite lamenting the struggles of being blessed, a famous New England novelist feigning perspective and tinkling out some flaccid foreign policy prescription. You drag your cursor across the dungy paragraph, and your hands are shaking, electrified by the knowledge that this could be the crap sermon your social choir has been waiting for. You're a screengrab and a "lolwut" away from a big tent retweet revival.

A hate-read reaches its climax once you've hit the send or share or tweet button. The nervous energy starts bubbling, primed to pop at the first fav or reshare or confirmation that your friends, selected because they share your prejudices and biases, indeed share your prejudices and biases. They jump in with their what-a-buffoon-s and literally-the-worst-s. You get to be the yawping center of the critical crowd, united in boo-chortling at the sad sack who tried to put words on the web.

The curdled cream spoils to the top and the tortured piece lands at number one on the most-emailed, lifted and buzz-forward lists.

But a hate-read doesn't culminate in the mob violence that it courts. The conclusion of a hate-read is the analytics bump, inflated numbers and torqued virtual meters, the back-slaps around the stats screen. The curdled cream spoils to the top and the tortured piece lands at number one on the most-emailed, lifted and buzz-forward lists. He's on fire! Our readers can't get enough. The writer is sent back to the bottom of his long-empty barrel and begged to scrape out a thousand more words on millennials and Los Angeles, Brooklyn and Mad Men.

So why do we hate-read? Why is it so pleasurable? A simple answer is that the pieces that inspire our anger will be more widely shared than those that leave us feeling cold. Research shows that a hate-read tweet or Facebook post will be popular. It will reward us with the engagement of our peers. Katherine Milkman and Jonah Berger, Wharton professors studying the motivations for social behaviors like internet sharing, argue that the most emotion-inspiring content is shared the most frequently. "... content that evokes high-arousal emotions (i.e., awe, anger, and anxiety), regardless of their valence, is more viral."

But an expectation for successful sharing doesn't fully explain the bliss of a hate-read, the intense communal aspect of group criticism. Milkman suggested to me that hate-reading is popular, "perhaps, because the internet is inherently a lonely experience and things that rile us up make it more natural to reach out and create communities in that lonely space."

Related on Motherboard: A Clippy-Like Assistant Makes Your Life Hell in This Game

Hate-reading works through the magic of strong emotion mashed-up with personal detachment, bonding with clever friends in the budget fellowship of safe, shared disdain. Hate-reads balance the intensity of angry emotions with the depersonalized luxury of not committing too much. In order to hate, you don't have to show what you are, you just have to show what you aren't. Internet anger is easily relatable, linking its devotees in the fuzzy borders of its imprecision. In the via negativa of net disgust, hate-readers are united in contempt without risking the risable spotlight on their positive beliefs. There's joy in resigning the particulars of your worldview, in becoming another chirping voice in the chorus of internet indignation. Hate-reads stop being writing at all and become elements of sacrament as we chant and wail in the liturgy of shared, digital emotion. This is my dadbod, broken for you. This is my Benghazi, spilt for you.

This self-forgetting follows a similar pattern to the sharing of guilty pleasures and disavowed passions, the I-know-better-buts that we share, distancing ourselves from the content we consume. "Everyone knows this is silly, but what color IS the dress?" Whether hate-reading a thinkpiece on the intersectionality of Marmaduke or retweeting (with caveat) a quiz for teenagers—which Disney title-sequence is most like your life !?—our social networks reward strongly emotional content that we don't have to claim.

Related: Meet Mike Burns, the man behind @DadBoner

We pay for the ease of simple online connection with the wages of self-violence. Online networks thrive on fungibility. We have to become cartoons of widespread and basic beliefs to find widespread and basic acceptance. We shove our avatars away from the mess of personhood, leaving our virtual friends with the lightness of sketchy rages and disowned opinions. It's easier to relate to a few bullet points than an entire personality. We are just the this-is-bad-s that we parrot, communal tokens instead of complicated humans.

Hate-reading is a social bargain, trading a measure of self for the shared experience of anger. Surely, there is a hate-read to be written about the detrimental effects of hate-reading. It will probably be composed by a men's rights activist, who claims that hate-reading is "censure" or "censor" or "in clear, de facto, defiance of the first amendment." But, I'm not interested in the network casualties of hate-reading. I want to know what the personal effects are of being a hate-reader.

Hate-reading isn't bad, but it is Faustian. It's a powerful leveling tool against the bully pulpit of "famous men" and "staff writers" to publish and reproduce the power structures that gave them their platform. But it's self-alienating. I'm worn out after hate-readings. I don't have much original thought to give back. Lost to mob discontent, I have to claw back to my own ideas. When I find them, they feel unimpressive. How will these thoughts possibly arouse the kind of reactions that my hate-reading easily won? What do I even think? I can't recognize my thoughts or keep them apart from the thoughts cast in the negative space of my friends' expectations and favorable opinions. Even worse, my thoughts, my ideas, if I do find them, will probably go into a piece that will be hate-read.

Like this one.

Erik Hinton is on Twitter.

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Illustration by Stephen Maurice Graham.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

It might be that you've never considered how history as we know it would be if the Events of Popular Video Games were factored into account(s). But you're here now, so you might as well stick around for a minute.

Think of school. For some of you, this might be a current concern. For others, so long ago that to even begin to poke at the memory is to break down in floods of tears over that time what's-her-face flatly rejected you in the middle of morning break, in the spring of 1994, in front of the kids you wanted to be mates with but could never breach the circle of. The scars heal, somewhat, but time can't cure the ache now, can it?

But it's while you're at school that the Roman Empire and Ancient Egypt fill your thoughts for, like, an hour per week, scrawls of text spilling over ruled pages, crappy papier-mâché sarcophagi littering classroom worktops. (At least, that's how it was for me. You probably have iPads and Segways, now.) And video games have long mined this era for narrative inspiration, sowing seeds of change as they've gone, like little pixelated Scott Bakulas.

Xbox One launch title Ryse: Son of Rome features a wealth of they-really-existed-because-they're-in-books-and-stuff characters, like the famously fiddling Emperor Nero and the Queen of the Iceni, Boudica. You play as the couldn't-have-a-blander-name Marius Titus, and it's up to you keep Nero from harm while repelling the rebellious Celts. A whole bunch more happens, too, with gods and that, assuming you can see its story through—and a key moment is the deadly face-off between Boudica and Titus. Guess who wins.

In the Real World, the actual circumstances surrounding Boudica's defeat, and death, are rather flaky. But what's fairly certain is that she was not, as Ryse depicts, decapitated in Rome by a nobody. Had she been, you'd no doubt see a good few statues of Marius Titus during a city break to the Italian capital.

But this kind of playing with historical fact—the game's treatment of Nero is also adjusted to fit its own narrative design—mightn't have made all that much difference to how Rome's fortunes ultimately fared. Once Nero had passed, the Empire would last only another 100 years before Marcus Aurelius' son, the "guileless" and ignorant Commodus, would set in motion misrule that would collapse everything his predecessors had worked for. Titus was some years shy of having a major effect on the Empire's fortunes.

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'Ryse: Son of Rome,' Vengeance trailer.

Ryse, at least, retains realism in the way it presents its characters. Set across the Mediterranean in the Egypt of teenage pharaoh "Tutenkhamen" (sic), 2003's Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy built a world full of anthropomorphic creatures cohabiting with humans. Bird-like beings call the ancient city of Abydos home, while Heliopolis is run by bipedal dogs speaking perfect English. Imagine what horrors a genuine curse of the pharaohs would wreak upon tomb-botherers had these ungodly chimeras actually mixed, and mated, with the people of Cleopatra et al. It'd be like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, only several fold and lasting for 500 years. You wouldn't want to go diving in the Red Sea of a summer holiday, that's for sure.

The likes of Age of Empires and other real-time strategy titles referencing historical events are great examples of video games that twist the past as we know it through player-determined events. The Microsoft-published series has looked to the Iron Age, the Middle Ages, and the early modern era (among others) as backdrops for its campaigns, while Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms games and Dynasty Warriors spin-offs have given gamers a say in the fate of China's Han Dynasty.

Perhaps, through the Romance... player's ineptitude, Cao Cao fails to take his place as a key player in the Three Kingdoms period, which could, if mirrored by history, result in catastrophe for what is now the city of Xuchang. His policies on agriculture and education brought stability to a region in crisis, and his love of poetry wound influence what was written during the Tang dynasty. Basically, no Cao Cao where he should be, and the China of today becomes a very different place.

Like games? Check out our doc 'The Mystical World of Magic: The Gathering'

Something else we're all made to sit through in school history lessons is the First and Second World Wars— and with good reason, too, you ungrateful shits. The outcome of these indelible conflicts has determined so much about how we live our lives today. I mean, we could all be speaking German had things gone differently, right? That's what the old dudes in the pub, the guys who can make a pint last two and a half hours, tell me. I've no reason not to believe them—it's not like they're pissed on a mug of low-booze bitter and some pork scratchings.

The First World War hasn't been all that common a backdrop for video game plots—I can think of Valiant Hearts: The Great War, and the old Red Baron Atari game, which I only recall because of its Xbox Game Room inclusion, but I'd have to turn to Wikipedia to list any more. But the Second? Flipping millions of them.

Let's talk Wolfenstein 3D. According to the story behind id Software's first-person-shooter-popularizing PC game of 1992, one man alone is responsible for the fall of the Nazi Party—William "BJ" Blazkowicz. He annihilates countless enemy soldiers before encountering the big man himself, Adolf, at the game's climax. Except Adolf's not cowering in a bunker, tearing himself up over whether to pop a pill or pull a trigger—he's wearing a robotic suit and packing enough chain gun heat to bring down an entire battalion. Now, our BJ's a tough guy in video game terms, but one actual, real-life man against that? Come on, now. If Wolfenstein was how World War II really went down, then Hitler would have stomped out the Allied resistance with one mechanical boot, and half the population of East Anglia would be chowing down on bratwurst this evening.

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Einstein eliminates Hitler at the beginning of 'Command and Conquer: Red Alert.'

Stay up to speed with what's happening in the modern world—read VICE News

Hitler's died a variety of ways, according to video games. In Assassin's Creed lore, he's a rogue Templar ultimately taken care of by the assassins that give the series its name. Sniper Elite V2 gives you the chance to shoot his balls off. (Yes, plural.) At the end of Bionic Commando on the NES, a revived Hitler, aka "Master D," summons the Albatross (a big space ship thing) to repel Nathan Spencer, only to go down with it. Command and Conquer: Red Alert really pushes the alternative reality agenda in its portrayal of his demise, though. The 1996 RTS hit's prologue shows Albert Einstein traveling back in time, from the 1940s to 1924, where he eliminates the future Nazi leader with a shake of his hand. How? To quote the scientist himself: "The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination."

Well-known figures from history have a habit of popping up in games—just this year, the inventor Nikola Tesla played an important role in the brief, muddled story of The Order: 1886, while the next Assassin's Creed, the Victorian London-set Syndicate, will star Charles Darwin and Dickens in a DLC mission. Drumming buster Phil Collins had a cameo in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories where you could, if you wanted to, kill him. Sort of, anyway, because he just keeps singing. Nothing, not even fiery molotovs, can stop the (soft) rock.

But all of these people are ancient. What about more recent happenings that might entirely change the way we see our world? Well, there's the 2007-set events of 1999's Outcast to consider, where silly scientists conspire to crack open a black hole right next to Earth. Naturally, "you" have to fix that situation—but let's say you didn't. You wouldn't be reading this, now, for one thing. If the happenings of Half-Life weren't confined to the imaginations of the Valve team, we'd also be right in the shit right now, given its 00s setting and no clear resolution to the problems that began at Black Mesa.

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The Battle of Wounded Knee display in 'Bioshock Infinite.'

Slip back just a few years and the 80s-set Hotline Miami games paint a pretty sorry picture for anyone living in major American cities at the time. If your mother survived the fallout, chances are you're scrolling through this, checking the apocalypse-proof Twitter on your phone, preparing yourself a bowl of refreshing sludge, and gently stroking your abnormally proportioned chin at the same time, courtesy of your four arms, you nuclear freak.

But anyway, we've both been here long enough. Metal Gear Solid 3 alters events of the Cold War. The God of War series does horrible things to Greek mythology (which is real history, right?). Resistance tells us that the world got invaded by aliens in the 1950s, and everything that happens in Bioshock Infinite might well have played out differently had it not featured a protagonist entirely messed up in the head by what "he" witnessed at Wounded Knee. The same game also altered the events of the Boxer Rebellion, and features a statue of John Wilkes Booth, the man who shot dead Abraham Lincoln—in the world Infinite presents, or at least its little floating corner of it, this is a man to be eulogized, not demonized. I don't want to think about where any of us would be right now had Shaquille O'Neal not defeated the malevolent mummy Sett Ra during the course of Shaq Fu, and here's something even more terrifying: imagine if Chuck Rock hadn't overcome bully boy Garry Gritter back in 16bit Paleolithic times. I get chills.

And through it all, through the entire history of video games messing with what we consider the truth that preceded our present miserable existences, everything's made more sense than even a few minutes of Prometheus. Which goes to prove that video games are better than movies. Probably.

Follow Mike Drive on Twitter.

Sun Araw is the solo project of Long Beach-based Cameron Stallones, who used to be in a psych rock band called Magic Lantern and has also worked with Pocahaunted. These days, he's making experimental music in the true sense of the word, setting up elaborate semiotic frameworks and even inventing his own terminology. This is less for pretension's sake than for what Cameron described in the short interview I did with him as "creating a world."

On the new album, Gazebo Effect, he worked with Alex Grey (of experimental label DPI), and Mitchell Brown, to build a psychedelic universe of mathematics and electronics that somehow sounds organic. Check out the interview we did with Stallones below while you listen to his new track, "Processional," which appears on Gazebo Effect.

VICE: Can you explain this new project to people who've never heard your music before?
Sun Araw: It has always been a true solo project, every record composed, performed, and produced by myself, but with some guests here and there for special instrumentation. The live aspect has been fully collaborative since the beginning (in recent years, steadily with Alex Gray of DPI), and it's a continually inspiring parallel practice.

And you release this live stuff, right?
I've been releasing some live sets on my Bandcamp that are a collaborative interpretation of Sun Araw album material, with each iteration of the band numbered to chronicle the collaborators. The Trio is formed of myself, Alex Gray, and Mitchell Brown, who is a melon-expansion technician and 1/4" magnetic tape cowboy, long-legendary in Los Angeles. In the end, the process for making this music crept up unawares while we were just coolin'.

"PROCESSIONAL" - S. Araw "Trio" XI, from the album GAZEBO EFFECT from sunaraw on Vimeo.

I've always enjoyed the visual component of your work and the way you present it. What are your influences?
I really try to feel my way to it intuitively. Though I think most of the things I see that electrify me are other records and sometimes books that seem very personal and like a world. My aim is to generate potency and generosity in an object. I'd like to [create a world] for anyone to enter who might enjoy that sort of thing.

Is that basically your entire conceptual goal with this project, then?
Since we recorded it, I've been working to discover what it was. We talked a lot as we were working about the nature of the production chain we had made. [The process] involved either Alex or I (or both of us) running into Mitchell's 1/4" reel-to-reel machine, which he manipulated by hand. So what we were doing was obstructed before it came back to us as audio in the room. For me, the experience was like playing guitar into a wood chipper, which was just fantastic.

Can you talk about this relationship you've mentioned in the past between "interpretation" and "obstruction"?
Obstruction is a form of interpretation and it's also a type of composition, meaning, a "picture of something." By this I just mean that when you make a move of any type, what comes back is a certain shape as your move has passed through a present structure of realities.

Hm.
If you throw a ball or something, it will make a curved shape in the air. Certain things we do go just as we imagine, but others do not come close. Conceivably, the discrepancy or the quality of what comes back as compared to what you intended tells you something about the place you are in. This is sonar. We intentionally placed [Mitchell] as one of those structures of realities between our actions and their effects. Due to his unique musical sensibility, it became something very lovely.

Check out more from Sun Araw here.

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Canberra is the capital of both Australia and school excursions. It doesn't get a great rap from anyone interested in nightlife; it's too clean they say, and too PC. But then Canberra is a city full of well-paid domestic expats with not much to do after hours. Surely there's something going on.

The drugs stats say there is. At the last report, Canberra saw a 52 percent increase in trafficking charges—from 67 in the 2011-12 period to 102 in the last financial year. It has also been reported that there has been a 33 percent increase in drug manufacturing over that same time. So to understand what this scene looks like from the inside, we spoke to a Canberra drug dealer about what they see, and what we don't.

I started dealing around two and a half years ago. I had a friend who was dealing and I was impressed with the way he consistently turned over large sums of money each weekend. Also, because he only sold to people we knew or associates of theirs, there was never any trouble. Canberra has never been a place I've felt watched so I got in with him and started using his suppliers.

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Monday to Thursday is pretty quiet here. Then when the weekends roll around, I start work. On a typical night, I'll start with dinner at a friend's or out in the city where I'll get a call or message. I know most of my customers so I'll generally be selling to a large group rather than one person. I then go back home to pick up what they want, then drive it out to them or meet them halfway. Canberra is spread out and driving can take a lot of time. Some nights I will be making four to five trips home.

I sell to an even split between public servants and tradesmen, a.k.a. tradies. Most of the public servants are around 27-years-old while the tradies would be 22 or younger. I used to prefer selling to tradies because they buy more—it's phenomenal how many people take drugs on residential and commercial work sites. But now I'm finding more public servants are buying than ever before. Maybe it's because of the amount of money they make. Or it could also be because they can sniff some coke at work and be productive and unnoticeable. Occasionally I get a call from people buying coke for "friends." When I prod a bit further these "friends" can range from local politicians to Canberra's professional sportsmen. Also without giving too much away, some footy players love coke. They enjoy splurging at home, away from the public eye.

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Per week I am usually selling anywhere from seven to ten grams of coke, as opposed to an ounce of MDMA per month. People buy so much more coke because they think they need more of it to have fun. It wears off quicker so I guess that's why they're buying more too. There's also a demand for weed, but here in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) it's legal to grow your own up to a certain size. I find most people won't bother with dealers for a small amount of pot.

One of the reasons I feel safe here is the lack of police who actually bust in Canberra. As it's something of a halfway point between Sydney and Melbourne, the larger busts pass us by. Having said that, there was a recent raid in Hume, a Canberra industrial area. I have a friend in the Australian Federal Police (AFP) who told me that it was actually the utility company, ActewAGL, who discovered the lab and alerted the police. They were testing the sewers for hazards before entering a manhole, only to discover a lab was pouring dangerous chemicals down the drain. The chemicals tested positive for methamphetamine by-products and the lab was raided.

Check out our documentary on Australia's biker crisis:

Most drugs in Canberra aren't made here. They're brought in on trucks from Sydney or Melbourne, mostly by the Rebels, who are the bikie gang with the monopoly. Personally I don't have an affiliation with bikers (a.k.a. bikies), but I know most other big time dealers do, further up the chain. For me bikies are hard line criminals and they don't mess about. Anyone who is pushing as much ice as they do through the capital is worth staying away from. They wouldn't feel ethically compromised by what they do. I'm not saying I do either, but the difference is that I see people having fun at a bar, not smacking out on ice and destroying their lives. Selling drugs for me has turned me away from taking them.

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Canberra has a lot of wann-be dealers. Their biggest mistake is that they're too flashy with their drugs, money, and connections. Others just sell enough to cover the costs of getting high. But I'm a big believer in don't get high off your own supply. It's a cliche, but by sticking to this I usually turn around three grand a month profit, with the majority of that coming from coke. I buy it for around 80 to 85 percent of what I sell it for, depending on how pure it is.

The idea of being caught has never haunted me. I'm aware of the risks but I think if you're smart about how you do business, dealing here is pretty low risk. I'm happy with what I've achieved in under three years. I've had a lot of disposable income, which is something I'd never have had otherwise. I can't see myself doing this forever though, maybe not even for another 12 months. We'll see.

As told to Dan Nulley. Follow him on Twitter.

This story was co-published with the Marshall Project.

If you thought violent biker gangs were a relic of the Altamont era, Sunday's shootout at a Waco, Texas restaurant might have come as a shock. A long simmering beef between the Bandidos and Cossacks boiled over into gunfire. When police arrived at the scene, gang members shot at them, too, leaving nine bikers dead, 18 people injured, and 170 suspects in police custody. Over 100 weapons have been confiscated.

The scale of this incident dwarfs a typical urban gang confrontation, says Harold Pollack, co-director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab and an expert on gangs and guns. We talked to Pollack about why biker gang violence typically gets so little attention. He believes the Waco incident confounds our expectations regarding the race and geographic location of people who perpetrate crime, causing us to see biker gangs as more of a "curiosity" than a threat.

Dana Goldstein: How does the shootout in Waco differ from the gang violence you study in Chicago?
I have never encountered a gang incident in Chicago remotely like this. The number of perpetrators involved—not to mention the nine deaths—far exceed the typical urban gang-related shooting. Maybe there was some gang incident in Chicago like this decades ago. But this sort of pitched battle? I've never heard of anything like it. If these biker gang members were non-white, I think this would cause a national freak out.

One of the shocking parts of this incident is that after the police arrived, there was a gunfight between the gang members and the authorities.
Urban gangs and criminal organizations very rarely get into gun battles with police. They certainly have access to powerful weaponry. Police around the country periodically capture large caches of AR-15s and other weapons in cities. Yet when they break down the door to a gang safe house or a drug location in a city, whatever weapons might be piled on a mattress in the adjoining room are left where they are. They aren't picked up and used to attack the police. The people who do attack police are typically cornered individuals or people with serious mental health problems.

These biker gangs have a long history in organized crime. They began with restless, traumatized veterans returning home after World War II. Today, biker gangs still act as a sort of private militia that police can't always control, patrolling festivals and other events. Why don't we pay more attention to them?Geography may be part of the answer. There are not a lot of outlaw biker gangs in gentrifying Brooklyn and other key media centers. Of course, the number of deaths is lower overall with these groups. You don't have the daily deluge of homicides the way we would in Chicago. But I do think that our views about urban crime are so framed by race and inequality in a variety of ways. When criminal activity seems unrelated to these factors, it doesn't hit our national dopamine receptors in quite the same way. People tend to view these motorcycle gangs as a kind of curiosity.

So are the biker gangs a real problem, in your view?
I don't know. Some outlaw biker gangs have certainly sold a lot of meth or been involved in other drug distribution. There is something very 1971 Rolling Stone about this scene. I couldn't quite believe it when I read this news.

Interested in biker gangs? Check out our documentary about a biker gang full of former Nazis

The police in Waco recovered 100 weapons. Is that concentration of weapons something you've seen in Chicago?
We have widespread illegal gun challenges, but 100 weapons at one crime scene is absolutely remarkable.

How do gun laws play into the scale of the Waco incident versus urban gun violence? In Texas, it has been legal to carry a concealed, licensed weapon since 1995. On Monday, the day after the shootout, the Texas Senate debated a bill that passed the House in April that would allow open carrying of guns, and could prevent police officers from asking individuals if they have a license.
More stringent regulation of underground gun markets to prevent prohibited people from gaining access to guns would be very helpful. You do that through better law enforcement and policy interventions to block access to guns among people who are already "prohibited possessors"—legally barred from possessing these weapons. No one strategy will dramatically address the problem. But improved background checks and a variety of policing strategies appear promising to deter this type of crime. So do laws that deter people who do own illegal guns from carrying these weapons on the street or in a bar if they happen to get into some altercation.

The Bandidos are an international organization. One infamous 1996 shooting between them and the Hells Angels took place in Copenhagen. Do any Chicago gangs have such far-flung affiliates?
Yes, some do have far-flung connections, particularly in South and Central America. That's a virtually inevitable byproduct of a globalized world.

This interview was conducted by Dana Goldstein for The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization focused on the US criminal justice system. You can sign-up for their newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

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The world of Mexican wrestling, known as Lucha Libre, is filled with colorful and mysterious characters. They usually hide behind masks, giving the audience only a glimpse of what it's like to be a superhero. In this world, average people become larger-than-life personas.

One of these personalities is a wrestler known as Piñatita. He's a regular fixture and a fan favorite at one of Los Angeles's Lucha VaVoom, a showcase of Mexican wrestling, burlesque, music, and comedy, all rolled into one. What sets him apart and often highlights him is the fact that he's a mini-luchador—a little person wrestler. To outsiders, the pairing of mini-luchadores with a sport that glorifies physical strength and size may seem like an odd tandem. However, the culture of Mexican wrestling is one that actually highlights their size. In fact, you'll often see Piñatita fighting alongside his larger counterparts, pulling off dangerous and dazzling moves mid-air.

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But when he takes off his mask—something fans rarely get to see—he's an ordinary man named Arnold Virgen, hailing from Guadalajara, Mexico. He's a wrestler first and foremost, but he's also an entertainer having appeared on various television shows, usually mimicking different Hispanic personalities. He's also a devoted and religious family man with a 12-year-old daughter and a baby on the way, living a quiet and simple life two hours outside of Los Angeles.

It's quite the contrast to the surreal, extravagant world of Lucha Libre, but he understands that the two worlds are completely separate. In a way, he's not unlike a comic book superhero, living dual lives. In one, he's hailed as a champion. In the other, he's just like the rest of us—except that he has to deal with the unique challenges of being a little person.

Los Angeles-based photographer theonepointeight spent a week with Piñatita, documenting his life both inside and outside of the ring. He followed him through his vibrant performances at Lucha VaVoom's Cinco de Mayo event, into his home, and even to the ultrasound appointment for his baby-to-be, offering a rare glimpse into the life of Piñatita, LA's littlest luchador.

See more from Lucha VaVoom on their website.

See more of theonepointeight's photography on his website and Instagram.