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Photo via Wikimedia Commons

A famous Quebec journalist who wrote about interviewing Muammar Gaddafi's son, hanging out with Serbian snipers and witnessing a brutal torturer's execution allegedly made it all up, according to an investigative report by a Montreal newspaper.

François Bugingo, who has contributed to Radio-Canada, 98.5 fm, TVA, and the Journal de Montréal over a career spanning more than a decade in Quebec, was suspended by at least three news outlets after the revelations emerged on Saturday. Announcing he will temporarily retire from the public eye, he said that he is "staggered by the attack" and will confront the allegations "in due course."

Isabelle Hachey of La Presse broke the story, following almost a month of research. Tipped off by an inconsistency in a column on Libya, Hachey went on to find numerous problems with Bugingo's international reporting. She spoke with sources he mentioned that had no recollection of working with him.

The alleged falsifications extend over twenty years, back to the time he supposedly spent as a young reporter in Rwanda.

This February, Bugingo reported on his Journal de Montréal blog that a torturer who worked for Muammar Gaddafi told him "I hate what a bad man the Guide has made of me" before his execution in Misrata. This could not possibly have happened, according to Hachey, because Bugingo was not even in the Libyan city at the time. Challenged with the allegation, Bugingo told Hachey he "didn't go to Misrata" and "must have read about it somewhere." Hachey told VICE that she recorded these admissions on tape during a nearly two-hour interview with Bugingo on May 15th.

She also found holes in his reporting from several other conflict zones, including Rwanda, Somalia, Iraq, and Bosnia. While appearing on a Quebec morning show, Bugingo once talked about the time he supposedly spent with two journalists in Sarajevo. He described how a Serbian sniper pulled out a bottle of alcohol and played the guitar for him. But the journalists he mentioned told La Presse that he wasn't with them at all.

On Monday, Hachey released another report about a supposed meeting between Bugingo and Saif Gaddafi, son of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, while he was held by rebel forces. Bugingo mentioned the meeting in his column more than two and a half years after the fact, but Gaddafi's jailers told Hachey that he never met with a single Western journalist at the time Bugingo claims.

Hachey told VICE that she had suspicions about Bugingo's reporting for a long time, but only dove into the story after she read his report about the meeting with Gaddafi. Bugingo had posted an itinerary of his over 3,300 km travel schedule on Twitter that seemed incompatible with the time needed to report for his articles. He also claimed to have spoken to Gaddafi through a struggling Arabic interpreter, despite the fact that the dictator's son, a former student of the London School of Economics, spoke excellent English.

"After that I really took the time to search through all of his blogs and columns," she said.

Hachey told VICE that Bugingo was "polite and courteous" as she confronted him with inconsistencies in his reporting "point by point."

"He didn't seem surprised or indignant, but he was certainly on the defensive," she said. "He did seem to have the impression of going through an inquisition."

Bugingo responded to some of Hachey's questions by telling her that he was working on a book about his exploits, and that he needed to keep some details secret until it was published.

"Every time he would say, 'you will read about it in my book'," she said.

Bugingo has released two statements since the revelations. The first, published on his Facebook page, said that his journalism has always been "verified" and "solid." He said that he would defend his integrity "in due course, including on the issues concerned." Bugingo did not, however, directly deny the admissions attributed to him in Hachey's article, and did not offer any explanation for the inconsistencies she found in his reporting. In a second message, released through his lawyer, he said he was temporarily withdrawing from the public sphere, in order to preserve "peace for my family and friends."

"I have promised to defend my integrity and prove my professionalism," he said. "However, I will take the time that is necessary for me to respond to these allegations."

He did not reply to VICE's requests for further comment.

The Professional Federation of Journalists of Quebec said Saturday that it was "very concerned" about the alleged falsifications, which it said could "stain the credibility of the journalistic profession." The organization said it would invite Bugingo to explain himself before deciding whether to suspend him. He has already been suspended from his work with TVA, the Journal de Montréal and the Montreal radio station 98.5 fm.

Hachey said that it shouldn't have been up to her to dig into Bugingo's reporting.

"It should have been done by his employers," she told VICE. "The culture of fact checking you see in American newsrooms doesn't really exist in Quebec. There's a relation of trust between the reporter and the editor. Maybe this will change those practices."

She said that the episode would certainly hurt the image of journalism in Quebec, but emphasized that it was also journalism that brought the matter to light.

Despite a relative dearth of coverage in English Canada, the scandal has rocked Quebec. The hashtag #bugingo has been used just under 14,000 on Twitter since Saturday, with an estimated 94% of Canadian mentions in Quebec.

If the allegations prove to be true, Bugingo will join the infamous company of Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, formerly respected journalists who were found to play fast and loose with the facts.

The greatest irony of the episode might that Bugingo, who has served as vice president of Reporters without Borders and president of the group's now-defunct Canadian chapter, has criticized journalists who do exactly what he's been accused of.

"Media professionals have a duty to repeatedly denounce the downward slide of Fox News and other propaganda channels," he wrote on his blog. "First, because it's our professional and ethical duty. Second, because it can affect our credibility before our audience.

"In wars and other tragedies, truth is often the first victim," he said. "It would be dramatic if those who call themselves defenders of truth... contribute toward burying it."

Follow Arthur White on Twitter.

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Good news, everyone!

It's attack ad season again.

With just 147 interminable days left of hearing three grown men crowing like frat boys chirping each other outside of an East Side Mario's, the Conservatives have released a new attack ad targeting Justin Trudeau.

And it's really bad.

Open on boardroom 115. A landline is ringing.

We've got a table of four very important business people—Old Dude, Old Not-White Dude, Woman in Blazer, and Woman in Cardigan. Basically, sub-sections to represent the entire country.

"Let's talk about Justin," says Old White Dude.

"I see he's included his picture," lays down Cardigan. She's holding Justin Trudeau's resume. Sick burn. "Let's start with the experience section: nothing about balancing a budget or making a payroll."

At this point, you're realizing that the ad was cast with the very best actors that Discount Dave's D-List Talent Agency has to offer.

"Didn't he say budgets balance themselves?" asks Blazer.

Evidently, budgets don't balance themselves, which is why the Conservatives had to sell off a bunch of government-held shares at a discount, and move a bunch of money around in order to give the impression that they balanced the budget.

"And what does the experience section say about keeping us safe?" asks Cardigan, who is the only person not wearing a suit. It is not casual Friday yet, Susan.

"Well, he wants to send winter jackets to Syria."

Yes, and so does the current Canadian government. ("Canada is helping... provide emergency assistance, including support to help people survive the winter.")

"Like that'll stop ISIS," says sassy Old Not-White Dude.

At this point, it becomes very clear that the shadowy cabal of Illuminati who are hiring the prime minister are not big fans of Justin Trudeau.

"So what are his policies?" asks confused Old Dude.

Cut the second tax bracket by 1.5 percent, get the provinces to adopt a carbon-pricing scheme, fix Canada's access to information regime...

"Legalizing marijuana!" says Old Not-White Guy. "Is that the biggest problem we have to solve?"

It is, apparently, if you're the Harper government, which has spent a decade trying to jack up penalties for small-time pot dealers (tens of thousands of Canadians are charged with drug possession each year, including thousands of youths) and cut off dying cancer patients' ability to grow their own medical marijuana.

"He has some growing up to do."

Cardigan disapprovingly notes that Trudeau wants to cancel income splitting. (Income splitting, as you may recall, is a tax loophole for about 10 percent of the country that disproportionately benefits rich families.)

"I guess pension splitting for seniors is next," says Old White Dude.

That's a pretty terrible guess, Old White Dude, as Trudeau said earlier this month that he is "going to protect income-splitting for seniors."

The phone in the background is still ringing. Are these the only four people working at the top-secret prime minister-hiring bunker?

"I'm not saying no forever, but not now," says Cardigan.

In case you're wondering: yes, it's a little weird to endorse your opponent for a later election in your attack ad.

Trudeau 2073!

"Nice hair, though." Shade thrown, Old Not-White Guy.

Cardigan writes "JUST NOT READY" on Trudeau's resume, which doesn't really feel necessary (and most HR departments frown on writing on resumes). The sound of a felt marker squeaking on glossy paper was added to remind everyone in the country just how fucking annoying attack ads are.

The whole ad is supposed to scare the shit out of people who wear cardigans and/or are old, by conjuring the fear that Justin Trudeau doesn't know what he's doing.

Just like Stephane Dion was not a leader and Michael Ignatieff didn't come back for you, the Conservatives are hoping to swiftboat Trudeau by making up a bunch of shit and throwing it at him.

But while those grainy ads—with their low-voiced movie-trailer-narrator and their American-style muckracking—proved effective in kneecapping the previous Liberal leaders, these anti-Trudeau ads are pretty much just depressingly hilarious, like watching a middle-aged guy's video dating profile from 1993.

At least when the Manitoba NDP did it, they hired decent actors.

So get ready, because whenever you turn on a TV or stream a Youtube video this summer, you're going to be confronted with this Conservative ad.

The other parties are going to be rolling out ads, too, but they don't have nearly as much money to do so.

Thomas Mulcair has an ad that features him in a hipster cafe, not at all looking completely out of place.

The Liberals also released an ad today that features Justin Trudeau talking like. there is. a period. after every. second word.

And the Conservatives have another ad, featuring Sad Harper sitting at his desk, all alone, late at night.

But it'll be the Trudeau attack ad that you see again, and again, and again.

You know why? Because the Conservative Party has (and this is the proper accounting term) a fuckload of money.

By the end of 2013, the party had $11 million in unrestricted cash in the bank to spend. Since then, they've raised another $27 million.

Given that parties are only allowed to spend $20 million, give or take a few million, in the court of the election campaign (roughly between September 13 and October 19), that means they'll have a lot of money left over. And there's no real rules on how parties spend money or run advertising outside of an election period.

So, do the math: the Conservatives are going to dump so much money into blanketing the airwaves of this summer, you're going to want to take a shotgun to your TV.

Follow Justin Ling on Twitter.

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Andrea Ng. Photo via Daily VICE

Andrea Ng was 16 years old when she uploaded a selfie she took getting ready for a high school dance to Facebook. It was innocent enough; she and her friends were having fun putting on makeup and posing in front of the bathroom mirror.

The girl from Richmond, BC didn't think much of the photo at the time and had forgotten all about it until three years later, when it came back to haunt her. She has since spent two years of her life fighting to have it removed from the internet.

The whole thing started in May 2013 when Andrea's friend sent her a link to a Facebook account that was using her name and the school dance selfie. Except the photo had been doctored to make it look like she was topless. The pink dress she was wearing in the original image was erased and breasts had been superimposed onto her chest.

And to make matters worse, the impostor was on a mission to add as many of her friends and family as possible.

"Whenever it happened, I was so upset I couldn't sleep. I didn't even know how to make it stop," Andrea told me recently. "I kept waking up in the morning, worried it could happen again."

Andrea, now 21 and a public relations student at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, has been trying to stop her unidentified cyberstalker, who has since circulated that photo on social media using multiple fake accounts.

She got some relief when Facebook removed the fake account after she reported it in 2013. But this February, the image cropped up again, this time on Tumblr. And it went viral. She says the photo has been reblogged on hundreds of other pages. After Tumblr took down the original page, Andrea thought the whole ordeal was really over for good.

Then in April, Andrea's boyfriend called her at work and told her the topless photo had made its way onto Twitter. Her stalker had created a Twitter account with her name and was following her colleagues and the companies she had been applying to for internships.

Andrea was in full panic mode and tried the RCMP again, still to no avail. She says an officer told her they couldn't investigate further, partly because she didn't appear to be suicidal over the situation.

"I was pissed. I was speechless," she told me. She thought of Amanda Todd, the 15-year-old from nearby Port Coquitlam who committed suicide in 2012 after a cyberbully threatened to post a topless photo of her online, and wondered why her case wasn't taken seriously.

Canada's new anti-cyberbullying law (Bill C-13) came into effect in March and makes it illegal to share "intimate images" of anyone without their consent, but it's unclear how this provision will apply in cases like Andrea's, where the image is fake.

Now, Andrea has decided to take matters into her own hands, and put her public relations skills to work. Earlier this month, she wrote a blog post detailing her entire experience. "Sometimes you can't explain why some people in this world have so much time on their hands, to want to try to sabotage your life through cyberbullying," she wrote.

In the blog, which has been viewed more than 16,000 times, she posts the real photo next to the fake one, blurring the nudity for fear of being charged with child pornography (a pretty reasonable fear). She cites cyberbullying statistics (police reported 1441 cybercrime cases of a sexual nature in 2012, a quarter of which resulted in criminal charges), and describes her interactions with police and social media companies.

"Now, the person can no longer spread the image, because the truth is out there, they would just look dumb," says Andrea. "I had to say something about it. Then, maybe, this person can no longer hurt me."

And she was right. Andrea says her cyberstalker has finally stopped circulating the photo online. "I feel like I'm in control of my life, that this person can no longer hurt my feelings." She says she would still like to find out who the perpetrator is, but hasn't heard anything further from the RCMP.

I reached out to the RCMP in Richmond about Andrea's case and spoke to media liaison officer Cpl. Dennis Hwang. He wouldn't speak about her or her case, citing privacy concerns. But, he did ask me whether my "spidey senses" tingle when I'm approached with these types of stories. He also wouldn't answer whether it's practice for RCMP to tell cyberbully complainants their cases won't be taken seriously unless they are feared to be suicidal.

In an email, Hwang said the RCMP "treats all cases of bullying very seriously. It is a national concern. Each case is unique and will be examined as such by the investigator."

Since she published the blog post, Andrea says she has heard from many other women who are also being cyberstalked, and even though she says she hasn't received help from police, she still tells others to call them. "Maybe the more cases they get, the more they will see how serious and widespread this issue is and deal with it," she told me.

"In the meantime, if people need help, they can contact me. I've got their back."

Follow Rachel Browne on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

On a stage in Vienna, a man in leather trousers is dancing in front of an animation of a butterfly. Meanwhile, in Dublin, there's dancing in the street. Fortuitously, the Eurovision Song Contest has coincided with the day Ireland has voted in favor of gay marriage. A double rainbow even appeared over Dublin as a sign of approval from the gay-friendly gods.

We are the first nation in the world to pass same-sex marriage by referendum. After weeks of news coverage questioning whether we're still a nation of Catholic zealots, it's clear from the overwhelming majority of Yes voters (62.1 percent) that we're finally beginning to shake off the church's stranglehold.

After a sunny day spent celebrating, drinking and waiting for the drag queen Panti Bliss to appear at Dublin Castle, the city is ready for a big gay party. A line of people in 80s polyester jackets form a queue around the city's best-known gay bar, the George, where the habitually stern political commentator Vincent Browne presented the referendum results on live TV earlier in the day, surrounded by a crowd of jubilant drag queens.

Before the referendum, a kind of emotional exhaustion had settled, lifted now with news of the results. The love is tangible and effusive tonight: locals, tourists, drag queens, and awkward heterosexual boyfriends mix and spill onto footpaths, the city's gay bars unable to contain them all.

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"I woke up nervous, then, when the vote counts started coming in, I got emotional," says Robert, who I meet outside the George. "It just hit me how many young people are going to grow up feeling accepted here now. It's this very visible fuck you to the old Ireland."

Robert is in his early 2-, but the change even in his lifetime has been radical. "Homosexuality was only decriminalized here in 1993. When I was born, I was essentially a criminal," he says. "When I think of my trans friends, I only hope the understanding doesn't end here, but that it just grows and grows."

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The line for the George now runs the full length of the lane. I ask where Robert will end up if he doesn't get in. "Wherever I go tonight I'll have a great time," he says. "The whole city is gay tonight, Dublin's gone omnisexual."

Next I meet Clara and her dad, who canvassed for Yes votes in the city center. "It was around 40 percent yes votes, 40 percent nos and 20 percent undecided," Clara tells me. "One guy told me to get the fuck out of his face, that it was sick. And the No voters weren't anything like you'd expect them to be."

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When Clara's father came out, some time after having her, gay marriage was a distinctly distant prospect.

"It's an entirely different Ireland now," he tells me. "People are fed up with being told what to think by the church and the establishment."

I speak to Cathy and Carla, a couple who look too young to get into the George, even if they make it through the mile-long queue. "People normally stare at us just for holding hands in the street," Cathy tells me, "but today everyone's smiling. I feel like we're a normal couple."

It's saddening how casually she says this. I ask if they've never felt "normal" before, if they've felt that Ireland is an inherently homophobic place. "I think guys have it much harder than girls," says Carla. "But the fact that this came through by vote makes it special. It feels like Irish people want us to be here."

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Today's results have been doubly empowering, for those who will marry one day under the new law and those who doubted that their votes counted in the first place. Dubbed "generation emigration" for their tendency to leave, young Irish people have increasingly felt more and more disenfranchised. The most vocally liberal are often also the least likely to vote, plagued with a fear—bolstered by the UK's recent Conservative victory—that Twitter is an echo chamber and that the wider nation would likely side with the Iona Institute, a right-wing Catholic advocacy group.

As it turns out, the only county in Ireland with a majority No was Roscommon, and finally Irish law is beginning to sync with our reality. It's felt as though Ireland itself was in the closet, a liberal country under a theocratic constitution. Our churches are empty, our bars packed out on a Sunday. The ferry is full of young women off to the UK for abortions.

WATCH: VICE News' documentary on abortion rights in Ireland

The referendum debate was, at times, disturbingly personal, offensive to the LGBT community and basically anyone raised in a non-nuclear household. Due to rulings by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, both sides had to be given equal airtime, with the no side focusing largely on the idea that only children raised by married, heterosexual parents could be "legitimate" and healthy.

"I was raised by single mother. I found it grotesque looking at the No posters," says Azzie, a girl wearing shades and a huge amount of neon.

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The Iona Institute gives the impression of a lone corps of extremists, but the more disturbing truth is that, for many young Irish gays, it was their own relatives who voted against them.

Families have fractured, private lives have been scrutinized and attacked, and the axiom that " the personal is the political" has been pushed to brutal extremity. Friends of mine have suffered breakdowns, continuing to canvass day after day in the districts they grew up in, asking neighbors to give them their rights.

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But then, how often does politics connect directly to the heart? We have weathered the turbulence, and love has won. "It's about visibility," says Simon, a friend I meet in the pissed-up mob outside Mother, a much-loved gay club night that, tonight, has packed out two separate venues. "It's gay people talking about themselves, and that doesn't happen very often. No one has apologized for anything, except to say they wish they came out sooner. I've never loved or felt loved by this country like this before."

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Tonight is all about love. Messy, drunk, increasingly pilled-up love (it's nearing 3 AM, and those who didn't get into Mother are now either rolling around or crashing out on the side of the footpath).

A friend vomits on a man's arm. Another chants "God loves fags!" neatly anticipating the Westboro Baptist Church's announcement that "God hates Ireland." A white Nissan Qashqai with the windows down and the doors flung open blasts Lady Gaga. Joe Caslin's beautiful murals of same-sex couples loom on George's Street and in rural Galway, watching over the crowds as they make their way home.

WATCH: Our documentary about gay conversion therapy in America

"We're only hours into the Gay Agenda," a guy waving a flag shouts. "We're going to take over the world! We're going to eat your babies!"

His enthusiasm is infectious. I want his revolution. He has "LOVELY FAGS" written in pink all-caps on his hat. I ask him where he thinks the No side is partying. The columnist and Iona advocate Breda O'Brien, for example? "Breda has been strung up in Temple Bar like they did with Mussolini," he says, before dry-humping a blue-haired girl on the bonnet of the Nissan.

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I get the feeling this party will carry on long into tomorrow, into an age where our country is more equal, and men and women are free to marry and love each other and blast Gaga out of slow-moving Nissans.

Thank you, Ireland, for supporting marriage equality and, with the use of a referendum, hopefully paving a path for other countries to follow.

Follow Roisin on Twitter.

Scroll down for more photos of triumphant (and drunk) Irish people.

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Photo by Maggie West

Last week, the Los Angeles City Council went and did something crazy: They passed a measure that will raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour over the course of five years. That put analysts in the position of having to explain what this would mean, and they all said different things.

Leftists rejoiced and fiscal conservatives grieved, naturally, just as they did when Seattle similarly hiked its minimum wage last year. But unlike most partisan debates of this sort, we'll be able to look back in a few years and know which side was more correct.

Will the higher wage really "lift hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty," as Councilman Paul Krekorian told VICE in an interview? Or will it do literally the exact opposite, as Warren Buffett wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed and "reduce employment in a major way, crushing many workers possessing only basic skills"?

The City Council had "the benefit of three comprehensive economic analyses, and a peer-review of those analyses," Krekorian says. But two of the analyses were at odds on many details.

UC Berkeley's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment performed one of those studies and found that operating costs for businesses only stand to increase by 0.9 percent. (That study actually looked at a slightly different plan, which would have raised the minimum wage to $15.25 by 2019.) Consumer demand would fall thanks to higher prices, the study found, but the wage increase would more than make up for that.

However, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce sponsored a study of their own, conducted by the independent research firm Beacon Economics. Beacon took direct aim at the claims in the Berkley study, and said that minimum wage earners might suddenly be able to inject their walking-around money into the economy, yes, but that the "cost hit taken on by business is of greater magnitude." They claim that this will cause job growth to stagnate.

For more on work and wages, check out our documentary on underage miners:

In FiveThirtyEight, Ben Casselman stayed away from either partisan position, writing that this isn't actually much of a raise at all. First of all, he argued, by 2020, $15 will be just $13.75 in today's dollars. And when you further adjust those $15 for the horrifying cost of living in LA, the picture gets even worse:

The bigger issue is that $15 doesn't go as far in Los Angeles as it does in most of the rest of the country. Not even close. According to data from the Council for Community and Economic Research, it costs workers about 40 percent more to live in Los Angeles than in the average American community. That means that $15 in LA is the equivalent of less than $11 in the US overall.

Put the two together and LA's new minimum wage of $15 in 2020 is worth about $9.75 to the typical American worker today.

Taking a cue from some data generated by a March report on housing prices that the Economic Policy Institute released, the local blog Curbed synthesized a brutally pessimistic view of the city after the wage increase, and titled it "Every Single Part of Los Angeles is Unaffordable on $15 [an] Hour."

One problem is that Los Angeles isn't good at providing affordable housing. "I think there's a wide agreement that we need more housing in Los Angeles, and we need more affordable housing so that we address that unaffordability problem on the cost end as well," Krekorian acknowledges.

Read more about minimum wage fights from VICE News.

Krekorian says that there's going to be "additional economic analysis in the third year," and claims that while the the new law puts the city on track for some kind of change, the government is not stuck to that track if it turns out to be "unduly harmful."

But predictions aren't just about what's about to happen in Los Angeles. This is thought to be catching on, and possibly becoming a national movement.

Towns like Seattle and San Francisco approved similar measures, but those are two of America's coastal liberal strongholds, chock full of tech money, and—perhaps most importantly—both with populations under 1 million. Los Angeles, meanwhile, is the second largest city in America with almost 4 million people.

Krekorian says he hopes the move it will "shape the national dialogue around the minimum wage," and that similar strategies will be necessary "until our Congress, and every state acts to try to address this terrible problem of increasing wage inequality that we have in this country."

After Los Angeles passed its measure, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the shift toward $15 an hour was a "grassroots movement." Democratic Presidential candidate Martin O'Malley—who successfully pushed for a minimum wage increase a year ago in Maryland when he was that state's governor—also came out in favor of a $15 wage.

Others, like Arindrajit Dube, an economist who backs some minimum wage increases, are withholding their endorsements. Dube balked slightly at $15 an hour for fast wood workers in a New York Times story from 203, citing "concerns that it might lead to the substitution of automation for workers." In a Washington Post blog post that same year, he was quoted as saying, "We just do not know what a $15 [an] hour minimum wage would do based on the type of careful research designs that have become the hallmark of modern labor economics."

John Cassidy of The New Yorker pointed out that there's precedent for this increase, though. Back in the 1990s, Princeton economists studied a sudden and controversial wage increase, and found that paying workers in New Jersey drastically more than those in neighboring Pennsylvania didn't have much of an effect on employment. Other economists tried to replicate their experiments. Some confirmed them. But some endorsements were less glowing, and a few showed that low skilled workers were adversely affected by the hike.

Cassidy didn't use the New Jersey–Pennsyvania example to show that the wage hike will help more than it hurts. Instead, he pointed out that this isn't the first time there's been a huge scale experiment into what giving people a big raise actually does.

Even if there's no definitive answer about where we're headed, Krekorian says he sees minimum wage earners in Los Angeles as living in a "painful economic environment." Only will tell whether this latest idea will alleviate some of that pain.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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Waven waistcoat and shirt; Topman shirt, Levi's jacket, Christian Cowan Sanluis hat

PHOTOGRAPHY: ALEX DE MORA
STYLING: KYLIE GRIFFITHS

Makeup: Daisy Harris d'Andel using MAC Cosmetics
Hair: Shiori Takahashi using Bumble & Bumble
Set design: Yasmina Kurunis
Casting: Sarah Bunter
Stylist's assistants: Thomas Ramshaw and Nina Bright
Photographer's assistant: Theo Cottle
Models: Ella H at Tess, Emily at Nevs, Dominique at Established

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WeSC shirt, dungarees from Rokit, Converse shoes

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Ellesse jacket

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Versace top from Harvey Nichols, Kitty Joseph joggers, K-Swiss trainers

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Fred Perry top

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Kenzo top from Harvey Nichols

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Creep by Hiroshi Awai T-shirt and shirt

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New Era hat, Shirt from Rokit, Evisu shorts

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Marc by Marc Jacobs shirt from Harvey Nichols

There are one million divorces in the United States every year—that's one every 36 seconds, nearly 2,400 per day, and 16,800 per week. It's hardly surprising, then, that the divorce industry is worth a whopping $50 billion annually—that's a hell of lot of heartbreak.

In the latest episode of our series on the love industries, we delve into the growing industry offering people alternative ways to split. In the divorce capital of the world, New York City, we explore the industries making heartbreak bearable and learn that—whether it's divorce merchandise, "conscious uncoupling," or "reverse-wedding" planning—people's attitudes toward the sanctity of marriage are changing, while Americans in particular are adopting new-age rituals as a way to call time on their relationships.

[body_image width='604' height='404' path='images/content-images/2015/05/26/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/26/' filename='sex-piss-the-life-of-a-hostel-receptionist-876-body-image-1432641883.jpg' id='59884']Teenagers at a youth hostel. Photo by Jamie Clifton

This article originally appeared on VICE Spain.

One night around 3 AM a guest ran into the lobby, crying. I think he was speaking Korean, which is pretty far from any language that I understand, so it was kind of hard to figure out exactly why he was so shook up. It quickly became obvious, however, when I managed to decipher the word "piss." There are few lingual boundaries that word cannot cross. I asked the security guard to watch the desk, took a deep breath, and slowly made my way toward his room to inspect just how much urine we were dealing with.

Apparently some sleepwalking Australian backpacker had wandered into the poor Korean's bed and mistaken it for a toilet. At least that's what I understood from the broken English and the puddle of piss dripping from the mattress.

Working nightshifts in a busy Barcelona youth hostel means I have a unique front-row seat to all sorts of sordid situations that you just don't see while the sun is still up. It's a parallel universe of drugs, booze, and horny British teenagers with second-degree sunburns.

My job is to greet the guests, give them their keys, and explain everything there is to know about the establishment—well, except for the fact that it transforms into a modern day Babylon after 3 AM. That, they seem to find out by themselves.

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PROMISCUITY

One of the hostel's cardinal rules is that there can only be one person per bed. It doesn't matter how many Jägerbombs you've downed, you are never allowed to have sex in the room. This is simply a matter of respect for the other people you are sharing your glorified toilet of a room with. But I suppose that rules are made to be broken.

One time, five out of eight guests from a room came down down to collectively lodge a complaint. It was 7 AM and two drunk people were really going at it in one of the bunks. After sitting at my desk for the better part of seven hours I was mostly just jealous of the couple. But I had to do my job so I headed upstairs to try and get them to stop. I marched into the room and ripped the curtain away from their bunk and was met with a pale ass bobbing up and down about six inches from my face. The busy couple didn't seem even slightly put off by my presence. I begged them to keep their groaning to a minimum, but at that stage it didn't really matter as all of their roommates had already gone to breakfast.

To be fair, the sex isn't restricted to the rooms. Showers, toilets, the top floor landing—anywhere without a camera is fair game. I'm actually still trying to figure out how all the guests seem to know about the bloody top floor landing.

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Teenagers at a youth hostel. Photo by Jamie Clifton

It isn't at all uncommon for horny tourists to hit on the staff, either. One night, our security guard—a gentle, Cuban man named Miguel—was doing the rounds when he heard a strange noise coming from the toilet. When he went to investigate he saw a Canadian girl taking a piss with the door wide open. Miguel got a proper shock but the girl certainly didn't—she simply spread her legs and gestured for him to come in and join. As flattered as the poor man was, he decided it'd probably be less than professional and declined.

In comparison, the reception team has looser morals. I remember our old security guard—a really nice 50-year-old guy—whispering that I should take this girl who was interested in me to the first floor. He gave me a walkie-talkie and told me he'd call me if there were any problems. The paternal tone in his voice quickly convinced me that it was the reasonable thing for an employee to do during business hours.

The first floor has this area that's more or less dead after midnight. We went there and got down to business. Once we were done, I figured I'd go get us some tissues to clean up with but I forgot to put any clothes on. Halfway down the hall I triggered the motion sensors and all of a sudden I was standing ass naked in front of the building's CCTV system. Luckily, nobody ever actually checks those cameras.

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Photo by Robert Foster

THE MOTLEY CRUE OF CHARACTERS

There's more to hostels than sex, of course. Often, they act as temporary homes for people who don't have much money and/or also suffer from mental illnesses, like depression or paranoia.

One such character was Anton. Anton was a young Albanian man who'd moved to Barcelona to make a living. I'm not entirely sure how he was making that living, but he would hurriedly come and go from the hostel several times a night. He never said what he was doing, which was strange because he wasn't shy in telling me about other parts of his life—like the time he and his brother beat up 40 people in one go, or how he lost his virginity to a girl in the hostel, who obviously thought it was the best sex she'd ever had. That kind of story—ones that are very entertaining but obviously untrue. In the end, my boss kicked him out for threatening an employee. He left the hostel screaming that he'd be back and that he was a "sniper" and a "lion." We never saw that lion again.

There was another guy, a chap called Ramon. After having spent 20 years working in London, he'd returned to Spain to find some work in slightly better weather. He had some savings but chose to use the hostel as a place to get set up. He figured it'd be easier to find an apartment and a job if he had a base to work from. He was full of sob stories—like how he visited his mom in Spain and found out she had a new family and no interest in talking to him. Or how a woman robbed him of $460 when he tried to rent an apartment from her. It felt as if every story he had ended badly. He finally decided to get out of both the hostel and Barcelona and start a new life in Menorca.

After some time, it gets hard to distinguish the subtle differences between the tourists and the crazy people. The lines blur and one can actually become the other. Like the Korean guy who came down to the lobby screaming about piss that one night—some nights later, he ended up in a similar situation and drunkenly mistook someone's suitcase for a toilet. The owner woke up to find all of their possessions drenched in liquid crap. It wasn't only my duty to clean the clothes but also to lift the drunken wreck of a man into the shower.

That's only the tip of iceberg, though. To this day, the worst I've seen is a Swedish girl—high on god knows what—running naked through the hallways, painting the walls with her menstrual blood. I don't think I will ever forget that particular incident. She probably doesn't even remember it.

Related: 'Big Night Out: Ibiza'

THE VIOLENCE

The worst part of the nightshift isn't the drugs, the booze, the liquid shit, or the casual sex. It's the violence.

One time I tried to stop two drunken morons from fighting outside the hostel and one accidentally caught me full force in the face. Our security went to town on them, completely pummeling them to the ground.

"I had to, it's my job. They can't touch your face," he told me.

His job or not, he seemed to enjoy it a bit too much.

There are also fights between guests and people who don't work at the hostel. The last one I witnessed involved three American girls and a taxi driver. According to the driver, the girls hadn't paid their fare. According to them, he had both robbed and sexually harassed them. When the cops arrived, the girls turned on them because they weren't wearing uniforms. They accused the cops of being impostors, threatened to beat them up, and then pretended to call the embassy.

The situation was finally resolved when the exhausted taxi driver agreed to settle for $45. The girls kept screaming that it was robbery. The taxi driver screamed back. When I finally managed to get them back to the hostel, we sat down for a chat—they actually cooled down and began to trust me. Just when I thought they were actually starting to behave like normal human beings, one of them turned to me and asked me:

"Have you seen Breaking Bad"?

"Sure," I replied.

"Well, my uncle is a senior DEA agent and I'm going to get him to put that bastard in jail in Cuba," she said.

Just another day at work in a European youth hostel, I guess.

Not into youth hostels? Find out about the life of a five-star hotel bellboy.

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On Sunday afternoon in Times Square, two tourists approached a man in uniform and asked if they could take a picture together. He throws an arm over one's shoulder and unfolds the fingers of his big red paw; he's a bootleg Elmo impersonator, and he charges five dollars per photo. Behind them a sailor smiles awkwardly on the corner—he looks relieved when I ask if I can take his picture.

Although my impression of Fleet Week is mostly based on an episode of Sex and the City, it turns out the event was initially conceived by the Roosevelt administration in 1935. The idea was to drum up a little nationalist sentiment among an American public who remained obstinately apathetic to the political thunderclouds in Europe and Asia. Over a hundred ships and four hundred aircraft descended on San Diego in a dazzling military spectacle.

Last year, the NYC Fleet Week introduced the #SelfieWithASailor initiative, an attempt to bring the festival into the digital age. This year, they brought it back. The premise is simple: Take a selfie with a sailor and post it online. What intrigues me, however, is the way these servicemen and women get swallowed up by New York City. They become another attraction in the cutthroat market of the Big Apple's iconography.

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Related: The Navy's Newest Toy Is a Terrifying Sharkbeast from Hell

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Related: On Decks and Doors

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Related: This Company Creates Custom Sex Toys for Disabled Veterans

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Related: Should Underage Soldiers Be Allowed to Drink Alcohol?

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Brittany Carmichael is a Canadian photographer based in New York. See more of her work here.

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The city of Yharnam has already gone to shit prior to the start of 'Bloodborne.'

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Humans can be assholes, right? Here we are on Earth, a natural miracle of cosmic circumstance, ecological progression, and environmental equilibrium. Some believe the chain of events that led to our planet's birth and humankind's own existence were so rare and coincidental we should be extremely thankful and loathe to spoil the gifts we've been given.

But the majority of our species feels compelled to chip away at our world until it's reduced to ash. We are existence's stroppy teenagers, ignorant of how grateful we ought to be, and disrespectful of the forces that have supported us through our infantile years. Humanity is continually hammering the Earth by wiping out its wildlife, scarring its surface and waging war. In short: we're doing existence wrong. We had one job, and we're royally screwing it up.

As late comedian George Carlin once said, "The planet is fine. The people are fucked." This is a theme that has fueled countless video game narratives since the medium entered pubic conscience in the late 1970s. You just need to look at the space craze of the Atari era, where games like Robotron: 2084 and Space Invaders saw our species met with certain doom at the hands of unstoppable forces.

But those narratives are getting smarter, and rather than have Earth or parts of it wiped out by monsters or aliens, humans seem to be doing a pretty good of destroying themselves through arrogance, apathy, or the quest for dominance. Software's Bloodborne and the studio's wider Souls series are great examples of why our species just needs to stop meddling with forces it can't control and be smarter.

In Bloodborne, it isn't explicitly clear if the terrible, beastly curse that befalls the game's setting of Yharnam is the fault of humanity itself, but the people have royally screwed up all attempts to plug a cork in it. You'll likely get that vibe once you enter the School of Mensis, an educational facility full of scientific equipment and grotesque amorphous beings that were once its students. Two doorways in this facility spew thick purple smoke, each leading to warped worlds within nightmares.

Related: Sitting down with the director of 'Mad Max: Fury Road.'

This is open to interpretation, but the way I see it the students of Mensis were trying to pool their genius to create or find a way to enter or create new dream-like realms, much like the Hunter's Dream hub the player visits when they want to level up.

One of those dreams—Nightmare Frontier—houses an ancient Great One called Amygdala, which is also the name given to the part of our brain essential to human memory functions and our psychological capacity for fear. It's quite fitting for a game based around insight, terror, and the subconscious.

It's all a little coincidental, then, that the gateway to this hideous beast, and its significance to the Great Ones' cycle of curses, should lie within a college. It seems like humans tried to solve a problem—in this case, a curse—and depending on your take of Bloodborne lore, they may have opened the floodgates to Amygdala's monstrous brethren and other foul beasts in the process.

We're often too smart for our own good, and this is a theme that has led to some major dick moves in gaming, worthy of facepalms so extreme you'd likely shear your own face off. 2K Boston/Irrational Games' BioShock is a prime example of where humans really sucked at life. The arrogance of Andrew Ryan and his super-rich master race of intellectuals proved to be their undoing. Well, that and golf putters. They're Ryan's kryptonite.

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The opening sequence of 'BioShock.'

During BioShock's legendary opening, a recording of Ryan can be heard saying, "I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be constrained by the small." The problem here is that, quite often, humans need order. We need constraints to keep our sometimes foolish, self-destructive ambition in check.

The boundless nature of Ryan's underwater utopia was its undoing. For all of its citizens' artistic and academic brilliance, those elite individuals were ultimately felled by beings of their own creation. They engineered Plasmids to further human ability and evolution, yet it turned them into rabid, deranged addicts. The ball was dropped hard, and chaos followed.

It's hard to believe people so smart couldn't see the corrosive nature of their methods before it was too late, but you just have to look at what real-life corporations and the top one percent are doing to wreck our planet in the here and now to see it's not such a stretch. You can say the same about humans in Epic's Gears of War series, and the way their squabbling led to their own near-extinction at the hands of the Locust.

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IGN explains 'Gears of War' in five minutes.

On the Gears planet of Sera, humanity enjoyed a short-lived era of prosperity until settlers discovered Imulsion, a natural, rich energy source that had been bubbling beneath people's feet the whole time. Just like the very real wars over oil and resources in our world, the powers governing Sera went nuts and started the Pendulum Wars in an attempt to horde all the Imulsion for themselves.

Unfortunately, something else was lurking below Sera's crust. The Locust are true natives of the planet and it's fair to say they took a slight grievance with all the humans nuking and warmongering all over their home, so they came topside to take back what was rightfully theirs. The sad thing is, the planet was never humanity's to begin with, yet they acted like it was their right to be there.

It's a bit like when Britain colonized America and wrenched it from the hands of its indigenous people. The deeper you look into the story of games like these and stack them side-by-side against our own history, you start to see just how terrible humans can be. This doesn't apply to all of us, obviously, but if our sole purpose is to exist and endure, create new life and ensure the survival of the species, we have a funny way of showing it.

From conflicts that led to the nuclear wastelands of Fallout and the meddling that caused Earth's invasion in Half-Life, to the Lifestream-sucking generators of Final Fantasy VII's Midgar, the digital representation of our species really does suck at life. And it's the stark similarities of these narrative cogs to actual atrocities and self-destructive acts that truly provide food for thought.

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One of Robert Sidlauskas' Dready drawings. All images courtesy of Dready.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

I've been feeling nostalgic about my schooldays recently. Perhaps it's because of the poll-defying Conservative election victory, or maybe all the 17-year-olds actively giving themselves undercuts, or the fact that life back then—a period stretching from the early to mid 90s—was generally just a lot simpler; my biggest worry being what brand of backpack I should buy rather than cripplingly mortgage repayments.

Whatever the reason, I've been yearning for a return to that glorious, responsibility-free time in my life. So naturally I was delighted to hear of the second coming of Dready, the iconic streetwear brand featuring the bug-eyed, spliff-smoking Rastafarian of the same name.

Dready was as ubiquitous as the bowl cut in British schools during the 1990s. He could be found emblazoned on bombers, record bags, and hoodies, doodled in the margins of exercise books and scratched into toilet cubicle doors. With a joint permanently dangling out of his mouth, the brand was about as rebellious as it got when you were 13. Owning a Dready piece meant you'd probably told your parents to fuck off at some point, and had maybe once got off with a girl: two of the most formative moments of adolescence.

Now the brand has relaunched with seven limited edition T-shirts designed by Florence and the Machine guitarist and original Dready fan Robert Ackroyd. The shirts use the late Robert Sidlauskas' original drawings, some of which have never been made public before.

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Robert Sidlauskas and some of his drawings.

Sidlauskas was born in Northampton to Jamaican and English parents. He conceived the Dready character in the late-70s as an alter ego, through which he could express his owns beliefs, hopes and fears as a Rastafarian living under the specter of Thatcher and the Cold War. A shy, quiet man, he spent much of his early life in care, before finding stability with a foster family in Birmingham in his teens. The many diverse peoples he came into contact with growing up would provide inspiration for a troop of additional characters, such as Barley Corn, Guru, and Natty Dread.

It was in The Oasis Centre, an alternative shopping hub in the city, that he first met Christopher Carpenter. The Oasis was something of a draw for creative types, much like the King's Road in London had been around the birth of punk, and Carpenter had a small shop there in which Sidlaukas liked to hang out and draw.

Recognizing his talent and latching onto Dready as a potential urban Mickey Mouse-type character, Carpenter proposed a clothing brand. According to Sidlauskas's daughter Dionne, the artist saw this as "a perfect platform to share his thoughts and beliefs—peace, love, culture, and unity, but, most importantly, family." He was only too happy to draw to order. "If I needed Dready on a mountain bike, he'd do it," laughs Carpenter now.

The brand became hugely successful, tapping into the current of unity and inclusivity running through British underground culture at the time, particularly in the rave, jungle, and drum and bass scenes. But as with any successful idea, imitation was never too far away. Soon market stalls and high streets were flooded with pale, cheaper alternatives to the Dready brand—the likes of Herbie and Spliffy. Both Sidlauskas and Carpenter despaired. "The copyists pissed [Sidlauskas] off," says Carpenter. "It wasn't a black product, it wasn't about drugs. We were above that kind of thing. There was a message."

READ ON MOTHERBOARD: Meet the Fashion Designer Who Is 3D Printing Impossible Clothes

Carpenter switched his focus to mainland Europe—the brand was particularly popular in France, where it was illegal to depict drugs on clothing and Carpenter's reps were frequently arrested—before scaling down operations around the turn of the millennium as smaller stockists began to be swallowed by the internet. It's been ticking over online ever since. Sadly, Sidlauskas died from Crohn's disease in 2012.

I don't dare tell Carpenter that I had a Herbie record bag at school. For what it's worth, I felt unremittingly self-conscious when I wore it: it wasn't me and I knew it. I was paranoid about the drug references. I was imitating the big boys in much the same way Herbie was imitating Dready. I was a cheap knockoff.

Related: Enjoy our documentary Urban Fashion Week

Thankfully, when I speak to Robert Ackroyd on the phone from LA, where's he's preparing for the imminent release of the new Florence album and a "hectic" promotional schedule on both sides of the Atlantic, I find him in a confessional mood.

"I had the Herbie record bag—that's all I could afford in year seven," he tells me. "But in the plethora of weed-affiliated street brands back then, Dready stood out; it had a little more culture to it."

Ackroyd's interest in the brand was reignited by a glimpse of an old Dready bomber in a photograph. Disappearing down an "internet rabbit hole" he eventually got in touch with Dready owner/director Robert Wesley, and was soon offering to design a collection.

"I don't know how stoned I was when I suggested being a part of it, but they said yes, which is insane," says Ackroyd. "I spent a couple of weeks on it, put it in a drawer, returned to it and thought, 'Wow, this is absolute garbage; I don't know what I'm doing.' But then I realized I didn't need to redesign Dready. The best way to do it would be to focus on the artist. They sent over reams and reams of beautiful art—all these incredible comic strips, snapshots of Britain and West Indian immigration and the assimilation of that culture at the time. I'm a big fan of Robert Crumb, and they reminded me of his stuff." (There are plans for a book and a show to showcase the thousands of drawings Sidlauskas made over his lifetime).

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The new collection of Dready T-shirts.

Dready will be following the lead of successful streetwear brands like Supreme and Palace by slowly expanding to a full range (of bombers, hoodies, and more T-shirts), and keeping it limited to avoid over-exposure. A whole new generation may soon be comparing Dready notes, while aging ravers and kids who grew up on the original collections can look forward to a nostalgia trip. "I try to design stuff that I'd like to wear myself," says Ackroyd.

Inevitably our chat turns to the UK election and the renewed pertinence of Sidlauskas' message, one Ackroyd paid little attention to as a teen. "Back then it was about the image and the look. There were a lot of 'one world' messages going around. These were the days of [renowned jungle/drum and bass label] Moving Shadow and [promoters] Helter Skelter. That sentiment never really resonated with me. It seemed a little saccharine, an easy, flippant thing to say," he tells me.

"But people seem to be getting more segregated. It felt like we were getting somewhere, and now we have this bizarre propaganda of xenophobia and another five years of tyranny. England's such a cynical place, I'm not even sure if we want to hear these rebel stories any more. But it's a good time to have this message out there."

Follow Tom on Twitter.

If you love Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and have $20,000 to blow, you can head to Sotheby's auction house in London this week and bid on a genuine lock of the composer's hair. The Guardian reports that the ancient gray strands have been passed down through generations of musicians and come inside a gold locket with a note claiming they sprouted from the scalp of one of music's greatest composers, who died in 1791. If you're a less-rich-but-equally-insane classical music fan, you can bid on a smaller lock of genuine Beethoven hair that is expected to sell for around $5,000.

Also up for auction this week is an invitation to Beethoven's funeral. Beethoven's friend, Gerhard von Breuning, remembered that by the time he was able to pay respects to the composer in 1827, people had already chopped off the dead man's luscious mane, presumably knowing that it would fetch their ancestors thousands in 2015. Since Sotheby's is only selling a pinch of Ludwig hair, maybe the hair thieves' descendants are still hanging on to the remainder of Beethoven's scalp, hoping it'll be worth even more another half century down the line.

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Follow River on Twitter.

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Photo via Flickr user Raffaele Esposito

Pope Francis may be a beacon for hope and leadership to millions of people in the Roman Catholic Church, but the guy really misses the days when he could mosey into a pizza joint and grab a slice without all the hassle. According to NBC, the Pope told Argentinian newspaper La Voz Del Pueblo that delivery doesn't cut it for him. He misses being able to stroll into a pizzeria and grab "una buena pizza."

For a pope who loves a hot slice, wants to be remembered as a "good guy," and has angered GOP Catholics with his progressive stance on climate change and Palestine, he's not very progressive when it comes to his TV habits. He admitted to La Voz in the same interview that he hasn't watched television since the summer of 1990, saying "no es para mi" (it's not for me) and promising the Virgin Mary that he was done with the tube for good. Luckily, his Swiss Guards keep him up to date on the soccer standings.

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This isn't Allan. Photo via Wikicommons.

This article originally appeared on VICE Denmark.

Yesterday, to the utter disbelief of more or less everyone, two Danish radio hosts beat a rabbit named Allan to death with a bicycle pump live on air. Apparently it was an attempt to highlight the hypocrisy that many people show when it comes to animal welfare.

Allangate—as it's now widely known—has naturally turned into a bit of a global media shitstorm and the Radio 24syv hosts Asger Juhl and Kristoffer Eriksen have been catching their fair share of shit for it. I caught up with Kristoffer to ask what exactly this rabbit battering was all about.

VICE: Hey, Kristoffer. How's it going?
Kristoffer: Well, all right, I think. The last two days have been pretty crazy. Probably because we killed a rabbit on live radio. And then we ate it.

That's probably why, yeah. What exactly happened?
It was a bank holiday on Monday, so we decided to make a three-hour show about how people are hypocrites when it comes to animal welfare. We had a bunch of different experts talking about the subject, then we got our intern to go buy us a rabbit so we could kill it and confront ourselves with the fact that every time we eat meat, an animal dies.

We think it's important that people consider how the animals we eat are treated. Denmark has a huge pig production industry where tons of baby pigs are killed and often thrown out as waste. There are loads of animal welfare issues in the agriculture industry but people don't really give a shit about it unless it's a cute little animal, like a puppy or a rabbit.

Like animals AND fur? Learn how to make a fashionable raccoon suit without harming any raccoons!

It was your colleague Asger who actually did the rabbit bashing. Is he getting more shit than you?
The media is giving us both equal amounts of shit, but the mob is definitely going harder on Asger. He's getting all the death threats.

What sort of threats have you guys been getting?
Some Russian guy sent a pretty insane one, threatening Asger's children. I actually have it here. The subject line is "Hello Bitch" and here's the message:

"I can't understand you, you sick bastard. I wish to find your children and break their heads while I look at your face and reveal your pain. Imagine how your poor child is trying to catch his breath of air while his fucking head is falling apart. It's delicious. Oh, I wish, and I want to find them."

So was it worth it?
Yeah, I think reactions like that pretty much make it worth it because they help illustrate a pretty solid point—that some people think that animals and humans are equal, or even that some animals are more valuable than humans. I think that's pretty scary, to be honest.

Related: Dog Days of Yulin

How did you guys decide who was going to kill Allan?
It was pretty easy. Asger is from the countryside and he's killed animals before so we thought it would be best if he did it. He was instructed by a guy at the zoo who kills rabbits to feed them to snakes—so Asger was under the strict guidance of a professional. Obviously, I'm a total hypocrite because I don't mind eating meat but I didn't want to kill a rabbit.

What's up with your choice of weapon? People weren't too happy about that bike pump.
In retrospect, it was probably a mistake to use a bike pump. The guy at the zoo said we needed to use a blunt object but we only had a bike pump. Unfortunately, all the headlines are focusing on that and it's detracting from the point we were trying to make.

You said you were a hypocrite, but how do you feel now? Do you want to hunt or become a vegetarian?
Neither. But I was actually surprised that I didn't have some huge emotional reaction to Asger beating up the rabbit. Now, I wouldn't mind killing an animal myself if the situation called for it. I was definitely far more scared and emotional about it before it happened before I saw it.

[body_image width='960' height='720' path='images/content-images/2015/05/26/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/05/26/' filename='danish-radio-killing-rabbit-876-body-image-1432648953.jpg' id='59958']Asger enjoying a pasta he made with Allan.

Asger has kids, right? What did they think?
Asger took the body home and skinned it in front of his children. He showed them how to take out the intestines and everything and basically made a science project out of the whole thing. Then he brought the rabbit over to my place and we cooked it. I heard the kids thought it was really interesting.

Where do you draw the line between knowing where your food comes from and creating a generation of sociopaths who kill animals with bike pumps?
It's important to let children know that you can't kill an animal for no reason. That's the point we were trying to make. If you're going to eat an animal, it's going to die. This has nothing to do with hunting an animal just to see it in pain or out of some morbid curiosity. You don't kill animals for the fun of it, it's part of life—part of being at the top of the food chain.

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Photo via Motherboard

The traditional idea of masculinity is one that can be expressed in a number of different ways. A masculine man is someone who is virile, macho, strapping, rugged, robust, powerful, testosteronic.

At least, that's what the internet tells me, and commenters have always pushed shining examples of what it means to be male. But with the rise of the dadbod—a term used to describe the men giving up chiseled abs for a little bit of chub—pinpointing the definitive nature of the ideal male image has entered an even greyer area. Is a man meant to be bear-like and squishy? Is husking up the true ideal for a man, or is it about having the discipline to diet down until that six pack pops? These questions, which have been twisted and contorted by memes and buzzword columnists, have serious implications in the real world for men who secretly scrutinize every inch of their appearance.

Over the last month, I've been reading the jokes and takedowns on dadbod, of which the consensus seems to be: look at how easy it is to be slightly out of shape guy and still considered handsome in our society. It's a form of male privilege, sure, but as a guy with an eating disorder, I really don't fucking want it.

Although relatively unspoken of outside of help groups and internet forums, eating disorders in men exist: The National Association for Anorexia and Associated Disorders (ANAD) estimates that at least 24 million people in the United States suffer from a clinical eating disorder of some form, with around 10 percent of that number being men. In Canada, statistics aren't as reliable, but decade-old government surveys pin roughly 1.5 percent (or 470,400, based on 2002 population) of 15-24 year-olds in Canada with some form of an eating disorder, and anywhere from 9-15 percent of them are male. ( NEDIC)

With no shame, I admit that I was, and am, one of them. For as long as I can remember, I've been self-conscious of my body. Growing up, I was known as the chubby kid who was abysmal at sports. It wasn't uncommon for both boys and girls, along with their fathers and mothers, to point out that fact and, whether intentionally or not, pick on me. Being a guy, I always got the vibe or verbal command from others to just laugh it off. So, I did, and buried it inside me.

In private, however, it always found a way out.

When it comes to eating disorders, men tend to be swept under the rug in most discussions about the topic, a problem that York University psychology professor Jennifer Mills says is largely due to the different societal expectations that men and women face when it comes to ideal body types.

"I think that the fact that men's ideal body shape is more broadly defined than that of women is one of the reasons why being a man protects people from developing an eating disorder," she said. "The ideal body shape is not as extreme or rigidly defined as it is for women."

One of the reasons Mills says there's a lack of awareness when it comes to male eating disorders is due to how males have embraced exercise as a way of coping with eating disorders. Where some females tend to simply eat less out of a desire to be thin or develop bulimia as a way to counteract overeating, males attempt to rationalize weight loss through dieting and overeating by training harder and more frequently, thus getting them caught in a grey area of sorts. After all, it's unlikely to be shamed for be too healthy.

"Men still make up very small numbers of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. They are relatively more likely to be diagnosed with 'eating disorder not otherwise specified,' because they don't quite fit into those two diagnoses," Mills says. "For instance, some men lose a lot of weight through dieting, but don't quite meet the BMI cut-off for anorexia nervosa. Or they compensate for binge eating with exercise, not purging."

I can certainly attest to this fact: a few months before my 16th birthday, after screaming at a 4 AM post-binge reflection of myself in the bathroom mirror, I went to sleep with a determination to wake up the next morning and ask my parents to pull the old, rusty weight set out of the garage for me and set it up in the basement.

The next day, my dad had set up a bench, a bar and some dumbbells, all without a peep or cast of judgement from parents. Thus, the real phase of my battle against my image began.

Over the next few years, up to the very point that I type these words, I would scrutinize every single thing I ate and constantly worry about if I was burning enough energy throughout the day. It started simple enough: fried chicken turned to chicken breast, pizza turned to pistachios. Before long, I was counting my calories with an online app, weighing my food with a scale. I became involved with bodybuilding and weightlifting communities, figured out a way to rationalize my unhealthy relationship with food through periods of "bulking" and "cutting," and generally, on the surface, seemed OK to my friends and family.

For some people, eating disorders manifest into what researchers and doctors refer to as " body dysmorphia:" a condition in which a person sees a more highly-negative version of their appearance than actually exists.

For some insight, although I've never been officially diagnosed with body dysmorphia, I've spoke to doctors who suggested I likely have it. All it takes is for me to look at an old photo of myself to realize just how good I actually looked to realize that, despite thinking I almost always look like shit and need to work harder, I am very likely just fine in the eyes of others.

Dr. Flanders, a Toronto pediatrician with a special interest in eating disorders, describes the gap that those the body dysmorphic face between simply wanting to look better and permanently hating their image as "a difference in perception."

"Someone with body dysmorphic disorder literally see/feels something that is different from reality," he said. "The classic example is the thin anorexic girl who looks in the mirror and sees the reflection of a fat person in the mirror. For a male it could look like this: a strong muscular boy looks in the mirror and sees a weak scrawny body reflecting back."

While the pursuit of lithe bodies like Justin Bieber and Beckham is undeniably more prominent in today's society, it wasn't always that way. Many of the sex symbols from decades past hid their abs and muscles under hair, grit and flab, despite being hustled out as the showrunners of male sex appeal.

Now, with many Hollywood actors getting that superhero psychique from steroids and HGH, it's obvious, like the much-talked-about beauty standards of women, for men, things too have changed.

One image I distinctly remember from my childhood is the countless times standing in the shower, staring down at my stomach, grabbing at my skin and secretly wishing I could just tear it off. Certainly, images of male actors I saw on TV and movies influenced that feeling, and if men and women think alike at all, Mills says parallels can probably be drawn.

"I think it's reasonable to expect that the same kinds of things that lead to the development of eating disorders in women, do so in men," she says. "Internalizing a slender, idealized body type leads to body dissatisfaction."

But despite what may seem like an evolving standard of male beauty, Flanders says that much of the development of such conditions may just be unavoidable.

"The underlying cause for eating disorders is still not very well understood. We suspect, however, that there is a fairly strong genetic component," says Flanders. "There are also some common mental health struggles that some people with eating disorders share including low self-esteem, perfectionism, impulsive behavior, and difficulty maintaining healthy relationships."

According to organizations like ANAD and NEDIC, those with eating disorders often harbour other demons like depression and social anxiety as well. While I can't claim a scapegoat for why my brain thinks this way, nor am I qualified enough to render a verdict on what should be but isn't being done to protect both boys and girls from developing such a horrible condition, I can say this: the privilege of being male has inherently come the burden of being expected to exercise it.

In a way, being told to toughen up and "act like a man" has created a desire for me to never be satisfied and to never complain. While I still recognize that I have an eating disorder and probably will forever have to cope with it, it's something I've learned to manage. Like how Bruce Banner keeps from turning into the Hulk, I have ways of working around my bad habits.

At the end of day, even if I've learned how to cope with my fight against myself, I think it's important to speak about all of this openly. I also hope other men speak up so that the next generation doesn't have to deal with the standards I felt I had to, because really, even if society changes it's tune about how men should act, I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to do the same for myself.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

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A smartphone, via Wikipedia.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

The future of video gaming is mobile. That's not my opinion, but seemingly the verdict of the powers that be at Konami. The legendary Japanese developer recently revealed that its "main platform will be mobiles," by which they mean (smart)phones, rather than software for the 3DS (doing fairly well) and Vita (not so much). There's still the epic Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain to come before the studio properly moves away from "traditional" games-making, and likely further console titles in the pipeline (surely we'll see at least one more Pro Evo), but nevertheless: a great many Konami admirers did not take the news well.

Here are just some of the comments left on the VICE Gaming Facebook page (which you can certainly like, if you like) after Konami's position became apparent: "Anyone with a brain will drop Konami after MGSV, [it's] pretty much a redundant company in the vidya world"; "I wish nothing but failure, regret and misery on this stupid company"; "Konami is a dying company, [and] this push for mobile is just the desperate grasp before the end"; "It's sad how mobile gaming is causing great publishers and developers to abandon the traditional gaming scene."

Some harsh words from people who were card-carrying fans not so long ago, but is Konami right to move its gaming focus towards the mobile market? It's a massive name in the gaming world, sure, but it's not all about Contra and Castlevania—Konami makes plenty of money in other markets, having been active in the health and fitness sector for some time and developed casino equipment to the tune of serious dividends. It's got shareholders to consider—and with revenue falling during the 2013-14 fiscal year, the simplest fix is surely to combat the greatest costs that can't guarantee significant returns. And the development and distribution of big-budget, (usually) boxed video games, unless you can throw Destiny or Grand Theft Auto money behind a massive marketing campaign, is always a risky business.

Of course, moving into the mobile market is a massive gamble, too. Right now, over 430 new games get added to the App Store every single day. Gaming forms the largest section of apps available through the store, with double the number of available downloads than the next-biggest category, business. Standing out in this always-expanding crowd is, for a great many mobile developers, an absolute nightmare. I've had conversations with people making amazingly innovative titles for mobiles who are rocked by how their work's been lost in the flood of free-to-play behemoths and other, more-perfunctory creations awarded "editor's pick"-style prominence with an arbitrary hand. The Konami brand won't be a free pass to smartphone success, and any games the company makes exclusively for mobiles will have to be more than existing genres given a Metal Gear Solid reskin.

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'Clash of Clans' is currently making over a million dollars a day.

At least, that's the critical thinking—I mean, who in their right mind would pay for something (or not pay for it, initially, and then pump up their monthly bill with microtransactions) that's utterly rancid gameplay wise but "stands out" simply because the avatar you're guiding through the endless runner (or whatever) in question is dolled up like a Belmont? You'd hope nobody, but the truth of the matter is that free-to-play titles offering damn-near-identical experiences are The Big Thing on the mobile platform. And they're having a massive effect on the market, too, with the daily revenue for games like Clash of Clans (over a million dollars*) and Candy Crush Saga (just under a million*) taking the return on mobile games past console equivalents for the first time ever.

According to information that landed in my inbox the other day courtesy of a San Francisco- and Edinburgh-based "analytics and personalization platform" called deltaDNA—look, it has a website—this year will mark a changing of the guard when it comes to gaming. Out with the old, in with the new – as picked up by Forbes, which reported back in January that mobile games will make in the region of $30.3 billion in 2015, versus console gaming's $24.6 billion. For any company that needs to be profiting from its games arm, these projections can only be attractive. But there's a catch to Konami's "main platform" focus—and that's the fact that console (and PC) gamers aren't going anywhere as mobile revenues climb.

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The next 'The Legend of Zelda' game will be for Nintendo's Wii U, not Android and iOS devices.

Sales of Sony's PlayStation 4 are running at such a rate that, at the moment, it's outperforming the PlayStation 2, the world's highest-selling console of all time. Quoted by Forbes (in the same article linked to above), video game research firm Newzoo's chief executive Peter Warman points out that "mobile gaming does not replace console or PC gaming." Vincent van Deelen, a market analyst, adds: "Playing games on the TV or PC will not disappear." The App Store might be bigger than Steam when it comes to download numbers, virtual units shifted, but the average spend on an iOS game is significantly less than a single dollar. Apple's games-related revenue, via its commission percentage on sales, is more than Nintendo's, and it makes games, but can you really see Shigeru Miyamoto coming out and publicly stating that his main focus for future Mario and Zelda titles will be smartphones?

Of course not—Nintendo might finally be looking at phone opportunities with something slightly better than a sneer, but while its first mobile game will be out before the end of 2015, its rollout will be measured (five games by 2017), with the creative focus remaining fixed on the company's proprietary formats. Video gaming's many and varied forms have easily accepted, and embraced, smartphones and their platform-specific gameplay traits—but as someone who games both at home and on the move regularly, for me the experiences are very different, as Nintendo seem to acknowledge. Which isn't to say both aren't welcomed, just that they each have their places, and I'd never want one without the availability of the other.

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Or, something completely different: Inside America's Lucrative Divorce Industry

With only a few exceptions—the Swedish studio Simogo springs to mind—mobile gaming doesn't do story-rich games especially well, so it's to the bigger-screen titles that I turn to feel fully enveloped by my interactive entertainment. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is my latest addiction, but in the past I've sunk hundreds of hours in the Mass Effect series, a slew of open-world games from Rockstar (I expect you know the ones), and Bethesda's Elder Scrolls adventures. Hell, I even enjoy linear shooters when the fiction that supports them makes me care about the reasons why I'm gunning down so many NPCs.

But I'm never playing Scrabble on my console (assuming you can, which I assume is the case), only ever on my phone. Super Hexagon is something I only ever turn to when riding a few stops on the Tube, likewise Vlambeer's Ridiculous Fishing, and recent App Store chart-topper Alto's Adventure. These games only really work on mobile, and are rarely connected with for more than ten minutes at a time. They're great games, but small games. They don't cost a lot, and they deliver the satisfaction I expect from that outlay. Each innovates in its own way, to keep you hooked; none really has an "end," unlike the wonderful 80 Days and Monument Valley, exquisitely rare mobile titles that do straddle the line between home experience and travel companion, perfectly playable in either situation, and with a sense of finality come their scripted conclusions.

Fancy a dance? Read THUMP.

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'Monument Valley' is a mobile game that is just as distracting at home as it is on the move.

Mobile gaming has its own language, one that's easier to understand than console and PC gaming—but that doesn't make it a better means of communicating with the medium in question. The best part of 40 years of home computing culture isn't about to be erased because Game of War's making a million and a half dollars a day*—there are people opening Machine Zone's F2P strategy title every single day that have never played Pong, or Tetris, or Super Mario Bros., or The Sims, or The Secret of Monkey Island, or Speedball 2, or Call of Duty, or Grand Theft Auto. Not to mention Castlevania, Contra, Metal Gear Solid, Pro Evolution Soccer, and Silent Hill.

Nobody is yet saying that Konami is going to abandon its bigger games in exclusive favor of same-franchise, smaller-costs mobile development, but the decision to abandon the already hyped and so eagerly anticipated Silent Hills, which VICE Gaming already lamented, and to sever ties with Metal Gear Solid director Hideo Kojima—albeit after The Phantom Pain has come out, which it does in September—sends out some alarming signals. An emphasis on making smartphone games that turn a tidy profit could well reverse in-the-red revenues, but if Konami completely turned its attention from the console world, that'd not only be damaging to the company's reputation but also, as market analysts have made clear, quite possibly its finances.

The company's way forward has to be with a complementary, cross-platform attitude to games making, and the understanding that there isn't just the one breed of gamer in the world, moving en masse from PlayStations to iPhones. Chances are they're using both, sometimes at the same time—I know I do (I've been known to use walkthroughs, what of it?). To think otherwise, to return to those VICE Gaming commenters, really is sad—for Konami, for consumers, and for gaming culture in its fullest, purest form. Mobile gaming isn't "the future"—it's the present, and anyone hoping to capitalize on its current boom and draw profits in the immediate future is already a couple of years behind the curve.

(* At the time of writing)

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.