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There are few things in life as fulfilling as seeing a new "like" on a Facebook post. You think I'm joking, but deep down, having people "like" the shit we post on Facebook makes us feel all warm and fuzzy. There's actually scientific proof of this: Studies have shown that not only do we experience a release of dopamine when we post something on social media, but an area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens lights up the same way as when we think about fun things like sex and food and money. That dirty blend of synthetic social interaction, a bogus sense of achievement, and the illusion of popularity triggers some kind of pathetic rush—kind of like an addiction—leaving us all thirsty for the next digital thumbs up.

The sad thing is, most of those "likes" are a farce. While you're over there congratulating yourself on breaking double digit "likes" with your latest profile picture, someone else is sitting behind their computer, snickering about the reasons why they clicked the little blue thumb. With the exception of your mom, few people "like" your status update because they actually like it. Hell, sometimes people "like" your shit expressly because they hate it. Trust me, you do it too. Here are a few of the reasons people have been "liking" your posts.

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Loyalty

First, I'll start with the good news: People don't always care about the stuff you post, but there are people who genuinely care about you, and they'll "like" your posts regardless. The microscopic slice of your online friends you would conceivably take a bullet for—they get thumbed unconditionally, and vice versa. Hell, they'll "like" it even if they loathe it, because that's what friends are for.

The same goes for people who care about you less, but feel obligated to look like they do. Like that guy you met at the bar that one time, who you shared a heart-to-heart with and never saw again—he'll one day share in the joy of your newborn child.

With some strangers, there's a symbiotic "liking" relationship. The mutual massaging of each other's internet presence has long outlived any real life relationship. If you saw them in the mall, you would probably stop, drop, and roll. But you'll keep 'liking' each other's shit for all eternity, like a joyless game of tag that only death can settle.

Spite, Version One

We've all had that experience where we're lazily scrolling through Facebook and then—BAM. Some pouting wart on your past has resurfaced right in the center of you news feed. But instead of the usual excruciating, sexed-up projection of their lives, they're broadcasting some kind of discomfort. Something like: "Feeling realllllly poorly :( :( :("

Now here's something we can really get on board with. This you like. You like that karma is fighting the good fight against their immune system; you like that it's the perfect amount of suffering for you to "like" it guilt-free; and most of all, you like the perverse satisfaction of picturing them assuming you're rallying behind them in their hour of need. It's a juicy, victimless venting of spite. Thumbs up!

Spite, Version Two

Every now and then, a post pops up so spectacularly cringeworthy that it, too, warrants a "like." This person must be officially recognized for their outstanding contribution to awfulness. A classic case is the chump who rants through unwanted updates on their toxic social circle. They tell of an unforgiving place, where "trust" and "loyalty" are an unstable currency and "true friends" dwindle with each passing day. Anyone who notices what a monumental fuckwit they are, is proudly dismissed as just another "hater" and if pretty much everyone hates you, you've got to be doing something right. Right?

To witness such an exceptional career dickhead is life-affirming. Not in the grand scheme of things, of course, but on a purely selfish, personal level. Even at your lowest, when you are wincing with shame and your morals are taking a sabbatical, you will still have the high ground on this waste of a soul. Really, you are 'liking' what a slightly better person you are. Everyone likes a villain.

Some people will do anything for online gratification. Take YouTube sensation Shoenice22, who became famous for eating anything from sticks of deodorant to tampons online.

Sex

A lot of the time, we are "liking" stuff on behalf of our genitals. Up there with religiously favoriting their tweets, it's probably the easiest, least ballsiest way to imply that you wouldn't mind banging someone. In the olden days, there was the Facebook "poke" function, which still exists today, but no one uses it. Now, the subtler "like" can be used to set in motion a series of events, ending with you consummating your Facebook attraction with some good old fashioned, IRL sex.

Scrolling through display pictures is like visiting a cattle market, admirer's carefully study each user and their "likes" are shouts expressing their interest. If the photo is comprised of a non-buddy marketing themselves to a lens, the intention of the "like" is explicit. Those in relationships are treated to a monthly break down of everyone who wants to poach their loved one. Remember: Friends don't let their homely homie's profile picture stay in single figures.

If you're too discrete and debonair for such an upfront declaration, you might inject a little allure in to your cyber-pursuit by instead "liking" a photo your target is tagged in. Maybe, you could "like" a photo where there's something fun going on and they aren't seducing the camera. This way your intent is slightly more mysterious and ambiguous. Like, Hey, I just like the fact that you are having fun. And maybe, probably, I want to sex you? This only applies if the photo pops up on the news feed, of course. You wouldn't want the recipient to feel like you've hunted them out and have been rifling systematically through their life, like a pervert through a trash bag.

For an even more subtle and sophisticated approach, perhaps just "like" some recent success in their life, or a music video they posted. This could indicate that you have the same taste in music (you want to fuck them) or you are pretend-psyched about their exam results (you still want to fuck them). There's still a sniff of underlying intent when "liking" an adorable video someone has shared of a baby goat being a dick.

Drunkenness

In the muddled mindset of the drunken Facebooker, all the unspoken codes of conduct go stumbling out the window. Near-strangers just feel like old friends. You "like" with reckless abandon, putting as many thumbs in as many pies as you can: ex-girlfriend's mom's cover photo: Yeah I like that! Photo of yourself looking fresh from two years ago: Damn, yeah I like that! Dude you don't recognize mourning the death of their grandmother: Oh shit. They really need me right now. I like that!

Waking groggily up, you'll find your Facebook presence near the top of your regret list. Your open screen will show an ominous number of notifications, which you decide it is probably best not to acknowledge.

Sincerity

Suspend disbelief a moment and imagine somewhere in the inconsequential swamp of strangers tensing and ex-colleagues venting that you scroll upon something you genuinely like. For whatever reason, you just want to express your straightforward appreciation—no ulterior motive.

Here's the thing, though: Will they interpret your "like" as a flirty declaration? How regularly have you been "liking" their shit? If you recently caught a case of "like" trigger finger, they might assume you are madly obsessed with them. They'll imagine you pawing through their past, chanting a mantra you've created by splicing together their most successful Facebook statuses.

What if you can't even remember the origin of your online sham of a friendship? What if they can't even remember you? Shit, your name will stand out on the list of "likers" like a sore, blue thumb. Maybe it's best not to "like" it after all.

And then, of course, you realize: All these hypothetical repercussions of a "like" are pretty much imaginary. No one gives a shit—we are all happy to be "liked!" When an unfamiliar name shows their appreciation for some vapid insight into your own life, you value it the same as you would from a close friend.

Follow Sam Briggs on Twitter.

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Via Flickr user Rachel

Today the Harvard Crimson published the results of an annual, wide-ranging survey it administers to the school's outgoing seniors. One big takeaway: That image we have of college as a teen movie–esque sexual free-for-all doesn't reflect the truth, at least not in Cambridge—a whopping 24 percent of seniors said they had never had intercourse while at Harvard.

That's a lot of college kids not having sex, but the number doesn't appear to be an aberration. According to that same survey, only 45 percent of male students watched porn multiple times per week, and 56 of female students didn't watch porn at all. This is a multi-year trend: Last year, 21 percent of respondents to the Crimson survey said they were virgins. In 2013, a whopping 27 percent said they had never had sex. Put simply, Harvard students don't seem too interested in fucking—as one student put it in a 2010 Crimson op-ed, the school is a "barren wasteland of sexual destitution."

Is Harvard more destitute than other schools? That depends on which numbers you look at. Between the years 1990 and 2013, researchers quizzed 7,000 different students in a sociology of human sexuality class at a big Midwestern university. What they found—and published in the Journal of Sex Research this past February—is that only about 15 percent of them were virgins, a number that included underclassmen. But a Stanford sociologist told USA Today in 2011 that 24 percent of seniors from multiple colleges were still virgins. Statistics aside, college students remained obsessed with sex and the idea that it's there for the taking at campuses across America. For instance, during orientation at the University of Florida, wide-eyed 17-year-olds and their parents are often told that that every time a virgin graduates, a brick falls from off a tower on campus—and, of course, no bricks have ever fallen.

You know what else college kids don't like? The band Jawbreaker, apparently.

One common theory behind the trend of chastity at Harvard and elsewhere is that college kids, like everyone else these days, are stressed out and overworked. In 1996, anxiety became the number one reason college students visited mental health services, surpassing even relationship problems, according to to the book The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids. And students at what's often considered the nation's most elite university are certainly very driven, which means they're probably more focused on keeping their heads above water academically than anything going on below their waists.

But there isn't exactly a one-to-one correlation between ambition and frigidity; schools just as rigorous as Harvard have very different reputations. For instance, the annual Sex Power God bacchanal that Brown students throw every years was enough to draw the scorn of Bill O'Reilly in a 2007 segment. Jesse Waters, an attendee and guest on the show, described women falling down drunk in nothing but their underwear. "I went down to the bathroom into a stall and heard people having sex in the stall next to me," he told O'Reilly. "I did observe people having sex behind where the DJ was playing. There was guys kissing guys. Girls making out with girls. It was the wildest party I've ever been to."

Presumably, not every school can host crazy blowouts featuring such gasp-worthy open displays of homosexual affection, but if college kids want to have more sex, maybe they should take some tips from libido-focused publications like Cosmo: get more exercise, eat sexy foods like salmon and walnuts, and for fuck's sake, watch some porn.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Back in 2011, VICE Germany gained exclusive access to Jamel—a small town often called a "Nazi village" by the press. Jamel may have only housed around 35 permanent residents, but it skewed pretty heavily toward neo-Nazis and extremists who are mostly members of the far-right NPD political party.

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Alexi Halket. Photo by Charlie Reynolds

When I was in ninth grade, I dressed up as a "hippie" for Halloween. My version of that was floral bellbottoms, a matching fringed vest, about five pounds of thrift store jewelry, and a white crop top.

It took the vice principal until second period to sniff me out. She intercepted me between classes and hustled me into her office. She told me the outfit was distracting to boys, and I would have to go home and change.

I raised one brow and pressed her on it. I said something to the effect of, "A sliver of skin on my belly is distracting? Why?" She said yes, it was. She didn't say why. "Bra straps, too," she added. Hopes dashed and costume now ruined, I borrowed somebody's hoody and went about my day. I saw no other choice.

That was 13 years ago, and absolutely nothing has changed. Schools across the country are operating the same way. This week, an Etobicoke School of the Arts student was yanked into her own vice principal's office to have that very same conversation I was forced to have so long ago. Alexi Halket spent 90 minutes in the office in a back-and-forth about her clothing, when presumably she attended school that day in the hopes of learning something other than which sartorial choices are deemed "appropriate" by her elders. According to the school's behaviour, the top she chose to wear was more important than the development of her young brain.

Predictably, the internet blew up over it, and on Tuesday, hundreds of young girls and women in Toronto stomped their schools in crop tops of their own.

Young women are mobilizing, but schools have been slow on the uptake. They're still viewing young women's bodies as hazards to the learning environment. Dress codes still routinely state that tops should have backs and fronts, completely covering undergarments, waists, and shoulders. Skirts must fall at mid-thigh or below.

Young women are sick of this bullshit, and with due cause. This relentless prosecution of women for their personal sartorial choices sends the message that school is for boys, and that girls are welcome to attend if, and only if, they do not distract those rightful occupiers of the classroom. We are treated like children in restaurants: we can be there if we're on our best behaviour, but one false move and we're swiftly deported from the scene, animal crackers and Crayolas flying. Our presence in schools is conditional, and we are still an afterthought.

But the backlash from teens is growing as online activism extends to real life, and feminism faces a new epoch (and maybe even a new wave). This discussion is making headlines every few weeks. Girls are being labeled as wicked jezebels and temptresses for wearing yoga pants or tank tops, and more young women are getting sick of the creepy, if not outright dangerous, sexualization of their bodies by teachers who are two or three times their age. They're tired of their bodies being policed so that boys can be "protected" from being forced to behave like leering predators. So they're speaking up and declaring to their schools that they will dress their bodies as they see fit.

Lauren Wiggins, an 18-year-old from Moncton, made all of the headlines a couple of weeks ago when she wrote a letter to her vice principal and was subsequently suspended. She said it best when she said to her school's designated disciplinarian:

"If you are truly so concerned that a boy in this school will get distracted by my upper back and shoulders, then he needs to be sent home and practice self-control."

And in Fredericton, young feminists have made major strides. Fredericton High School students were suspended after protesting the dress code, but that led to the creation of a new, district-wide sexual assault policy.

The storyline my vice principal gave back in the early 2000s, though, is one people in her shoes are still giving today: that school prepares kids for adult life in an office (because all adults work in an office) and that as such, anything that wouldn't be deemed appropriate in an office should also be outlawed in the hallowed walls of a school. K, perfect! Let's teach kids everything about the exclusionary practices of capitalism, and nothing at all about body ownership!

One would be hard pressed to find a high school in this country that does not have something to say against the sporting of tube tops or spaghetti straps. And boys, are prohibited from wearing these things, too. They're also prohibited from wearing hats at some schools, or showing their boxers over their jeans.

But how many dudes get shirtless in gym class, or out on the soccer field in the spring? Are young men really going to be chastised for showing up to gym class in a muscle shirt? This, friends, is what we call a sexist policy. If girls can be blamed for "distracting" boys with their bodies, is it a far cry for them to be blamed for being raped or sexually assaulted?

These clearly sexist dress codes are symptomatic of a much bigger cultural problem, of course. We force women to be viewed through a sexual lens, and then we blame them for it. Adult teachers see 15-year-old girls' yoga-pantsed butts as sexy, and rather than viewing that as completely fucking disgusting, we view it as sensible and righteous.

Further, we're shaming sexuality as a whole by telling boys they should never have sexual thoughts about girls, and for telling girls they need to cover up in order to avoid provoking the boys. It's normal for most adolescents to have sexual feelings. Rather than avoiding the issue by shaming them for those feelings, schools should be teaching young people to express their sexuality in a respectful way.

No wonder the majority of adults I know have issues with sex.

Teachers and vice principals: you guys should really spend some time googling "rape culture" this summer, and stop telling girls they're doing something inherently wrong by being young, carefree, and dressed comfortably for warm weather.

In the meantime, girls: own yourself. Don't be afraid to be right just because your foe is older or more powerful than you.

And rock. That. Crop top.

Follow Sarah Ratchford on Twitter.

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Jess Salomon performing at Comedyworks. Photo courtesy: Josh Baluyot

On Saturday, May 30, I was supposed to give a talk at TEDxWomen in Montreal. That is until I was removed from the speaker roster on Friday without any kind of explanation. I got kicked out of TEDxWomen. It is still unbelievable to me. And, if I'm honest, a little thrilling. The only time I've ever been kicked out of anything was once in music class in Grade 8. It was the triangle. I just couldn't take it seriously.

I wish I could say I got the boot for something outrageous. Like my talk was just a series of rape jokes or a subliminal organizing cry in support of men's rights activists or a long ad for Monsanto. But it wasn't. Even as I imagine staging my too controversial for TEDx talk, duct tape over my mouth, the word "CENSORED" splashed across the Facebook event invitation, I worry the biggest joke would be how innocuous the whole thing was. I see myself yelling after disappointed audience members as they file out of the theatre, "I swear, that was it! I'm sorry!"

The talk I submitted to the organizer was a mostly comedic and generally self-deprecating tale about making the switch from war crimes law to stand up comedy. I offer a step-by-step guide, with accompanying cartoons of myself making mistakes like standing next to the spotlight rather than under it, of my parents crying, and of my first album cover six months into comedy called Jessica Salomon: 10 Minutes. That's right, album cover. That's something I actually sent to club owners. I now go by Jess Salomon. I'm hoping no one will make the connection.

Everything was approved save for one joke. Quick digression: there were only two jokes from my act in my talk. I was originally invited to do stand up comedy and I said, "I don't think that's a good idea, why don't I do a comedic talk instead?" Because I've learned that despite what people will tell you, they don't really get jokes these days. Last point of order: The "E" in "TED" stands for "Entertainment." LOL. Last, last point of order: The theme of the day is "Daring Greatly!" Is there an irony emoji? If so insert it here.

The first joke was a dirty one. It was an example of what my act was like when I first started. I was told there was a risk that TED might not give my video as much play or that it could be removed, but that, if I wanted, I could keep it. No problem.

The second joke, the offending joke, was political. I included it because it's funny, but also because it represented a turning point for me in comedy when I started doing the kind of material I only hope to get better at doing. It came out of the debate surrounding the Quebec Charter of Values—legislation intended to outlaw religious clothing in the public sector. I was against this law, as was the voting public. Thankfully.

The essence of the joke was to say that I think people in a democracy should be able to wear whatever they want but that at the same time I understand the discomfort people feel around the burka and the niqab, or, as white people understand them, "the ninja and the beekeeper."

White people don't often know the differences between all of the various kinds of coverings, so I thought it was important to make it clear that I wasn't talking about the veil. A lot of white people aren't super culturally savvy. This is a joke about white people. I am white.

I then go on to act out how I deal with my personal discomfort in the rare event I see a lady in a burka or niqab, basically my back-and-forth inner monologue between the part of me that's like "You go girl!" and the other part that's like "Blink twice if you want to get out of here!"

It's a joke about me trying to be sensitive to the fact that although it's hard not to see these coverings as misogynistic or imagine that the woman underneath might be oppressed, it's important to also recognize that this could very well be her own choice. To acknowledge her power and agency in how she dresses and lives her life.

The organizer of the TEDxWomen conference was worried about how Muslims in the audience or people out there with Muslim friends or family that wear burkas might feel. She was especially concerned about the feelings of a speaker who wears a veil. When she asked if she could send the joke to this veiled woman I agreed because I assumed this was a case of someone getting offended on behalf of someone else.

I was wrong. The veiled speaker was very offended. Caps and exclamation mark offended. She was also worried that if I spoke before her in the lineup, my joke (not about veils) would affect people's perception of her and, as such, her credibility as a scientist. Her concern was that me talking about the burka/niqab would enter people's subconscious such that they wouldn't be able to focus on what she was saying. I don't know what it's like to wear a veil and present a scientific talk, but to my mind, the kind of people who would be distracted by her veil would be distracted by her veil regardless. That said, being able to keep my joke and go after her in the lineup would have been a great solution. What it didn't resolve was the larger issue the organizer had about protecting people from being offended by the joke.

I spoke to her on the phone in an effort to understand what it was that had offended her. In the first place, it seemed, she had an issue with my discomfort. With the idea of me needing to have an inner debate about what someone was wearing at all. The gist of her argument was that she never feels uncomfortable and never judges anyone: Not girls in short-shorts, or people who have tattoos or piercings. You know just a list of totally random examples. She thought it was only fair that if I was going talk about how the burka or the niqab might be oppressive (an assumption she disagreed with), I should also make a joke about how girls in short-shorts are oppressed. As if the absence of that joke was proof of my intolerance. The truth is, I just don't happen to have a joke about asses hanging out of shorts because my joke came out of a specific law targeting religious clothing and not Miley Cyrus inspired fashion choices.

It was made clear to me that if I wanted to speak I had to cut out the joke. This was supposed to be an inclusive environment where everyone felt safe. (Presumably until all of this was uploaded to YouTube.) But it's not about inclusion of viewpoints; it's about creating a safe space for the offended and potentially offended not to be offended. The reason or logic behind their offense isn't questioned. It's just enough that they say they are offended.

I was told I could replace the joke if I wanted, with a joke about Jews or Gays or Jewish Gays, because I belong to those groups so presumably no offence could be taken there. There is an understanding that people are allowed to joke about their own people. That doesn't mean though that those people won't get offended. Trust me, I've made jokes about Israel. I know. It also doesn't mean you shouldn't make jokes involving other groups. There are a million ways you can joke about a minority group you aren't a part of without making them the butt of the joke. Again, despite what they tell you, most people don't really understand comedy.

And so, I agreed to remove the joke. I still don't see it as offensive. Maybe I haven't tried hard enough. I've told the joke many times, including in front of Muslims. Including in front of veiled Muslims. And including in front of the organizers of this TEDxWomen talk who had no issue with it when they came to see my act at a local comedy club. The only explanation I've been given is that I'm not Muslim, so I shouldn't make a joke that references what I am not.

What I always have been is someone who makes fun of the kind of people who think the greatest threat we face today as a society is the "PC Police." The people who think political correctness has gone too far. And now, I have to agree with them. Not that this is the greatest threat—um, pretty sure that's climate change—but that political correctness has at least jumped the shark. Now these people that I always make jokes about, who can't let go of the word faggot, can use me as an example of how they were right, it has gone too far, and now I have to agree with them.

I told the organizers when I took out the joke that I would like instead to talk briefly about how I couldn't make a joke I wanted to make because it might offend people. I said I thought it was funny that a joke about trying to be sensitive to others is being censored on account of it being potentially offensive to others. I promised not to say the word Muslim, burka, or niqab. I resubmitted the text. I said these things and then I added this:

TEDx: A place for ground-breaking ideas, for DARING GREATLY, for speaking truthfully!!!! ... As long as you don't mention any ethnic or religious minority you aren't a part of!

They responded by removing me from the roster. No further explanation. It appears that jokes involving burkas or niqabs at least merit some discussion. A joke about TEDx, that gets you banned, no questions asked.

Fittingly, considering the theme of my talk, no experience thus far has made me feel as much like a bona fide comedian. It's kind of unbelievable and kind of thrilling. Like getting kicked out of music class felt that day in Grade 8. TEDxWomen is the triangle. Not worth being taken seriously.

My apologies to the people who play the triangle!

VICE reached out for comment on this column. This was TEDxWomen's response:

Jessica Salomon is a great talent. TED is a non-political, non-religious platform as stated in the TEDx Rules.

Please refer to the following excerpt:

• No talks with an inflammatory political or religious agenda, nor for polarizing "us vs them" language. We seek to build consensus and provide outside-the-box thinking, not to revisit familiar, unresolvable disputes on these topics.

As per these guidelines, we were unable to move ahead with her proposed content.

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Unfortunately this would probably not fetch much money. Photo via Flickr user How can I recycle this

Together with donating your sperm and pharmaceutical trials, selling your hair online is one of the easiest ways to make money without working. Wigmakers, high-end "doll artists," and hair fetishists are willing to pay over a thousand dollars a head for top-quality product.

Human hair is valuable because it's a scarce commodity unequaled for a range of uses. With tiny scales that soak up oils while repelling water, hair cleans up tanker spills better than most other fibres. But the real demand comes from the cosmetics industry. Extensions and wigs made from premium-grade human hair sell for several times the price of synthetics. Apart from the natural sheen and texture, real hair also doesn't melt when exposed to heat, a major advantage when using a blowdryer.

International trade flows are moving hair to where the money is. For 2014, UN stats show that the US imported over $650 million worth of human hair—raw, processed, or worked into wigs, false beards, or eyebrows. Italy and the UK were also major destinations, both reporting over $50 million in imports. China's natural wig exports were over $2.2 billion, and weighed in at just under 12 million kilograms.

The supply chain can be shockingly unethical, however, with middlemen traveling around Indian and Chinese villages offering peasant women a pittance for hair worth hundreds on Western markets. In 2004, the Guardian reported that Russian prisons and mental asylums were making a profit by forcibly shaving inmates and selling their hair abroad. (Victoria Beckham even boasted about being the proud owner of a Russian prison wig, a claim her hairdresser later denied.)

But the internet has created opportunities for women to get a fair price for their hair, by directly linking them to buyers around the world. George Horton, a hair stylist from California, got the idea to set up onlinehairaffair.com back in 2007, after he dared two girls to sell their hair on eBay.

"We went to the salon, cut their hair, shaved their heads," he said. "We didn't have any idea what would happen. But people went crazy on the bidding."

Altogether, Horton's stunt brought in about $4,000, he told VICE. Obviously there was an untapped market, so he created the site, first as an auction platform, then as a direct online marketplace.

Competitors soon followed. One of the first was buyandsellhair.com, a UK-based company that went up in 2010. The owner, Sandip Sekhon, told us that colour, thickness, and quality all affect price. Red hair gets the best returns, at $30-$80 an inch, followed by blonde. Hair considered "virgin"—pure of dyes, bleach or chemicals—also brings in a bonus. But length is the most important factor, with a head of quality hair over two feet likely to crack the $1,000 mark. Sekhon's website lists $6,500 as the highest price ever paid to a user, for 45 inches of thick virgin hair.

Who's paying all this money? Over the course of a year spanning 2013 to 2014, Sekhon's company surveyed its buyers to find out what they were doing with their purchases. He told us that 83 percent reported making wigs or extensions, while five percent listed "art, design, or fashion," including porcelain dolls, clothing, and buttons. The remaining 12 percent willingly admitted that they needed the hair for a fetish.

And fetishists are happy to pay more if they get a little something extra. Some buyers offer a premium if women provide a video feed while shaving their heads, Sekhon said. In some cases this is simply an insurance measure, he told us, since sellers have been known to defraud customers by mixing horsehair with their own strands. But in about half of video transactions, special requests give away the buyer's sexual inclinations.

"They'll say something like 'I would like to see your face as you cut it,'" Sekhon said.

Kimberly Christensen of Eagle Mountain, Utah, who's selling 16 to 17 inches of her hair for $280 on hairsellon.com, was courted by what sounds like some kind of hair fetish video ring. A man contacted her, offering $1,500 for what he called an "extreme makeover."

"They wanted to shave all my hair off," she said. "He wanted me to fly to Alabama and they would film the makeover. They offer more because they sell their videos. It sounded very strange."

Then the man came back with more conditions. He wanted a taste of what was to come, and asked her to film it.

"He said 'you have to cut off a piece from your scalp right now or no deal,'" she told VICE.

Kimberly needs money to pay back student loans and other debts, but says she's not in dire financial straits. So she refused. She says that she still receives messages from the man.

VICE called the phone number she was contacted from, but only got a non-descript answering machine. Messages were not returned by time of publication.

Kimberly says she's also been in contact with buyers who make porcelain dolls. Besides wigs and extensions, dollmaking is the most lucrative application for human hair. Kim Malone, who runs an online doll store called the Dollery, told us that many high-end doll artists (and they do insist on being called artists) use human hair, perfecting what's already an eerily unsettling lifelikeness.

"Artists from all over the world search for these specialty wigs created just for art dolls," she told VICE. "Sometimes they cannot find them and have to make their own wigs, or they hand insert the hair into wax on the dolls' heads."

Malone said that real human hair is most common for dolls over $1,000, particularly those on limited edition runs, which can fetch as much as $13,000.

Cristina S., who also advertises on hairsellon.com, is currently negotiating with one of those doll artists. She told us that she always asks buyers what they want to do with her hair.

"Some make crafts. Some just collect it and store it in boxes as some sort of peculiar hoarding," she said via email. "One buyer even asked if he could cut my hair himself. This introduced me to the haircut fetish disorder."

There's nothing wrong with having a hair fetish but online hair marketplaces might not be the most appropriate venue to find willing partners. Cristina certainly wasn't happy about being propositioned.

"I would never feed such unhealthy behaviour," she said, "no matter what they pay."

But some women will, according to Sekhon.

"Many sellers accept," he said, "because they can demand extra money for it. They'll say, 'Sure, you can see a picture of my face.'"

Follow Arthur White on Twitter

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Michael Jackson's famed 2,700-acre compound in Los Olivos, California is going on the market, the Wall Street Journalreported today. The ranch is no longer called "Neverland," as it was when it belonged to the late Prince of Pop. Instead, the listing refers to it as "Sycamore Valley Ranch." Not to mention, a lot of MJ's bizarre fairytale weirdness is gone.

The amusement park rides have been removed along with most of the zoo creatures, like his elephant and orangutans. However, Suzanne Perkins of Sotheby's International Realty—who is sharing the listing with two other real estate agents—claims that there's still a llama galloping around the property. The train station and railroad tracks which Jackson installed have also survived. The property contains two lakes, a handful of residential spaces of varying sizes, and a 50-person movie theater.

This could all be yours for the low, low price of $100 million—five times what Jackson initially paid for the ranch in 1987. If you're interested and want to take a look, you better be ready to prove to the real estate agents that you're serious—there will be an "extensive pre-qualification" process before giving potential buyers a view of the property. If you aren't actually interested in buying an insanely expensive ranch that is more than likely full of freaky vibes, just check out the photos we shot when we snuck inside the ranch last year.

Want Some In-Depth Stories About Michael Jackson?

1. Urban-Exploring Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch
2. Meet the Mystery Man Who Rapped on Michael Jackson's 'Black or White'
3. More Photos of Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch
4. Exploring the Depressing House of Michael Jackson's Disgraced Dermatologist

Follow River on Twitter.

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Chris Gethard with Ilana Glazer and Philip Romano, who holds the Ripley's record for longest tongue in America, on the first episode of 'The Chris Gethard Show' on Fusion

On Tuesday night, Fusion's newest late-night host Chris Gethard was standing inside a homemade silver tent dubbed "The Genital Chamber." With him was Broad City co-creator and co-star Ilana Glazer. The two comedians watched on a small monitor as a man in Pakistan disrobed via Skype.

"I've had this growth on my dick," the voice explained to an attentive audience of about 60 seated on the Manhattan studio floor. The occasion was a taping (and live-streaming) of the debut episode of The Chris Gethard Show—a final, edited version will premiere on Fusion tonight. Gethard and Glazer—who call the gentleman "a hunk" and "gorgeous," respectively—then described his penis to two sketch artists, the show's Shannon O'Neill and Glazer's Broad City co-star, Abbi Jacobson. Jacobson was totally up for the job of translating the narration into caricatures, having proclaimed earlier in the episode, "I'm a genital wizard!"

The Chris Gethard Show's prior four years gestating on public-access was more than enough time for Gethard and his collaborators to come up with kooky gags like "Genital Chamber," which subvert the standards and practices of traditional TV. The set during the first episode of TCGS on Fusion was equally unconventional, littered with people dressed as a banana, a racecar driver, and a "human fish." A woman hula-hooped nonstop in the background. And there was the LLC, a five-person band fronted by Gethard's wife, Hallie Bulleit. The shoddy green walls resembled a suburban basement and were decorated with other people's trashed artwork.

TCGS unique approach is also right inline with the audience Gethard's trying to reach. "The target demographic for this show is goons, ghouls, freakazoids, blookies, oddballs, the sexually confused, dingbats, dinguses, the socially awkward, people with mild depression, dorks, asthmatics, underdogs, dweebs, people with severe depression and jabronies," Gethard told the camera at the beginning of the show, citing his desire to "take what makes us different" and "put it in a pedestal."

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/8TX7mGBoHhU' width='100%' height='360px'] During the taping, Gethard (whom VICE interviewed last year and who is also an occasional contributor) asked the question, "What's weird about your body?" Instead of shying away from the topic, Skypers and audience members literally lined up to flaunt physical quirks that most people downplay in polite society.

"I think the kids who support our show, they really trust us, and not in a token way," Gethard told me in his office after the taping. "Kids are willing to get up and on a camera—that's already a scary thing—let alone say, 'Let me show you how I can turn my leg all the way around.' Getting on Skype on TV and taking out your teeth when you're a young person? That feels like a thing that's really hard, but they know that we're not bullshitting them when we say that we got their backs and we're doing it for the right reasons. Hopefully all those kids walked away tonight feeling an adrenaline rush or feeling positive that they participated."

Both Glazer and Jacobson raved about the courageous guests afterwards. "I loved it. It was a real happening and an authentic weird moment," said Glazer. "It made my week," added Jacobsen. "It really felt like an old-school UCB. You just don't get to be around that kind of energy very often."

UCB is the Upright Citizens Brigade, an improv/sketch group founded by Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh 25 years ago, eventually spawning two theaters each in New York and LA. Gethard is a veteran UCB performer who gained a following co-starring in UCB's marquee show, ASSSSCAT 3000, teaching improv classes (his students included Glazer and Jacobson), and hosting Chris Gethard's Magic Box of Stories , a solo show where Gethard told bizarre true tales from his life (many of which made it into his 2012 book, A Bad Idea I'm About to Do ).

Speaking of talk shows, Eric Andre does one, too. See what happened when we met him

The ascension of TCGS began around the time Sean "P. Diddy" Combs made a celebrity cameo during its public-access era. After that, the weekly show transferred from UCB's digs in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood to a studio operated by the cable-access channel MNN. Comedy Central ordered a pilot in fall 2013 before eventually passing on the series.

"I've kind of had some near-misses along the way with bigger things, and I've had some situations that I think I kind of opted out of along the way as well," Gethard said. "I was on a sitcom once, and that came and went." (The sitcom was Comedy Central's Big Lake, in 2010.) "That was the one where it was really eye-opening for me because I was like, Wow. I thought that was going to be really painful, and it wasn't . I also thought when I got it, it was going to kind of solve all the problems in my life, but it didn't."

Following the Comedy Central pilot, The Chris Gethard Show producers presented the show to several other networks before finding a home at Fusion. Alex Fumero, the network's director of programming and development, is a former UCB student and a longtime Gethard fan.

Will Ferrell, executive producer of 'The Chris Gethard Show,' calls in

With Gethard's unique comedic sensibility, he is poised to shake up late night the same way David Letterman did more than 33 years ago. Letterman ended his late-night career last week, and Gethard hopes a very prominent piece of his idol's set will bring good fortune to TCGS. "We have the George Washington Bridge, but we don't know if we're allowed to use it so we have it covered" with a red and white tablecloth, Gethard said. His team was tipped off to the unceremonious dismantling of Letterman's scenery earlier this month, and they bested bloggers in a race to the Ed Sullivan Theater.

Read Chris Gethard's story on VICE about how bedbugs made him a real New Yorker

Fumero compared Gethard to both Letterman and Andy Kaufman, calling his show, "smart, avant-garde comedy" with "so much heart to it."

"[Fusion] went after guys like Paul [F. Tompkins] and Chris because we wanted, as our first foray into the industry, to send the message out that we understand the craft of comedy. And what better way to do that then to bring in the people who are carving new paths?"

During their initial meeting, when Gethard began talking about his passion for making TV more interactive with help from the internet, Fumero and Fusion's chief programming officer, Wade Beckett, "just looked at me and they go, 'I think we know how to help you cause this kind of trouble,'" Gethard recalled. "When you're talking to a TV network and you say things like, 'I want to show everything for free online before it ever makes it to your network,' it doesn't really make much sense to people who think traditionally. These guys are kind of trying to think ahead of the curve."

Both the producers and Fusion immediately agreed that there needed to be a way for home viewers to feel part of the studio audience. So on Tuesday nights, the entire lengthy taping is streamed live on fusion.net, allowing for callers and commenters to be addressed in real-time.

"Because you're interacting with the show," Fumero said, "you'll want to tune in on Thursday to see what happens: What made it? What else did they add? We don't believe this is a show that runs for one [half] hour. This is a living television show."

The Chris Gethard Show premieres tonight on Fusion.

Jenna Marotta is on Twitter.

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I pulled back the whip to strike the blindfolded, handcuffed man seated in front of me. On the table beside us was a large cardboard box overflowing with whips, handcuffs, and vibrating dongs. Having met just minutes before, I knew nothing more of this man than his name (Eugenio) and his country of origin (Italy), but we both had a job to do, and time was of the essence.

While it's true that we were brought together by an internet advertisement, we weren't "sexpats" or lao wai boy toys for some chain-smoking Chinese tycoon. Eugenio and I met working for Lelo, which was once called "the Apple Inc. of the pleasure products industry." For Eugenio, eight years a designer, and myself, a New York copywriter, giving a story to each of the sex toys billowing out of that cardboard box was our first mission as marketers—and like any good marketing team, we needed to know what it felt like to be in the moment with our new products. So there we were, strangers, whipping each other, fully clothed.

Before working for Lelo, I had been backpacking for six months, moving between international cities every few days, when an American friend teaching English in Shanghai invited me to stay with her for as long as I wanted. For six weeks, I spent my days perusing markets, cooking and drinking with new friends, and meeting with Troy, my language exchange partner, at Shanghai Library.

When I finally left Shanghai for New York City, I vowed to return one day. Back in the States, I would comb the Chinese expat job boards looking for a gig that would bring me back to China. One morning, I stumbled upon an echinacities.com job board ad posted by a "luxury intimate lifestyle brand." I was intrigued. They were looking for a copywriter, and I knew two sentences into the job description that it was mine to lose. On the global job front, New York City experience is considered a CV silver bullet, and by then I had interned for comedian Denis Leary's production company, worked in pre-production for a five-time Tony Award-winning producer, and written a handful of nationally-run commercials. Three days and two interviews later, I was working for Lelo.

On this episode of Slutever, Karley Sciortino learns how to safely beat up her boyfriend in the bedroom.

Lelo, the world's leading "luxury pleasure object" company, was founded in Stockholm in 2002 by three industrial designers. Since then, the brand has garnered a reputation as the Rolls-Royce of sex toys. Their products—including Inez, a $15,000 24-karat gold vibrator—continually win both industry and non-industry awards. At the 2015 XBIZ Awards, the Academy Awards of Sex Toys, the company took home three major prizes: Luxury Toy/Line of the Year, Powered Sex Toy of the Year, and the coveted award for Pleasure Products Company of the Year.

As the company rapidly grew in the 2000s, the team moved to Shanghai, presumably to reduce overhead and gain proximity to the sex toy factory in Suzhou, 60 miles west of Shanghai. Today, three sub-brands exist under Lelo, each with a different, majority female, demographic.

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Promotional leaflets for Picobong, one of Lelo's sub-brands. Photo courtesy of the author

Take away the lingerie mannequins, sensual posters, and pleasure objects littered about, and the Lelo office looks like any other modern office floor in any other country. In fact, there's very little evidence that it's even in China. On the seventh floor of an eighth floor building, tucked off a main road in Shanghai's French Concession, the office of under 100 employees was roughly 70 percent Chinese and 30 percent Westerners. The Westerners, a majority of whom were 20-somethings on the marketing team, hailed from about a dozen different countries.

As normal as daily operations were—we still punched in and out on a computer at reception and celebrated the birthdays of the month with cake—there were some unique occurrences. It wasn't uncommon to see two a dozen Russian models from a local talent agency parade in with the hopes of being chosen for a photoshoot. I'll never forget one meeting about an industry magazine ad where we analytically flipped through a previous edition, which had a big-breasted woman bent over on the cover, like it was an issue of Good Housekeeping.

Even images of a woman spread eagle on your computer screen would barely garner a second glance, since the most puritan employees would assume you were doing research in good faith. It's true what they say: You can get used to anything.

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A few Lelo employees at a company event. Photo by the author

Part of my job was to name Lelo's products. In due time, the items in the overflowing box—a light bondage set for "curious beginners"—became The Evilution Series, and the nameless neoprene knicknacks came to life as the See No Evil Blindfold, Resist No Evil Cuffs, Speak No Evil Choker, Take No Evil Whip, and Fear No Evil Teaser. Eugenio and I were relieved and my boss seemed impressed months later when the line was nominated for Best Soft Bondage Line of the Year at the 2012 XBIZ Awards .

Like any copywriting job, my duties ranged from fun, creative endeavors—like coming up with PicoBong's brand tagline ("Not for the Clothes-Minded") and writing an ebook on sex positions—to more tedious tasks, like editing user manuals and writing press releases. A majority of my time, however, was spent writing blog posts, covering topics from the benefits of prostate massage to mastering the art of Skype sex.

There were often raised eyebrows when I answered the ubiquitous question: So what do you do? It didn't take me long to generate a word bank of responses that never quite came out right: "I write advertisements for a Swedish company." "I write sex and relationship advice." "I name sex toys." "I'm a freelance writer." You can tell a lot about someone by his or her reaction to your job, and you can tell a lot about yourself by what you decide to tell them.

On Motherboard: Sex toys are becoming smarter and smarter.

Looking back at my year at Lelo, which concluded in June 2013, I like to think that I positively contributed to the conversation surrounding sexual expression, openness and health. Maybe someone is two years into a Kegel exercise regimen because of an article I wrote for the company's blog. Maybe someone has a better, healthier image of his or her body or mind. Maybe someone is finally able to achieve multiple orgasms. Heck, maybe I saved a marriage. Then again, maybe not.

But in the end, even if a bride-to-be laughed aloud with her bachelorettes while reading the box copy for Kiki Bling, the "diamond-studded vibe that'll make your hips hop," I'd be left nodding with pressed lips.

While I left Lelo and China two years ago (I contracted for one year, per my working visa), hardly a few weeks go by without a nostalgic flashback. As I walk Manhattan's West Village, I notice it's Lelo's latest creations that the neighborhood's sex shops proudly display in their windows. From the gift shop of Manhattan's Museum of Sex to Brookstone's across America (sure, that's a back massager alright); morning talk shows to in-flight magazines, Lelo's black and white logo never seems far away. Having penetrated 50 international markets and counting, I doubt I'll be able to escape it anytime soon.

Thumbnail photo via Wikimedia Commons user Morderska.

Follow Matt Alesevich on Twitter.

From the outset of the ongoing trial of alleged mass shooter James Holmes, the journal he'd been keeping during the lead-up to the horrific crime was clearly one of the prosecution's prized possessions.

Holmes has been charged with murdering 12 people and injuring 70 more during a spree at the Century 16 cinema complex in Aurora, Colorado, on July 20, 2012. Earlier this week, the prosecution submitted the journal, a 36-page catalogue of his neuroses, into evidence, and the document was made available for public perusal not long after.

In court Thursday, a psychiatrist spoke briefly about the journal just before the lunch recess, according to ABC News. "Whatever he suffered from it did not stop him from forming the intent and knowing what he was doing and the consequences of what he was doing," said Dr. William Reid, who examined Holmes after the incident three years ago. His will go down as the first psychiatric analysis of the suspect offered to the jury, but it's nowhere near the last.

Holmes's diary features philosophical ramblings, plans for the shooting, and a narrative of his attempts to find help for his mental health problems. As the New York Times reports, it includes phrases like "mass murder spree," "maximum casualties," and "broken mind."

In other words, it's a pretty rich resource for both the prosecution and the defense.

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The trial, notable for having had the most potential jurors ever summoned for a trial in US history, began on April 27. Like the recently-concluded trial of Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the case doesn't hinge on whether the defendant committed the crime, a point which his lawyers concede. Instead, the defense insists their client is not guilty by reason of insanity. That means a nice, long look inside Holmes's mental state is going to be almost as critical as expert testimony.

The journal itself appears to be a brown computational book by Ampad, designed to be used by college students for solving long math problems. Holmes inscribed his name on the front, and on the line marked "course," he wrote, "of life." That might have been a prescient choice of words, since the prosecution is pursuing the death penalty, and using this notebook to prove he was insane is likely the defense's best chance at keeping Holmes off death row.

Two forensic psychiatrists offered statements to VICE conditionally, provided we note that they don't constitute an analysis of Holmes, just a peek into the journal as a piece of evidence.

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"There is no question that the notebook demonstrates major cognitive difficulties, and a major psychiatric dysfunction. He's not of sound mind," Maria Lymberis, MD, an honorary UCLA psychiatry professor and forensic psychiatry expert witness, said.

In the early pages, the notebook is indeed full of ruminations about life, death, and morality. "He's been trying to understand what's wrong with him," Lymberis said, describing Holmes as "in search, trying to find out what is the meaning of life and what the hell was happening to him."

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From a section in the notebook marked "Alternatives to death," Lymberis added that we can ascertain that "he was desperate. It was life and death for him, as life increasingly had lost all meaning and value. He was totally preoccupied with death."

Although she cautioned that neuroscience hasn't advanced to the point where we can look at a brain's physiology and definitively point to a lack of criminal intent, there are conclusions to be gleaned from the sheer negativity of the notebook's content. "When we are in that kind of negativity, modern science says that the brain produces chemicals that are toxic," she said.

Related: Read about how experiencing violence can rewire your brain to make you more violent, too.

Clinical and forensic psychiatrist Nathan Lavid was rather more skeptical about using the journal as evidence for the insanity defense. He pointed out that after a mental illness is established in court, there's still the thorny issue of proving that the patient didn't know right from wrong. He thinks that will be fundamentally tough in this case. "He used a gun. I know that he knew what a gun does. He wasn't going around with a banana," Lavid said.

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The journal includes not only sections in which theaters are evaluated for desirability as targets based on the number of likely victims, but also contains Holmes's estimates of how long it will take for the cops to arrive at any given location. "Looking at law enforcement is not indicative of an individual who is impaired by mental illness so that they don't know the difference between right and wrong," Lavid told me.

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The scariest parts of the notebook are probably the bizarre, morbidly mathematical bits about the value of human life. But asked if the above page suggested the onset of psychosis that could meet the legal definition of insanity, Lavin replied, "Probably not."

"It sounds like the person has emotional problems," he added. "It's not bizarre or detached from reality to such an extent that it would meet the insanity criteria."

But while Lavid makes it sound like the defense is in a tough spot, Holmes's attorneys don't have to prove he was insane, as in most states. Instead, the burden of proof is on the prosecution, which must show the accused was sane at the time of the act. Then again, as the Denver Post reported in 2013, it's been decades since any mass shooter in America won a mental health case. Holmes's attorneys hope to reverse that trend.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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One of the guys from Benefits Street ,the last program to trigger the anti-poverty porn ire of the masses.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Forthcoming BBC 2 program Britain's Hardest Grafter looks set to be a grotesque circus of poverty, in which 25 British workers—a mix of the unemployed, the under-employed, and those earning the minimum wage—"will be put to the test in a series of challenges and tasks," according to a release put out seeking contestants. "At the end of each episode, those who have produced the least will be eliminated and by the end of the process, just one worker will remain. The winner will receive in the region of £15,000 [$23,000], which is a year's living wage (outside of London)."

Unsurprisingly, people are quite upset about this. The careers website Graduate Fog, which first reported the story after production company Twenty Twenty contacted them to advertise for participants, pointed out that it "feels distinctly Hunger Games." Jezebel said, "No, this isn't the plot of a Black Mirror episode." From atop their moral perch, the Mail Online wondered if this was "a new low for the BBC?" Already, one of those petitions on change.org is out there, decrying a "tasteless and deeply damaging concept."

It all feels very familiar, bringing to mind the outrage over Benefits Street and every Twitter storm about a female beauty product with idiotic advertising that has erupted over the last few years.

In this case, though, all the shock and referencing to dystopian programming seems out of place. Rather than a twisted, nightmarish vision, Britain's Hardest Grafter reads like a diary of the average working day for millions of British people. You have to subject yourself to various chores and humiliations under the ominous threat of being "eliminated," for a derisory amount of money. Jezebel's right—this isn't Black Mirror, it's much less fantastical than that. It's the drudgery of working life for those stuck at the bottom in Cameron's Britain. Why are we so outraged by bland reality?

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The flyer sent around by the Britain's Hardest Grafter production company.

If anything, Britain's Hardest Grafter is a sugared pill with a title that could have come from a government press release. A Twenty Twenty representative told Graduate Fog, "All contributors will receive compensation for their time as part of filming for the show (it will be filmed across two weeks)—we're still working out the specifics but obviously it will not be below the national minimum wage." That's a better deal than a lot of people get. For precarious workers and unpaid interns, there's nothing "obvious" about getting the minimum wage for a solid two weeks. The same goes for the young people who will soon be forced to work 30 hours in order to claim their £57.35 [$88.00] youth allowance —making £1.91 [$3] for every hour of work.

The program seems at least to be an honest representation of our bleak society. If it's repulsive, that's because our society is repulsive. That "the winner will receive in the region of £15,000 which is a year's living wage (outside London)" is apt for Cameron's Britain. In Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, which began its run in the "Things Can Only Get Better" Blairite heyday of 1998, all you had to do was sit opposite Chris Tarrant, answer a series of pub quiz questions, and you could win enough to buy an enormous mansion, a fast car, and several big holidays, all without having to worry about putting something away to see the kids through student debt. Everyone could buy into the idea that, given the right chance, everyone could get rich quick.

After the financial crash, that lie has been torpedoed. In Cameron's austerity Britain, you have to pit yourself against other workers in a grim fight for the ultimate prize—one year's subsistence (so long as you don't want to subside in the capital city where a huge proportion of the population happen to live). Who knows what happens to all the contestants who don't win? Maybe they clock into the nearest food bank after dropping out.

Related: Want to learn about poverty in Britain? Check out our documentary 'A Trip to Britain's Busiest Food Bank'

There is sometimes merit in being loudly appalled at the state of the world—there was some collective strength on display when women got together to say it wasn't some advertiser's business whether or not their torsos were "beach body ready." But in this case, and so many others, it's hard to feel that a lot of this mewling isn't anything but another form of entertainment in itself—a kind of outrage porn to slot in neatly with the poverty porn, a kind of depressing porn sandwich. Ultimately, most of the griping will be useless. In a few months, the appetite for outrage will have grown and it will be sated once more when another shitty program gets commissioned by some producers looking for publicity.

Britain's Hardest Grafter might be warped and play on some of the worst aspects of human curiosity, but in itself it did not cause unemployment and misery, and neither did it manufacture within us a prurient desire to watch other people have a horrible time. This particular controversy ultimately comes from the same outrage vortex that simply can't believe that Katie Hopkins actually said migrants are like "cockroaches," while ignoring that treating migrants like cockroaches is in fact official EU policy. There seems to be some kind of tacit acceptance that we can all live in a huge world of euphemistic dancing about, while a nauseating merry-go-round of people "tell it like it is" and act as sponges for everyone's scattergun ire.

Outrage is easy. The hard bit is blocking the sewer from which fetid poverty porn emanates. Unfortunately, that means changing society, which is much more difficult than pointing at things and saying that they are bad in return for clicks.

Follow Simon on Twitter.

For a policy proposal that has an approximately 0 percent chance of being passed by the US Congress right now, universal basic income is an uncommonly hot topic. The idea that every body should receive a paycheck simply for being alive is fast becoming a darling of several factions: tech investors who expect millions of jobs to be automated out of existence, libertarians who see it as a way to avoid the inefficiencies of the traditional welfare state, and certain lefties who have embraced it as part of a way to separate government benefits from work. Dylan Matthews of Vox has produced a string of primers on the subject, and The Atlantic recently profiled a Reddit-famous basic income advocate. Yet the idea goes against everything Republicans are supposed to believe about no free rides, as well as Democrats' preference for welfare programs designed from on high. Even if there were solid mainstream support for basic income, Congress can barely do anything these days, much less consider a wholesale redistribution of wealth.

This may not be such a dead end for the concept as it seems. Over the past few months, basic income advocates tinkering with Bitcoin and other online currencies have created a series of experiments under the premise that we can start playing with basic income now, whether the government gets in on it or not.

Greg Slepak, for instance, is the sort of Bay Area software developer who reads the Yelp reviews of homeless shelters to learn about their conditions. "We cannot say with a straight face that we provide welfare to Americans," he has concluded. "We don't." His response, of course, is software—in particular, Group Currency, a specification for online currency systems that provide basic income–like distributions of funds to all their users. He believes that the technology underlying Bitcoin—a database called a blockchain, shared among its users without need for central authority—makes this possible in ways that it wasn't before. When based on a blockchain, money itself can be a shared resource. "For the first time in the internet's history, mass ownership is possible," Slepak says. "It gives individuals back their self-determination, back their dignity, back their freedom."

More on basic income: The town where everyone got free money.

So far the two projects Slepak recognizes as fitting the Group Currency spec are uCoin, which gives every member of the system a "Universal Dividend," and (possibly) Swarm, a cryptocurrency investment platform that refers to its payouts for all participants as a basic income. But there are other digital currencies being developed or discussed that include their own variants on the basic income idea, including the Kiwicoin in New Zealand, Cubecoin, Strangecoin, the Worldwide Globals Organization, and the Basic Income Project, LLC. The ones using cryptocurrency have their own subreddit.

In San Diego, Alex Goodwin has more than just a schematic. The initial implementation of his idea, FairShare, is already up and running—it uses a bot on Reddit to pass out portions from a stash of donated bitcoins. Payouts are still small, but they're there for the taking. Slepak considers the FairShare specification "vague," but Goodwin wants to develop the project through practice, not theory. He takes as his motto an utterance of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin: "We shouldn't delay forever until every possible feature is done."

Perhaps the most eyecatching digital basic income out there is the one associated with BitNation—"a collaborative platform for do-it-yourself governance" led by Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof, a Swedish entrepreneur whose resume includes contracting stints in Afghanistan and Libya. The idea is to use blockchain technology to provide opt-in, state-like services free from the constraints of borders. Basic income is to be one of those services —alongside pensions, marriage contracts, and "contract enforcement"—though the program has fallen short of its initial $20,000 crowdfunding goal.

Tempelhof is outright opposed to a basic-income scheme coming from a government. "At Bitnation everything is done through voluntary means, rather than through forcing people through the use of—or threat of—violence," she says. "We believe voluntary participation is the only morally defendable way of doing things."

More money: Politico's Ken Vogel talks about how cash runs American politics

In principle, a DIY basic income scheme need not require cryptocurrency. For instance, one could set up a trust of some sort that would take donations and distribute dollars to, say, every active Social Security number. Of course, just the cost of cutting and mailing checks would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. And that's one of the advantages of using cryptocurrency, which can be transferred at zero or negligible expense. Given the legal ambiguity of cryptocurrencies, too, they offer a means of bypassing the regulations and taxes that would come down on such a fund based in regular money.

Another advantage of cryptocurrencies is that they can accrue value as they become more widely adopted. (The 10,000 bitcoins used to buy a pizza in 2010, when only a few people were on the network, are worth almost $2.4 million now.) When more people have them and use them to exchange with each other, they tend to become more valuable. Basic income, since it involves wide distribution, could be a very good way to make a cryptocurrency valuable. Already, similar kinds of giveaways have been used to create pump-and-dump schemes using Bitcoin clones, where a free giveaway ratchets up the value just long enough for the founders to sell off their coins and make the currency worthless again.

Another downside of these pseudonymous blockchain systems is their vulnerability to what is called a "Sybil attack": With no obvious way of confirming who is who, one person could claim the payouts for multiple accounts. This is a defining challenge for basic income schemes based on cryptocurrencies, and some have addressed it more convincingly than others.

Creating a decent basic income system now, even if it had only a little money in it at first, would give every potential beneficiary an incentive to see it grow.

For those wary of cryptocurrency, there are other ways to fund a basic income program that don't require an act of Congress. UNICEF has been testing basic income payouts in India; the organization GiveDirectly turns donations into direct cash transfers in poor regions. Alaska already has a basic income–like program with its Permanent Fund, which pays out about $1,000 in dividends from the state's oil revenues to every resident, every year. This is an idea that progressive businessman Peter Barnes adapted into his "Sky Trust" proposal, which would use carbon permits to curb emissions while putting the fees into a basic-income fund. Barnes calls for using such trusts to treat resources like clean air, intellectual property, and the electromagnetic spectrum as commons—from which we are entitled to " liberty and dividends for all."

Barnes's proposals, however, would require government intervention of one kind or another, such as California's cap-and trade program. In lieu of that, a Citizen's Permanent Fund might be seeded with voluntary contributions. Wealthy corporations and individuals could contribute to such a fund as part of their charitable portfolio. Activists could also target entities that take advantage of the commons—energy companies, internet giants, pharmaceutical firms profiting from publicly funded research—and hold sit-ins outside their doors until they pay into the fund. Finance hackers like Robin Hood Minor Asset Management could pitch in by co-opting financial markets.

One way or another, creating a decent basic income system now, even if it had only a little money in it at first, would give every potential beneficiary an incentive to see it grow. We'd get creative, because the more creative we got, the more we'd get. And having such a system (or systems) in place would change the conversation from whether to consider basic income than the more interesting questions of how.

We'd also start to notice some of the things that can go wrong. Cryptocurrency schemes run the risk of leaving us with a system in which you'd get your check only if you play by the founders' rules. Many of us would also want to make sure that the redistribution goes the right way—from the top down.

Imagine, for instance, that a small group of investors holds half of the tokens in a cryptocurrency, and then distributes the other half to the whole world as a basic income. The value rises as people use the currency, and everyone gets money for nothing—but the investors get a whole lot more, and their behavior could have seismic effects on the currency's value.

A universal payout to everyone on earth could do much to reverse global inequality—in regions with low costs of living and high rates of poverty, what seems like a little in the United States could mean a lot.

Another issue with blockchain-based basic income is that the people who need the money most may be the ones least likely to have the gizmos or knowhow needed to become fluent with digital currencies; as with the Bitcoin economy itself, the beneficiaries are likely to be white, male, and affluent. At the same time, a universal payout to everyone on Earth could do much to reverse global inequality—in regions with low costs of living and high rates of poverty, what seems like a little in the United States could mean a lot. For people without the necessary technology, funds could be held in escrow until they find a way to access them.

All this is just speculation, however. It's difficult to know what the strengths and weaknesses of various plans are until we try them out—and this new wave of digital experiments are an opportunity to do just that.

Nathan Schneider is the author of God in Proof and Thank You, Anarchy. His website is TheRowBoat.com, and he tweets here.

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Pavan Amara. Photo by Amy Smith.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Rape survivors often speak of two versions of themselves: the person that existed before the rape, and the one that exists after.

The aftermath of sexual assault introduces a whole world of unfamiliar anxieties and fears into the the victim's life and can have an overwhelming impact on their body image and sexuality. It's so easy to become severed from your past life, to be unable to recognize who you were were before. Not being defined by what has happened to you is incredibly difficult—impossible, even. After all, the violence of rape removes the sense of security, control, and autonomy you have over your own body.

After Pavan Amara, 27, was raped as a teenager, her relationship with her body and the very idea of sex changed forever. "It changes the way you feel about yourself," she tells me. "You can't walk past a mirror. You don't want anyone taking photos of you and you don't want to look back at photographs."

Amara's world grew smaller after her attack. She found it very difficult to be in crowds—"I felt very physically vulnerable, even in a crowded room"—and found herself unable to go to the doctor. "It reminded me of the forensic testing that you have to have after rape, so I stopped going completely," she says. "I did not want to be touched again."

The pain and trauma of rape radically altered Amara's relationship to sex. "It makes you feel like you don't have freedom [over that] anymore. After rape, you have the knowledge that sex could be potentially used as a weapon against you."

Amara's experiences are echoed in the words of many rape survivors. The road to recovery after being raped—both psychological and physical—is paved with internal battles with body image, health, and the ability to find true intimacy with anyone ever again. When it comes to having sex again, Amara says it's not just a question of "emotional trust" dissolving, it's "physical trust," too. Essentially, if your body has been damaged by sexual violence, it may not be able to respond to anyone's touch—however comfortable you feel with them—for a very long time.

Rape is far more widespread than many care to admit, or even know. Every year, 85,000 women in England and Wales are raped. Four hundred thousand women are sexually assaulted. Perhaps most staggering, though, is that 90 percent of these rapes are committed by men they know. In other words, somebody who the survivor has already been in contact with, trusted, and perhaps even loved.

One in five women in Britain have experienced some form of sexual violence since the age of 16, but when you consider the vast numbers of rape survivors won't report the crime to the police—perhaps through the fear of not being taken seriously, that they might be in one of the police force areas that only takes one in three rape cases to court, that their attacker won't be justly prosecuted, or that they'll be accused of "crying rape"—the reality is that the figures are probably higher than we'll ever know.

The road to recovery after being raped—both psychological and physical—is paved with internal battles with body image, health, and the ability to find true intimacy with anyone ever again.

Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of women are sexually abused, harassed, stalked, and threatened in their homes and workplaces each year, so many of us continue to think of rape as something that happens to somebody else. In doing so, we continue to turn a blind eye to the indelible impact it has on survivors.

"This is to do with society's myth about rape," says Amara, "which is that, when it happens, you go through this legal process and then it's all over and you're just meant to get on with your life." This could not be more removed from reality. "It affects you for years—or even decades—afterwards, but women are just expected to live with that."

Amara, who is now a student nurse, received counseling after she was raped, which helped when she was "in a really bad phase." But after the course of therapy ended, she had to "go back to doing normal things." To navigate day-to-day life with a heavy, frightening albatross on her shoulders. On the surface, her life had regained normality. But the relationship with her own body was still defined by fear. Left feeling lost and isolated, she went in search of communities or services that could help her with these feelings that wouldn't go away. Typing "rape, sex, body image, scared of doctor" into Google, she found nothing even remotely useful: "I found individual posts on threads of people feeling similar ways but nothing else."

It was then that Amara thought she ought to start something new. "I looked for support but it just wasn't there. I knew I'd have to take it on myself," she says. So, last August, she decided to take the leap and set up My Body Back, a project that helps survivors of sexual violence address any conflicts surrounding their sexuality, body image, and healthcare, on their own terms.

Amara approached 30 other female rape victims across the country to ask how they felt and how their issues were being addressed. Very quickly, her own conflicts were echoed. "They not only said it affected their image of their body," she explains, "but lots of women also said, like me, that they didn't go to the doctors for cervical or STI testing because they didn't have control in those situations."

Many women also detailed how being raped had a dramatic impact on their experience of sex—or their ability to engage in it at all. "Some women were blacking out or vomiting after sex, while others had repeated flashbacks," says Amara. "And many women were unable to have orgasms at all. If you're tense, you obviously can't orgasm, because you can't let go."

Given that sexual organs are the weapons of violent assault, it seems a given that the future act of sex will trigger dark and difficult memories of rape for many. As a result, it may be difficult for the survivor to realize that consensual sex with a compassionate partner is different from the rape, when physically, many of the movements are the same. For this reason, masturbation can be a powerful way of reclaiming your body and sexuality after rape. As Amara explains: "In rape, someone forces you to sexually be whatever they want you to be. Masturbation is about taking ownership of all those things about yourself that rape takes away."

While in conversation with fellow rape survivors, Amara also noticed that the women kept referring to themselves as "freaks," "weird," or "abnormal" for feeling the way they did. "It was quite ironic because they were all experiencing the same thing yet none of them knew that others were," she says. "The question that kept going through my head was: 'why wasn't a service of this kind already here?'"

Many of the women Amara made contact with felt like they had been made to choose between their physical health and their mental health in their recovery. Most chose to preserve their mental health and, in turn, "avoided the doctor at all costs." The reality of this was that many women didn't have any kind of STI testing after an assault, presumably through fear of any further intrusion, but were battling daily, hourly, bouts of anxiety as they asked themselves: What if I have HIV?

One woman even told Amara that she would "rather get cervical cancer than go for a smear test," because it's "like being raped again."

Some women were blacking out or vomiting after sex, while others had repeated flashbacks. Many women were unable to have orgasms at all.

There was one woman, Amara recalls, who even found the well-meaning dialogue of doctors and nurses upsetting, because they echoed the words of her rapist. "She was repeatedly told to 'relax' while the nurse tried to insert the speculum during the smear test—something the rapist told her throughout the attack." In the end, she was unable to go through with the test, and has avoided them ever since. Amara mentions another women who opted for a caesarean because, even during labor, she couldn't deal with the flashbacks that came with being touched. Hearing this made my blood run cold.

It is precisely these painful, too often taboo issues that My Body Back hopes to address. And with the help of Rape Crisis volunteers, NHS doctors and nurses, and staff at Sh!, Britain's only female-focused sex shop, the organization has flourished. In August, they are opening the first cervical screening and STI clinic designed exclusively for women who have experienced sexual violence at St. Barts Hospital in Whitechapel, East London. The clinic will be the first of its kind in the world. "It's really sad that it wasn't there before," Amara reiterates. "And it just brings home for me how women are actually treated."

Even though most hospitals and GP practices in Britain come into close contact with rape survivors every single day of the week, there is still a lack of understanding about sexual violence and the nuanced ways in which survivors recover within the NHS. "Everyone I've spoken to in the NHS says, 'I've definitely had patients like this, we see them all the time, but we don't know what to do,'" explains Amara.

For too long, a lack of government funding has meant the long-term psychological impacts of sexual violence have been neglected. The target-led structure and lack of funding in the NHS means doctors simply don't have the time to give rape survivors the support, patience, and sympathy that they need during a screening, for example—a procedure that may seem simple to the tester, but wracked with profound mental and physical comfort for the person being tested. Yes, we have crisis services that deal with the immediate aftermath of rape, but longstanding support services are few and far between. In failing to give women the support they deserve, Amara believes, our health service may have hindered the healing process of many women.

This is something women deserve. After sexual assault, you've already been through enough.

All the above is precisely why initiatives like My Body Back are imperative. The clinic will be custom-built to the personal needs, concerns, and preferences of survivors of sexual violence. It will offer an introductory session with an advisor, during which time patients can specify what body positions they're comfortable in and which phrases they do and don't want the clinician to use, which, as Amara explains, "enables them to really take control over something that's going to happen to them physically."

Women have control over even the finest of details at the clinic—everything from music is playing to which cushions and blankets are used. Aromatherapy was mentioned, too. More importantly, though, those who feel uncomfortable being examined will be provided with self-testing kits. Women's needs, Amara stresses, "come first."

"This is something which women deserve," she continues. "After sexual assault, you've already been through enough. You don't need to be worrying for ages about whether you've got an infection on top of everything else."

What Amara says sounds like crystal clear common sense. It makes you think: given how prevalent sexual assault is, how have we managed to get this far without such specialist services of this kind? How on earth can women be expected to try and recover after being raped if no one is offering the bespoke support, patience, and care they really need? The experience of rape is not a universal. Every woman is different. Every woman will recover differently. But how do we know how to help each individual unless we ask?

This is precisely what makes My Body Back different, so urgently needed—a health center that will ask women what works for them, not asking them to be malleable to the support framework that currently exists, or, more plainly, "get over" rape like you'd "get over" a broken bone. Because as Amara and so many other victims know, that's an impossible reality.

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I was really rooting for the Reality TV Awards to be great.

When the genre first became popular, reality TV was a surefire way to become famous. Stars of early seasons of the Real World and Survivor became household names.

This is no longer the case. With the exception of the people at the top of the reality TV world (your Kardashians and your Vanderpumps), very few of these "stars" are achieving any real level of celebrity.

There are now an unbelievable amount of reality television shows on the air. While looking through the list of possible attendees that the Reality TV Awards' organizers had sent to me beforehand, I saw people from dozens of different reality shows, most of which I had never heard of: Little Women: LA, MasterChef Jr, 90 Day Fiance, Best Ink,Queens of Drama etc. etc. Reality television has become so common that there are literally thousands of people in this country right now who could accurately describe themselves as "the star of a reality TV show."

And it is a fucking thankless gig. As I'm sure you know, events shown on reality TV shows are often exaggerated or totally faked. And they're done for you, the audience, to laugh at and judge so that you can feel better about yourself. People who go into these shows, go into them knowing that they are going to have to pretend to be stupid and humiliate themselves over and over again. Yet they do this, for your entertainment.

And are they given praise for this? Fuck no. Traditional celebrities (i.e. stars of film and scripted television) turn their noses up at reality stars, who they see as untalented. And the general public hates them, too. Stars of reality shows are regularly mocked, called bad role models, and blamed for the dumbing-down of American culture. Appearing on reality TV is one of the least dignified things a human can do. It all but ruins your credibility, and, by extension, your career prospects, both inside and outside of the entertainment industry. (It's not like Snooki could star in a serious movie or go work in a store. She's stuck playing the character of "Snooki" for the foreseeable future.)

These are people who are not well compensated, either. A friend of mine who works in reality television (but wishes to remain anonymous) told me that, depending on the show, "$75 to $100 a day is pretty standard, plus food and lodging and travel."

That's not to say that being on a reality show has no effect on their stars at all, though. They still hold the power to ruin your life. Reality television shows have been blamed for divorces, jail time, loss of child custody , and even suicide.

Hey, would you watch a show starring Glenn Danzig? Noisey would, a lot.

So when I found out there was going to be an award show in Hollywood to honor these poor, unfortunate souls, I was thrilled for them, and decided to attend. The stars of reality television selflessly provide a vital public service, and they deserve to be honored.

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The evening started out promising. I arrived at the ceremony to find what appeared to be a regular red carpet. With celebrities, and press, and fans.

But, upon closer inspection, it turned out to not be what it seemed.

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There's this VICE documentary about North Korea where the crew is filming at a computer lab, and, though it appears to be a totally normal computer lab, they realize that the people using the machines don't know how to operate them. They're just staring at their monitors, moving their cursors back and forth. It had all been set up for the benefit of our crew.

Much like the North Korean computer lab, the Reality TV Awards red carpet did not hold up to scrutiny. It was merely the facade of an awards show red carpet, constructed to give the illusion of glamour and fame.

The press were almost exclusively from outlets with names that I'd never heard of and are barely googleable. Several of the crews, like the one in the picture above, were filming their interviews on iPhones.

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The celebrities, too, were just masquerading as celebrities. Like this woman. She was walking down the red carpet, posing for photos while the paparazzi shouted for her attention. All of the evidence suggested she was a public figure of some sort. That there might be some point in these people taking her photo.

But I googled her after the event, and she has 544 Twitter followers.

Another woman I googled turned out to be the ex-wife of Danny Bonaduce. Further down the carpet, I saw someone interviewing a dog. The dog, I later found out, is Instagram famous and once appeared in a Katy Perry video.

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As the guests made their way down the red carpet, they were accompanied by assistants who held their names on pieces of paper so that the assembled press would know who they were looking at.

I have since learned that this is common practice and is done at all red carpets, regardless of how famous the people walking down it are, but at the time I found it a huge bummer to watch. The fact that the people holding the signs had the facial expressions of hostages in a videotaped message to the West definitely wasn't helping things, either.

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Neither did this woman's profession being written inside scare quotes.

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After the red carpet, I headed inside the venue for the ceremony, which was hosted by Jonathan Bennett, the actor who played the guy Lindsay Lohan has a crush on in Mean Girls.

From the very first words that he spoke, it was obvious he was the wrong choice for the job. Throughout the evening, he did that self-deprecating host thing like they do at the Oscars, where he kept making jokes about how pointless the ceremony was and how everyone in attendance was a loser. For instance, in his opening monologue, he said, "Tonight, we're not going to say 'and the winner is,' because let's face it, there are no winners here." Later in the monologue, after struggling to pronounce the name of someone from The Girls Next Door, he said: "Bridget, I'm so sorry, I have no idea how to pronounce your name. I asked like, five people backstage how to say it, but no one knew who the fuck you were."

This stuff is funny at the Oscars because everyone knows who Oprah and James Cameron are, and calling them losers just reinforces the fact that they are rich and powerful and beloved by millions. But saying it to a crowd that's made up of cast members of Real Husbands of Hollywood and Sex Box (the show where people have sex in a box) just felt cruel.

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The few people in attendance who I actually recognized didn't seem too thrilled to be there, either.

Like Abby Lee Miller from Dance Moms, pictured here presenting the award for Reality King, which is like the Reality TV Awards version of Best Actor. As she walked out on to the stage, looking annoyed, she gestured towards the list of nominees and said, "I just found out nobody on this list is here." A moment later, she held it up and asked, "Do I have to read this?"

After being told that, yes, she had to read it, she made her way down the list, saying things like, "I don't know why he couldn't be here. He's not that busy..."

The award went to Blake Shelton from The Voice. He was not present to collect it, nor had he sent over a prerecorded thank you message.

Later in the evening, Abby was presented the award for Best Reality Villain by Omarosa. As she came on stage to collect it, she asked, looking self-conscious, "I just wanna know one thing—am I the only one here?"

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At one point, Maddie Ziegler presented an award. She is one of the few people to escape the reality TV ghetto and achieve mainstream success. After first appearing on Dance Moms, (FYI, the cast of Dance Moms were among the most famous people in attendance) she went on to star in several Sia music videos, model for Elle, and perform at the Grammys. This made her at least 10,000 times more culturally relevant than anyone else in the room.

For some reason, the organizers of the awards hadn't checked to see if the people winning the awards were in the audience. So throughout the evening, every time someone won, there would be 30 seconds of the person presenting staring awkwardly into the crowd, asking if anyone was present to collect it.

Ziegler was no exception. After she read out the results for the award she was presenting (Outstanding Judging Panel to Dancing With the Stars) she was just left to stand on stage in silence, waiting to see if anyone was there to collect it (they weren't).

After a full 20 seconds of agonizing silence, Bennett, the host, swooped in and attempted to save Maddie by ad-libbing some onstage banter, but he wasn't able to carry it. After a couple of seconds of unsuccessful chit chat, he gave up, and said, "I got nothing..."

As Ziegler left the stage, Bennett said, "Give it up for Maddie, isn't she the best?"

He then called behind Maddie, vocalizing exactly what everyone in the room had been painfully aware of: "You don't even deserve to be here... You deserve to be somewhere really good. Like... Not here. You're too good."

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Later in the evening, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt were presented with a lifetime achievement award.

There's no arguing that, if anyone deserves a lifetime achievement award in this medium, it's the two of them. They have given their entire lives to reality television. Since first appearing on The Hills a decade ago, they have done everything within their power to stay relevant. Things that almost always came at the expense of their dignity and credibility.

They've done everything from faking a divorce to intentional wardrobe malfunctions to bad plastic surgery to endorsing Sarah Palin to angering Native Americans by changing their names to Running Bear and White Wolf, all in the name of attention.

While they presumably made a lot of money at the height of their success, a look around online shows that the two of them haven't been working much lately.

According to his Twitter account, Pratt recently returned to school to complete a degree in political science. Speaking to the Daily Beast back in 2011 about the possibility of doing this, he said, "What real job—what political world—would want Spencer Pratt, with the stigma I've attached to my name?"

In the same interview, he explained that he regretted pursuing a career in reality TV. "Everything we were doing, in retrospect, was a mistake. The second we continued on our quest for fame was a mistake," he said. "This isn't a business. That was the big thing I didn't get: Reality TV is not a career. Anyone who says, 'Oh, you can have a career in reality'—that is a lie."

Related: Watch our documentary about former reality star Alexis Neiers.

Maybe it was part of their schtick, but when they came out to collect the award (which, presumably they had been told about in advance, given that it was a lifetime achievement award,) they didn't seem to know what to say.

Montag said something generic about how exciting it was to win. Then Pratt looked out into the crowd and said: "Well, if I had any doubts about my 15 minutes of fame being up, thank you, now I know, it's official, good luck to all of you now." The final seven words of this statement ("good luck to all of you now") sent a chill down my spine.

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By the time Perez Hilton appeared via pre-recorded video to announce that he "couldn't make it" to the awards, it was all a bit too much for me to handle, and I felt like I had to get out of there.

I wasn't the only one. Looking around, I saw that about 50 percent of the attendees had left by this point.

I reluctantly stuck around to watch the rest of the show, but everyone was just going through the motions. At points, I seemed to be the only person in the entire room listening. Everyone else was either chatting or texting.

Almost every category presented some new nugget of sadness. At one point, someone collected an award on behalf of Hell's Kitchen and said, "Well, we're never going to win an Emmy. So this is just as good." Later, when Leah Remini won the award for Reality Queen, the host stepped out on stage and said, "So, we're supposed to show a video of Leah Remini right now... but the video doesn't work." When the award for Most Badass Crew was presented, a man who looked ready to fight stormed the stage screaming "SAY MY NAME!" because the guy who won the award had forgotten to mention him in his acceptance speech.

When the show ended, the host announced that, for the rest of the evening, the bar was going to be free.

I went to the bar, expecting a huge line of people fighting for free drinks, but there was none. Not even free booze could make people stay.

I drank a beer and headed home. That night, I dreamed of a better world. Where reality TV stars are treated like the heroes they truly are. Goodnight, you poor tortured souls.

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

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Photo via Wikimedia Commons/Stephen P. Weaver

On Thursday, Dennis Hastert, a Republican former congressman who served as Speaker of the House for almost the entire Bush administration, was slapped with charges of lying to the FBI and engaging in some sketchy banking.

The financial impropriety was some kind of long-term arrangement Hastert had going on with a mysterious entity the seven-page indictment refers to only as "Individual A."

Apparently "Individual A" demanded $3.5 million over the course of four years to "compensate for and conceal" some unnamed past indiscretion.

In order to make payments every six weeks without anyone noticing, Hastert allegedly withdrew the money in a tricky, illegal way that avoided transaction reporting requirements. The FBI began an investigation in 2013, and when they questioned him in 2014, the indictment alleges that he lied when he said, "Yeah... I kept the cash. That's what I'm doing."

Hastert left Congress in 2007 and has been working as a lobbyist ever since, according to the New York Times.

Want Some In-Depth Stories About Political Scandals?

1. A Brief History of Crimes Committed in the White House
2. How the Backroom Dealings of a Bizarre Florida Eye Doctor Could Bring Down a US Senator
3. The State Department Will Start Releasing Hillary Clinton's Emails June 30
4. A Vegas Prankster Tricked Right-Wing Media With a Fake Story About Harry Reid Getting Beaten Up

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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All photos courtesy of Felix von der Orsten.

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany.

Just over a week ago German photographer Felix von der Osten won the British Journal of Photography's Breakthrough Undergraduate Photography Award for his series The Buffalo That Could Not Dream, shot on the Fort Belknap Native American reservation in Montana. But before he focused his attention on that traditional community in the great Northwest, he was documenting another group back in Germany—LARPers. I caught up with him to discuss the appeal that Live Action Role-Playing has to so many, and the overlooked role it plays in helping its participants develop real-world skills.

VICE: Was there a particular reason you started this project, other than having the perfect character name for LARPing?
Felix von der Osten: I was interested in people dressing up in medieval gear, so I started by taking photos at Spectaculum—a festival near Cologne. I had a friend in the scene who was studying with me in Dortmund, so I asked if I could take her picture and get some contacts of others. People were really happy to meet up and open to talking about it. There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding LARPing.

Like what, exactly?
A lot of people think that LARPers are fleeing from their reality. The most interesting thing for me was to discover what it really meant to them, and why one might choose to be a servant in an old pub if you can be a king or a knight? I found it's mostly about just trying out different things, to be in different social situations while remaining in this protective environment. There are always people that take it more seriously than others, but in these conditions it's a chance to test out different social skills.

Are they experimenting with personality traits that they aren't necessarily confident enough with in the real world?
Yeah, absolutely. This is one of the big advantages of participating. You can't fail, nothing can happen to you, it's all in the game. They talk a lot about in-time and out-time. You can be extremely aggressive in trading, for example, something that you might never do in a real situation.

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Do people often find their in-time characters coming out in their out-time? Does it get confusing?
No, not really. I never met someone that extreme. But there are some people that are their in-game character more than their actual self. In any subculture you will always have these extremes at both ends. From what I experienced, all of them were rational enough to know what they were doing. They are just having fun, that's their main goal, I think. Breaking out of their normal life and doing something different.

Could you see yourself ever getting into it?
For me being able to photograph it was something in between, which was pretty cool. I can be with them, experience it and photograph it at the same time, but without getting fully involved. I wasn't in character so it can be a bit weird when you approach someone who doesn't want to break their character by talking with you.

How did you get around that?
Often they would talk a very old German, and I would then just adapt in the same style. They might say "What are you doing with that crazy lens apparatus in-front of your eyes?" But if you respond playfully then they're into it. But most of the time they are just happy to have their picture taken because they spend so much time making their costumes.

Related: Psytrance Rave in a Forest

I was really surprised by the attention to detail that seems to go into these characters—not just to their appearance, but also their personalities.
Yeah, they think of the whole history of the character, it's forged over years. But it can happen at LARP fests that your character dies and all that work is finished—you have to come up with a new one.

What goes on at these fests when they're not posing for pictures or fighting each other?
Just walking around the tents, you can see so much crazy stuff taking place. You might get jumped by two guys who will try and rob you for all your gold, but then you can just as easily end up killing them both. All of them said this is their favorite time—when they camp out for days on end.

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There seem to be quite a lot of women involved in LARPing as well.
Yeah, it's almost half and half. I spoke to one girl and she's a bartender. She just likes to be in the environment of the bar and loves to hear people telling stories. Another girl—her name is Cookie—she likes giving people cookies and is always laughing. She will jump in in any tense situation, do something kooky, and then people are happy again.

So what happens if you have a relationship in this fantasy world? Does it then continue in the real world?
A couple I know met in character, but then outside fictional character it was awkward because they didn't know what to talk about. They just didn't really know each other's real self—they only knew that in-game person. So they had to get to know each other all over again.

It's an interesting development but they worked it out in the end. It goes back to what I said before: Maybe you're not that guy that finds it easy to talk to girls, but when you're in character you're more likely to try stuff or say things that you normally wouldn't. You can test these skills out there and then eventually use them in the real world.

It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Sabrina Davis

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Screencap via Google Maps

The incident: A woman was allegedly asked not to take the last rib at a barbecue.

The appropriate response: Either giving up the rib, splitting it, or eating it really fast, depending on how nice you are.

The actual response: She stabbed someone in the eye with a fork.

Last Sunday, 45-year-old Sabrina Davis (pictured above) was at a barbecue in Muncie, Indiana. According to claims made in a police report that was filed later that evening, Sabrina reached for the last rib from a meat tray in the kitchen a little before 7 PM.

A woman named Angela Watkins, who was also attending the barbecue, was reportedly not too happy with Sabrina's rib-taking attempts. According to the police report, Angela confronted Sabrina as she was "upset that Davis was taking the last rib" and felt she had been "taking all the food."

Angela's sister, Lanika Marshall, told police that Sabrina responded by stabbing Angela in the eye with the fork that she'd been using to take the rib. The sister claims that Angela then grabbed a knife and tried to revenge-stab Lanika with it, but was held back until police arrived.

Sabrina was arrested and charged with felony criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon. During police questioning, Sabrina confirmed that the stabbing had been because Angela had taken the pan of meat away from her, but claimed that Angela had pulled a knife on her first.

Angela was treated at a nearby hospital for two small lacerations on her eye.

The police report does not specify who ultimately got to eat the last rib.

Cry-Baby #2: David Wilson

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Screencap via Google Maps

The incident: A woman said IndyCar was better than NASCAR.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: Her fiancé allegedly choked her.

Earlier this week, police in Johnson County, Indiana, received a 911 call from a woman in distress. Before the woman could explain the situation, the 911 operator heard a male voice ask "Who are you calling?" before saying "Everything is fine here," into the phone and hanging up.

Police were dispatched to the address, where they found a woman who claimed she had been choked by her fiancé, 57-year-old David Lee Wilson (pictured above). According to a report in The Indianapolis Star, the woman explained to police that David had been in the kitchen while she listened to the Indianapolis 500 in the living room with a friend.

While she chatted to the friend, she reportedly said that she preferred the Indianapolis 500 races to NASCAR races. This sent David, who had overheard from the kitchen, into a rage, the woman told deputies.

She alleges that David came into the living room and began "rambling" that NASCAR was better than IndyCar. He then started choking her, she said, prompting her 911 call.

Police arrested David on allegations of strangulation and domestic battery. He admitted that he had gotten angry after hearing his fiancé "talking trash" about NASCAR, but denied choking her.

Unsurprisingly, the woman reportedly told officers that she and David had been "drinking all day."

Who here is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll right here:

Previously: A guy who drowned a dog because it wouldn't stop barking vs. a woman who allegedly beat a man with a crowbar because he was snoring.

Winner: The guy who drowned the dog :(

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.