Photo courtesy of the author

It is 3:45 PM on a Wednesday and I am in a candle-lit room hugging a man who I have just met. His name is Steve Maher. We have been hugging for ten minutes straight. We are not on drugs.

Steve is a certified Core Energetics practitioner who specializes in hug therapy. "I've been hugging for about 15 years," he tells me before our session. Core Energetics is a body-centered form of psychotherapy. Steve explains it to me like this: "Let's say you're tense and holding everything in your stomach. The body registers your history. It's about getting things unstuck." To him, hugging is integral to the process of emotional and physical expression. "Think of hugging as a language: of acceptance, care, comfort, and safety," he says. Though he admits that some of his clients see him for the "connective experience" of hugging another person, he also does "some pretty deep therapy with some clients who have early attachment wounds. A lot of them have trauma related to touch."

We start our session off hugging standing up. Steve, a barrel-chested veteran of the timeless art of embrace, leans in with his chest, his stomach touching mine. He breathes deeply, as one does when meditating or doing yoga. I follow suit, and soon enough my breathing falls in line with his. He tells me he senses trauma in my shoulders—a shaking, something he sees often in new clients. We stay this way for a few minutes, sometimes talking about my feelings, but mostly just hugging. It's nice, almost overwhelmingly nice, the kind of experience that makes you wonder, as you're nestling completely inside another human's touch, why you don't do stuff like this more often.

If you're a man or have been around men for any length of time, you've probably noticed that they can be extremely leery of discussing their emotions, and can use activities—drinking, watching TV, sports, playing music—as a way to avoid actually sharing. I know I have a problem talking about my feelings, even to my own girlfriend; I even have a problem admitting I don't talk about my feelings.

In the past six months, I've moved across the country to Los Angeles, quit drinking, got an apartment with my girlfriend, changed jobs, started doing yoga, improved my relationship with my parents, and gotten a dog. But despite all these changes, since I've come to LA I've had a problem that I think a lot of men have, which is that I've had trouble connecting to other men. In New York, I was friendly with lots of people—I couldn't swing a dead cat in a bar without hitting someone who I at least tangentially knew—but I also had a small number of intimate buddies, close friends I had formed connections with after sharing years in the city with them. Now I mainly talk to them over the internet, and haven't really replaced those bonds.

According to academia, my circumstances are representative of those of many guys. In 1982, researchers at the UCLA psychology department published a paper arguing that while friendships between women often centered around "emotional sharing and talking," friendships between men were generally based on "activities and doing things together." Additionally, the researchers found that men are closed off: "Because the male sex role restricts men's self-disclosure to other men, small degrees of personal revelation to a male friend may be taken as a sign of considerable intimacy." Women, meanwhile, were much more likely to share personal information even with women they weren't especially close with.

All of this adds up to something called the "Male Deficit Model," which posits that guys have three types of friends: "activity friends," "convenience friends," and "mentor friends." This boils down to the idea that, for one reason or the other, male friendships tend to be mediated by something, whether that's partying (an activity), proximity through the workplace or a scene (convenience), or through learning about life from one another (mentor stuff).

Many men are still Entourageian, Apatowistic pack animals, incapable of showing vulnerability or physical affection.

Even though the theory isn't exactly perfect—it ignores bonds formed by intense experiences together, for example—there's certainly something to it. My LA friendships are mostly centered around activities: I have an internet radio show with some guys and make music with another guy, which mostly gives us an excuse to hang out and joke around. When I meet people and think to myself, Hey! I should hang out with that bro sometime! I'm sort of at a loss for how to reach out to them without some sort of activity in mind.

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It's not like this is a new problem. In Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, first published back in the dark ages of 1993, John Gray argued that men tended to retreat from their problems. The ManKind Project has been around since 1985, offering retreats that help men trying to get in touch with the full spectrum of their beings. Then again, that group has faced accusations of holding bizarre ceremonies where naked men smashed cooked chickens with hammers, so they might not be the best people to emulate.

Contemporary men don't have to mutilate poultry to achieve a sense of brotherhood—there's an app for that. It's called Wolfpack, and it's meant to facilitate casual friendships between men based around activities. It was launched by Nile Niami, a producer-turned-speculative real estate developer who's building a home in Los Angeles with a proposed selling price of $500 million and who once sold a home to Diddy for $39 million that featured an underwater tunnel. Over the phone, Niami tells me that the idea for Wolfpack came to him after a recently-divorced friend admitted to him that he had no one to hang out with.

"It started off an an app for a divorced guy that's lost track of all his buddies and needs to reconnect again and try to make new bromances to hang out with guys," Niami says. Right now, Niami tells me, the app has around 8,000 users, most of them in LA, but like all app proprietors he has big dreams of it being used "a million, two million" lonely bros in the coming years.

But despite the friendship apps, the websites telling us we need to share our feelings, and the naked ceremonies, many men are still Entourageian, Apatowistic pack animals, incapable of showing vulnerability or physical affection, of telling each other that yes, we too are trapped in glass cases of emotion.

For some more perspective, I turned to Professor Geoffrey Greif of the University of Maryland, author of 2008's The Buddy System, an academic tome about the nature of male friendship. Though he says that societally, "there's a general shift that men are becoming more comfortable" with expressing themselves, "the notion of an incredible closeness between men is scary." He describes female friendships as being "face to face," while male friendships are often "shoulder to shoulder." By that he means, that men are going to be more comfortable participating in activities with one another rather than simply talking. "Part of the reason men like hanging out with other men," he says, "is sometimes they don't like the emotional demands on them that women put on them."

According to Grief, while men have been socialized to accept romantic rejection from women, it's a whole 'nother ballgame to be rejected platonically by a man. Making friends requires the letting of one's guard down, he says: "Most men—especially when they make new friends—don't want a high-maintenance friendship. They might interpret it as vulnerability."

In the process, we miss out on some really good hugs.

Image via Wiki Commons.

I don't just keep coming back to hugs because Steve Maher gave me a really good one: It turns out there is an actual, chemical reason that it feels good to hug another person. "The body is made to respond positively to hugging," Steve tells me. "When people hug and they feel safe," he says, "it generates oxytocin, which is a feel-good chemical." Indeed, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reports that those who receive a surplus of hugs and physical contact tend to have higher oxytocin levels in their bodies. Oxytocin triggers the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps control how we experience pleasure, and reduces stress in the body. Steve tells me the relationship between hugging and oxytocin is established early, when mothers hug their infants. "From infancy, (hugging) is how we learn to feel safe in the world."

But my feelings aren't just a repository of warm goop inside me—like everyone, I have anger and regret knotted up somewhere, in my case maybe related to the time last year I was punched in the head in the bar because someone didn't like something I'd written. I've mentally gotten over that, but subconsciously, who knows? That's why, after we hug, Steve suggests I beat on a large foam block with a tennis racket.

"We call it 'hitting the cube' in Core Energetics work," he says. "It's a place to express strong emotion physically."

So I start beating the shit out of the block while imagining what I would say to the guy who had hit me. I did. It felt good. Later, in an email, Steve tells, "I think that you had a lot of energy flowing at that moment, both from hitting the cube and from the energy of what got stirred up from your assault."

It seems silly to me to say that hugging allowed me to feel safe enough to let my rage out, and that expressing my feelings about the incident might have allowed me to better come to terms with them, and ultimately let them go. Then again, I don't like to talk about my emotions.

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It would probably be journalistically irresponsible of me to throw out some theory about why men close themselves off. How to we learn to be the way we are? Is it because we're taught, from a young age, to associate manhood with competing and winning against other boys and men in a variety of arenas? Is it because of some weird, fucked up inherited misogyny? Is it just homophobia? Is it because large swaths of the Western literary canon has been penned by guys like Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway—guys who, if the term had been around back in their days, probably would have been labeled "bros"? Is it those movies that idolize those almost mute, sometimes even nameless, Clint Eastwood types as they float through a cartoonish world killing everything they see? Or those other movies that depict guys as immature schlubs who need to be rehabilitated by a got-her-shit-together leading lady who is almost motherly in her guidance but also way hotter than the guy?

At the risk of even more journalistic irresponsibility, I'm going to let Tucker Max expand upon all of this. "Most guys," Max tells me over the phone, "think they're supposed to hold their emotions in, they're supposed to be strong all the time, and that they're supposed to create a barrier to deal with this stuff. These are old cultural tropes, but they're still very deeply embedded."

Max, of course made his name as a publishing enfant terrible with the books I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, Assholes Finish First, and Hilarity Ensues, which depict sexual encounters and drunken mishaps in detailed, explicit, and sometimes fairly misogynistic prose. Though he is not without his detractors (the 2009 film adaptation of Beer in Hell subject of protests for the way it depicted women, and in 2012 he caught flak for trying to get Planned Parenthood to name an abortion clinic after him in exchange for a $500,000 donation), the Tucker Max of 2015 is at least on the surface different from the Tucker Max of yore.

He's married, for one, and has a child. He invests in startups, and as an investor allegedly shies away from superfans of his drunken endeavors. Along with the evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, Max has a new site called The Mating Grounds, a blog and podcast dedicated to helping guide young men through "the entire mating process—from its beginning (puberty), through the different forms and stages of dating, all the way to marriage (or whatever form of relationship a man chooses)." Sure, it's not exactly The Feminine Mystique, but it's a far cry from Max's story of the childish glee he felt about fucking a midget.

On their podcast, Max and Miller coach young men through the world of sex and dating what I have to admit sounds like a responsible manner. Though the podcast can certainly be read as "Tucker Max is trying to help guys get laid," to hear Max tell it there are big differences between what he does and, say, your garden-variety pickup artist guru.

"A huge part of the podcast," he tells me, "is explaining basic foundational stuff about women to men." The idea, essentially, is to help young men get girlfriends through teaching them to understand and respect the experience of women in society, and through that understanding better themselves so that they're not part of the problem. His hope is that "guys can group together and be like, 'We can go out and meet girls with the goal of finding a girl we want to date instead of pretending that everything is just about putting our penis in women and that's it.'"

"Most guys are boring or annoying or boorish or awkward or transparently objectifying of women. They literally look at women like a piece of meat."
–Tucker Max

Max readily admits that "it sounds fucking ridiculous and ironic that I'm the one trying to teach guys how to get girlfriends," but I have to admit his advice has a certain legitimacy to it.

For example, Max begins one episode by saying, "Most guys are boring or annoying or boorish or awkward or transparently objectifying of women. They literally look at women like a piece of meat. Women notice this, and this annoys the shit out of them." The episode's notes add, "If you just want a female-shaped body to get sexual pleasure from, try a Fleshlight or a sex doll."

"It's not like I made all this stuff up," Max tells me. "There's nothing that I say in this podcast that wouldn't be old hat for someone in any sort of therapeutic situation, or most female advice-type spaces, or any sort of place where people openly talk about their emotions." Max sees his role as that of a translator. "Really, if we're doing anything new, it's just that we're bringing a lot of ideas that other people and other groups have talked about for a long time that are very valid to men in a way that men can listen to and connect with."

He thinks the issue of men's lack of friendships as well as their inability to interact with women as results of the same basic problem of not being able to communicate, period. "Young guys think that everyone else has it figured out, and so they have to act cool like they have it figured out, and like they're killing it or whatever. But underneath that thin veneer of false confidence and bravado, they're all deeply insecure and scared and afraid, and they don't know what the hell to do, and everything's very confusing for them."

Photo via Flickr user Friskytuna

Steve and I lay down on a mat. He tells me to spoon him. At this point, any weirdness that might be associated with spooning a stranger has melted away. One of Steve's ground rules is, "You're not allowed to be physically uncomfortable." This means both in the most literal sense (I'm encouraged to shift my position if my arm is falling asleep) and a more figurative one. This is an environment, he says, where "straight men are out of their comfort zones." He tries to create "an environment where they're comfortable enough to explore it."

The experience is certainly new—I honestly think it was my first time spooning another man—but not at all unwelcome. Though I'm the big spoon, it's clear that Steve's running the show, putting his arm over mine protectively and occasionally patting me. We breathe, again in unison, sometimes talking, but mostly just lying there. He then tells me to put my head on his chest, explaining that this is an extremely paternal position. He tells me that I am safe, and then tells me to tell myself I am safe. I feel, well, safe.

There's something about being physically cradled by a large human who is professionally obligated to not judge you that makes one feel deeply, almost primordially secure. That security allows me to let out my latent fears and anxieties, articulating thoughts that had been floating around my head in packets of vague badness. I talk about how I felt stupid after getting punched in the head. I talk about my issues with substance abuse. I talk about my relationship with my parents. I talk about my relationship with my girlfriend. I talk about my relationship with my dog.

I have no idea if these things would have come out in traditional therapy. But they sure as shit came out in hug therapy. In the email afterward, Steve tells me, "I wanted you to feel safe and cared about. In that place you opened up and shared stuff you were holding in. Hugging supported that happening, as well as my being a listener for you. How you responded is natural."

As I drive home from Steve's therapy space, I feel something of an afterglow, something he told me might happen. I don't necessarily feel better, just different—it turns out that spending an afternoon talking about my feelings helped me achieve a sense of clarity. I've spent a lifetime conditioning myself to not talk about my feelings, to suppress them to the point that sometimes I can't even recognize what's actually bothering me. By articulating the underlying bullshit that's been on my mind, unspoken, I managed to unclog my brain.

In the days that follow, I take care to notice not just my reactions to stressful situations, but the actual root causes of those reactions. I feel less closed off from the world, because I'm literally opening up the channels that have prohibited me from understanding myself.

A couple nights later, I meet up with my bandmate to write and bullshit. I tell him about my experiences with hug therapy, and for the first time in months, talk to him about my feelings. He tells me about his. In this moment, we have transcended the "activity friendship" of the Male Deficit model. We're just two people, talking about life. Before I leave, we hug. It feels good.

Follow Drew Millard on Twitter.

All photos courtesy of the author.

This article originally appeared on VICE France.

I met up with Pack, one of the guys from Dirty Riderz motorcross crew, on a sunny May morning in Paris. I sat on the back of his moped as he drove us to the crew's headquarters, a small house where they keep a dozen dirt bikes and quads. We ate a bunch of kebabs together in the driveway, loaded up the truck, and headed out towards the place they like to ride. They asked me not to divulge the precise location, because they don't want to turn up one day and find the cops waiting for them.

Members of the crew are aged between 14 and 35, and most come from the surrounding area—the Paris suburbs of Choisy-le-Roi, Vitry-sur-Seine, and Villeneuve-Saint-Georges—but interest is spreading. Recently, guys from as far away as Val d'Oise, which is on northeast end of Paris, have joined the crew.

The wider bike-riding movement that the Dirty Riderz are a part of—#CrossPavement, essentially the French version of UK BikeLife—became properly organized a couple of years ago, and the popularity of these bike crews have been on the up ever since.

The reason the Dirty Riderz gather in this one particular spot is because they've been kicked out of everywhere else by the police. This countryside road is where they can come to relax and work on their riding skills. When they congregate here, it's an entire day event—a "normal" day starts at around noon and ends at about 10 PM.

Related: Watch our documentary 'Black Bike Week'

The atmosphere is almost familial. People show up with friends and everybody's welcoming, offering tokes on their water pipes or a bite of the merguez sausages they're grilling up.

The day I was there, one of the riders got into a pretty nasty accident. He fell off his bike and slid 30 feet across the hot pavement. He'd basically burnt the skin off his entire arm, so the guys rushed him to hospital in the boot of a station wagon.

One guy told me that there could be as many as five accidents a day—but usually there's none at all. These guys ride really fast and some don't wear any sort of protection, so when they get hurt, they get really hurt.

Something about it reminded me of the early days of France's skate scene—police are out to get them and they're kicked out of everywhere they ride, but they keep going regardless. Time will tell if they'll be gradually accepted into the mainstream, or if they'll forever be stuck on the margins.

Scroll down for more pictures.

Cover art detail from 'Second Quest,' via the book's tumblr.

This article is part of VICE Gaming's Comic Connections week—find more here.

Whenever I see the opening screen of the first The Legend of Zelda—the green pixelated rock formations jutting out around you, the three branching paths, and the strange cave with a mysterious old man and a sword—I can't help but think of the millions of other people who have looked at it. I think of my mother, who introduced me to The Legend of Zelda when I was far too young to understand it. Gaming can be a pretty solitary hobby, and shared experiences like this can form a sense of community. Even if I'm alone, I know that there's probably someone else, somewhere in the world, looking at Hyrule with me. There's some comfort in that.

That sense of communal attachment is, I think, part of why The Legend of Zelda is such a long-lasting and at times contentious series. So many people fell in love with it that it created an indelible impression on the medium, a massive star exerting a gravitational pull that everything after has had to reckon with.

This is not necessarily a good thing. Communal devotion can be as dangerous as it can be liberating. Our beliefs about things we love can calcify, or turn cancerous, and communities ostensibly built around a shared love can rapidly become venues for intense hatred. To put it another way: Us all loving video games didn't do a damn thing to stop Gamergate from happening. From continuing to happen.

Which is, in an important way, what Second Quest is about. A recently published graphic novel with words by Tevis Thompson and art by David Hellman, Second Quest is a flirtation with the mythology of Zelda and the mythology we've built around it. It's a meditation on the dangerous toxicity of insular communities, and particularly how hostile and oppressive they can be to women. Most of all, it's a story of a young girl trying to find somewhere where she can be free.

The cover to the print version of 'Second Quest,' via the book's tumblr.

In 2012, Tevis Thompson, who was a game critic before he was a comics writer, wrote an essay called "Saving Zelda." It was an outpouring of his frustration with the way Zelda series has become mired in tradition and structure, the way it's lost its way by trying to imitate its own past. He wrote:

Modern Zeldas do not offer worlds. They offer elaborate contraptions reskinned with a nature theme, a giant nest of interconnected locks. A lock is not only something opened with a silver key. A grapple point is a lock; a hookshot is the key. A cracked rock wall is a lock; a bomb is the key. That wondrous array of items you collect is little more than a building manager's jangly keyring.

Almost everything in Zelda has a discrete purpose, a tedious teleology. When it all snaps into place, some call this good design. I call it brittle, over determined, pale. It's the work of a single-minded god, a world bled of wonder.

Second Quest offers something of a revision of that essay in narrative form. In that way, it's a graphic novel doing the work of games criticism. And it does it better than most straight-up games criticism could ever hope to. It's a beautiful, poetic allegory of a world with no room for creation and no place for imagination.

The story follows a young girl named Azalea in a world suspended in the sky. After the invasion of foreign "barbarians," a magic ritual tore her world from the ground and thrust it up into the stratosphere, where her cloistered civilization now lives, ignorant of what—if anything—exists below. The abbesses and rulers insist that nothing remains, but Azalea thinks otherwise, and she spends her time sneaking out of the city walls, exploring the ruins at the very edge of the land, peering jaggedly out over the clouds. Early on in the story, we see the collection Azalea has amassed from the ruins. For a Zelda fan, they'll be instantly familiar: ocarinas, boomerangs, bottles. The lens of truth from the N64 outings, the last time many felt the series marshaled any true creativity.

A detail from 'Second Quest' showing items that Azalea has collected.

The trinkets Azalea has found give her visions, images of another world, or perhaps the past. Another girl, like her, walking where she has walked, poking at the same ruins of the old world that she is. These visions represent the same feeling I get looking at the opening of that first game on the NES—the sense that others like me have walked here, have done these things; that I'm a part of a community, even if I don't see one. It's a lovely statement of how games (and art in general) can capture us, can liberate us. A fantasy can be a place to find freedom, and games, like Azalea's magic dream visions, can pull us out of ourselves, connect us to a sense of a breathing world outside the walls.

It's this beauty, this power, that Thompson sees in Zelda, and that he gives to Azalea. But it's a power that is beset on all sides by the world she lives in. When the abbess that leads the city's religion learns of Azalea's visions, she tells her that she must channel her magic, "make herself useful," use it to maintain the order of the city by literally keeping it from falling back to earth.

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The abbess, the society of the city, and even the city itself function as a symbolic representation of everything Thompson loathes about the Zelda franchise and, presumably, about the insular and slow-moving "gamer" world in general. In broad, panoramic images, we see that the city is built on a hill as a Matryoshka doll of gated structures, a literal "giant nest of interlocked keys." At the center is a magic sword embedded in a rock, Link's trusty Master Sword re-envisioned here as the ultimate symbol of control. Fairy-like clockwork birds roam the city, following around boys dressed in familiar hooded elf garb, pointing out any transgression like Ocarina of Time's Navi does in your nightmares.

These re-imaginings paint the portrait of a society built around stories used for the purpose of oppression and social control, stories that have become so powerful and so widely believed that even questioning them is a dangerous political act. This is the fear Second Quest has: that when stories lose their wonder, their sense of imagination and humanity, and become frozen in place, they simply become tools of control, crushing ideologies instead of freeing fantasies.

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And when Azalea tries to pull away from that ideology, the city proves crueler than she could have imagined. The last part of the book is a struggle against the city's repressive fury. Boys dressed as Link try to murder Azalea, ostracizing and isolating her as they sling fire. And if that reminds you of anything, well, it should. Azalea is struggling against the patriarchal power of an oppressive society, but in the allusive logic of Second Quest this society is a clear stand-in for "gamer culture," worshipping its own fictions to the exclusion of compassion for the outsider. How dare you be different? How dare you try to change things? It feels like Thompson's warning to his readers: stagnant art, and the cults built around it, can have real consequences. Group dynamics can be a way to enact violence on outsiders, on minorities and women, and anyone who tries to change things, and that's true whether you're talking about politics or games.

A sample page from 'Second Quest,' via the book's official website.

Second Quest connects those dots deftly, using its fantasy world to present the power of ideology and fantasy to us in a way that doesn't undersell the real influence they can have on the world. It's easy to say, "Well, I mean, they're only video games," but Thompson and Hellman have crafted a story that suggests that even the most harmless loves can become dangerous if left uncritiqued, unchanged. A story that suggests that maybe the worst thing we can do to something we love is to leave it as it is. In the process, it manages to be both a brilliant graphic novel and one of the smartest pieces of media criticism I've read in a long time.

Second Quest believes that we need to see the things we love the way they are, and that by doing this we can encourage them to grow and change and discover the freeing truths that drew us to them in the first place. To not do so, it argues, would be disastrous. As Azalea puts it, as the city threatens to hem her in permanently: "The world did not disappear just because we stopped looking."

Find more information on Second Quest at the book's official website

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If some guy who is shagging someone in an autumnal street can wear a condom, so can you, Hackney. Photo by Miki Yoshihito via

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Everyone in Hackney has chlamydia now, apparently, so I guess we need to stop fucking people from Hackney. You know that quote? That Tumblr quote. It is by John Waters and goes like this: "We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don't have books, don't fuck them."

John Waters was wrong. We need to make not having medically-inadvisable junk infections cool again. If you go home with someone and they try to take you back to Hackney, don't fuck them.

Because, as a new Public Health England (PHE) study reports, Hackney is the most sexually-infected London borough, and chlamydia is their number one jam. As boasts go, that isn't a good one, is it? It's also especially prevalent among young people, with 4,270 residents per 100,000 between the ages of 15 and 24 being clapped up to the nines. That's just no good.

There are other takeaways from the report, too, based on 2014 data: last year there were 439,243 reported STIs in the UK, with gay men (categorized as gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men) being most at risk of infection. Chlamydia was still the most commonly diagnosed STI, with 47 percent of cases (206,774), followed by genital warts (70,612). Increase-wise, syphilis is making a weird, old school comeback (up 33 percent on 2013), while gonorrhea is having a renaissance, with 2014 seeing a 19 percent increase—especially bad because gonorrhea is one of those smart, tactile STIs that can suss out and become more resistant to antibiotics.

But it's London where the problem is worst, with 113,381 cases in 2014—up five percent on the year before, and going against the general national grain of falling infection rates. Fun fact: Lambeth is the worst place in the country for gonorrhea! Fun fact: Lewisham, Southwark, Lambeth, and Wandsworth are also seeing high rates of chlamydia, which can lead to infertility! Fun fact: heterosexual men and women were more likely to get genital warts or genital herpes! Fun fact: what the hell, people! Why would you put the most tender parts of yourself at risk of disease!

Feels like a penis implant documentary sort of day, doesn't it?

"These figures are very concerning and show too many people in London are still getting STIs by continuing to have unsafe sex," PHE London's Dr. Yvonne Doyle said. She added that certain trends—gonorrhea just generally being on the rise, for instance, with a 19 percent year-on-year infection rate—can be attributed to certain risky sexual behaviors, such as gay men having condom-less sex, and the emerging trend of people having unsafe sex while high on drugs.

On the whole, PHE London seems to think these figures are cause for concern, especially in El Capital. "The stats published today show that too many people are getting STIs," head of STI surveillance Dr. Gwenda Hughes said. "Reducing this spread must be a public health priority. We are particularly concerned about the large rises in diagnoses among gay men—this group saw a 46 percent increase in syphilis and a 32 percent increase in gonorrhea."

READ ON MOTHERBOARD: Why Are Condoms Still a Thing?

Allow me for one moment to put one foot firmly on the desk like a cool substitute geography teacher with a ponytail: hey kids, let's talk about sex. Imagine me unpeeling a greasy condom and putting my entire forearm in it. I am making intense eye contact with all of you, here. I am saying: no laughing at the back. I am saying: If you're too embarrassed to put your entire forearm and a few fingers from the other hand into a condom in front of a room full of people, then you're not mature enough to have sex.

The deflated, ruined condom lying prone on the table now, everyone tensely aware of it while I am pouring out a palm full of spermicidal gel. Me saying: The rhythm method does not protect you from STDs. Me going: I hear you kids like anal now. If you want to avoid more of these horrible, horrible lectures, start rubbering up, try to avoid overlapping sexual relationships too much, and if you're in a high risk group get your junk checked now and again. And that goes double for anyone in Hackney. Class dismissed.

Follow Joel on Twitter.

Forty-two years ago, on June 24, 1973, an arson attack killed 32 people at a gay bar in New Orleans. Though sometimes referred to as "the deadliest attack on LGBT people in US history," the fire is often forgotten.

But documentarian Robert Camina wants to make us remember. His film, Upstairs Inferno, just premiered last night in New Orleans on the anniversary of the tragic blaze.

While no evidence has ever been found that the murder was motivated by hatred or overt homophobia—in fact, the most likely suspect was a gay man named Roger Nunez who had recently been thrown out of the Upstairs Lounge—Camina says that the New Orleans authorities were slow to respond to it because of bias against the victims.

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VICE called up Camina to talk about the film and to try and understand why such a horrific crime remains an obscure chapter in gay history.

VICE: What brought you to this topic?
Robert Camina: One of my executive producers is from Louisiana. He began to tell me about the Upstairs fire and I was shocked because I thought I knew my gay history, and I knew nothing about this. It's as poignant as the Stonewall Inn raid, but it's not part of our LGBT narrative. So I felt compelled to tell the story. I committed and I started production of the film, and then the 30th anniversary happened in 2013 and it sort of grew off that. TIME Magazine covered the fire and more people came forward that knew people. So that's how I started the film and nearly three years later we're premiering it tonight on the 42nd anniversary of the fire.

For those who don't know, what happened that night?
On June 24, 1973, someone deliberately set fire to a gay bar in the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana. Thirty-two people were killed in that fire. Three people were not identified. Those three people's bodies—plus one other—were never claimed, and they were buried in the New Orleans public cemetery.

And what was the community's reaction?
The reactions by the church were horrifying: Most churches closed their doors for funerals. They refused to have funerals just because of the place where these people died. [They weren't necessarily gay] they just died in a gay bar. It was difficult for people to grieve publicly because, in 1973, you could lose your job, you could lose your house, you could be outed, if you said, "I knew somebody that was killed in a gay bar." Well, why? Are you gay?

And you think that was a factor in the muted reaction?
I know that had that happened at a straight bar, with affluent people, you know there would have been an arrest. There would have been a public outcry. The mayor would have had a national day of mourning.

Can you tell me about the church that features into the story?
The Metropolitan Community Church was a gay-affirming Christian church and they had just formed a chapter in New Orleans. And after church, they often went to the Upstairs, and one-third of the congregation was killed in the fire, including the pastor and the associate pastor. So it was extremely devastating to the MCC as a whole, as well as the gay community in New Orleans.

So after the fire, what did the investigation find?
The New Orleans Police Department did do not a very thorough job of the investigation. They pretty much dropped it after a few months. Fire marshal investigators pursued it for quite a while after the police stopped. They identified a primary suspect and ultimately concluded that this suspect was the probable arsonist. He committed suicide a year after the fire and so they were never able to file any charges. But to say that the New Orleans Police Department's investigation was lacking is probably an understatement.

What about other officials?
Even though it still remains the deadliest fire in New Orleans history, the mayor at the time did not acknowledge the fire, the deaths. Neither did Governor Edwards or Archbishop Hannan—he didn't even acknowledge the devastation.

Watch: Gay Conversion Therapy

What was your approach as a filmmaker?
It's gruesome—there's no way around it—but I didn't want it to just be a stagnant exposition of facts. Tracking down the survivors wasn't the easiest thing to do. It is forty years later and many have passed away. Some people are still in a lot of pain and they don't want to talk about it on camera. But I wanted to make sure and comfort everybody that I wasn't out to exploit what happened to them and their friends.

How did you do that?
It's not like something where I could go up and go, "Hi, my name is Robert Camina and I'm going to interview you about this traumatic event." You have to build a relationship with them and I'm happy to call them my friends now. I've grown to love them and their families and they're a part of my extended family now.

For more information aboutUpstairs Inferno, go to the film's website.

Thumbnail from a scan of The Times Picayune .

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

VICE sits down with deaf actress Yana Novikova and uses sign language to interview her about her award-winning performance in The Tribe.

Charlotte with her daughter Esmée.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

It's Friday night and as other students down discounted booze, briefly forgetting the £60,000 [$94,000] debt and jobless abyss that awaits, Charlotte is standing in the supermarket, mentally scanning Tesco Value items. She has a tenner in her pocket to last the rest of the week. Only it's not just her to worry about. Charlotte's three-year-old daughter Esmée needs to eat and has run out of diapers. A tenner isn't enough.

New statistics, out today, reveal that childhood poverty has flatlined. Households Below Average Income (HBAI) stats show that 3.7 million children are living in relative poverty, unchanged from the figures for 2012 to 2013. That means a quarter of the UK's kids are still growing up officially poor, and that hasn't declined despite the fact that Parliament is committed to eradicating child poverty by 2020.

We hear lots about how Generation Y is screwed. Those born from the early 1980s onwards are faced with soaring rents, unattainable property prices, grotesque fees for further education, high unemployment, and a ban on NOS. Grim times. Talked about less are the 680,000 millennials who become parents every year.

The average age of first-time mothers is now 30, but that still leaves more than 340,000 babies born to women under 30 every year in the UK. Of these, 140,000 new mums are under 25. For these Millennial parents, life is becoming increasingly tough.

"I had to move back to my parents for a while," Charlotte told me. "But there wasn't really room. It was my mum and dad, me and my daughter sharing a bed and my brother and sister.

"I moved into my own place in April but I've had to borrow money again this month just to pay rent. I do get student finance and part housing benefit but it's not enough to pay everything."

Esmée and Charlotte

Charlotte has only one year left of her sport and exercise science degree but she doesn't think she'll make it to the end and has started job-hunting. Even if she drops out of uni to work, however, she's doubtful about making ends meet, especially with the £200-a-week [$315] cost of childcare.

"It just doesn't add up," she says.

Charities agree that things are getting worse for young parents, especially those bringing up children alone and particularly those under 25. With most first-time mothers who register as sole carers being under 25, it's a perfect storm for Generation Y-ers who have already started families.

After the last batch of welfare reforms, under-25-year-olds accounted for 41 percent of all benefit sanctions; single parent families were disproportionally affected, through benefit caps, bedroom tax, and changes to council tax benefit reduction. It's just been revealed that the number of homeless families living in B&Bs has increased by more than 300 percent in the past five years. With £12 billion [$19 billion] more welfare cuts in the pipeline, things are likely to become still more precarious.

What this means is a second generation condemned.

"We're very concerned that further cuts will push even more children into poverty," Octavia Holland, director of policy at single parents support agency, Gingerbread, tells me. "Children who grow up in poverty are less likely to get good qualifications and more likely to remain in poverty as adults."

Gemma has a three-year-old son. Unable to cover the cost of childcare with her wages, she stopped working and was scraping by until her benefits were unexpectedly stopped.

"Three months ago, my circumstances changed and I could no longer claim for child benefit," Gemma told me. "All of my payments were stopped for six weeks and I was handed a £156 [$249] check to pay for rent, bills, and food. For the past couple of months I've been relying on food parcels from Barnardo's Billericay Children's Centre."

Women bear the brunt of this shit storm but being a dad when you're young and skint is not so sweet either. Liam (not his real name) is 23 and has a one-year-old daughter with his 18-year-old girlfriend, Casey. Liam is living with his nan and granddad while Casey lives with her mum.

Related: Also having a hard time of it are the parents of children who are sectioned under the mental health act. Watch our film about one of them, 'Maise'

Liam is waiting for his security industry certificate so he can find work as a bouncer or shopping center security guard. Casey worked for a while as care assistant on a zero-hours contract but had to quit because the schedule was so unmanageable. They're both waiting for help with council housing—they've been waiting a year.

"We're just basically getting on with it if you know what I mean," Liam told me. "But granddad had pneumonia so my grandparents are housebound as they live in a flat two floors up. Me and Casey don't have anywhere to spend quality time together with our daughter. The only time we're on our own is between places: when we're food-shopping or when we're on the way to her mum's or something."

Strict housing benefit regulations (if you're under 25 you can't claim for anything other than a single room) mean that men are unlikely to be allowed overnight visits from their child on the basis of their accommodation being unsuitable. Organization like Working With Men, which supports young fathers, say that welfare sanctions have had a direct effect on the ability of single men to form relationships with their children.

Today's childhood poverty statistics are a warning that the chaos heaped onto Millennials is being passed down to the next generation. Javed Khan, the CEO of children's charity Barnardo's tells me, "High childcare costs, harsh sanctions, and low wages are making it nigh on impossible for many of the young parents we support to work their way out of poverty".

Read on Noisey: No Money, No Space, No Time: How London Has Forced Out Musicians

"I try to make Esmée think everything's normal," Charlotte tells me. "It's just something you have to live through," says Liam. The reality is though, Charlotte will probably have to leave uni and, even if Liam gets a job as a security guard, it's going to be tough for him and Casey to cover living costs.

Welfare cuts are bricks thrown through the already fragile walls people build around their families. It's hard to fight back when you don't even have the basics for survival: money for food, a place of your own.

"I'm so stressed I can't even go out no more," Liam says. "I'm shutting myself away from everyone. There's nothing really I can do."

Follow Frankie on Twitter.

Welcome to friendly Aamjiwnaang. Screenshot via crowdfunding campaign video

The Chemical Valley near Sarnia and Aamjiwnaang First Nation in Ontario is home to some 40 percent of the entire country's chemical industry: around 60 plants and refineries cluster in the area, spewing pollutants into the air at regular intervals. And while industry and government have said the levels of pollution in the area are acceptable for human life, the high rates of miscarriages and skewed birth rates (almost 2:1 female to male, nearly unheard of for humans anywhere else) hint at a different truth.

After years of feeling misdirected, if not kept completely in the dark, residents of Aamjiwnaang are organizing in an effort to pick of the slack from what they feel is an unresponsive government. They've launched a crowdfunding campaign to fund independent water-quality and sediment tests in an effort to conclusively prove what they say they already know, and what seems self-evident to anyone who's been in the area: they live surrounded by unsafe levels of pollution. With 11 days left in the campaign, they've raised more than 85 percent of their $10,000 goal.

Vanessa Gray is a self-described land defender from Aamjiwnaang, and is one of the people behind the crowdfunding campaign. She says the goal of testing the water and sediment is to determine the cumulative effects of pollution in the area, something the provincial government has failed, in her eyes, to adequately address.

The provincial government, for its part, seems to feel its testing and standards are up to snuff. Ministry of Environment and Climate Change spokesperson Lindsay Davidson wrote by email that "no health effects are expected from exposure to sediment and water during recreational use of Talfourd creek," and that "given that the protective levels established for single contaminants are well below where effects are expected, exposure to multiple contaminants at these levels is generally not of concern."

2013 documentary "The Chemical Valley"

Gray and many other residents of the area are not convinced, and want their own tests, both to understand the toll taken on their environment by constant pollution, and as a first step toward an eventual restoration project for the Aamjiwnaang waterways. While much of the pollution that has immediate impacts on people's health in the area is from the air, water holds cultural value as well as a potential key to understanding how the pollution accumulates over time. That last part is why the group wants to test both water and sediment.

"It's not as easy to take air samples as it is water samples and sediment samples," Gray said, "and we can see how it bio-accumulates.

"It's a way for us to understand the real truth of the damage that's being done to the land," said Gray. "Looking at the facts themselves, to have that understanding of how neglected the water is. I specifically would like to look at the water because traditionally, women are caretakers of the water, and men are caretakers of the fire. So we know our water is toxic—there are signs up, our community is well aware of this problem. But there's been no concrete steps forward to fix the problem, it's only been mitigated by the ministry of the environment saying it meets their standards. But it doesn't meet our standards: the chemicals shouldn't be there to begin with, because we didn't put those there. Those were the companies, [like] Shell and Suncor, responsible for that."

As VICE reported back in 2013, pollution has plagued the area around Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia for the better part of a century. That pollution has almost certainly contributed to the astoundingly high rates of miscarriages in the area—39 percent of women in Aamjiwnaang have reported having either a miscarriage or stillbirth—and to the nearly unheard-of asymmetry in birth rates.

The crowdfunding campaign is just the first step in a long process that will involve commissioning the tests and analyzing the results before even starting to decide on a course of action for cleaning up the water supplies, but Gray said she's overjoyed with the support they've received.

"We're just really excited, and we are looking forward to putting this into action and figuring out our next steps toward our restoration dream."

Follow Tannara Yelland on Twitter.

The faux-kidnappers posing with one cop who wasn't incensed by their antics. Photos courtesy Gavin Wilson

The tranquility of a nice little neighbourhood in Edmonton was sliced apart by the sounds of thrash metal as a rented U-Haul van ripped around the corner, stopping in front of a small, quaint house with two trees. Inside the van, a dog barked, as if trying to compete with the Municipal Waste track blasting from the speakers at full volume. The back doors opened up and out popped ten young men wearing ill-fitting nylons over their faces and brandishing baseball bats. They all ran to the house and, after a brief time tracking down the hidden house key, filed into the residence and slammed the door.

Six different neighbours watched this happen. And they all called the police within seconds.

Once inside, Gavin Wilson and Ross Nicholl sat alongside eight other friends from the Edmonton music scene. Their faces smushed by the constrictive pantyhose; in their hands they gripped foam baseball bats. There was a nervous excitement to the room—none of them had ever done something like this before, and they couldn't wait to kick off this bachelor party.

The boys, prior to embarking on their (mis)adventure

A friend near Nicholl hoisted a sleeping bag over his head, ready to slam it onto their prey—their soon-to-be-wed buddy Landon Scott McHardy—before duct-taping his feet and wrapping his arms with industrial saran wrap. They had everything planned out, they talked to Scott McHardy's fiancee to find out about the location of the hidden key, they knew exactly when the bachelor was coming home.

They only fucked up one thing: they forgot to inform the neighbours.

Two cars simultaneously pulled up to the house. One was Scott McHardy, and the other... a ghost car. The group inside assumed only that the groom had arrived and prepared themselves. A knock on the door, follow by:

"EPS Police! Open up!"

After a few moments of confusion, Wilson went to open the door thinking that the bachelor was simply turning the joke around on the group. But what he saw was not his friend, but two stressed out middle-aged policemen with their pistols pointed at his face.

"Show me your hands! Show me your fucking hands!"

All available cars, a helicopter, and the K-9 unit were en route to the home to thwart the bachelor party.

Two weeks prior, the plot was set into motion after the betrothed started complaining that his friends hadn't thrown him a bachelor party. That's when hids friend Dan Tansy decided to not only give his buddy a bachelor party, but the best fucking bachelor party that one could have. One that involved them pouring beer onto him while he was immobilized by a sleeping bag in the back of a moving U-Haul rocking trash metal.

"It's a good thing that they caught us when they did, because if they would of caught us in the van we would of been seriously arrested," said Tansy.

We can all guess what their inspiration was.

Edmonton Police had reason to take the stunt seriously. Recently, Edmonton's first police fatality in 25 years occurred when Norman Raddatz opened fired through a door striking two officers and killing Const. Daniel Woodall. In the ensuing weeks, the EPS had been on high alert and following every code of conduct to a T. One of the officers who talked to the partygoers after the situation told them that he "was ready for fucking war" and came ripping down the road with his weapon on his lap.

When the police arrived on scene, two cops stormed the front door and two waited in the backyard with guns drawn. Several of the people in the house debated running out the back door because they had petty outstanding warrants for things like speeding tickets and noise complaints. It's a damn good thing they didn't, because the story of a man wearing nylon on his head armed with a baseball bat running at two police officers with guns drawn may not have had the happiest ending.

Police breaking up the faux-kidnapping. Video courtesy Gavin Wilson

Everyone inside remained pretty much frozen except for Nicholl who pulled off his mask, put down his bat, went to the nearest couch, crossed his legs, put his hands by his sides, and just stared at the wall for the duration of the incident. Wilson, however, was at the door of the house dealing with a very stressed out cop wielding a pistol.

"I just kept yelling at the guy over and over that it was a bachelor party and assumed that I looked very scared," Wilson said. "He kept yelling contradictory statements at me like, 'Open the door,' 'Don't open the door.' I was like, 'Fuck, please tell me what you want if you are going to point that at my face.'"

Eventually the cop finally recognized that this situation wasn't a danger and holstered his weapon. He took everyone's IDs and tested the foam bats on the walls.

"They checked all of our IDs and weren't surprised to find that none of us had any criminal past because we were obviously really fucking bad [at being] criminals," said Tansy.

The groom to be, post-dustup

The officer in charge pulled them aside after the fiasco to tell them what was up. He threatened to charge them the cost of deploying the helicopter—about a grand—and completely laid into the group. After cursing the boys out and making sure they knew exactly why what they did was dumb, the cop in charge ended up saying, "I can tell that this was good-hearted in nature and just really fucking stupid."

When called for comment the EPS doubled down on this.

"The Edmonton Police Service reminds citizens that mimicking criminal activity can cause concern in the community and result in the deployment of police resources that are already overstretched, possibly pulling police away from those who may truly require assistance," they wrote in an email to VICE.

After the situation was clear of tension, a few of the cops took some photos with the boys, who then went back to Gavin's for a fire, some well-earned drinks, and to get the bachelor obliterated.

This time they succeeded in their mission.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.

After being told we could take photos inside, when we arrived we were told we couldn't, which is why all the pictures are taken outside. All photos by Chris Bethell.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Behind the shoddy grey exterior of Mecca Bingo Hall on Hackney Road, the room is overflowing with people. Trays of Scotch eggs and pink wafers line Formica tables. Strip lights illuminate slot machines and nicotine-stained seats. Armed with bingo markers, pints, and cocktail sausages, row upon row of punters bow their heads in concentration. When one elderly lady shouts "Oi!" instead of bingo, the crowd erupts into laughter and heckles.

Believe it or not, this is the busiest the bingo hall has been in decades. But while tonight might be a full house, tomorrow it'll be empty. The big turnout for the finale night will not stop the once-thriving bingo hall from closing its doors forever.

As the first purpose-built cinema to be transformed into a bingo hall in Britain in 1961, the art deco building has been drawing in regulars for decades. In spite of this, Mecca Bingo has decided to sell the building off to private property developers for £5.5 million [$8.6 million]. Club managers said it had been "struggling for some time" due to decreasing customers. Nevertheless, this isn't an isolated case. The bingo industry has taken a hit in recent years, with around 200 bingo clubs having closed since 2005.

Along with many, May Dunn, 78, is distraught that the place is shutting up shop. "My husband died four and a half years ago, and I've been in this bingo ever since. I would've been dead without it," she tells me. "I've spent a lot of money, but it was worth every penny. It's kept me alive."

"I've been coming here since it first opened in the 60s," May says. "When I had to look after my invalid son, I only came three nights a week, but when I lost my son 20 years ago, I started coming here till 9 PM, seven days a week. And then when I lost my husband, I didn't have to go home at all, so I was here till midnight or one o'clock every single night. When my husband died, I didn't want to go on holiday, the only place I wanted to come was here. I'd come in, say hello to everyone and even get a kiss and a cuddle. It's like a big family in here."

Now that it's closing, May does not know where she'll go: "We're all very upset. None of us know what we're going to do." She inhales deeply and savors every last breath of smoke.

"This is the first night this bingo hall has been full in a very long time," says May, gesturing at the overflowing foyer behind her. "Normally you walk in and you can sit where you like. Upstairs was closed for four years until tonight."

The club has long served as a lifeline to elderly locals who have few other sources of support. "We think our old friend Lena died of a broken heart when she found out this place was shutting," May tells me. "She used to say, 'What am I gonna do when this place goes?' She was really worried. She was scared to be on her own. Lena was also here since it opened. She'd be sitting in the corner, with her long coat and her little purple handbag, smoking like a trooper."

At the ripe age of 80, Lena passed away. "She was on her way to bingo a week ago, but the cab driver didn't think she looked well, so he took her home, where her daughter was waiting for her, and she died."

Like May, Marina Martin, 81, is also sad to say her farewells. "Coming here got me out the house. Without it, we're gonna be sat indoors day and night, and I don't think that's good for anybody," she tells me. "Even though I don't win, I just enjoy playing bingo. It's not about winning, it's about company."

A game of chance, Marina swears there's no skill involved: "It's all down to luck, and I'm not a lucky person. I pick up scores and 40s, but I never hit a grand." All the same, Marina says the prizes aren't what they used to be: "It's got too expensive. It used to be a social club, but it's more of a business now—they want to make their money."

Even if it has become more money-orientated, the club has still failed to draw in the crowds it needs to stay afloat. "Back in the day, upstairs was full, people were sitting on the stairs and queuing round the whole building. Now look at it. It's sad, really," says Marina.

Although, she does add that the place has managed to attract younger crowds in recent years. "My daughter comes in here, and all the students have started coming in quite regularly. Even they're gonna miss it, because I'm sure they wouldn't travel either." Looking around the hall, I'm suddenly struck by the overwhelming amount of women. According to Marina, "Bingo's always been known as a woman's game. Men have got the pub and football and betting."

When I ask Marina what she'll do now that Hackney Road's closing, she hesitates. "I definitely won't play bingo online. I know too many people in debt for that—the point of coming here is it's a social thing." But living just five minutes away in Bethnal Green, this is the only bingo hall in traveling distance.

Once I tell Marina that a free daily coach service to Mecca Bingo in Camden will be piloted for eight weeks, she plucks up slightly. "I'll definitely try that, but it's still not the same as walking five minutes to your local with people you know."

Having lived in Bethnal Green and Hoxton all of her life, Marina has seen East London change first-hand. "The area around the bingo club has changed a lot," she says. "It's trendy now, but it used to be as quiet as anything around Hoxton and Shoreditch."

Slap bang between Shoreditch and Broadway Market, Mecca Bingo has absorbed the overspill from its increasingly gentrified neighbors. Creperies and cocktail bars are scattered between William Hill's and wholesale handbag shops. In fact, it is probably this avant-garde juxtaposition of pawnshops and pop-ups that make properties like Mecca Bingo Hall so lucrative.

Nevertheless, Mecca Bingo's old school exterior is not enough to stop it from being sold off. After all, this working-class leisure pursuit doesn't exactly cater for an incoming class of JP Morgan employees who swig rosemary cocktails at Street Feast. On the contrary, bingo belongs to a bygone era. A time when cinemas were for watching films, not drinking; and pubs were for getting pissed, not eating $13 scotch eggs.

But this begs the question of what will become of Mecca Bingo Hall? Within a few months, Mecca Bingo will have joined the ranks of Hackney Road's iconic gay venue, The Joiners' Arms, which is long gone. Pluto Properties will have turned the Bingo Hall into a luxury gated property complex. In turn, residual communities will be displaced by children who slurp babycino's and adults who eat fro-yo.

But what will happen to the elderly folk who rely on the club as their only source of support? While bingo might have long been regarded as a joke by some, Hackney's Mecca Bingo provides an irreplaceable sense of community and camaraderie for its members. It goes without saying that when relics of old working-class Britain like Mecca Bingo close, the fabric of the area fades.

TRENDING ON NOISEY: The Hierarchy of the Glastonbury Campsite

But why has bingo taken such a dive in recent years? The combined force of the growth of online bingo, the smoking ban, and the recession has meant more and more bingo clubs have closed their doors.

As new, advanced leisure pursuits have vied for Britain's attention, it has become increasingly difficult to drag people away from their surround-sound TVs, garden gnomes, and crates of cut-price lager. What's more, bingo halls have started to look naff and dated. These unchanging institutions remain trapped in a pre-Costa-Del-Sol era, where families play Bingo at Butlins in Bognor Regis and Blackpool's B&Bs are chock-a-block.

Related: Watch our film 'Regeneration Game,' about swathes of London being sold off to make way for luxury housing

What's more, the few rather fraught attempts to revive bingo have probably done the industry more harm than good. With the Evening Standard's ES magazine declaring it "hip," and Prince William and the Queen publicly endorsing it, no wonder the game has struggled. Other attempts to modernize the industry have gone as far as updating "bingo lingo"—the slang callers use when they're reeling off numbers. While 71 has been changed from "Bang on my drum" to "J-Lo's bum," 32 has been changed from "buckle my shoe" to "Jimmy Choo."

Nevertheless, bingo hasn't always been a dying breed. In the 60s, bingo—rather than X Factor—was the opiate of the masses. After gambling was liberalized in 1960, Britain's first bingo halls sprung to life. By the mid-60s, a quarter of the population was playing bingo, and the number of club members had reached 14 million. In many ways, the golden age of bingo marked the dawning of mass leisure and the night-time economy. When a worker walked out the factory gates, he was freer to decide how he passed his free time than he'd ever been before. As pastimes like bingo carved out a new sphere in the life-work realm, leisure, and recreation—things we now take for granted—became increasingly accessible to growing numbers.

And bingo is still a hell of a lot more popular today than most of us would imagine. Believe it or not, more Brits play bingo than attend football matches and church. In 2011, three million customers made 49 million visits to bingo in the UK.

Standing inside Mecca Bingo on its finale night, I am transported to another England. Lucky trinkets and framed photos of members' relatives stand proudly next to stacks of bingo booklets. Without the polyphonic ringtones, it could be the 80s.

Despite being born and growing up just over a mile away, this is the first—and last—time I have been inside. As with many remnants of old working-class England, bingo has faded as London has become intent on shedding—and sanitizing—its cultural past.

Follow Maya Oppenheim on Twitter.

The Sediment Club dropped their first EP in 2010 and have been delivering us a pummeling heap of Grade-A, no-wave revival ever since. They did a full-length split with Guerilla Toss and have since toured with other East Coast slayers like Bush Tetras, Palberta, and Lightning Bolt side-project Black Pus. The band is led by Austin Sley Julian, whose father is Ivan Julian of Voidoids fame. Sediment Club is planning to drop a new record, Psychosymplastic, so we are premiering a video for the upcoming album's title track. It's just as weird and fractured as the band's music. Watch it.

Listen to more Sediment Club on Bandcamp.

Image via Flickr user thecomeupshow

On Wednesday, rapper Rick Ross was arrested in Fayette County, Georgia, and hit with felony charges for aggravated assault, aggravated battery, and kidnapping. Ross and his bodyguard Nadrian James (who is also facing charges of kidnapping and aggravated battery) allegedly pistol-whipped Jonathan Zamudio, who was working as a live-in groundskeeper at Ross's home, pointed a gun at him in a threatening fashion, and detained him in a bedroom against his will. Reportedly, the victim lost use of his jaw as a result of his injuries.

That incident took place on June 7, four days before Ross was reportedly arrested in the Atlanta area with marijuana.

Even without this latest incident, the history of William Leonard Roberts II is almost as bizarre and convoluted as the persona under which he produces music. Many of the media narratives surrounding Ross call into question exactly where Roberts the human and Rick Ross the rapper meet—is Ross actually the stone-cold gangster rapper he portrays in his songs, or are his raps nothing more than ten pounds of shit stuffed into a gilded, five-pound model of a luxury yacht?

Certainly, Rick Ross is a fantastical character. He's a pro wrestler reimagined as a rapper. He's also a large, large man who makes exaggerated boasts about how he is rich off of cocaine. If you don't believe that characterization, just check out his song that is literally called "Rich Off Cocaine." He once made a music video in which he avoids arrest by jumping off a bridge, only to get picked up by a speedboat full of beautiful women. His on-record persona is that of a remake of Scarface in which nothing goes bad for Tony Montana, ever.

Now, that Rick Ross is not real. But part of why Rick Ross is such an enduring presence on the charts (he was on hit songs—sometimes his own, sometimes as a guest rapper—every year from 2006 to 2014) is because he actively cultivates an air of absolute grandiosity, often to parabolic excess. You can hear it in his monster hits like "B.M.F." and "Hustlin'," both of which feature beats so punishing they rattle the listener to their core. You can see it on his Instagram page, where you can find him posing next to exotic cars, getting a massage, or on safari, looking at a giraffe. This stuff certainly isn't out of the norm when it comes to rap personas; far from it.

But often, Rick Ross can come across as the biggest bull in a china shop that's already filled with, like, 15 other bulls.

"Speedin'" music video screen grab via Flickr user A Continuous Lean.

In real life, William Roberts has faced his fair share of public controversy. In 2008, the Smoking Gun famously revealed he had once been a corrections officer at a Florida prison, earning him the derisive nickname "Officer Ricky." Shortly thereafter, he addressed the rumors in an issue of Don Diva Magazine, saying, "I never ratted on a n—ga! I never prosecuted a n—ga! I never locked up a n—ga that is first and foremost. I always felt that me being the n—ga I am, I never owed a n—ga an explanation." Continuing, he said, "When I say that I'm rich off of cocaine, it's because I did it. Those are the street principles that apply." Months later, Samuel Ferguson, the journalist who conducted the interview, was gunned down on the highway. Rick Ross was never connected to the murder, but media outlets pointed out that he had called Ferguson a "rat" and a "bitch" in subsequent interviews.

2008 was a busy year for Ross. That's when he was slapped with a $4 million lawsuit by hip-hop personality DJ Vlad, who alleged that Ross's entourage had issued him a beating at the Ozone Awards for his coverage of the Officer Ricky scandal. Meanwhile, a Miami public records search revealed that Ross was charged with felony possession of a firearm and misdemeanor possession of marijuana in that same year. (The marijuana charge was eventually dropped.) The deposition for that charge was obtained by the Smoking Gun, which revealed a bizarre line of questioning in which Ross's lawyer denied any connection between Ross and any street gangs, specifically the Carol City Cartel, with whom Ross has claimed affiliation on record (going so far as to name one of his rap groups Triple C's).

According to public records, in 2009, Ross was hit with another gun charge, this time a misdemeanor of openly carrying a firearm.

On Noisey: Why Rick Ross Doesn't Get It

In 2011, Ross was arrested for possession of marijuana in Shrevport, Louisiana. In 2012, TMZ reported that a man was murdered in front of his Miami house (though Ross was later ruled out as a subject). The next year, Ross was the alleged target of a failed drive-by shooting. The Smoking Gun, which was pretty much serving as a Rick Ross watchdog site at that point, uncovered that Ross was armed at the time of the incident.

Then there's the fact that Ross's lawyer's denial that his client is affiliated with gangs is tough to square with lyrical shout-outs to Carol City Cartel boss Boobie/Black such as, "Let me think back to '96, when Boobie had the realest n—ga feelin' like a bitch," and "When they snatched Black, I cried for a hundred nights/ He got a hundred bodies, servin' a hundred lifes." On "Ashamed," from 2012's God Forgives, I Don't, he goes so far as to rap, "Boobie gave me the game."

This is what's confusing about Ross. His persona is performance, but that performance bleeds into real life. When it does, the question we're left to ask ourselves is this: How much of what Rick Ross raps about is real, and how much of it is fiction?

Then again, this is almost certainly the question Ross wants us to ask. After all, he once rapped, "The rumors turn me on/I'm masturbating at the top."

Follow Drew Millard on Twitter.

Photo by Jamie Fullerton

Two men. Both with a higher-than-average desire to rub one out over internet porn. Only one of these men is a "porn addict."

"I watch porn on a daily basis and would estimate my collection of videos runs to around seven terabytes, scattered across several hard drives and devices," Ben told me. "I'm fully aware that I masturbate and consume porn more than the average user, and honestly I can't tell you why that is. I think it may be because I had sex later than many of my peers and turned to porn as the only way to explore my own sexuality."

Seven terabytes is a lot of porn to have stored away, especially considering it's 2015 and there are literally millions of videos you can just stream online. But does that make Ben a porn addict? No, not according to him.

Mark (not his real name) similarly finds the lure of internet smut impossible to resist. Even at work, Mark struggles to keep himself from watching porn. He doesn't always succeed. Just before Christmas, a colleague spotted his filth-filled screen, and Mark spent his festive days off waiting to see if he'd be fired. In the end, Mark kept his job, but he decided to seek help. "I'm a porn addict," he admitted.

Like sex addiction—super fashionable in celebrity circles—the concept of porn addiction has attracted criticism. In a new book, Sex Addiction: A Critical History, New Zealand academics Barry Reay, Nina Attwood, and Claire Gooder claim that porn addiction is mythical; a product of "social opportunism, diagnostic amorphism, therapeutic self-interest and popular cultural endorsement." Yet while they don't believe it's an addiction, Reay acknowledges that our sex-negative culture, click-bait media, and flourishing therapy industry have combined to create a fanciful and frightening condition.

Mark, and thousands of other men (few women seek treatment for porn addiction), would disagree. An online " Kick Start Recovery Program," created by UK porn addiction expert Paula Hall, has had more than 11,000 users.

The Marylebone Centre for Psychological Therapies, the UK's oldest treatment center for sex and porn addiction, has seen a spike in referrals over the last five years. It was here that Mark came for treatment; one of around 600 men who the center has helped through a 12-week, talking-therapy based program. There have been no follow-up studies to evaluate the effectiveness of this treatment, but the center's clinical director, psychotherapist Dr. Thaddeus Birchard, says that aftercare groups prove it's working. Birchard has no doubt that porn addiction is real.

"It's a form of sexual addiction," he tells me. "This is defined by four criteria: the behavior is out of control; you find it hard to stop; you are continuing the behavior despite harmful consequences; and the behavior has an anesthetizing function."

Birchard acknowledges, however, that one man's guilt-free masturbation marathon is another man's medical problem. "One of the problems when talking about sex or porn addiction is that everything about it is very subjective," he says. "The only person who can really tell if you're a porn addict is you."

Watch our film about sex and porn in the digital age:

It's the vagueness of these definitions that leaves the addiction model open to attack. Birchard stresses that most of his patients are experiencing distress; certainly grounds for deserving help. However, "shame"—a concept which is meaningless outside a specific culture—is a word that crops up repeatedly, and negative effects are likely to involve the disapproval of a partner. Tellingly, a recent study found that religious people are more likely to believe they're addicted to porn.

"One of the weaknesses of the concept of porn or sex addiction is determining what constitutes distress," Reay tell me. "It is a pretty nebulous measurement. It can't just be left to the individual to determine, but once some kind of criteria is introduced, who is to say what constitutes too much porn consumption?"

Reay believes that "porn addiction" is a cultural product that over-simplifies complex issues. Unquestioning reporting of porn addiction in the mainstream media is certainly rife. This, Reay says, "creates a cultural climate where simple, unchallenged concepts like sex addiction and porn addiction are the easy explanations for any troubling sexual behavior."

Birchard disputes this and says there is evidence that porn addiction is a physical condition. Neuroscience is the go-to favorite when it comes to backing up these claims. Some studies appear to show that sexual compulsion can cause physical changes in the brain, the hallmark of addiction. However, not all of the studies stand up to scrutiny. Several were on rats and, of the few human studies, small sample sizes (eight men in this case) confound data.

Professor David Ley, who has been at the forefront of porn addiction critique, has savaged this flimsiness of research, suggesting it is "hindered by poor experimental designs, limited methodological rigor and lack of model specification."

In theory, people can become 'addicted' to anything: making money, conversation, Snickers bars.

The concept of porn addiction and its treatment models certainly lie within a specific moral framework. Birchard tell me that "women are addictive around relationships and men around sex," that "women have sex to have relationships and men have relationships to have sex" and that men are "attracted" while women are "attractive."

But perhaps all of the debate is secondary to the fact that people are seeking help because they're miserable. Props to you if you're happy jerking off for ten hours a day, but what about the people who aren't?

Psychotherapist Ash Rehn told me: "I don't make claims about whether porn addiction is 'real' or not. The people who consult me about their porn use are in a far better position than I am to judge whether something is real to them. What is clear is that some people do find themselves struggling to stop using or limit using pornography."

However, Rehn says that focusing too much on the "porn addiction" can mean ignoring underlying problems. "If a therapist does that, they risk missing the original purpose or significance of their client's porn use," he says.

In theory, people can become "addicted" to anything: making money, conversation, Snickers bars. Compulsive behavior is often an indication of other mental health issues. In one study of men with "sex addiction," 62 percent had a history of major depression, and almost all had a history of alcohol abuse or dependence, while others reported obsessive-compulsive disorder and social phobia.

None of this means that people like Mark—unable to keep off PornHub for the duration of a working day—don't have a problem or should be denied help. The question is, are we doing them a disservice by calling them addicts? Why is it only the guilt-laden vices—food, sex, gambling—around which these theories spring up? I've yet to meet someone who's worried they're addicted to reading or music.

Follow Frankie on Twitter.

This article is part of VICE Gaming's Comic Connections week—find more here. Also, and this is important: this article does contain some spoilers for the story of Batman: Arkham Knight, particularly in regard to the appearance of certain series characters. Consider yourself warned.

My feet are swinging freely, nothing but air below my soles, the solid surface they were just recently comfortable on shifted several inches from where it should be and the next reassuring slab of something thick and quite possibly concrete a deadly number of feet beneath me. Black, gloved hands grip my collar. I'm sweating fear. Shitting the stuff. The hands pull me towards a masked face. It speaks: "I want you to tell all your friends about me." "What are you?" I scream into eyes that glow like dying suns against the endless dark of space.

"I'm..."

The face, what I can see of it, contorts into an expression of pained bewilderment. There's half a laugh, in a voice different to that instructing me mere seconds ago, and then silence. I fall from my attacker's grip. Down and down, until the world around me is swallowed by bats and I appear, again, to once again try to make the next checkpoint. The roles reverse. I'm the guy who's good at being bad for goodness' sake, the Caped Crusader, the Dark Knight, whatever you want to call the construct that is Batman: an eternal superhero who isn't always that super or heroic, a billionaire playboy who was never in it for the money, a servant of the people whose very existence relies on them remaining terrified. Or am I? This isn't a Batman I've met before, in films and comics and television and video games. This one is crooked, corrupt, different. It's all in the eyes.

And neither of us is in control.

Slight Spoilers Follow

I know Batman's not supposed to kill anyone, but come on—does it look like this guy's walking away from this?

Rocksteady Studios' third and, we're told, final entry in its Arkham series of Batman games begins as those who've played the previous Asylum (2009) and City (2011) have come to expect: You're Batman, here's some shit happening, go and sort it out. Except, that isn't how it begins: Arkham Knight's opening prologue, explaining how and why the city of Gotham managed to evacuate the best part of its 6.3 million inhabitants in a single day, puts the player in first-person control of one Officer Owens, just an ordinary cop at the end of an ordinary day, going about his business in an entirely ordinary way.

Owens is signing off from a shift with a coffee and some food at Pauli's Diner, the kind of compact and densely detailed environment that you can't help but poke around in. The bowls full of sweets for trick-or-treaters look almost good enough to eat. Damn, this is a handsome game. You drift from booth to booth, checking out the patrons—here are some bikers minding their own business, here's a couple on a going-nowhere date, here's someone walking up to you, to complain about a customer smoking. You'd better go check it out. On the way you scan newspaper headlines from over the shoulders of their readers. The stories might not seem important now, or relevant. But they will be, likewise the missing person poster behind the counter.

"Excuse me, sir. There's no smoking in here." Cue: the extraordinary, orchestrated by Scarecrow and his threat of unleashing enough "fear gas" to turn everyone in Gotham into a violent lunatic. Cue: the expected, as Batman sets out to stop the villainous Dr. Jonathan Crane from achieving his terrible objective, again. Cue: a secondary antagonist's arrival, an unexpected additional headache for Batman, the Arkham Knight of the title. Cue: questions, lots of them. Who is this mysterious man with a militia and missile-firing drones at his command? Why is he working with Scarecrow? What does he have against Batman and how the hell does he stay a step ahead of our hero, as if he knows precisely how his mind works? Cue: a showdown, the suggestion of self-sacrifice, an against-all-odds saving of the city, and...

Point, click, boom. It's all in the eyes. Or, rather, it's behind them. We thought it was gone, but suddenly the two of us is a threesome and I can't feel the real me anymore. I was okay before this game began. Then I became Batman. And then Batman became something else, someone else, and here we are, 24 hours of game time later (split between two consecutive PMs of a solid 12; story at 89 percent completion; some side-missions finished, others left flapping in Gotham's northwesterly winds), back on the rooftop, not sure which of us is going to fall this time. Which of us is getting back up. Which of us is going to battle through all of these fucking drones in an over-"gamed" Batmobile upgraded to within a titanium-coated inch of its operational capability.

Significant Spoilers Follow Regarding The Appearance Of A Major Character—Turn Away If You Must

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"The look on your face... Batman, scared of his own reflection." The voice is familiar, not one to ever be forgotten. In a previous life he wielded a saber of purest light; in another... well, this is his second-most-famous role. Mark Hamill is back as the Joker in Arkham Knight —of course he is; of course they are. And it's when the clown prince of crime makes his entrance that Rocksteady really begins to exert its storytelling strengths here, repeatedly referencing both Asylum and City with such ferocity that if you've not played those games prior to this one, you probably should. For one thing, it's because of the bloody events in City that the Batman of Arkham Knight is in this mess. It's why Scarecrow tells him he's changed. It's why there's an isolation chamber with Bruce Wayne's name on it across town. But first, there's work to be done.

Busywork, like destroying mindless waves of the Arkham Knight's ground and air drones. Like chasing down a number of his lieutenants before leaving them to be scraped from the tarmac by the GCPD (yeah, yeah, they're not dead, we know). Like taking out militia-held checkpoints around Gotham, just because. The Arkham games are at their best when they're indulging the player in the fantasy of being Batman, whether or not it's actually all him beneath the cowl, and when you're soaring above Gotham, pounding down goons of plot importance and deploying gadgets aplenty to tackle the clustered forces of evil, Arkham Knight excels. "The ultimate Batman simulator" was its makers' aim, and for something like two-thirds of the game they've achieved that. The other third, though, is horrible.

Much of the game's more tedious content can be ignored for the most part as "you" progress through the its core narrative, ultimately representing extras to be picked off once Scarecrow's plan's been scrapped. But when Arkham Knight forces Batman into his armored and heavily armed wheels, and then into tight spots that no vehicle should ever be in—on crumbling rooftops, inside deep mine shafts and abandoned shopping malls—the game collapses into frustration and despair. This is not the Batman simulator anyone wants. This is Transformers Do Gotham. And it's abhorrent.

Significant Spoilers Follow—We're Going To Discuss A Boss Fight In Some Detail—So Bail If You Need To

This is the Arkham Knight himself, whose identity is strongly telegraphed across the game's central plot but not revealed until close to its end (and I won't spoil it in this piece, promise).

"What are you?" I scream into the dark tunnels beneath Gotham, gripped by the anguish at seeing my game restart, and restart, and restart, even though I know what I'm supposed to be doing but the game doesn't want me to actually do it. I'm looking for tree roots for Poison Ivy, or searching for the kidnapped Jim Gordon, or digging for gold enough to have Scarecrow bugger off to Vegas, or something. To be honest, I've forgotten my purpose being down here, and am losing any will to care, because this is not the "ultimate" anything, anymore. I'm playing a stealthy game of cat and mouse on a claustrophobic grid, underground, in the Batmobile, against a gigantic drill piloted by the Knight himself, a drill that delivers a one-hit kill, which then becomes a pursuit through obstacle-laden tunnels that end lined with explosives.

This is a boss fight and it's just the worst, one that takes about 30 seconds to figure out—get the Knight into those explosives three times and you win!—but significantly longer to execute because the Batmobile handles like it's being driven by a freak with with one ankle made of iron and the other chalk at the best of times, and down here I'm pulling teeth over how Rocksteady's celebrated designers evidently took the afternoon off for this section of the game, handing direction over to a couple of interns with bubblegum for brains. This is painful: a diabolical mark of disdain against the Arkham series' good name. "What are you?" I cry, close to real tears, as once more my game is over because the Batmobile, which earlier on could smash through brickwork and steel and iron and concrete like it was popping candy bound by Silly String, doesn't break through the thin propeller of a slow-moving fan and is therefore caught and crushed by the ever-gaining industrial contraption turned instant-death machine.

"I'm..."

About to give up when it happens, and I do it, and I smile again—only for the tank-drill-beast to reappear and total the Batmobile. I smile harder. It's gone. I'm free. Finally, Arkham Knight is going to forget about all the Carmageddon bollocks it's been force-feeding me these past (*checks watch, dies a little more inside*) 21 hours and let me get on with swooping and scanning, and being the most bad-ass detective that fantasy has ever known. And I remain free for another hour or so before... of course he's got a spare, which is airdropped into the fray. He's a billionaire, after all. Here we go again.

Significant Plot Spoilers Pretty Much End Here

This. Fucking. Thing.

The story of Arkham Knight is great. It's a riveting climax to the Arkham series, and at various points I was genuinely shocked and moved by proceedings. Rocksteady understand that this Batman exists in a universe of their creation alone, and that his enemies and allies alike are theirs to sculpt and mould, empower and destroy as they see fit. It's why City ended the way it did—it's why Arkham Knight begins how it does, in the briefest of contextual-button-pressing pre-prologues you'll ever see, reconfirming that what you witnessed at the climax of City really did happen. Not that death can stop a man who's never really existed, of course.

The fiction here is rich, deep, and giving—explore it and you're constantly rewarded, tiny seeds of storyline potential growing into significant plot beats. Be sure to check out the evidence room at the GCPD, and play the answering machine in Wayne Tower. Hearing members of the Knight's militia discuss Batman's tech is great fun: "I hear he's CIA funded," says one guy, a minute before I almost certainly break his skull. (He's not dead, he's not dead! He's... probably going to die from that, actually.) Another is overheard saying: "Arkham Knight? I was in Arkham City, and I never heard of him." How very meta! And how very wonderful, too. Having Hamill back as the Joker is a genuine treat, even as he (once again) gradually becomes the real enemy of the story. "You know, I had the singing voice of a soprano once," he lies to us, in one of many interjections of meaninglessness rattling about Batman's head. "Well, I had her vocal chords."

The game plays brilliantly every time the Batmobile is in the garage. On foot, Batman is slow, barely capable of a jog in all his gear, just a man—but by using an enhanced Batclaw he can take to the skies at speed enough to cover great distances in no time whatsoever. Navigating by air is the way to see the incredibly detailed and impressively drenched Gotham, and the city's never looked better, on film or in games or across pages. (Flight is also essential for finding the stuff that the game doesn't explicitly signpost for you, like the presence of a certain other "bat man.") Plot-essential puzzles that gently test your grey matter are simple but satisfying, and when fists fly, new abilities present themselves: there's the option for environmental takedowns, and a new "fear" takedown can be used to instantly incapacitate successively targeted enemies. The usual Arkham series combat and "predator room" sequences are as refined as ever, easy to pick up and exacting to master, and encounters where Batman's joined by an ally allow for tag-team takedowns. Yes, you'll be brawling as several characters, not just Batman, and not all of them always on the right side of the law. Meow.

I'm a good ten hours into the game when one of these partners in crime fighting, Nightwing, says to me: "It's going to be a long night, Bruce." No shit. A good 14 more later and it's still not through: the rain continues to fall (well, it did, until something happens that I'm not going into here because I gave the spoilers all-clear, up there), super-villains like Two-Face and the Penguin remain at large, and this replacement Batmobile isn't going to drive itself (well, it does, but you know what I mean). My brain feels entirely liquid, my eyes are bloodshot, like I've sucked deep on some of Scarecrow's brew. I need a break. But it won't be a long one. I want to get back to it, now that the worst is (I hope) behind me.

On Motherboard: The Dark Knight Disses and Stumbles All Over Clean Energy

There's some stupid, almost world-breaking stuff going on in Arkham Knight. How the hell did the Riddler get all of these racetracks and obstacle courses under the ground? How'd he ever afford the materials and the muscle power? (Not to mention: why bother at all? "Insane" isn't really an answer, here.) Why is Batman's cape billowing when he's indoors and nothing else around him indicates the presence of a substantial breeze? Why, in 2015, is one of the strongest (if not the strongest) female characters in Batman lore relegated to a please-rescue-me role? (Yeah, she does get to show off her claws, but she's still this game's archetypal damsel in distress.) And why does Bruce Wayne look more than a little like Gareth Bale on a steady diet of MaxiMuscle? Seriously, he does. Wait for a moment of hush and you'll see, clearly.

Then there are the few sections of such desperate awfulness that some players will give up on them. (Rocksteady should prepare to be billed for a fair number of smashed controllers.) Arkham Knight's not perfect, then, not by a long shot. But it is, in its own ways, beautiful—erratic, fantastic, drop-dead gorgeous; glitching out of control, bold and bruised, and broken-hearted. It's a character study of twisted excellence told with elegance enough for its gameplay shortcomings to just about not matter enough. It's both the two-bit robber hanging over the edge of the building and the vigilante in black, the player being played, the fate of all involved in the unseen hands of someone else entirely.

"I'm..."

Batman. I'm Batman. Eyes wide open and wild like crazy. At least for a little longer, until he turns or we do.

I'm still playing Arkham Knight on PlayStation 4, but it's out for Xbox One, too. It's probably best that you don't try to play it, just yet, on PC.

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.