Aurin, the President of the Association for the Visually Challenged in Arad, photobombs Aurel.

This article originally appeared on VICE Romania.

Social media has ushered in a whole new era of communication. One where traditional language and interaction have been replaced with pictures of fancy desserts and videos of pets with above-average piano skills. According to a recent study, a typical internet user is logging 1.72 hours a day on these websites, and that trend only seems to be escalating. That said, there's also a fairly large demographic that couldn't give a shit about the endless sensory overload that is Facebook stalking—one of the main reasons being that they can't actually see.

Romanian photographer Ciprian Hord's latest project, Out of the Dark, is about documenting the lives of blind people and then uploading the pictures to the social media platforms that aren't always that accessible for them. The idea came about last year while the artist was trying to overcome a bout of depression.

"Maybe I was looking for people who were sadder than me," Ciprian said. "Given my line of work—where seeing is everything—I couldn't imagine anything more depressing than going blind. Once I started working on this project, I quickly realized how wrong my assumptions were."

VICE gave him a quick call to find out more about his work.

Aurel and Florin, both blind, at the swimming pool

VICE: How did you go about contacting your subjects?
Ciprian: I asked a friend to introduce me to people from the Romanian Association for the Visually Challenged, hoping that a recommendation would help me gain the trust of this community. I immediately met lots of great people who were more than willing to talk to me. I didn't need a middleman—my worries were completely unfounded.

How did you convince them that the sort of publicity this project would bring their association was a good thing?
I told them that I wanted to depict the everyday lives of blind people and I'd need to be allowed to hang out with them. Some people understood it from the beginning, while it took others a little longer. I still get asked: "What do you actually want to accomplish with this project?" A lot of people don't see the point in projects like this one, so it's difficult to explain my intention. But, I strongly believe in the power of images and I'm convinced that, with great pictures, I'll be able to change whatever negative attitudes or mistaken ideas people might have towards the blind.

What are the everyday lives of the people you met like?
The more time I spent with them, the more I realized that blind people live a completely normal life, full of ups and downs. Many have a successful family life: They have children, jobs, they go to concerts and to the theatre, they dance, party, have fun, and all the other stuff that we all do. Others are introverts with emotional problems and, to some extent, integration issues—much the same as many people with no physical impairment. Nonetheless, it can be tough for some blind people to do some of the "normal" activities that seem mundane to others.

Watch: Blind Gunslinger

Did you feel "lucky" that you are be able to see while working on this project?
After getting to know my subjects, there wasn't a single moment when I felt like I was having a better time in life than them. That misconception vanished quickly and I got to learn so many things. I learned that Olivia bakes amazing donuts, even though she sometimes uses pepper instead of sugar. Aurel knows more about computers than I ever will and he can drink me under the table. Florin is the best dancer I've ever seen, Nelu is an amazing fisherman, and Ovidiu takes his kids to kindergarten every day.

Scroll down for more pictures.

Ed Harris as the menacing Gunslinger in HBO's 'Westworld.' Photo courtesy of HBO

Imagine a not-too-distant future in which a rich corporation has built the most fantastic tourist resort in the world. Leveraging new technologies, scientists have created attractions that offer visitors a chance to immerse themselves in another world. But something is going wrong. Safely protocols are failing. The corporate board won't shut the park down. And then the bloodshed begins.

If I told you this scenario was based on a Michael Crichton novel, you'd be right to think of the multibillion-dollar Jurassic Park franchise. But even as the latest installment, Jurassic World, breaks global box office records, HBO has put its money behind an even earlier Michael Crichton vision of a theme park gone wrong: Westworld.

The new show debuts in January. HBO recently released its first look, a mere 30 seconds of video that tells almost nothing. There will be sexy robots and fighting robots; Anthony Hopkins will be the mad genius behind them, and Ed Harris will be the menacing but alluring android gunslinger.

To get a better sense of what the new show might be like, I went back and re-watched the 1973 movie Westworld, which Crichton wrote and directed; read his novelization (the movie came first); and watched the sequel ( Futureworld). I even tried to get my hands on the widely-panned short-lived TV series based on the movies. The original, at least, holds up. It's classic Crichton, offering a well-conceived premise in which we get immersed—so much so that by the time the plot breaks out, I was disappointed that we were going to see the whole thing collapse.

Westworld tells the story of the amusement park of Delos, where tourists, for the lofty price of $1,000 a day, can go to a quasi-historical world based on our own: Roman World, Medieval World, or West World. In each, they put on costumes, and get to fight and/or fuck robots to their hearts' content, and in total safety as the robots can't hurt them... or can they? After the first wave of inevitable carnage, one tourist takes off first through the Western desert, then the other worlds and the tunnels beneath, pursued by the implacable Gunslinger. Through the eyes of this robot, played by Yul Brynner, we see a pixelated world as he tracks his foe, only to be foiled by luck, quick thinking, and the power of fire to override his infrared sensors.

It would be hard to overestimate the influence of Michael Crichton, who died in 2008, on modern mass-media storytelling. He was never, to my mind, the most innovative writer, but he knew how to build a novel or a script around a hook, and he knew how to take a winner and make it a franchise. Not only was Jurassic World the huge hit of the summer, but he also created ER. In fact, he wrote the original script for the hospital show in 1974, and it endured constant rejection until he and Spielberg, who directed the picture, found a buyer in the 90s. The rest is TV history. Crichton has plenty of stinkers in his resume, but he's certainly provided material in this case that has enough depth to create a new hit show. And HBO is due for a new hit show.

It's true that Girls and Veep are both excellent comedies, and of course John Oliver's 18-minute rants not only dominate my Twitter feed after every show, but may have literally changed government internet policy. The funny stuff, though, is not what propelled HBO to the top of our current Golden Age of High-Quality Television. HBO needs a violent, sexy, gritty, unique, artistic, intelligent, captivating drama in the tradition of its great shows. It needs a new Sopranos, Deadwood, or The Wire (or Rome, Oz, Six Feet Under , Boardwalk Empire... take your pick).

Game of Thrones has continued to surge in both ratings and controversy throughout its fifth season, but there are only two years left. Then what? True Detective Season 2 was widely panned; Rolling Stone called it, "the year's most passionately disliked show." The Brink and Ballers are "not good."

On Motherboard: Where Was the World in 'Jurassic World'?

Because Westworld is set in an amusement park, the movie deliberately invokes clichés. You might roll your eyes if a show presented a duel at high noon or a tavern brawl replete with a body sliding down the bar, but that's precisely the point here. The tourists want to participate within those clichés: stabbing Caesar, playing poker with Wild Bill Hickok, or commanding armies in a great medieval siege. HBO, via Rome, Deadwood, and Game of Thrones has been providing its own takes on these archetypal events and settings, so Westworld has the chance to get very meta.

There are two problems. First, the show is going to need to be patient. We know there will be a robot revolution, but if the show rushes toward it too quickly, we'll lose the chance to enjoy a new take on the innovative setting that Crichton dreamed up so many years ago. Second, while I like the setting, Crichton didn't really give us any interesting characters around which to base a franchise.

Watch the Full Episode of 'Dronez' with Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, and Jack Black:

Westworld's best character is Yul Brynner, who plays the Gunslinger. And yet he says little other than "draw" or "your move." He's the "villain" of West World, designated to start fights and be gunned down by the tourists. He's also got souped up infrared vision, killer instincts, and an implacable hatred for humanity. In many ways, Brynner's portrayal is a precursor to the more famous killer robots played by Schwarzenegger in Terminator or Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner. None of the humans are all that interesting, even the nominal hero Richard Benjamin.

Show creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy are going to have to do better. Crichton gave them the premise and some iconic images on which to draw. Now they have to advance it from a single good movie to a world to which we'll want to return show after show, season after season.

Follow David Perry on Twitter.

Two weeks ago, I went to a Wiz Khalifa concert and watched the 27-year-old rapper ride a two-wheeled self-balancing electric scooter around the stage. This was probably an affectation on some level—he was also shirtless, wearing expensive-looking mariachi pants, and at one point sent two huge, inflatable blunts into the crowd—but it was obvious he fucking loved that little gadget. During "You and Your Friends," he and approximately four of his friends did a synchronized dance on the scooters, and when Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy (with whom Wiz was co-headlining the Boys of Zummer Tour) came out to play bass, Wentz was also riding one.

Over the weekend, Wiz Khalifa was handcuffed by police at Los Angeles International Airport, allegedly for refusing to dismount the same sort of two-wheeled self-balancing electric scooter. Everyone is calling this contraption a "hoverboard," possibly because Wiz Khalifa tweeted, "I stand for our generation and our generation is gonna be riding hover boards so if you don't like it eat a dick!" (I reached out to Wiz Khalifa's record label for comment but did not get an immediate response.)

In a single tweet, Khaflia managed to encapsulate the essentials of the two-wheeled self-balancing electric scooter:

1. These things are incredibly, even bizarrely, popular.
2. Nobody knows what the hell to call them.

Follow Drew on Twitter.

Follow Mike on Twitter.

A dead fin whale on Whale Island, Alaska. Photo courtesy Dr. Bree Witteveen/Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program via AP

Over the past two months, 30 dead whales have washed up along the Alaskan coastline, with six more bodies appearing farther south in British Columbia. Although not quite as viscerally horrifying (to most) as the time in 2007 when about a dozen mostly right feet washed up on the shores of the Pacific Northwest, these dead whales are still troubling. Worried that such clustered death might point to deeper ecological problems, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently declared an unusual mortality event (UME), allowing them to form a taskforce aided by state, federal, tribal, and Canadian researchers to dig into these whale deaths. So far no investigations have yielded a clear cause, and there's no sign that NOAA will figure this out anytime soon.

To keep things in perspective, there have been much larger mass whale deaths around the world in recent years than the one in Alaska. In 2003, 2010, and February of this year, New Zealand saw between 160 and 200 of the great beasts wash ashore (often due to migration mishaps). Still, 30 dead whales are significant for the region, which has traditionally seen a third as many carcasses over the same amount of time in previous years.

Unfortunately, the NOAA doesn't have a great track record of solving UMEs. Since NOAA started declaring and investigating them in 1991, they've only solved 29 out of 61 cases. Their success rate for solving whale deaths is even worse: of the ten UMEs between 1996 and 2015 involving whales, only two of them were ever assigned a probable cause.

In the only two whale cases where NOAA investigations succeeded in establishing causes (a right whale die-off in 1996 on the Florida and Georgia coast and a large whale die-off on the California coast in 2007), both were attributed to detrimental interactions with humans. That fits with wider scientific investigations into whale deaths. A 2012 study found that between 1979 and 2009, 1,762 whales had died in the northwest Atlantic Ocean, 750 of known causes. Of those with identifiable causes of death, 67 percent were due to ship strikes (171) or entanglement in fishing gear (323), with the remainder chalked up to natural causes. Studies have also linked other mass whale beachings and deaths (including those of 100 melon-headed whales over the course of one month in the Loza Lagoon of Madagascar) to manmade sonar, which fries whale communications and drives them out of local environments. Numerous other whale deaths have been credited to toxic spills contaminating food chains.

Related: Japan Is Going to Kill Thousands of Whales No Matter What Other Nations Say

You'd think, then, that direct human interactions might be the logical site of blame for the Alaskan whale deaths. But Bree Witteveen, a whale expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who has been following the story closely, believes otherwise.

"Deaths resulting from entanglement would show obvious signs," Witteveen told VICE. "And [they] are not likely to result in so many carcasses in such a small time frame."

"Sonar," she continued, "may also be a cause. To our knowledge, however, the [most recent] Navy sonar exercises in the Gulf of Alaska were not initiated until nearly three weeks after the carcasses began to be sighted."

NOAA's current lead hypothesis is that a harmful algal bloom triggered the deaths. Known regionally as "red tides," these events are linked to rising temperatures, which allow life-choking microscopic creatures to proliferate, many of which produce toxins consumed directly or indirectly by whales in tight social formations, leading to the potential for mass deaths.

Watch on VICE: Doin' It Baja: Exploring the Underwater World

"Some [algal toxins] mimic neurotransmitters in the brain and cause seizures and death of brain tissue," Spencer Fire, an expert on algal blooms and their effects on whale populations at the Florida Institute of Technology, explained to VICE. "Some interfere with normal nerve function and can cause respiratory paralysis. Some cause gastrointestinal problems."

Numerous mass whale deaths have been linked to algal blooms since the late 1980s. One of the most recent killed 22 whales near Florida's Everglades National Park, and necessitated the euthanization of four more, between December 2012 and January 2013. NOAA is worried that we're seeing a troubling rise in the frequency of such blooms.

Conditions are right for algal death in the North Pacific, where sea surface temperatures have risen 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit above their normal levels, triggering an unprecedentedly long and massive red tide from California to Alaska this year. Fire notes that the region is home to two algal toxins as well: domoic acid and saxitoxin. And the fact that so many whales have died off in a similar area in a short amount of time alongside other marine animals (walruses, as well as seabirds such as murres and shearwaters have turned up dead on the coast) could support the theory of poisoning via algal bloom.

Watch On Motherboard: Inside the Grind: The Fight for Whale Hunting in the Faroe Islands

But Fire cautions jumping to conclusions too quickly. Indeed, the lone sample taken from a whale carcass thus far has only cast doubt upon the algal bloom hypothesis. Toxicology on that flesh, explains Witteveen, came back negative for cesium, ruling out a fringe hypothesis that the whales had somehow been killed by continued fallout from the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. But it also came back negative for domoic acid and saxitoxin, the region's two algal toxins. That doesn't prove that algal blooms weren't responsible for the whales' deaths, at least partially, considering the test was conducted only on a single whale. But it certainly doesn't bring us anywhere closer to figuring out an answer to this mystery.

Canadian scientists have apparently started a necropsy on two more whales, which may provide us with some answers to the mystery. Yet any results will take months to assemble. It'd help if we had more evidence to work with, but most of the carcasses are floating along a vast and inaccessible coastline, where bears are getting to them before researchers, consuming their scientifically valuable flesh. Officials are hoping that average folks will be able to help them find more dead whales to test, but caution against touching any of them. Until then, we'll have to rely on what little evidence we have in the search for conclusions that may never come in full. In the meantime, we might collectively want to turn some attention toward that massive oceanic algal bloom, because even if it isn't responsible for this tragedy, it does sound like a disaster waiting to happen.

Photo courtesy of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas

Laurie Penny is a journalist who writes a lot about gender, occasionally for this website. For several years, she has been an eminent British voice in discussions around feminism, misogyny, and the way they interact in a social and economic sense. But now she wants to talk about men. Folding conversations around masculinity into women's rights is notoriously difficult. As Penny herself says, "women are only allowed to be experts on gendered things and nothing else, whereas that's the one thing men aren't supposed to talk about."

But for a generation of young men growing up in an age where the media is obsessed with defining and labeling feminists, it's understandable that they'd want to examine their own place.

For a lot of feminists, myself included, the idea of welcoming men into gendered discussions isn't immediately exciting. There's concern it will draw attention away from female voices already struggling to be heard in the mainstream. But as Penny explores in her recent book Unspeakable Things, male identity needs to be overhauled to address endemic misogyny.

In the lead-up to her appearance at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, VICE spoke to Penny about making room for men in feminism.

VICE: Hey, Laurie. So your book is about how men fit into the modern gender discussion. Personally I struggle with this, as gender is arguably the only thing women lead discourse on.
Laurie Penny: It's a hugely important step that men are starting to realize how much patriarchal oppression has affected their lives. The logic "men don't have rights therefore women must have taken them away" is gradually disappearing outside the so-called men's activist movement. Men need to claim space to talk about masculinity and its problems in a way that isn't solely about attacking women.

Men's rights movements online raise things like: feminism is bad because it doesn't talk about male rape or suicide and depression amongst men. These are huge problems, structural crises, people have to talk about them. It's sad that for some of these men, the only time that they talk about them is in the context of attacking women.

I've noticed when a man starts talking about the weight of male culture it's perceived as men's rights rhetoric.
Women are only allowed to be experts on gendered things and nothing else, whereas that's the one thing men aren't supposed to talk about. Particularly when it comes to their own experience.

How do men start that conversation?
I know men who have experienced pushback within the feminist movement and have been told they had the wrong ideas—and often they did. They're learning experiences. There's a lot of internalized sexism and misogyny that has to be dealt with. That's one of the most painful things for men coming into the movement, but it encourages guys to recognize that.

That sense of your views being suspect because of your gender, that you know less because of who you are, the fear of not being taken seriously when you talk—that's what women experience every time they try to talk about something that isn't feminism. Men have to accept that if they want to be part of this discussion they won't necessarily be leading it.

Does feminism need men?
There's one thing men really can do without monopolizing the platforms. Men are socialized to be more welcoming and understanding to the same ideas if they're coming from a guy. It's how you behave when women aren't there that's a really important test. It's how you behave when you're in a room and your friends are making rape jokes. As a feminist man, talk to other men and call them out. Your dude friends are going to be more receptive of you saying, "nah dude that's really not cool," than me.

That kind of speaks to the exhausting question of how to you tackle insidious sexism in male culture. But it's difficult to say that battle may have to be started or led by men.
Men are our fifth column in all male spaces. Particularly when so many boardrooms and political meetings are all-male spaces, men can be very useful fighting in that arena.

Related: Meet New Orleans's First All-Female Biker Gang, Caramel Curves

I heard this interesting comment that said men haven't had their sexual revolution because they've never been pushed to a point where they're obliged to push back. Even looking at feminism, every wave has been brought on by a breaking point where people took a stand: voting rights, reproductive, and body rights, combating rape culture...
That's very interesting. I think one of the reasons men haven't had their big moment where they challenge gender-orthodoxism is that—certainly in the West and in recent memory—their energy and frustration is channelled into misogyny, violence, and a culture of self-loathing. It's going to be very interesting in the next few years to see if men are brave enough to sustain that discussion without it turning into toxic, misogynous bullshit.

Does that feel likely?
I'm hopeful. I'm seeing a lot of men stepping up who have no time for the old patriarchal dogma. They've grown up in a different time, in a culture where you cannot ignore women's realities in the way you once could. Technology has changed that, and I think an awareness of feminism has changed that. Men in their early 20s have been aware of a feminist shift in public conversation from the age of 16 or 17, during those vital growing up years.

But is that enough? Can moral evolution happen without it being forced?
Masculinity has been in a condition of crisis for centuries. The exciting thing happening right now is that a lot of men, particularly young men, are coming to realize that. It will be interesting to see the rallying issues that they pick; whether that's about gender expressions or different kinds of freedoms and how you unpack misogyny within those. Misogyny is coded into all the gender analysis we allow men to have: misogyny is performed for other men to shore up their own masculinity, misogyny is a constituent part of how we imagine modern masculinity.

It's going to be very interesting to watch, I'm a bit nervous, but it's also exciting.

Follow Wendy on Twitter.

Laurie will be speaking at the Melbourne and Brisbane Writers Festivals, and the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. To win tickets to see her and a bunch of other interesting speakers at FODI, click here.

It's not fair to pick on redheads all the time, but come on: what child is this excited to meet Stephen Harper? Photo via Facebook

Highly ranked comments on the Conservative Party's Facebook page seem to be defined by three characteristics: a) puzzling references to sharia law, Justin Trudeau's hair, and/or socialists; b) a disagreeable quantity of exclamation marks ("Oh Mr. [Stephen] Harper, we sooo need this. Ty!" and "Thankful for PM Harper!!" and "God keep our land!!!" and "Harper all the way !!!!"); and c) they're almost entirely supplied by seniors.

The latter fact may not be entirely surprising—especially in the meme-heavy wake of Earl Cowan, the befuddled geezer who crassly referred to Toronto reporters as "lying pieces of shit." Bruce Foster, political science professor at Calgary's Mount Royal University, notes the Canadian conservative movement has historically been sustained by this age group, with the average supporter for the Reform Party (the populist precursor to today's Conservative Party) being "like 150 fucking years old."

Sure, there are indeed plenty of fresh-faced Conservatives out there: the likes of J.J. McCullough and Trevor Norris spend decent chunks of their days reminding the Twittersphere of that fact, while young fans appear at Conservative rallies with the oddly optimistic and kind of creepy intent of befriending Harper's kids.

Yet new polling data suggests younger Canadians are far more prone to vote for a centre-left party than for the Conservatives: only 24 percent of 18-to-29-year-old decided voters will vote for the blue team, compared to 40 percent of the 65+ contingent. Perhaps the honourable response to such a situation would be for a party to take note of what young people are concerned about (job creation, education and the environment, according to a recent Abacus poll) and make commitments to resolve such issues. What have the Conservatives done instead? Gone batshit about terrorism and deceptively balanced the budget—two hot-button issues that reinforce the generational divide on the wrinklier end of the spectrum.

Michael Harris, author of Party of One: Stephen Harper And Canada's Radical Makeover, notes: "In terms of Harper's appeal, man, if fear and greed can appeal to you, he's doing everything he can." That approach—attempting to convince Canadians we're on the brink of transforming into a failed state overrun by terrorists—was recently summed up by Sun Media commentator John Robson as representing "coarse, vindictive, proudly unprincipled cynicism." When partnered with smarmy pledges like the Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB), the Conservatives quickly prove they view college-age voters as inconveniences who don't really deserve attention (although Harper did post a picture of playing video games with his son on the campaign trail, but he wasn't touching any of the controller's buttons or triggers, so who really knows what was going on there).

That's because historically, the Conservatives haven't needed young voters to win. Our first-past-the-post electoral system tends to inspire divide-and-conquer politicking, encouraging parties to hone attention on specific demographics they know they can secure with hyperbolic messaging and pledges. Other instances: Harper repeatedly insulting the newly elected Alberta NDP government, releasing face-palm-worthy attack ads, and belittling Justin Trudeau by only addressing the Liberal leader by first name. By disenfranchising already cynical young voters with robocalls, a hellishly long and pointless campaign, or with good old-fashioned voter suppression tactics, the Conservatives can pretend that segment of the population just doesn't exist. Sure, it's not honourable, but it wins elections. At least it has in the past.

Foster notes the Conservatives have a solid base of 30 percent but will need "another bunch of voters" to get them up to the 40 percent range required for a majority. And that's where things might get interesting. A recent poll from Abacus suggests 70 percent of Canadians haven't fully decided on who they're going to vote for, something David Coletto—CEO of the polling firm—says corresponds with a discernible trend away from "a stable partisan identification or attachment." Recent EKOS Politics data also suggests the Conservatives have little "second choice" support, meaning the party has to retain the backing it has. But "negative feelings" about Harper are rising and the ongoing trial of disgraced Senator Mike Duffy continues to chip away at Conservative support.

The timing couldn't be better for organizations like Shit Harper Did (SHD)—a Vancouver-based project that's carefully chronicled some of Harper's worst offences via satirical videos and online posts—to ramp up its droll efforts to get young people voting.

Since 2011, members from the organization, including executive director Sean Devlin, have crashed speeches by Harper, his wife Laureen, and former industry minister James Moore. Many more instances of direct action will occur in the coming weeks and months, according to Devlin, with some 1,500 young Canadians committed to risking arrest for the sake of direct action. In addition, the organization's teamed up with the Yes Men and Mark Achbar (creator of The Corporation and Manufacturing Consent) to create a feature-length documentary about Harper's infatuation with terrorism, which will be released in late September. Shit's about to get pretty real.

Coletto says the Alberta election has changed the game; what he calls an "incredible halo effect" from that shocker is still lingering, with more people than ever before believing the NDP can win. This fact matters, given that young voters tend to lean left and that knowing one's politician of choice has a shot of actually winning can inspire higher turnouts.

Of course, efforts like Shit Harper Did could flop and half of 18-to-29-year-olds could stay home on Election Day while over three-quarters of 65-to-74-year-olds vote (mostly for Harper), just like in 2011.

All photos by Jake Lewis

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Capitalism is on its last legs and is about to be destroyed by a generation so connected by technology that they have more loyalty to their phone than to their social class.

That's what I took from meeting Paul Mason, economics editor of Channel 4 News, VICE's one-time Northern Soul correspondent and the author of a new book that you should probably read: Postcapitalism – A Guide to Our Future.

The book is ambitious, but to boil it down: Mason reckons capitalism as we know it can't really handle the pace of the technological change it has unleashed—specifically when it comes to information technology. It'll have to be replaced, and he calls this replacement "postcapitalism."

I recently met Mason in a small meeting room of the offices of Penguin—of which his publishers Allen Lane are part—in London. As we sat down, his publicist stood a small wall of copies of his book behind his head—with its distinctive cover that Mason describes as "moody"—a bit like the company logos that every soccer manager must perform post-match interviews in front of. Presumably, then, Allen Lane would like you to buy the book after reading this article. They'd probably be annoyed if somebody ripped a PDF and put it on the internet for people to download for free. Which is a bit ironic, since a key theme of the book is how the unstoppable free flow of information facilitated by the internet is going to destroy capitalist trade as we know it.

Take, for instance, copyright law: a fundamental plank of the economy as we know it, hammered out since about the 18th century, and one that basically doesn't make sense in a world of Pirate Bay and album leaks.

"I don't think the Beatles made their first album because they wanted to be charging 99p a track because they still own the copyright to it when they're all dead," said Mason. "They made it so they could shag beautiful women, take drugs, and have a fantastic time while they were young. That's why they did it. And that's why anybody does everything, actually. That's not to be sexist about it—that's why men and women throughout the ages have done amazing creative things; because they want to be valued, have their voice heard, and I think it's mad to imagine that copyright can exist forever. It should be just tapered much more cleverly."

You may recognize Mason from his dispatches on Channel 4 News, reporting from Greece as it gets pushed into a financial abyss, Scotland as it nearly lurched away from the UK, and wherever else the tectonic plates of the world economy and politics are shifting. When we met, his experience as a communicator came into play, talking not just with his hands but, at times, seemingly with each limb and facial feature pointing in a different direction. Beneath the relatively traditional delivery style of a public service newscaster lies a radical political mind with its roots in the traditional left—young Mason was a supporter of Workers' Power, a Trotskyite sect—that is perhaps given a little more room to breathe when he writes op-eds for the Guardian or writes books such as his 2012 hit, Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions.

The "moody"book cover

McCartney's quibbling over the rights to Sgt. Pepper illustrated just one of the ways that technology undermines capitalism. How can supply and demand make sense when the supply of an mp3 is infinite? It can't, really, and this leads to what Mason calls the "zero-price vortex." Tangible things also get dragged into this zero-price vortex—the value of shoes is "dependent more on socially created ideas (the brand) rather than the physical cost of production." Add to that the destruction of the relationship between how much stuff costs and how much people get paid to make it and capitalism has a pickle on its hands. Can the system survive stuff being free?

Mason argues it can't, and that the harbingers of a change to postcapitalism are what Mason calls networked individuals—the young, digitally connected people who, much like John, Paul, George, and Ringo before them, just want to get laid. But they could use technology for so much more than Tinder and Happn, if only they could recognize it.

"If they began to understand the power of cooperation and networking in their lives, in the same way they understand its personal power—the ability to have three girlfriends at once—you can harness that power, in a much more interesting way, actually."

When he says this, I can't shake the thought of the stereotyped internet generation of cutesters intagramming from the Cereal Killer Café as the leaders of some nauseating, sweet potential revolution.

MASON gives instead the example of Chinese factory workers, who in the West we mainly think of as the suicidal producers of smartphones, rather than avid users of the devices: "They're banned from even touching their mobile phone during the actual work day, they march to work, they carry their tin plate with them, and they eat together, so they look like utterly regimented individuals. But when they're in their own space—say, they go up to the toilet—first thing they do [is get on their phones], 'How much are you getting [paid]? My mate from village X in back-of-beyond shanty town Y [is getting paid this], you're getting this, I'm getting this—this is not right.'"

Related: Watch the VICE documentary, The Disturbing Truth Behind the 'Spitman' Urban Legend

But it's about more than Twitter revolutions led by angry people who have some shiny new tool for airing their grievances—it's about how we define ourselves. "It's like, who do they want to be? When sociologists interview them there is this thing that they say, which is, 'Look, once I'm out of the factory and into the internet café, I'm living. I'm there, I'm in the world, the factory is just a nothingness.'" Being connected has given us a new identity, says Mason—one which is more important than traditional class identity.

"It's the working class sublated, which is a Marxist term and it's a good term, it means destroyed and reborn—a bit like Khaleesi with her dragons, you know what I mean?" he says making a Game of Thrones reference that goes totally over my head and I have to later google.

Not that he relishes this shift. "That's particularly poignant for somebody like me who comes from a factory town, where in my radical culture, my dad's and granddad's radical culture, you were who you were because of who you were at work. These Chinese workers are who they are the moment they can get to the toilet and open their smartphone."

The identity change is true closer to home as well as in the developing world, with traditional workplace identities evaporating.

"Most workers don't think purely as workers any more. They don't have that collectivity and 'work is number one and everything else is outside it'; in fact, their lives tend to be lived in the opposite direction. As a union organizer at the BBC, you'd hit a certain age group below 35 and [employees] go 'Why should I join?' says Mason. "And then, over 35 they go, [knocks on table] 'Hi, I've just joined, how do I join the union?' There's a total break.

"Go to India—you see all the communist flags, and you see all the people coming out of cotton factories, looking like utter, Lenin-era proletariat, and then you go to the union organizers. They're all 50 years old and you go, 'What's your main problem?' and they go, 'People under 35 won't join the union, because they can't afford it, because they don't think this way any more.' Once you've been through that you realize it's not just people in the square mile of Soho and Shoreditch who don't join unions. It's a generational thing."

This is heretical to your average far-leftist infiltrating the Labour Party to vote Jeremy Corbyn for leader, who would say that it is the working class who are going to change everything by overthrowing the Donald Trumps and Philip Greens of this world. Instead, Mason thinks that a new, sharing economy will grow under the surface of capitalism and supersede it. The question of how this change is going to happen takes more cues from how the state created capitalism than from its putative destroyers.

"The state has to be rethought as a transition motor," he says—meaning it needs to be reimagined as a vehicle for change rather than a defender of the status quo. "And transition's a long period—we're not talking about two years, we're talking about 50," says Mason.

"Forget defending random bits of the old system. Think about where society could be going in 50 years. Both what its massive problems are, like climate, aging, and also what the potential of the technology is. If you think that way, what you've then got to do, is do exactly what the British state did in the Waterloo era. They said, 'Look, the whole purpose of this state is to clear a path for these new things'—factories, railways, whatever. I mean literally. The state went, 'We need a railway from there to there, fuck you if you live in between.'"

And now, the same must be done again, with the state promoting a move away from capitalism that he calls "Project Zero," because, he writes, "its aims are a zero-carbon energy system; the production of machines, products, and services with zero marginal costs; and the reduction of labor time as close as possible to zero."

At this point I'm a little confused. Hasn't all this technology so far created a new type of capitalism rather than destroying it? "One, it's less money based," he says. "Two, there's an overt spirit of sharing—that things can't be monetized," says Mason. "And it's like the gift economy. A small scale entrepreneur in the 1930s is a bloke with his thumb in the till in a shop; they'll do everything possible to screw over everybody they can: their supplier, their customer, the butcher, the baker. And now what the network has done is it's made it obvious that if you exude good then good comes back to you.

Greeks protesting against the new Greek bailout. Paul Mason says traditional left-wing parties like Syriza would need to evolve to be successful. Photo by Panagiotis Maidis

"In places like Barcelona and Athens, you get lots of self-organized spaces, lots of people doing things that are not official, and then you ask them what is official, and they say, 'Oh, I wait tables, that's my job but I don't give a shit about waiting tables, it's this—it's the theater group or Bazouki class I go to.'" The key lies in no longer seeing these spaces as refuges from capitalism, but instead as replacements for it.

But for all the Bazouki classes in Athens squats, there's Twitter, which is now trying to enforce copyrighting on stolen jokes—"It's ridiculous really isn't it?" says Mason. "I mean fair enough, it's mad"—and a Facebook trying to sell your data to advertisers. For every Wikipedia, destroying the market for advertising space on online encyclopedias, there's also an Ello—the ad-free social network that was supposed to kill Facebook but didn't.

Over on VICE News: Throwing Stones and Molotov Cocktails—The Greek Debt Crisis

When a corporation makes a networked, user-friendly version of a service, isn't that curtains for the Open Source alternatives? How much less pirating goes on since Spotify and Netflix?

"I think that probably is it, but I think the problem is that they can't go on monetizing the ownership... I wouldn't be surprised if you could talk to Facebook and say, 'Which bit could you do without most?' they'd say, 'All this fucking friend stuff where everybody's exchanging their own stuff.' They'd say, 'What we really want to do is the adverts and the video.'"

At some point, says Mason, the Wikipedias of this world will be as big as the Facebooks. "I think the choke point for the transition to postcapitalism comes when the market sector and non-market sector become round about the same size."

As we wrap up, I'm feeling more aware of what I don't know than what I do know about how postcapitalism might pan out. Whether or not Mason's predictions are accurate, I'm not totally convinced his suggestions are desirable. In its role as a "transition motor" in the early industrial revolution, admits Mason, "the state relentlessly cleared this path for factories, for wage labor, for child labor, unfortunately." How do we know the transition to postcapitalism won't have similar costs? If the state moved heaven and earth to create capitalism, what will stop it doing the same to ensure its survival and creating some kind of techno-fascism—less a transition motor and more a whack-a-mole game, bashing non-capitalist initiatives on the head as they emerge? And what is it about the "sharing economy" of Uber and Airbnb—currently creating a desperate servant underclass—that should give us hope that, as Mason writes, "because its precondition is abundance, postcapitalism will deliver some form of social justice spontaneously"? Abundance is already here—we have enough stuff but don't share it properly. Loads of people are already in bullshit jobs that don't need to happen—and technology hasn't changed that until now.

There are plenty of what-ifs and what-abouts—you try and predict the future without raising thousands of awkward questions. Nevertheless, it's a book worth engaging with and forming some awkward questions of your own, unless you want to spend your life wondering why things are changing. It's a convincing forecast of the macro-sized economic forces that will shape our lives, and way more important than the guff from the government about "fixing the roof while the sun is shining." So go and buy it, and definitely don't wait until some anarchist somewhere rips it and makes it free to download.

Follow Simon Childs on Twitter.

A 12-year-old boy in Taiwan has punched a hole in a $1.5 million painting, which on the surface level is one of the greatest flexes of all time. Fuck art, right? Fuck art! Art is shit!

Banksy and his Dismaland might be getting all the attention at the minute, but let us instead elevate this little Taiwanese lord to the High Ruler of the Art World. Because look at him: dawdling through an art gallery, Puma T-shirt and shorts, not a care in a world, can of Fanta or similar in his hand, and then flooomp: attempts to lean his shoulder against a wall but instead trips over one of them little rope things and straight up punches a 350-year-old masterpiece in the bollocks. There's no getting up from that, especially when you are an ancient painting, unused to the peculiar human stress of being accidentally punched.

Top line is that this was an accident, and that the Paolo Porpora—on display at the Face of Leonardo: Images of a Genius exhibit in Taipei—will be ferried into the hands of expert restorers, and it'll be OK. The kid (probably the most grounded human alive, currently) will not be financially responsible, as the painting was insured. Actually, there was basically zero fallout from this incident. The moral of this story is "punching artifacts in galleries is, generally, alright."

But as the world's media focuses on the punch and the impact on the painting, we ignore the real story, which is the massive and urgent moment of despair felt by a boy on the cusp of young manhood, the unique dread that only comes with absolutely fucking up a $1.5-million work of art. For perspective: I broke a jug when I was 12 once, and I'm still not over it now. That jug was worth, at best, around $6. Magnify that feeling a quarter of a million times. That is what we dealing with, here.

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Orwell never predicted it, but one of the greatest boons of low-grade always-on CCTV monitoring is watching huge human emotions acted out through tiny physical acts when real shit happens to real people. Skip past the punch and ignore it: watch instead that instant jolt of recognition, that rarely captured moment of cinematic brilliance, unactable, the universal gesture of knowing, deep to your bones, that You Have Fucked Up:

Here are the thoughts that are going through this kid's head in the screengrab above, irrational and unstoppable, instant thoughts stemming from a massive boo-boo: Maybe if I just... hold my drink out... people will just—?

But then he realizes that doesn't make sense, so he stands and turns to see if anyone has seen—If I hold my drink out like this people will think I am just holding my drink in an unusual way and that the welt appeared there by itself—and then acceptance—Well, if anyone asks me if I punched the painting I guess I will say yes but I'm not going to just offer the information up in case I get shouted at.

And then, finally, approached and asked whether he just punched a hole in a $1.5-million painting, a sort of half-shrug, a single hand in the pocket of his shorts, desperation as two actual adults with responsibilities and moral compasses close in on him, a pincer movement of reality attacking him from all sides. "Did you just—?"

This is the most 12-year-old boy combination of poses ever performed. A literal full-body attempt to wriggle away from guilt and blame. Before he punched the painting, he was a boy. Instants after he punched the painting, he was a man, cloaked in dread and self-supplied fear. Then a woman in a tabard walks him out of shot to, presumably, find some sort of manager-type and apologize to them for the boy punching a hole in their near-priceless belonging.

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I've had moments like this, and you've had them too. I've chipped great scabs of varnish off banisters and accidentally split floorboards. I've broken decorative plates and one time I accidentally threw a football at a chandelier. And more than once, I have just stood and looked at my damage—sometimes padded it with the tips of my fingers, as though that might fix it—and then the owner of the banister or chandelier has returned and seen what I have done and gone: "Oh." And gone: "What happened there?" We both know the answer to this question. But my brain will short circuit, and I will say: "I don't know, weird isn't it?"

This is the human condition. To destroy things and then pretend that you didn't. This is how we get away with wars, and trampling on rain forests. Killing animals and fucking up the ozone layer. Guilt is a dirty feeling that human civilization is built on absolving as rapidly as possible.

And so solidarity with you, 12-year-old Taiwanese boy. If I punched a hole in a $1.5-million painting, I would also pretend I didn't do it. I would piss and fear-shit over my Puma T-shirt and shorts, undoubtedly, but I would also attempt to get away with it without getting in trouble. I would put one hand in my pocket and one hand on the fist hole and go, "Oh yeah, that." I would be marched into a back room and threatened by security and go, "I don't really know what happened, I think I saw... somebody... else... do it?" You are me and I am you, Taiwanese picture-punching boy. May the gods be merciful on your journey through life and into hell.

Follow Joel on Twitter.

Anne-Marie is from the Netherlands and Melanie is from England. They met as students at the Rhode Island School of Design and their countless similarities led to the formation of an incredibly close friendship that resulted in Melanie moving to Amsterdam in 2014. That's where they set up their base as a photographer duo called Sisters Not Twins.

Forever treading the line between documentary and theater in their work, it's probably safe to say that the two have become each other's muse.

Shanghai's stock exchange. Photo by Flickr user Aaron Goodman.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

China's "Black Monday" has spooked traders right across the world. The biggest one-day fall in share prices since the dark days of the financial crisis, back in 2007–8, left speculators frantically ditching shares in markets from Tokyo to New York, fearful of the consequences for a fragile world economy if China goes belly-up.

Some went further. Damian McBride, the former press chief of former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, could be found on Twitter recommending readers stock up on food. He could remember the depths of the 2008 crisis when Brown was to be found musing on the need to use troops to restore order, should the government's trillion-pound bank bailout fail.

We're not in 2008. You can hold off on stockpiling baked beans. But what the tremors show is that the foundations of the world economy are as shaky as ever.

2008 was a crisis caused by debt. As the superheated boom of the early 2000s reached its peak, countries like the US and the UK saw their financial systems dishing out fresh loans to anyone who could be persuaded to take them.

When these loans failed, the house of cards the financiers had assembled came crashing down. The global economy collapsed into its worst recession since the 1930s.

China was one of the few bright spots. After decades of double-digit growth, it was on its way to becoming the world's second-largest economy. Investment was pouring in to its industries. The response of the authorities to the crash was immediate: they made it far easier, and cheaper, to borrow money, with fewer questions asked. Billions of yuan flushed through China's creaking financial system.

Its economy sailed through the recession, hauling the rest of the world behind it. By sucking in raw materials to feed its boom, China helped exporters like Australia keep moving.

Growth, however, has slowed. And China's total debt—including firms, households, and government—has skyrocketed from $7 trillion in 2007 to $28 trillion today. Just like in in the West, much of that borrowing has helped fuel a property bubble. Its local authorities, dependent on property taxes for their own income, and with corrupt officials happy to have their palms greased by corrupt developers, encouraged the boom. Land sales raised $438 billion for China's local governments in 2012.

That bubble has now burst. Property prices are sliding. Like the US authorities at the end of the 1990s, China's rulers have responded to one collapsed bubble by stoking up another. Egged on by the authorities, smaller investors have been piling into Chinese shares. Prices have risen 150 percent in 12 months.

But by early July that bubble was also running out of steam. Slowing growth turned into falling share prices as speculators began to pull out of Chinese markets. The authorities have attempted to intervene, using at least $480 billion to buy shares and keep prices up.

That hasn't worked. Traders have lost faith in the government's capacity to keep prices afloat. East Asian economies, their biggest export market shrinking, are hardest hit, followed by the raw materials exporters.

And the Western country with the largest amount of money loaned to China? That would be the UK. Contagion can spread rapidly—as demonstrated by China's slump causing uncertainty across the world.

Read on VICE News: Dow Jones Rebounds After China's 'Black Monday' Triggers Financial Panic

China is likely to slash borrowing costs still further in the next few weeks. If that, too, fails, the crisis will worsen. But if it succeeds, it'll be at the cost of adding still more to the debt pile. It'll push the real day of reckoning into the future. It won't prevent it happening.

It's unlikely we'll see direct repeat of 2008 in the UK. But we're recreating the economic conditions that got us there, as the "recovery" pushes households back into unsustainable debts. The economy we have is geared to produce crisis after crisis: maybe China this time, maybe Europe next, maybe our own property bubble bursting after that. Until we make a clean break with that debt-ridden model, this is our future.

Follow James on Twitter.

Photo by Raf Katigbak

If you've ever been asked for your number by an aggressive creep, chances are you've either thrown a drink in someone's face or given out a random fake number in a last-ditch attempt to escape being stealth-grinded at the club. In the early 2000s, I was introduced to what became my favourite decoy for dodging clueless fuckboys who couldn't take obvious social cues: the Rejection Hotline, composed of an array of numbers with different area codes you could give out that would emit a prerecorded rejection in the ear of said creeps when they dialed:

Hello, this is in not the person you were trying to reach. You have reached the Rejection Hotline! The person who gave you this number did not want you to have their real number. I know this sucks, but don't be too devastated. So, why were you given the Rejection Hotline number? Maybe you're just not this person's type. Note: This could mean short, fat, ugly, dumb, annoying, arrogant or just a general loser. Maybe you suffer from bad breath, body odor, or a nasty combination of the two. Maybe you just gave off that creepy overbearing, psycho-stalker vibe. Maybe the idea of going out with you just seems as appealing as playing leapfrog with unicorns. Regardless of the reasons, please take the hint. Accept the fact you were rejected, then get over it. And please, do your best to forget about the person who gave you this number, because trust us, they have already forgotten about you.

The cruel-but-hilarious message was a godsend for myself and others who often found themselves in uncomfortable situations of attempted conquest. My friends and I spent much of our middle school years (and admittedly part of high school) abusing the Rejection Hotline, often passing the numbers around within our cliques during lunch period or after school, dialing in at sleepovers on our flip phones, or tricking complete strangers we met online in chatrooms into calling it.

The creator of the hotline, Jeff Goldblatt, who was 23 when he launched the hotline in 2001, now works out of Atlanta Tech Village in Georgia mentoring new entrepreneurs and working on several of his own projects. Despite spending no money on advertising, Goldblatt's hotline went viral to the point of garnering millions of calls and thousands of dollars in phone bills every month. The other day I called him up to figure out how exactly how his legendary hotline came to be and to hear the voice of the guy who rejected millions in a single pre-recorded message.

VICE: How did you come up with the idea to troll creeps with the Rejection Hotline?
Jeff Goldblatt: Basically, I was just being a wise ass trying to make my friends laugh. We were out at a bar one night having some drinks and people watching, and we saw this scene develop where we felt bad for a girl who was being hit on by this guy that she clearly wanted nothing to do with. Then we felt bad for him when she had enough and stood up and started screaming at him, embarrassing him in front of the whole bar. The next day I put up this voicemail message and told my friends, "This is what that girl should have given to that guy." My friends thought it was funny, and their friends thought it was, and next thing we knew, we were getting thousands and thousands of phone calls every day.

Then we were doing a million calls a month, and it just kept growing. I dubbed myself America's worst entrepreneur for the first two years because we were getting millions and millions of phone calls, and I was not yet making any money with it. [My company, RH Brands,] had about 300 varieties of Humor Hotlines, including the It Could Always Suck More and the Automated Sobriety Test lines, and probably 10–20 percent of them went viral and got millions of calls.

Wait, so it was a personal voice mailbox you set it up on?
The first business I had started was for web consulting. All my clients had my personal number, so I had this business voice inbox that was just sitting there getting no calls, and I was paying $15 a month for it. I put the first recording up on that. Pretty soon we had crashed that whole system because it just wasn't designed to handle tons and tons of calls or a lot of simultaneous calls. We crashed a lot of voicemail systems back in the early days before we figured out the telecom side of things—then we were able to handle thousands of concurrent calls because when the stuff went viral, we would literally get thousands of calls at the exact same time.

What would happen if you would call and there were too many people trying to phone in at the same time? Would you get a busy signal?
Busy signals I wasn't too concerned about because I felt like, regardless of whether people knew they were calling for a joke or not, a good percentage of them would call back. But it would actually crash systems. There were times when I was setting up a line, I would ask, "Are you sure it can handle unlimited calls?" because I always knew there was a chance my stuff was going to go viral and get thousands of calls. People would always say that it could, and one by one, we crashed lots of telecom companies' systems. After those first few years of learning, we had turned into a real company. We were paying thousands and thousands of dollars a month in telecom system bills. We had dedicated servers.

The first recording of the Rejection Hotline, did it stay exactly the same throughout the entire run?
I made a few small changes several years ago. I did that after some people had pointed out that it could be used in a mean way. I wanted nothing to do with anything that could be used to bully people. I changed it from "short, fat, and ugly" to "boring, dumb, and annoying." It might not sound like that big of a difference, but short, fat, and ugly are things you can't necessarily control about yourself, whereas boring, dumb, and annoying are things that you could work on. I always encouraged people to use it as a last resort. I would say that 99 percent of people who called it probably were calling it because their friend said, "Hey, this is funny," not because they were getting rejected.

The Rejection Hotline itself, at our peak in 2010, we were averaging about 10 million phone calls a month.

Oh wow, yeah, I used it around 2005. I heard that before you started the hotline, you studied journalism. Did you ever work in that field, or did you always focus on the hotlines?
I kind of went all in on this whole Humor Hotline thing long before it was making money. I knew I had something; I saw how well people responded.

In college, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I did a triple concentration in journalism, marketing, and philosophy. I wanted to keep my options open. I'm self-diagnosed ADD—it took me a long time to find something that could really keep my attention and motivate me. The writing background has helped me tremendously. I teach classes on viral marketing... what makes things go viral is the little details, the writing, the word choice, the length of writing.

Did you do all the writing for the hotlines?
I did for about 80 percent of them. I tried at times to work with various comedy writers, and it never really worked out as well. I didn't want the company to be dependent on me writing all the scripts, and I was getting kind of burned out with it because we were cranking out three new hotlines a month. Writing for the phone was kind of this unique animal. I worked with some guys who were super-funny, creative comedy writers for TV (like some from Family Guy) or on the web, and writing for the phone was just different.

What became of the Rejection Hotline and your other lines?
In 2007, I brought in a business partner, and we had five years of really strong growth on the revenue side. In 2012, Verizon and AT&T changed some regulations regarding the mobile content industry. It put a lot of our advertisers out of business. As soon as that change happened, we knew that we weren't going to be able to stay in the business. We had to start laying off employees, which was horrible.

In 2013, we sold off all of the phone numbers—we had thousands of individual ones. Rejection was the one we had the most numbers for because that was the only one people needed to be able to pass on as their own number with their local area code. There were just under half a billion phone calls in all—the Rejection Hotline was 20–25 percent of that.

We didn't sell content, audio files, scripts... Everything I did with the content to make it go viral on the phone I'm basically undoing now and trying to make it make sense on the web.

How the fuck did you make money off of the hotlines anyway?
Well, you're in good company because my parents didn't understand it, my friends didn't. My business partner came in from the advertising industry—he saw that we had this audience that was actively engaging with the phone at their ear. The revenue model became we would serve an audio ad at the end of all the calls, just like people would pay for an ad on the radio. That worked well for us until Verizon and AT&T changed those rules. Most of our best money came from mobile content stuff like ringtones, mobile games, sweepstakes. That was back before your phone did literally everything.

We had four years in a row of low seven-figure revenue, and I owned 40 percent of the company. When I first started it, I didn't really have any money, so I took a live-in position as a house director at a fraternity house so I didn't have to worry about paying rent, utilities, or supporting myself. It certainly put a damper on my social life because it's not the coolest thing in the world to tell a girl you've been out of college for a few years but you still live in a fraternity house. It was really the only way I could keep going with the business as long as I did without making any money at first.

What did you do with the money you made?
I bought a monkey and a tiger... nah, just kidding. I haven't really settled down, still single and looking. A lot of the money I was able to save, which is what I'm using now to reinvest. I do once a year take a work retreat cruise. Randomly, I came up with some of my better Humor Hotline ideas while on vacation in a tropical environment, so I justified it.

What are you up to these days now that your hotline biz has shut down?
I had so many ideas back then that I wanted to do, but because we were doing really well with the Humor Hotline business, I had to put all those aside. What I've been doing over the last year is pulling all those ideas back out of hibernation. I'm basically going to be launching over the course of the next year 100 different ideas in some form or another. I've got CheapFunStuff.com: we've got the One-Night Stand Kit/One-Night Shack Pack, the Bad Breath Bag... mostly gag gifts.

Has anyone ever told you their personal stories about using the Rejection Hotline?
I've met several people who've been on the receiving end of a Rejection Hotline number, but even those people are able to tell me how funny they thought it was. I've never encountered anyone who was legitimately angry. If you're going to get a fake phone number, you might as well get the Rejection Hotline rather than some random number that wakes up a little old lady.

Have you ever given anyone a Rejection Hotline number?
I have not. If I was to give it out I'm pretty sure the person could track me down easily through the website—the fact that it's actually my voice on the recording. The question I get asked more often is if I have ever received one of my numbers, which I almost wish that I had, but I'd like to think that before I ask a girl for her number that I've been talking to her long enough to know if there's any interest.

Follow Allison Elkin on Twitter.

Sarah* joined the Church of Scientology in 1977. She was 19 years old, a college student in Boston. After finishing the Church's introductory communication courses, she joined the Church of Scientology staff in Los Angeles. Around that time she met who she describes as her "past-life husband," another member of the religion who was working at Flag, the Church's spiritual headquarters in Clearwater, Florida.

"There's a long and weird-sounding romance story, but in short, we discovered that everyone was trying to keep us apart. That wasn't acceptable, so we left. We literally disappeared overnight," says Sarah. "It was very much a last straw thing. We saw too many stupid things being done that were not in the direction of helping people to better themselves. It's an amazing example of Pournelle's Law, except in our minds it was the difference between sometimes-miraculous technology and blithering idiots at the helm."

Sarah was only a member of the Church for three years, from the spring of 1977 until January of 1980. The 1980s were the start of a particularly tumultuous time for Scientology. Founder L. Ron Hubbard was pushed out of the scene and the controversial David Miscavige seized control. Miscavige's reign over the last few decades has been marked by accusations of physical abuse, economic exploitation, and Mafia-like fear tactics. In a sense, Miscavige is responsible for Scientology's current reputation as a global, money-grubbing scam.

Sarah left. But in 2015, long past her 20s and her brief stint in the Church, she's still a Scientologist. She's part of a group of people who practice the religion outside of the Church. It's called Independent Scientology, or more colloquially, "Freezone Scientology"—those who believe in the technology and some (or all) of L. Ron Hubbard's ideas, but refuse to conform with the orthodoxy. Some Freezoners came to Scientology completely autonomous of the Church, but most are former members who are fed up with the exploitation and the bureaucracy and believe Scientology can still be a pure, positive thing. They continue to practice, and continue to believe, whether Miscavige likes it or not.

VICE Meets Marty Rathbun, Former Senior Executive of the Church of Scientology

The alleged emotional and financial abuses of the Church have been extensively reported. These are, for the most part, the same reasons that drive Freezoners to dislike the Church. There are other, more insular issues—like the misuse of dianetics technology—but primarily Freezone Scientologists are hostile towards the Church because they don't like the idea of their religion and fellow Scientologists being exploited for a profit.

David LaCroix has been a Scientologist for 45 years. He left the Church officially in 2008, and runs the website Scientolipedia, which aims to expand the knowledge base of the religion beyond the Church.

"The site is not geared toward attacking the Church, it's just trying to say that the subject is separate from the Church," says LaCroix. "The Church of Scientology is a global criminal organization run by sociopaths. You could call up Coca-Cola and ask them about Scientology and their response would be just as valid as the Church of Scientology."

To LaCroix, the final downfall of the Church came with the dismantling of the Mission Network in 1982. The Mission Network was one of the longer-running traditions in Scientology. They were small franchises to welcome newcomers to the religion.

"Someone could read the Bible and think, 'that Jesus guy had some good ideas,' and yet be grossed out by what the Catholic Church has done—the message is not the organization." —Sarah

"[These missions] were making tens of thousands of Scientologists... they were the heart and soul of Scientology. These were real entrepreneurs, and they were making money," says LaCroix in his video What Happened to Scientology, "but in 1982, David Miscavige and a bunch of his thugs started declaring mission holders suppressive."

Being deemed "suppressive" in Scientology is like being excommunicated by the Pope. If you're deemed a suppressive person, your friends and family within the Church will be asked to completely cut you out of their lives. According to LaCroix, that's what happened to the missions—in the past they offered a tithe to the main Church, but it wasn't enough for Miscavige and his quest to maximize profits and maintain his control.

The destruction of the network is probably the most famous example of the antagonistic relationship Scientology has with the Freezone. To the Church, those who practice independently are "squirrels," and squirrels will not be tolerated.

"There's a whole body of aggressive scripture by Hubbard on the subject," Marty Rathbun, the former second-in-command of the Church of Scientology, told VICE. "This is an exact quote from Hubbard, he says if he found someone 'squirreling,' which is his word for being a heretic, they would 'think that he got hit by a Mack truck, and I don't mean thought-wise.' There's a bunch of stuff about how the biggest threat to the 100 percent workability of [Scientology] is people going outside of the established hierarchy."

Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

"Their idea is that they're trying to wake up the entire planet to the point where you're a spiritual being and free of your body," says John, a former member of the Church who is no longer a practicing Scientologist. "There's this idea that before you had a body you were a spirit, you were like a god, you could transport your consciousness from one side of the Solar System to the other. But you fell into this trap, and they have come up with the exact technology to get you out of this trap. And if you fall off even a little bit, you're not going to get there. But the real reason is that they have a money-making enterprise, and even if you believe it's useful, it's still tremendously overpriced... It's nothing more than wanting a monopoly."

The Church of Scientology has maintained this stranglehold on the religion for decades. Understandably, it's led to a healthy amount of cynicism within the Freezone. These are people watching something they love, something they care deeply about, be tarnished by greed, exploitation, and lies.

"It's like seeing a beloved child become a drug addict," says Sarah. "You can't do anything to stop it, and you see others sneer critically... when you know how wonderful a person he is or was."

READ: The Church of Scientology Is Hilariously Bad at Online Damage Control

But is Scientology worth saving? It's a religion with the makings of a cult. It's a new-age myth cooked up by a man who, by all realistic accounts, was a pathological liar with a vengeful hubris. Why does it matter that Scientology isn't being represented properly? Is it possible to find redemption in the Freezone?

"The idea of contacting thoughts, pictures, memories, and ideas in your head isn't a new concept in Scientology alone, other disciplines do that," says John. "The idea that a meter might spike when I'm thinking of something and the electrical currents in my body change, that can make sense. Locating a past trauma and having conversations about it, that sounds reasonable. I'd tell the same person to try neuro-emotional technique, not just Scientology. If it's helping you, if you think it's doing some good, go ahead."

The issue with the Church of Scientology's perspective on the technology is that they treat it like a magic bullet. Use this, find peace, it's the only thing that works. The fundamentals of auditing—the core practice in Scientology—is forging a connection with your past, your past lives, and with other non-human entities, often while alone in a room or with one other individual. You're making a connection. As John says, it's hypnosis. The promises of telepathy, mind-reading, and teleporting consciousness is a massive oversell. Along with financial and emotional exploitation, those are the things making the religion a public laughing-stock.

"Someone could read the Bible and think, that Jesus guy had some good ideas, and yet be grossed out by what the Catholic [Church], or any church, has done—the message is not the organization. And organizations can be or become corrupt," says Sarah.

Sarah is a well-known tech journalist, and keeps her beliefs secret to protect her reputation. You can't blame her. Freezone Scientology is a niche community; it wouldn't translate. But she has come forward in certain moments.

"I've stepped forward to tell a friend in pain that maybe I know something that can help. At least it's helped me. All of those led into relatively long conversations in which I said something like, 'I have to start out by what I'm not and I'm emphatically not a member of the Church of Scientology. I am, however, an Independent Scientologist,'" says Sarah. "I also know people who present Scientology with different words, or without a label at all. When a close friend was devastated after she lost her job, I arranged for her to get a few sessions with my auditor. She thought of him as 'a life coach,' and three hours later she said, 'I realized a bunch of things, I think my life is going to be very different now.' She has no idea that she got Scientology or Freezone Scientology; she just had a very good session with 'my guy.'"

It's hard to know if things could ever change. Most Freezoners seem content to practice on their own, and opinions toward the Church's mandates or guilt-trips run from ambivalence to anger. But there are others who are more optimistic. David LaCroix is perhaps the most orthodox of the Freezone Scientologists I interviewed, and one of the few who believes the Church isn't beyond saving—that someday the hierarchy will fall, and the corruption will be cleansed.

"David Miscavige is a bully and a strong-man, and once he's gone... I think there are many people capable of cleaning up the place," says LaCroix. "It's not like if he goes tomorrow Scientology will be wonderful, it'll be chaos for a while. But there's too many people who [have] a vested interest in those organizations being a place that is fun, a place that does deliver standard Scientology and trained auditors."

Super legit Church of Scientology in Canada. Photo via Flickr user thbl

I am not a Scientologist, nor am I religious. But even I could find some empathy within the Freezone. These people are far more realistic and more reasonable than the Church's soaring lectures and world-conquering rhetoric. These people are simply doing what feels right. For the most part they are happy, accepting, and nonviolent.

But is it healthy? Is religion healthy? Am I allowed to question what someone thinks will save their soul?

"Scientology is very similar to Mormonism," says Marty Rathbun. "If you've read Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven he talks about how Mormonism was always going to be subject to splinter groups and reform movements because Joseph Smith put in the scripture that anyone could achieve a direct communication link to God, so therefore they could prophecize. Scientology is very similar. It's heavily indoctrinated that your faith is a certainty. It's certainty, and any failure is a misapplication of the technology. I had that same mindset, I came to realize that that mindset was ingrained."

This realization ushered Rathbun out of Scientology altogether. The emperor has no clothes. He grew tired of blaming it on the doctrine, and came to terms with the deception of faith.

"I recently spoke with a long time Freezone auditor who described it as something people turn to when they are in anguish. When the auditing has helped them deal with that pain, they go away to live their lives which is as it should be. When or if they're in anguish again, they ask for more help," says Sarah. "In the Freezone, I found a community of people who shared the same goals and purposes I do including the freedom to disagree, and the respect towards others' choices. So it's avoided all the abuses of the Church of Scientology, from ridiculous prices, to forced disconnection, to 'ethics handlings,' to the expectation that you'll sacrifice your life in order to save it. In short, I found a community of people who want to work together to use a set of processes that helps us say, 'oh cool! I just realized something!' And that's all that's expected. Shared goals, attention to making-things-better, and respect."

It's going to be a long time before Scientology rehabilitates its image enough for it to be accepted in casual conversation. It might never happen. But it's undeniably left a mark on thousands of people. The Freezone is a community of men and women who saw the man behind the curtain and chose not to let go. Maybe that's faith, maybe that's truth.

"I got out of Scientology ten years ago," says John. "I think there's something there. I think some people can do crazy stuff like remember past lives, but I don't like how it's so standard. 'You do this, you get that,' which is so far from the case." He pauses. "But ten years later, here I am. I'm still talking about it."

* Names have been changed.

Follow Luke on Twitter.

Photo by Robin Holland. Courtesy of Film Forum

Quay, Christopher Nolan's new short portrait of the twin animator/filmmakers Stephen and Timothy Quay, consists of a visit to their London studio. The space is like an attic of subconscious horror strewn with stray doll parts, ingenious lighting rigs for their miniature sets, and, of course, immaculately built puppets, like the child-faced automatons from their unforgettable 1986 classic Street of Crocodiles. In one shot, they gingerly dab the eyes of a model with olive oil to get that lucid stare just right. In another, they muse over some recently acquired doll wigs, flecked with dirt and grit. "You find the object," explains one of the brothers, "and then work the project around what you find." The film is as much a study of the Quays' startling synchronicity as it is a tribute to their craft; they refer to themselves in the plural, complete each other's sentences, and tinker with their domain of vaguely disquieting splendor with equal delicacy.

Originally from Pennsylvania, the Brothers Quay attended Philadelphia's University of the Arts before enrolling at London's Royal College of Art and embarking on a 35-year career making films that navigate the edge of the imagination, often accompanied by magisterial film scores and a decidedly Polish or Czech-leaning aesthetic. Usually working in stop-motion, they have evolved one of the most recognizable styles in the history of film and been the subject of a massive retrospective at MoMA (2012's Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets). Aside from their own films—which include two feature-length productions, 1996's Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life, based on Robert Walser's novel Jakob von Gunten, and 2005's The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes —they have designed sets for opera and ballet (including Tony-nominated set design for Eugène Ionesco's The Chairs), animated music videos by Peter Gabriel, Pere Ubu, and His Name Is Alive, and produced work for Sesame Street, MTV, and Philadelphia's Mütter Museum of medical curiosities.

Nolan's film is part of a four-film bill screening in 35mm in 11 cities ahead of the October release of The Quay Brothers: Collected Short Films on Blu-Ray. I met the Quays last week prior to a screening at Film Forum, where they are taking a short break from their current project, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, based on a Bruno Schultz book. Essentially a single entity, the Quays differed only in that one of them wears his hair straighter (Stephen?) and the other one (Timothy?) appears to favor plunging necklines. Whenever one groped for a word or expression, the other would pick the conversation up seamlessly to refine the point; when they made eye contact, it was clear that something invisible and understood was passing between them.

VICE: First of all: What are your first names and how long have you been working together?
The Quay Brothers: Oh, you know our names! The films say "the Quay Brothers." It never says individually who we are. We are one. The whole point of the films is that they're not made by two guys, but that they are made by one.

It's clear from the Nolan film how inseparable you are. Have you ever worked apart?
Well, when you went to art school you did your own artwork. My brother did his work, I did my work, but when film came about you abandoned all that individuality and ego and became one. You're making one film, not two films.

How do you allocate the labor between you?
Everything is equal. While one of us might be editing, the other might be setting up the next shot. We'll do that kind of decompartmentalization. One gets called over, the other asks, "Do you like the lighting here, do you like this cut?" But we're in touch all the time. The principle is that one starts from the left, one starts from the right, and we meet in the middle.

It must be great working with someone who's exactly as good as you at everything.
Well, it is—in a sense. Because you never once have to say, "Do that," you're not ordering anybody like an assistant. We have had one assistant in our life, Ian Nicholas, who's a drinking partner and a furniture restorer. He's very good with constructing devices. He's brilliant.

How was Nocturna Artificialia, the first Brothers Quay movie, conceived?
It was our first time working with puppets. Strictly a puppet-animation film, and we knew nothing about how to make puppets. So it meant learning the whole technical side of how to make armatures and how to light them. We had no training, there were no guidebooks—well, hardly—to tell you how to do it. So you learned on the spot.

"In every single Communist country, they created a subversive empire with animation, because nobody was looking at animation."

That's kind of the revelation of the Nolan film, getting to see all your puppets in your studio. You're clearly as much craftsmen as filmmakers. Do you see yourselves as working in that tradition at all?
That's a huge legacy that goes back to the 14th century. Our own work probably descends from the turn of the century, with Richard Teschner and Władysław Starewicz. The tradition of European puppets—aside from classical puppetry—was always very symbolic and very serious. It wasn't for kids. They took on serious metaphysical themes. Growing up in America, we always felt like everything was Rin-Tin-Tin Land. It just felt like everything was gravitating towards kids and they wouldn't take the metis—the craft—seriously.

Whereas in every single communist country, they created a subversive empire with animation, because nobody was looking at animation. They were only looking at live-action films and worrying about censoring them. The animation films, they couldn't be bothered with. And so every single city or town in Poland had a funded marionette theater, subsidized so that they could make serious, committed puppetry. So there you are in Communist countries, [where] everything is subsidized and you're doing this remarkable puppetry, while America wouldn't even dream of paying even some poor puppet troupe in Philadelphia.

On the Creators Project: We Spoke to the Puppet Master Behind 'The Dark Crystal' and 'Labyrinth'

There's an American tradition of animation as well. But it's more like George Pal, Ray Harryhausen—more kid-friendly and concerned with metamorphosis. Your work is almost the opposite. Things want to transcend but can no more reach those heights than we can. As you said in your Q&A with Nolan, even the walls of your sets seem to be headed toward decay: "The treason of woodwork, the vacation of screws," as you put it. How do you put a limit that looks like mortality on a form where it seems like anything is possible?
That's a big question. But you just can't animate everything or there's nothing to suggest. There are limitations to what you can smuggle across visually, where the animation creates a metaphor. You can't create metaphor continually, ad nauseum. You have to choose: First it erupts, then it registers, then it vanishes. So you say, "Did that happen?" And yet it does happen.

It's a musical sensibility, as we always said. Music determines everything in terms of our narrative. Music demands, music suggests. Whereas traditional Hollywood animation is all based on character development—you know, there's Toy Story and it's Tom Hanks's voice pushing the thrust of the action. For us, décor is all part of it. It's the objects, a sense of atmosphere, the stimmung (mood) of what's happening in this landscape where the puppet is just, invariably, a tiny element.

Our characters are constantly belittled, trying to fend off forces greater than them, a whole metaphysical apparatus. And that makes the difference between us and Tom Hanks turning to Buzz Lightyear and saying, "Hey, partner. What are we gonna do?"

"Our characters are constantly belittled, trying to fend off forces greater than them, a whole metaphysical apparatus."

Is that why puppets are your ideal protagonists?
Exactly! Because they are symbolic forces, which you register as besieged victims. And I think we all recognize that when we're losing. And the great thing with puppets is the mask. It doesn't give way to emotion. He's stoic. That puts the viewer in the position of being caught in this malaise more than he is. He's fine!

You've made two feature-length films, Institute Benjamenta and The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes. Do you approach directing humans differently?
Well, with puppets you pose a performance. With actors you elicit, or invite, their collaboration. They've read the script, we've chatted with them, they understand you and all you do is coax the performance you've entrusted them with.

You don't come out of those movies saying, "Back to puppets, I'm never working with meatbags again"?
No, not at all.

"The way we work, it could take hours and hours and days and weeks to prepare one frame."

In speaking about your influences, you usually cite, in literature Kafka's Diaries and, in film, Walerian Borowczyk, even as audiences identify you with [Czech animator] Jan Svankmajer—
But Borowczyk came first. Yes, Svankmajer came much later for us.

—and the movie The Mascot by Władysław Starewicz from the turn of the century. Who are artists working at present whom you can cite as contemporaries?
We have fellow animators that we adore. One is the Estonian Priit Pärn and another is the Ukranian Igor Kovalyov. Both these filmmakers are tremendous animators, and they chart extraordinary realms. Again, there's no kids—this is serious, searing animation, and it pushes live action where live action can't go.

And I think that's what we've always said: As animators, we devote our energies at 1/24 of a second, in a way that you bring so much to a frame because you're preparing every single one individually. Every shot, every gesture, the lighting, how you're editing it, how you've built the material. Whereas in live action, you push a button and whoosh! Twenty-four frames go by in one second.

The way we work, it could take hours and hours and days and weeks to prepare one frame. So I think the way animators work is something live-action directors have no comprehension of. Christopher [Nolan] knows this. He's genuine in his appreciation for a system that he realizes is truly terrifyingly arduous because even he says he wouldn't have the patience. But he understands, and he respects it.

"You have to be very precise, it's like removing the filament of a dandelion with a set of tweezers. You have to be focused, you can hardly breathe."

There's such an emphasis in your films of suggestion over certainty, implication over plot, the miniscule over grand narrative. It's no wonder you work without scripts, since you tend to go to a place where language can't.
Yes, the invisible rises. The fog—and then you're caught, you're captured. And I think that's part of something we try to delineate.

What about your relationship to the music in films like In Absentia, your collaboration with Karlheinz Stockhausen?
Well, our "collaboration" with Stockhausen was that he was paid a certain sum of money to lob some music into outer space. He must have been thinking, "I don't know who these guys are, I don't know who's going to wind up dealing with this music, but I'm going to give them something difficult, not easy."

But we'd known Stockhausen's music since the 60s, so when we were offered the project, we leapt at the chance, although we'd heard that a dozen other people had been offered the project and rejected it. Understandably! What live-action director would have risked his life on Stockhausen? Other than Werner Herzog, who did the same thing with John Taverner [in the film Pilgrimage]?

Was it a relief in some way to build around existing music rather than using specific scores, such as those by [frequent collaborators] Leszek Jankowski and Pendereski?
Even when we work with Pendereski or Leszek Jankowski, the music is always there first. It's on the table before we begin day one of animation. We're slowly building the decors, we're listening, and it's going deep into your system, that music. So just like a choreographer who has to work with ballet steps, he has to marshal that movement. We're not choreographers per se, but you still have to sense a kind of parallel choreography. The scenario is there in the music. There's a prelude, there's a central section, an epilogue—whether it's 19 minutes or just one.

Knowing the music as we do, when you go to animate a sequence, you're carrying it in your fingertips—that blur, that space—before you even touch the object. We're convinced of that. It's a quiet transmission of energy.

Your fingers are dancing?
There's no fucking dancing. You have to be very precise, it's like removing the filament of a dandelion with a set of tweezers. You have to be focused, you can hardly breathe. That's simply the challenge you set for yourself, because if you breathe too hard, you will blow it away.

J. W. McCormack is a writer whose work has appeared in Bookforum, the Brooklyn Rail, Tin House, the New Inquiry, n+1, Publisher's Weekly, and Conjunctions.

The Quay Brothers: On 35mm runs plays at the Film Forum in New York through Tuesday, August 25 before traveling to selected cities nationwide in September and October. The Short Films of the Quay Brothers is currently available on DVD and will be released on Blu-ray on October 20, 2015.

(link: https://zeitgeistfilms.com/film/thequaysin35mm).

St. Paul's prep school in Concord, New Hampshire. Photo via Flickr user Walker Carpenter

"Welcome to an eight-week exercise in debauchery, an exploration into the innermost meaning of the word sleeze-bag."

Owen Labrie, then 18, was writing to a group of male peers at St. Paul's, a prestigious New Hampshire prep school. It was March 31, two months before graduation, and the height of the season students called "Slaypril and Slay."

"We will be exploring the several essential questions. Is life on earth heaven? Are there any gazelles left in this savannah?" Labrie added.

Five men in their teens and early 20s took the stand in a rape trial Monday and testified about the rites of a secret culture, one that until now has been decipherable only to students living in the gothic-style dormitories at the elite prep school.

Previously: The Trial of an Alleged Elite New England Prep School Rapist

Together, the young men told an all-too-familiar story of male bravado and rape culture intertwined with the strange and perverted customs of a New England institution whose alumni include famous politicians, authors, and bankers.

Central to this culture, according to the men on the stand: secrecy and denial at all costs.

Jurors heard private Facebook messages exchanged between members of a pseudo-support group for horny teens called "Slayer's Anonymous," and "sub rosa" emails—a Latin phrase meaning "under the rose"—used to denote confidentiality.

The central focus of the messages was a decades-old rite at St. Paul's called "the Senior Salute." It's either a harmless tradition or twisted sex game, depending on whom you ask. The ritual is crucial to both the defense and the prosecution's arguments over charges that Labrie raped a freshman girl who was just 15.

The general principles of the Senior Salute involves men on the cusp of graduation emailing younger students they'd "like to get to know better," as Tucker Marchese, a St. Paul's alum who testified Monday, put it. Another alum, Malcolm Salovaara, said the tradition was akin to a "last-chance dance."

If they agree to the Salute, according to the students who took the stand, there is usually an expectation of some sort of hookup ranging from a kiss to sex. These hookups were tallied in marker on a school wall.

Scores were kept.

Testimony suggested that among Labrie and his friends, the sex game was carefully orchestrated.

The alleged victim, who is not being named by the media, took the stand for three days in a row last week to testify about an encounter she says started as part of the Senior Salute but ended in rape. Labrie, a shaggy-haired prefect, was on his way to Harvard divinity school but, now 19, has been scraping together money to pay for his legal team and faces up to 20 years in prison each for three felony sexual assault charges.

The girl offered her account in graphic detail, and then defended inconsistencies in her testimony during a lengthy cross-examination. Labrie's attorney claims the interaction was consensual, and that his client never penetrated the girl—which, because of her age, would constitute sexual assault* in the state of New Hampshire.

"If someone did something like dry humping, that would be a variation of sex, wouldn't it?" Labrie's attorney J. W. Carney asked Thompson, who was Labrie's roommate for three years.

"I'm not entirely sure," Thompson, replied, adding that Labrie told him he "boned" the alleged victim. When Thompson asked if it was the girl's virginity, "He confirmed that it was," he told jurors.

Testimony suggested that among Labrie and his friends, the sex game was carefully orchestrated. Earlier in the day, another, a younger student testified that he believed Thompson and Labrie were competing to see who could get the highest senior "score."

On the stand, Thompson—who is entering his sophomore year at Brown— said that was "not true."

The jury heard from Thompson and four former high school athletes with carefully combed hair who are not facing charges, though some were accompanied by their own attorneys. Before this trial, they seemed to accept the ins and outs of the Senior Salute as as much a part of their education at St. Paul's as final exams.

"We live in a society that doesn't teach boys or girls how to give consent, or further more how to honor consent." –Nadiah Mohair

An alum who went to the nearby Philips-Exeter Academy a decade ago says sex games—even if they aren't as storied as this one—went on at other New England boarding schools. In one instance, she recalled, female students would compete to see who could sleep with a male student from each of the dormitories. (This would be unheard of at the public New England high school I attended, where the most remarkable aspect of student life was the sheer volume of drugs.)

But the extent to which Labrie and his peers devoted themselves to the Senior Salute stands apart.

"I've never heard of anything quite like it," says Rebecca Roe, a Seattle prosecutor who tried sex cases for 35 years before starting a private practice representing assault victims. "I've never heard anything like that at that level."

"It's really depressing that it just simply doesn't seem to get any better," she adds. "It's worse. When you are looking at people who are at an elite school, when you're talking about [students who plan on] hopefully being the future leaders of America."

"We live in a culture that has a rampant 'boys will be boys' attitude," offers Nadiah Mohajir, the executive director of Heart, a Chicago organization that teaches sexual and reproductive health to high school students. "We live in a society that doesn't teach boys or girls how to give consent, or further more how to honor consent."

Labrie, for his part, took courses on "sexual conduct" and statutory rape as part of being a prefect.

Watch: Ghost Rapes of Bolivia

The younger student who took the stand—his name is being withheld by media outlets because he's a juvenile—said he didn't think anything of it when Labrie asked him to talk to the girl in question. Labrie was the prefect of his dorm, and the 15-year-old girl had rebuffed a previous request to meet at a secret rooftop location to which Labrie had acquired a key. "There is a door here that's been locked since before you were born," Labrie wrote the girl, adding, "the night before its hinges swung open."

The intermediary Labrie reached out to was also a freshman and spoke to the girl while they were working on a science project together.

"I heard you got an email from Owen," he told her in a Facebook message read allowed to the court.

"Oh, I don't think I'm going to do it," she said, of Labrie's invitation.

"He's a nice guy," he implored her.

Eventually, after a 20- to 30-minute conversation, according to the student, she agreed to meet with him.

The messenger informed Labrie of the decision in a Facebook missive.

"You are the fucking dog," replied Labrie. "I will owe you 10,000 BJs." Labrie also offered to get him fucked up the night before graduation.

Labrie had had his eye on the girl for a while, according to classmates who testified Monday. In a list Labrie wrote in January 2014 of more than a dozen students he wanted to hook up with in the last two months of the school year, he wrote her name in all capitals, at the top.

"Who do you want to pork more than anyone bro?" asked Salovaara, who communicated with Labrie on the Facebook group.

Labrie replied with the name of the 15-year-old alleged victim.

"Haha are you kidding me bro?" asked Salovaara.

"Total babe," replied Labrie.

"Does she even have nibs yet?" asked Salovaara.

Salovaara also explained to the court another famous St. Paul's idiom: "Deny till you die."

It's a saying Labrie was apparently familiar with.

The freshman boy who helped Labrie get a date with the alleged victim said he was with a group of students when Labrie came back from the encounter. They asked if the two had sex.

"He said no but nodded his head yes," the then-freshman told jurors. Labrie had a "smirk" on his face, the witness remembered.

Later that night, Labrie told him they had sex, but to "keep it on the down low."

With Labrie's friend Marchese, now a sophomore at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, he was more explicit.

"How'd it go from no to bone?" Marchese asked in a Facebook message later that night.

"Just pulled every trick in the book," Labrie responded.

A few days later, Labrie relived an encounter with the victim's sister and friends to Marchese.

"Denied until I died tonight," he wrote.

Follow Susan Zalkind on Twitter.

*Correction 8/25: An earlier version of this article suggested consensual sex between an 18-year-old and 15-year-old would qualify as statutory rape, but under New Hampshire law, this would actually amount to misdemeanor sexual assault. An earlier version also suggested Labrie was accepted to Harvard University' divinity graduate school, but in fact he was planning to attend the undergraduate college and later study divinity.

It's been less than three weeks since Jon Stewart walked away from his desk at the Daily Show, but he's already found a new gig: hosting pro wrestling. He's guest starred in two WWE events since Sunday, in which he alternated between giving and receiving beatdowns in the ring.

"I've spent the past 16 years talking about politics," Stewart told the crowd at WWE's SummerSlam on Sunday, according to the New York Times. "It's nice to be back in reality."

During the annual pay-per-view event's big match between Seth Rollins and Trainwreck's breakout star John Cena, Stewart surprised everyone by jumping into the ring, turning heel, and pummeling Cena into submission with a folding chair. Rollins took the opportunity to deliver a finishing blow to Cena, securing the US Championship belt for himself.

"Jon Stewart has gone from Daily Show host to SummerSlam criminal here tonight," WWE announcers said. Cena lost his shot at a 16th championship, a record only held by WWE legend Ric Flair, and Young Cena fanboys around the world were crushed.

Yesterday, on Monday Night Raw, Stewart continued his stint as evil WWE heel, soaking in the hate from a booing crowd and explaining why he sided with his former nemesis, Seth Rollins.

"To those ... children who wanted to know who the little, old, mean man was and why he would do that, I will tell you why," Stewart said. "It was not in any way to help Seth Rollins retain the world championship ... It was because I could not let John Cena tie the great Ric Flair."

Then Cena climbed into the ring and body-slammed Stewart , exciting the hearts of Cena's mostly-pre-pubescent fans and horrifying all those people who want Jon Stewart unbroken enough to host a 2016 presidential debate.

The whole WWE plot is campy and convoluted and almost impenetrable unless you follow pro wrestling, but it's nice to see Jon Stewart celebrate his retirement by getting his ass kicked by a guy who looks like a toy from that movie Small Soldiers.

Members of the Azov Regiment in Shyrokyne. Photos by the author

There are European soldiers fighting amid the rubble of Shyrokyne in Eastern Ukraine. They shoot from half-destroyed hotels and sleep in the basements of war-ravaged homes. Artillery fire colors the hill behind the town black, and darkens the sky with gray smoke. Machine guns sputter day and night, and there is occasionally the crack of a sniper rifle as soldiers dart between abandoned houses, hotels, apartment buildings, and trenches.

The pro-Ukrainian Azov Regiment and the group of Europeans fighting with them have clashed almost continuously with separatists in and around the small village of Shyrokne for months, turning this once peaceful place by the Azov Sea into a decimated frontline. The detritus of war litters the streets, as do the relics of the civilian world that once existed here—children's bicycles, beach toys, garden furniture, an old football that a soldier kicks around during a lull in the fighting.

Katty, a paramedic from Right Sector, a pro-Ukrainian paramilitary group also fighting here, says she has tired of the soldiers in her battalion making the same joke: inviting her for a walk and a drink on the village's sandy beach. But in the late evening, during the quiet moments in between artillery barrages, it's not difficult to imagine the world that used to exist in Shyrokyne: lovers walking on the beach, children playing in the streets.

But it's here that the squad of European soldiers fight. On one shoulder, they wear Azov's bright blue and yellow insignia; on the other, they wear their own: "Mors Venit Velociter" or, "Death Comes Quickly."

Chris "Swampy" Garrett

"I spent all day with a pistol in one hand and a grenade in the other, wondering how I was going to kill myself and how many [separatists] I could take with me," said Chris "Swampy" Garrett, a British citizen and a member of the squad of Europeans fighting in Eastern Ukraine for Azov Regiment.

Garrett had just returned to Kiev after a failed mission behind enemy lines in the small village of Shyrokyne. His team had been surrounded and cut off from Ukrainian positions before the men fled. He spent over 14 hours trapped behind an enemy advance, fighting in close quarters and taking shelter from friendly artillery fire, before sneaking out of the village under the cover of darkness.

For Garrett, who has served in the British army and done humanitarian de-mining work in the Karen State on the Thai/Myanmar border, the decision to join the Azov Battalion was a simple one: "One day they posted up on the [Azov Battalion] Facebook site, asking, 'We need people who have any kind of knowledge with first aid, volunteering, with basic military skills, de-mining, anything. If you have any skills at all, to any level, can you come and help?' So I kind of saw that as my route in, even if I didn't stay with the [Azov] Battalion. [It was] my surest way to get into the country—get into the east and then be able to see the bigger picture from there."

For most of the Europeans here, while getting to the fight was simple, their motivations for joining the war effort are more complex.

"It was just seeing the aggression coming from [Russians and pro-Russian separatists]," Garrett said of his motives. "I mean, you know, obviously coming from a small island [the UK], if someone came and invaded, I would hope that some people would turn up and help to get rid of them. To me, every country—it doesn't matter if it's landlocked—every country is an island in that sense. If someone invades it, obviously you want to get rid of them."

Garrett is not the only member of the group of European soldiers who came to defend Ukrainian sovereignty. But while some came to protect Ukraine, others here came to fight for conservative and nationalist politics in Ukraine's relatively open political space. For Harley, a 42-year-old from France who served in the French navy and later in the private security industry, involvement was two-sided: he came "to help Ukraine against Russia" and wears a "Fuck U Putin" bracelet on his wrist, but joined Azov because its politics were similar to his own: "Azov," he said, propagated a political agenda that "was closer to my idea."

"Baghira," one of Azov's European soldiers, on the frontline in Shyrokyne

Azov's politics have drawn fire for being far-right to the point of neo-Nazism; "If you want to find Nazis, [Azov] is the place to come," one soldier told me on the way to the frontline. And yet, the political reality of Azov is much more complicated than that. One soldier in the European group told me he estimates that around 20 percent of the battalion could be considered neo-Nazis, while David Eriksson—a 48-year-old Swede who owns real estate and marketing businesses—said: "I think almost 100 percent of foreigners—it used to be maybe 90 percent of foreigners—are not Nazis. They are here to fight."

While the regiment was originally founded as a far-right paramilitary group by Andriy Biletsky, a current member of the Ukrainian parliament and founder of the Social National Assembly and Patriot of Ukraine groups (both also far-right), it has changed over time as this rag-tag paramilitary organization became a fully mechanized regiment closely affiliated with the Ukrainian government. While some of these Europeans—especially those who joined at the beginning of the conflict—came to fight for a fascist political agenda, many are uncomfortable with the political roots of the group.

As the conflict has evolved, political leanings have been lost in the quagmire of war. Most of these men seem more preoccupied with the fight to defend Europe and the battle against Russia than they are about the sovereignty or political future of Ukraine itself. "[The focus] changed maybe [during] my second tour," said Eriksson. "Now, it's more [about fighting] against Russia than for Ukraine."

A paramedic attends to "Steve," one of the members of the European group, after he sustained an injury while on a mission in Shyrokyne.

Furthermore, for many of these European soldiers, joining the Azov Regiment had nothing to do with politics; it was simply the easiest way to get to the conflict. The regiment actively solicits international recruits through its Facebook page, and English is one of its official languages. Almost all of the Europeans here are former professional soldiers and have served in their respective national armies or in the French Foreign Legion, and are chasing the kind of experiences they've had in conflict elsewhere.

According to "The Greek," a 33-year-old former soldier in the Greek army and French Foreign Legion, the group is primarily composed of "ex-professional soldiers that just liked their job and wanted to do their job... [but] every foreigner here, they're not ordinary representatives of their own societies." They all have a "restless" character and "adventuring spirit," he told me, which draws them to advocate for their politics or practice their trade in one of the most dangerous places in the world. Some of these men even considered joining the separatists before deciding to join the pro-Ukrainian Azov Regiment.

"The Greek" is one of those who came to practice his trade. He decided to fight, not for a specific political agenda, but instead for the act of war itself. "You fight for the war. It's a science; it's an art," he told me at the group's base in Yurivka. "The army itself is a science. This is what matters."

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There are very few places left in the world for those with a restless spirit to explore; very few places in which risk—real risk that cannot be mitigated by satellite phones and emergency helicopter rescue, and the stimulation that comes with this uncertainty—can be found. "I like getting shot at," claimed Steve, a former soldier in the Finnish army and the French Foreign Legion.

Life on the frontline is an existence lived on the edge of death; with the proximity of one's own mortality seems to come the climax of many of life's most stimulating experiences—fraternity, adrenaline, adventure, survival, purpose. For those soldiers who have found such feelings in combat before, the chance to become involved in another war is an exciting prospect. While these men "are not ordinary representatives of their own society," they are not so un-ordinary either. They have actualized our own very normal fascination with war, one that most satisfy by joining national militaries—or, more passively, through video games and movies—but which, once experienced in real life, cannot be simulated in a training camp, in the cinema, or on a PlayStation.

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Eriksson originally came for his politics, to fight Russia and defend Europe, but stayed for the friendship and excitement of the front. "It's the friends, you know, coming back to The Greek and other guys I love. I love those guys," he said. "Also, you feel like you're a traitor if you don't take part in the fight. It would be like you're at home, just as The Greek said, 'living my white middle class life,' you know? So [it's partly because] I want to do something. But it's also because you get hooked on it—you get hooked on the adrenaline and stuff, and it's a good life."

The ideological motivation to take part in a conflict becomes inseparable from the experience of war itself; the two distinct motivations—ideological activism and the desire to fight—exist together, but are not always developed at the same moment. Some here came with an appreciation for combat and developed their political motivations over time, while others who came to fight for their politics learned to appreciate the experience of war. Those fighting in Shyrokyne are part of volunteer paramilitary groups. These men have chosen to come to the frontline, even as many of their peers stay at home: "People that come here in Shyrokyne, they want fighting," argued Stanislav, a former history teacher in Crimea, now fighting for Azov Battalion.

Chris "Swampy" Garrett (left) and "Harley" (right) observing separatist positions from a hotel on the frontline in Shyrokyne

"I'm sure one day they will try and put us up against the wall—you know, for what we've apparently done here," Garrett said late one night before heading back to the frontline, speaking of his and other foreigners' involvement in a war that doesn't belong to them. But despite their various motivations for coming, and the furrowed brows their presence elicits, these men have come to the frontline for their own reasons and have tried to distance themselves from the controversy surrounding their engagement in this foreign war.

"Looking to the east on this cold crisp morning," Garrett wrote in an Instagram post in January [all sic], "I feel nothing but pain. That those back home sit in their nice comfy homes have nothing better to do than bad mouth the fact that i saw a problem and i am addressing it in a way that I know how. I dont believe that people should agree with how I chose to live my life. I believe that if you dont like it, stay out of it. Forget me, save yourself the time to moan about me. I do what i do because i feel compelled to do it. Is that not the essence of free will, to do what we believe in?

"So today i look to the east of ukraine. Do yourself a favour, look the other way... Through the cold, hunger and sorrow of this place we strive to do what we believe is right. At the same [time], I respect that only I can see my world through my own eyes and base my beliefs accordingly. Thats all... i have to say except love to you all, friend or foe."

Follow Chistopher Allen on Twitter.

See all of VICE News's coverage of the conflict in Ukraine here.