On Wednesday night, thousands of people, mainly parents with overeager children, flocked around the American Museum of Natural History to watch the inflation of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons. What once was a fairly unknown event has become a circus, as police herded the mass of people into tiny confined areas surrounded by metal barricades just outside the floats. The floats themselves looked just as unhappy, restrained ass-to-face like a gigantic human centipede. Behind me a parent said to a child, "Look, it's a Minion." to which the kid responded, "That's Pikachu, Dad..."

Jackson Krule is a photographer and former digital photo editor at the New Yorker. Follow him on Instagram.

See more of Ines Estrada's work on her Instagram, Twitter, and website.

Cars in Colorado Springs near the site of the shooting. Photo via Dylan Harris

On Friday, chaos broke out around and inside a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic when a gunman "wearing a trench coat and carrying an assault-style rifle," according to the New York Times, opened fire on civilians and barricaded himself inside the clinic, resulting in a tense standoff with police that was followed by a bloody shootout.

Just before 5 PM local time, the man was taken into custody.

On VICE News: Police Arrest Suspect in Gang-Related Slaying of Nine-Year-Old Chicago Boy

Scanner traffic between officers and dispatchers with the Colorado Springs Police Department provided an inside look into the details of the violence. Though such early accounts should not be taken as irrefutable facts, they can at least provide preliminary details that will be fleshed out in the days to come.

Officers responded to an active shooter situation just before noon local time on Friday, according to multiple media reports. Not long after police arrived an officer was shot in the hand, scanner traffic indicated.

"I've been shot!" he screamed over the airwaves. "I've been hit!"

The unnamed cop was the first of four officers and at least four civilians shot by America's latest mass shooter, whose motives remained unclear. Police were hesitant to shoot through walls or use a sniper to take him down because they were concerned that people were hiding in adjacent rooms, according to scanner chatter.

"We possibly have people in there," an officer said on the scanner. "We have told people to lie on the floor."

At 2:30 local time, police entered the Planned Parenthood and began exchanging gunfire with the suspect. After a few volleys, an officer reported two fellow cops had been shot.

"We're taking fire. We got two hit," an officer reported.

That prompted a response from another officer.

"Put gunfire through the walls if you need to," he said. "Whatever you need to do to stop this guy."

Two hours later, the shooter continued to walk freely through the building.

Using a camera-equipped robot and in-person surveillance, police carefully tracked the suspect's movements throughout the building. For hours police evacuated civilians to safety, and waited for their moment to pounce. Just before 5 PM local time, it came.

"He's saying he's gonna come out with his hands up," an officer said before adding a caveat. "We gotta take him out if he's got any IEDs."

Once outside, the gunman told police he acted alone, but for the better part of Friday officers were unsure if others were involved in what appeared to be a terrorist attack.

In their live-saving efforts, police went door-to-door inside the building, knocking first three times then twice before announcing themselves to the terrified on the other side who were communicating with 911 dispatchers. Scanner traffic indicated that those in hiding were concerned the shooter would pretend to be a police officer. Police rescued one man who was reportedly shot in the chest and hiding in the bathroom.

Officers stalked the gunman and communicated with those trapped in rooms. One by one and sometimes in groups of two or three, police extricated men and women from the building. Just after 4 PM local time police were able to speak with three people trapped in the building by cutting through the wall. The group was thought to be the last remaining people inside the building until a moment later when a dispatcher informed officers that five people were "unaccounted for."

Thirty minutes later, Lieutenant Catherine Buckley told reporters that even after police took down the gunman more work remained. Items the suspect brought with him to Planned Parenthood would have to be inspected before the scene could be cleared. In the early stage of the chaos, scanner traffic indicated the gunman was shooting at propane tanks in the parking lot.

There was speculation on social media that the Planned Parenthood had been targeted by a pro-life extremist, but on Friday afternoon the motivation of the gunman was unknown. Law enforcement agencies in New York increased patrols near the women's health organization's clinics, though no credible or specific threats had been received.

"We don't yet know the full circumstances and motives behind this criminal action, and we don't yet know if Planned Parenthood was in fact the target of this attack," Planned Parenthood said in a statement. "We share the concerns of many Americans that extremists are creating a poisonous environment that feeds domestic terrorism in this country. We will never back away from providing care in a safe, supportive environment that millions of people rely on and trust."

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Single-shot filmmaking isn't a radically new idea, but ask the average culture junkie, and you'd sure be lead to believe it is. Not so long ago, the first season of True Detective featured an unbroken six-minute tracking shot along a quiet street in the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong, leading the internet to explode with praise and near-immediate canonization as if the stylization was the first of its kind.

But linear entertainment isn't just getting the experimental treatment on TV, nor is this time-tweaking anything new. If anything, single-shot takes and entertainment that mimics reality (via temporality, three dimensions, or other senses) have been having a renaissance for nearly a decade since the advent of social media.

Be it the popular Twitch and YouTube accounts that feature uninterrupted and unedited play-through of video games in real time, Occulus Rift and the recent progress of virtual reality, the popularity of Snapchat, or the constant pushing of Merekat and Periscope, this media seems to suggest something about both the ephemerality and the endlessness of content. Binge watching and the pushback against mid-program advertising hint at a new kind of immersive experience in which non-disruption is paramount. If the medium is the message, then the feed is the culture.

The most recent example is Sebastian Schipper's full-length film Victoria, perhaps the most formally audacious attempt to turn entertainment into an all-enveloping experience. Shot in 22 different locations across two neighborhoods in Berlin between the hours of 4:30 and 6:48 AM, Victoria is a genre movie told in real time in a single steady, unbroken scene. It's taut, at times sweet, often stressful, and surprisingly intimate. It's also a total stunt. It's not the first film of its kind, but it may be the best.

The film chronicles the hour before and the hour following a bank heist, and once it begins in the foggy basement of a Berlin discothèque—the bass thumping as the light adjusts on the film's titular character—it doesn't cease until the film's mournful final moment. No jump cuts. No tricks. Just one long, long shot that's so effective it shouldn't work. According to Schipper, the Toronto Film Festival initially rejected the film because the jury didn't believe the film was actually a single take.

"The universe of filmmaking is like a nautical world, with all the men working at sea," Schipper told IndieWire in October. "You have the stories told in the bars and pubs, the ports, and I have a feeling that the one-take movie is like a mystical island. And some people say, 'I've been there!' But you never really know if that's entirely true."

The festival's skepticism may have been short-lived (Victoria was accepted the following year), but it's not without focus. One-take filmmaking isn't a new concept—the earliest example dates as far back as the late-1940s—but its cultural impermanence is what makes each film feel like a revelation. Prior films have either felt like formal experiments or elaborate ruses; they're either trying to get one by an audience, or actively disinterested in finding one at all. Victoria, on the other hand, is very much a film for right now, born in a time when authenticity is central to discussions about art, media, and technology have become relatively ubiquitous. The element of the unknown that Schipper talks about isn't just a sales pitch (though it is that, too). It's a pretty solid assessment of just what makes the single take both a routinely exciting stunt and commonplace con.

Nowhere was this more apparent than at the 2015 Academy Awards, when the two Best Picture front-runners—Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Birdman Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and Richard Linklater's Boyhood—were both beloved and hyped for formal choices that were total opposites of one another. There is an intended intimacy to be found in Birdman, depicting the measured chaos of an actor's life backstage, and Iñárritu achieves it by mimicking an uninterrupted shot that follows the actors through each increasingly claustrophobic corridor. Boyhood, meanwhile, labors to remind you that the film was an act of just that, labor—12 years of filming combined to create a narrative that takes place over multiple decades. These two gimmicks are on opposite ends of the spectrum—one, infusing the camera with the jittery energy of exploration; the other, letting time play out in a different kind of real-time—but they're getting at something similar: that film is the medium with which to play with that very device of temporality.

It was film theorist Andre Bazin who first coined the term "cinematic tact," stating that the camera "should not cut up reality, but rather it should show reality in its temporal continuity." This correlation between reality and continuity was formed largely by Bazin's fascination with the then-developing technology associated with filmmaking. For him, these developments had the potential to depict what he called "total cinema," a form of art that emphasized reality in a way that distanced itself from the complications and biases inherent in photography. In this context, art was both crucially tied to and in need of distancing itself from technology. The closer the medium got to simply reproducing reality with little to no disruption, the closer the medium could get to achieving a powerful new form of truth by way of art.

The single-take is, in some ways, about more than just experimentation, but instead deals with achieving the same thing that Bazin was reaching for over 50 years ago. Today, that emphasis on reality is semantically remolded to be about authenticity—something real—a feeling many directors try to achieve through long-takes and single-shot cinematic experiences. Few films have managed it. In the medium's early years, 35mm film reels featured a recording length of approximately 11 minutes, making the single-shot a technical impossibility as far as feature films were concerned. It wasn't until Alfred Hitchcock crafted what Roger Ebert called "one of the most interesting experiments ever attempted by a major director" with 1948's Rope that the single-shot film was truly attempted. But in fact, the film featured several cuts, disguised in low-lit close-ups that bought time for the crew to quickly change the film reels before Hitchcock panned back out, keeping all the action in a single room. It wouldn't be until the transition to digital filmmaking that the single-shot would be deemed achievable.

In 2000, filmmaker Mike Figgis experimented with temporality in Timecode, in which the entire screen resembles the four quadrants of a security feed, providing a rather ominous premonition, intentional or not, of a culture under constant surveillance. Unlike the fluidity of movement in Victoria, the form of Timecode had a voracious interest in the act of being seen; the camera never breaks the fourth wall, but it pushes more than just lightly against the glass. The stylization was so in-your-face, though, that the film felt desperate to be in conversation with something beyond narrative, alienating the viewer.

Two years later, Alexander Sokurov's 2002 historical drama, Russian Arc, used the one-shot form to explore the ornate grounds of the Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum, but the process was relegated to a 90 minute tracking sequence, moving the camera along the building's hallways. More than film, Russian Arc seemed to resemble something closer to immersive theater, with its sequential storylines evolving as the camera pans from room to room.

At its most intentional, the long take can serve as a conceit meant to compel one to look, so it's no surprise that filmmakers often use it as an endurance test. Gaspar Noé's Irréversible (2002) features a nearly ten-minute rape scene filmed in an unblinking single-take, while other scenes were digitally stitched together through subtle cuts in an effort to make the entire film look continuous as well.

Many films toy with the visual language of single-shot filmmaking, but very few have been able to effortlessly fuse the formal rigor with traditional narrative. The advent of digital has allowed each film to push the running time a little longer; at 140 minutes, Victoria clocks in as the longest yet. If technology in the days of cinema's infancy hinted at the ability to reproduce our sense of the world, today, Bazin's hope for the full potential of cinema seems to be nearing realization.

And in a way, it feels right on time. The indulgence of the single take seems in line with the radical new way that we absorb the narrative of daily life—largely together even when apart, in a steady stream of scenes and stimuli. We saw something similar happen in the early 1990s, and the rise of post-classical editing. The style was largely influenced by shorter commercial length and the style of music videos popularized by MTV, whose own original programming mimicked the speed and chaos of those same videos. Programs like Beavis & Butthead and The Real World (which employed dutch angles and aggressive cuts) managed to convey the aesthetics of music videos in a narrative format, ultimately influencing other entertainment such as Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers and the programming blocks on Adult Swim—both which internalized and winked at a similar emphasis on kineticism.

Watch: Talking 'Sicario' with Benicio del Toro

If the influence of that era's new media could trickle as substantially as it did, then there should be no surprise that the ubiquity of today's technology has crafted some new normal. At the turn of the new millennium, films like The Blair Witch Project, as well as the accumulation of cell phone footage from on 9/11, introduced a new kind of realism into the visual lexicon through hand held shooting—dubbed "shaky cam" and used by filmmakers like Paul Greengrass to denote a certain kind of urbane grit.

In the same way that the films to be born in the years since 9/11 have found a way to aestheticize a kind of recognizable reality through chaos and movement, Victoria and the single-shot prove that there is possibly something fundamental happening in regards to how digital and social media is influencing our idea of continuity. If Bazin's idea of cinema's holy grail was something uninterrupted, capturing both the continuous nature of the day to day, and the power of reflecting the world as we see it—a stream of scenes and senses—then culture's tradition of playing ping-pong with new media and technology, with one constantly influencing the other, seems firmly intact. Call it total cinema, or call it totally something else.

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Screenshot of Myspace's current homepage

The story of MySpace's rise, fall, and (so far failed) resurrection is a kind of case study for internet companies. In 2006, three years after it launched, MySpace became the most visited site in the US by some metrics, and it became known as a launching pad for musicians after artists like Calvin Harris, the Arctic Monkeys, and Lilly Allen got IRL famous after attracting attention on the social network. In 2005, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp bought MySpace for a then-eye-watering $580 million. Everyone knows what happened next: Users migrated to Facebook en masse, MySpace's aesthetic became regarded as ugly and cluttered. In 2011, Murdoch unloaded the site for $35 million, describing his decision to buy (and then hang onto) MySpace as a "huge mistake."

By then, the site was a punchline as well as a lesson in how quickly a site could become irrelevant. But today it embodies another aspect of online business culture: eternal optimism. The people currently in charge of the site imagine that with a little luck it could return to its current glory, even if no one else thinks so.

"We were trying to be everything to everybody, and we just stopped innovating," Linh Chung, who joined Myspace in 2007 as senior vice president of tech operations, told VICE of the site's downward slide. "That was the main reason we fell from grace."

In 2013, the site, now owned by Justin Timberlake and Tim Vanderhook's Specific Media Group, relaunched. Specific Media, which is part of Viant, is known for being a pioneer in the field of behavioural-tracking technologies, which underpin most online advertising. Featuring a sleek new design and surrounded by a whirlwind of publicity and TV advertisements, Myspace 2.0 drew 31 million unique visitors to the site in two weeks, though many of those people might have been drawn in by the site's premiere of Timberlake's first single in seven years.

Many old MySpace features like private messaging and customizable background designs had been dropped. The idea was to pivot into being more focused on music, along the lines of Pandora, Spotify, and even Pitchfork. It didn't take long before pretty much everyone considered the new MySpace to be a bust. Today, the site looks like just another content portal filled with listicles and aggregation. User can log in through their Twitter and Facebook accounts, and Vevo supplies most of the featured music videos.

What a Myspace profile used to look like. Image via Flickr user Luca Mascaro

But the punchline is that rather than fading away, MySpace is doing better than ever, according to some numbers. In 2014, its traffic grew more than 400 percent, hitting nearly 30 million unique visitors in December. And Viant CEO Tim Vanderhook is talking about a comeback.

"During the past four years, the total number of users ever to be registered on MySpace crossed 1 billion, which is something very few platforms have achieved," Vanderhook told VICE. "Because of that, we've felt the site has far more longevity than people believe."

There's one thing that MySpace has that few other sites can boast: lots of email addresses.

"Our strategy is really simple," Vanderhook says. "Every time we have something relevant to say or offer, we leverage our archive of registered users and email aggressively."

"Having a direct relationship with that many users means we aren't reliant on Google's search algorithm or Facebook's newsfeed to pull in traffic like many popular forms of media today," Vanderhook continued. "We can simply send an email to a billion users at a moment's notice when we're ready to launch something and entice them to check out what we're offering. And with the information we possess on people, we have a much greater ability to reach out and be relevant to them again."

Vanderhook has been using such tactics to drive former users back to the site since 2013, and strongly rejects suggestions that the company is simply spamming people. "It's personalized content that's tailored to each user," Vanderhook said. "And the better that we get at that, the more traffic we're seeing."

It's not just the rise in traffic that's kept Vanderhook interested in MySpace, but also the personal data from all those registered users that can be turned into revenue. For example, the vast mountain of data enabled Vanderhook to launch Viant's new Advertising Cloud product in the UK in September, a tool that helps the advertising technology company's customers (advertisers and marketers) identify consumer bases and push targeted ads using details about registered users' locations, incomes, the number of children they have, and more. (Since many users haven't touched their accounts in years, a lot of this information is out of date.)

For more on technology, watch our doc 'The Digital Love Industry':

But Vanderhook says he's not merely interested in milking MySpace's historical data for profit. He genuinely wants to revive the social media network. He mentions streaming services, connected TV, radio products, all supposedly in development, though launch dates and specifics remain ambiguous. Both the CEO and Jon Schulz, Viant's chief marketing officer, used familiar Silicon Valley buzzwords like mobile, connectivity, and video advertising when discussing the future of MySpace.

Vanderhook has full faith that "the company that gets it all right will become the biggest." Few would bet on MySpace being that company given its past of false starts and miscues. But despite the doubters, the MySpace team remains bullish. As they know better than most, digital audiences are fickle and technological advances can render entire empires useless in an instant. While Google and Facebook seem almost invincible, Vanderhook remains convinced that it's a matter of when, not if, they decline.

"At some point things start to become old and fail," he says. "With mobile devices becoming the dominant form of web browsing, if someone creates a popular voice-activated search engine, then Google.com could be out very quickly. These risks are real and they can happen far faster than people think."

It seems unlikely that MySpace will be able to return to its former glory, but the fact that the site has stayed afloat in one form or another for 12 years in a feat in and of itself. It might never be truly resurrected or evolve into something new, but instead sort of just drift along forever, the web equivalent of an old hotel with a fading sign.

"Can MySpace become as successful as it was before? It will probably be in a new shape or form, driven by a new music or TV platform, but absolutely," says Vanderhook. "The world is very different today and we've made huge traction with something that was not just dead but dead and buried six feet under. And we've been resurrecting it ever since."

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All photos by Bobby Viteri

"Look more laid back," Christina calls to the models, who are already lounging barefoot on the couch and holding oversized mugs of coffee. They adjust themselves so their knees lean into each other while they stare intently at a blank laptop screen.

"You're looking at a vacation property," the photographer, Andrew Zaeh, offers. "You're planning a vacation together." The scene already reads like how I imagine Ina Garten's friends spend their Sunday mornings, lounging in J. Crew style knitwear on an impeccable white couch. The details of the room all say, "Our only worry in life is choosing which gin to use in our evening Tom Collins." The coffee table—a thick piece of glass atop a pale petrified driftwood base—looks like something I saw on Goop.

"We know that it's hard to find cool, authentic pictures of gay couples. We want it to feel natural. We want it to feel real," Keren Sachs, Director of Content Development at Shutterstock, told me. To that end, the company has recruited models Harold and Andreas, a real couple who met at the Roseland Ballroom during Pride 2013 and got married a year later. The few knick-knacks that identified the apartment's real owner—a friend of the creative director—have been removed. For today, this two bedroom in TriBeCa is where Harold and Andreas spend their lives lounging on impeccable furniture and smiling vaguely at an iPad.

The photos are being produced for Offset.com, the high-end stock photo marketplace owned by Shutterstock. On Shutterstock.com without a subscription, two photos of an ice cream may be had for approximately $29. The photos are simple and clean—antiseptic scoops in triangle cones, cartons of ice cream in pastel colors. On Offset, "ice cream cone" yields a close-up of an artisanal-looking scoop, with honey dripping from inside its folds. The Offset photo costs $500 to download with maximum resolution.

Sachs watches the couple on the couch while Andreas improvises dialogue about their fictional vacation home in Greece. Sachs moves in to whisper to Lisa Curesky, the CEO of Good Brigade, the company producing the shoot for Offset. "I think we should get a couple of them kissing."

Curesky relays the message to her partner, Christina. Christina turns to the models and the photographer. "Can we see a few of you kissing?" she asks. The couple obliges.

"See, that's not something you'd be able to do if they weren't a real couple," Sachs says with approval. Harold and Andreas keep kissing, probably with a bit more tongue than most advertising companies would want to use on a billboard. And that's where these photos might end up: Harold and Andreas are posing for stock photos, which means their images will be uploaded on the Internet and sold, royalty-free, for use anywhere—from billboards to magazines to websites—by anyone who might want their brand to be associated in some way with a handsome gay couple in a beautiful TriBeCa apartment.

Jon Oringer created Shutterstock in 2003. The entrepreneur taught himself to code and personally shot the first 30,000 images that were uploaded. Since then, Shutterstock has grown to over 600 employees, with over four images downloaded per second in over 150 countries. In 2014, Shutterstock's revenue increased 39% from the previous year to $328 million.

The site itself is a two-sided marketplace: media sites and advertising companies license images chosen from a pool submitted by any interested photographers.The photographers get paid a percentage that increases based on lifetime earnings with Shutterstockevery time one of their photos is downloaded—and Shutterstock doesn't actually own the image. Sachs explained that photographers can apply to the site, and, "as long as we accept seven out of ten of their images, they're a Shutterstock contributor." Photographers retain copyright over their images, but Shutterstock is given full permission to market, display, and license the image to the customers on their site without final approval from the photographer. Last year, the company paid over $83 million to its roughly 80,000 contributors.

Good Brigade put the TriBeca shoot together on a shoestring budget, shooting in a friend's apartment and using non-famous models found online who wore their own clothes. The photo studio is trusting Shutterstock's data: Sachs says consumers want more pictures of authentic gay couples, and Good Brigade is delivering. And if the data is correct, Good Brigade could stand to make a good deal of money from images that cost practically nothing to create.

When they aren't giving press tours, Shutterstock representatives have little involvement with image production. And, more interestingly, the company's review process has very little oversight when it comes to an image's content. Instead, Shutterstock is more concerned with the technical quality of the photograph. "We've got some pretty incredible review standards... We look at trademark, we look at lighting, we look at the overall composition," Sachs says. "We make sure that the technical quality of the image meets the demand of the customers." It's true: spend long enough scrolling through Shutterstock and you'll come across photographs of full frontal nudity or an overweight man in a dirty tank top with a lollypop in one hand and a cigar in the other—but the shots are always in focus.

Sometimes, however, that crisp focus is the reason discerning photo shoppers decide against using Shutterstock's images. I spoke to an employee (who asked to remain anonymous) at a late night television show that often uses stock photography about her perception of Shutterstock. "Shutterstock images don't always look natural," she said. "If we were looking for a picture of a birthday party we'd probably just try to take a photograph instead." Similarly, many have questioned the omnipresence of these images, such as a critical analysis of stock photos' evolution in Dis Magazine or the countless Tumblrs that mock these pictures.

"Stock photo" is an aesthetic all its own, one incredibly varied but immediately recognizable. The common tropes are generically attractive people with forgettable faces against white backdrops, but the photos often descend into nightmarish middle-management fever dream territory, which can be kryptonite to people looking for an image that looks real and original. Although it was never said explicitly, it's difficult not to see Offset as an attempt by Shutterstock to distance itself from the perception that stock photography exclusively involves cheesy images of gleeful businessmen and interchangeably attractive women.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

The contrast is sharp between the cornball general stock images and the ones found on Offset's site. If you are looking for an image of a businessman on Shutterstock.com you will find nearly an entire page of men in ties crossing their arms, almost all white, each expressing a look that screams their jobs require them to use the word "synergy" without irony. On the other hand, the businessmen found on Offset, under the tag "Entrepreneurial Spirit," include both old men with wise faces and attractive 30-year-olds working with their hands: as mechanics, bakers, cobblers, all political-campaign-commercial-ready Real Americans. The businessmen on Offset are also bearded or wearing plaid, pictured in collaboration with other attractive men—all seemingly the type of guys who have a section in their budget reserved for artisanal moisturizer. And with a second curated collection jauntily titled "Stache" featuring images of mustachioed men, the millennial-hipster aesthetic seems overtly intentional. "Let these images help grow your microbrew incubator firm, your farm-to-table bistro, your put-a-bird-on-it," they seem to whisper.

Unlike Shutterstock, Offset consumers aren't offered the chance to apply to contribute images to the site. Rather, the team at Offset have been reaching out to photo studios like Good Brigade, but also professional artists and successful features photographers. David Prince has hosted his images to the site, scenes of abandoned hotel rooms and rain-clouded skyscapes that look like stills from music videos. His work is a click away from Anna Williams, a lifestyle photographer who's shot for Martha Stewart and has an expertise on macro shots of comfort food against dark wood rustic settings. "There were these artists who were never, never generating any money off their archives," said Sachs. "It just opened up a whole new door to us. I always say to every photographer I work with, 'Dust off your hard drives! You are sitting on so many images on your hard drives and you are not making money off them.'"

"On the consumer's part, there was an appetite to invest in imagery that was more like art," added Greg Behar, the general manager of Offset, during a later interview at the Shutterstock office in Manhattan. "Things they could use more like hero images, front-and-center for their marketing campaigns."

"Let these images help grow your microbrew incubator firm, your farm-to-table bistro, your put-a-bird-on-it," the Offset photos seem to whisper.

While Offset's growth backs up Behar's comments, there's still a slight tension watching the modern, supposedly authentic images being composed in real time. It probably has something to do with the executive from a massive online company smiling with closed lips a few feet away from a real couple making out in another person's real apartment. Every detail—the blanket draped across knees, the jacket hanging off the back of a chair—was curated to create a distinctly un-curated vibe. As I watched the hot gay couple kiss in the nice apartment I was struck with the realization that the scene already looked like an ad—maybe even a good one.

On June 21, it was announced that Shutterstock had partnered with Penske Media Corporation (PMC), the media company that controls outlets like Variety, Deadline, WWD, and HollywoodLife. In addition to becoming the official photo archivefor all PMC-sponsored events, Shutterstock gained access to PMC's archives to offer their customers countless new images. PMC CEO Jay Penske decided to partner with Shutterstock over Getty, its rival in the stock photo industry, because he "saw a better opportunity in aligning the PMC brands with Shutterstock, which we believe to be the ascending platform for imagery and video," as he told Financial Times. "We were also troubled by Getty's current financial condition, because of its excess debt/leverage." The partnership represents another major step in Shutterstock's effort to diversify its brand identity and not be known just as the go-to source for cubicle workers to fill out their PowerPoint presentations with pictures of other cubicle workers.

I asked Sachs whether her company is aware of the connotation of the word "stock photo" on the internet and beyond, where words like, "silly," "artificial," and "why is that woman so happy to be eating salad?" might come up. There was a slight pause."We definitely have a sense of humor about things like that," Sachs said, not entirely sounding like she did. The team at Shutterstock pointed to a collection they published after Jeb Bush's super PAC released a video ad in which scenes of Bush's idyllic America were actually stock photos of England and Southeast Asia, as highlighted by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and a variety of other websites. The collection, called "Safe for IA and NH," contains photographs of freshly painted barn doors, waving American flags, and apple pie, all taken by photographers from Iowa and New Hampshire. The joke is mild and charming while possibly suggesting the company's hyper-vigilance regarding its own portrayal in the media.

According to Shutterstock's data, mobile submissions for the site grew 40% in the first six months of 2015. The unique combination of social media and high-quality phones in our pockets means people are exposed to more pictures of "real life" than ever before. But while the photos for Offset might resemble "real life" more closely than their stage-set counterparts found in general Shutterstock.com galleries, they still portray a world far cleaner and happier than our own. The world of Offset is Brooklyn before it became a punchline, a service trip to India without anyone rolling their eyes, families of beautiful, bright-eyed children who are curious about the world and never cry.

Once Zaeh has gotten enough photographs of the couple on the couch he moves them to the bedroom. Andreas sits in bed, under the covers, while Harold pretends to get dressed at the foot of the bed. Once again, at someone's suggestion, the couple kisses, leaning across the mattress to lock lips, a moment made to look like an impromptu morning show of love before a husband leaves for work. And then to the kitchen, where Howard sets the table and Andreas cuts tomatoes for a fictional dinner party, the type you'd expect to include fashion columnists and festival-favorite indie directors. Andreas wields the knife with staccato, karate-chop hacks.

"No, no, that's not how you chop," Howard says, leaving his post to take the knife from his husband's hand. "This is how, you have to roll it, front to back." He demonstrates.

Soon, someone else will ask Andreas and Howard to kiss again, and they will, among strategically placed wine glasses. But that moment, the couple playfully bickering about the best way to cut tomatoes—half eye-roll, half-smile—was the closest thing to a real couple I saw all day. And it was still corny.

Maybe stock photos will never transcend their known inherent aesthetic, their stock photo-ness. But by creating imprints like Offset and partnering with PMC, Shutterstock will have such a big stake in selling photos for ads and of celebrity events that the visual format is the company's for the taking.

Harold and Andreas are the face of the future of advertising: a cost-effective option for companies looking for a sanitized, real-but-not-quite-real America that's just diverse enough to make us feel good enough about ourselves to keep buying Advil or Cheerios or Depends. And they're the face of the future of stock photos, a game that's changing and expanding right beneath our noses. We'll likely still know Shutterstock for the same hokey stuff as always, but its fingerprints will surreptitiously be everywhere.

Follow Dana on Twitter and see more of Bobby's photo work on his Tumblr.

Alex Friedmann, managing editor of 'Prison Legal News' and associate director of Human Rights Defense Center. Images courtesy of 'Prison Legal News'

Earlier this month, Prison Legal News made headlines after the monthly human rights publication sued the Arizona Department of Corrections, which had refused to distribute several issues to nearly 100 inmates with subscription. The LA Times reported that the DOC had blocked the issues because they contained information about "riots/work stoppages/resistance," "unacceptable sexual or hostile behaviors," and "sexually explicit material." No specific articles were cited, so Prison Legal News assumes that the decision was in response to pieces that dealt with sexual violence in prisons, including violence perpetrated by guards.

The 25-year-old publication—produced by the nonprofit Human Rights Defense Center—claims that the Arizona DOC violated its right to free speech. A suit against a government institution would be a drastic step for most publications, but to Paul Wright, the founder and editor of the by-prisoners-for-prisoners mag, that sort of battle comes with the territory.

Wright founded the magazine from within his cellblock with $300 and a list of 75 prospective subscribers in the Washington State prison system. The first issue was ten pages typed entirely by and Paul and another inmate in their cell. Over 300 issues later, the publication has a circulation over 10,000 and focuses on prison conditions, wrongful convictions, the inequities of the prison phone system, free speech, and other prisoner-rights issues.

VICE called Wright to talk about his latest freedom of speech battle, prison censorship, and the evolution of the publication representing those behind bars.

A front-page cover of a recent issue of 'Prison Legal News'

VICE: What inspired you to start Prison Legal News while you were still locked up? Where did you see it going at the time?
Paul Wright: It's kind of like the saying If a tree falls in a forrest... I think that phrase fits with prison issues really well: When prisoners are struggling and no one is around to hear it, is it really happening? The reality is that most prisoners in this country are screwed. There is no one coming to help them. There is no help for them. If you want to try to do anything in this country as a prisoner you need to do it yourself. You need to help yourself. You have to advocate for yourself. Our goal from the beginning has been to give prisoners the tools that they need to be able to do that—to be able to push their issues, advocate for their human rights, and also educate the American public as to what's going on inside America's prisons and jails.

For better or for worse no one with a publishing background has ever been involved in Prison Legal News or the Human Rights Defense Center. If anyone had, they would probably have told us that we couldn't be doing what we have been doing.

What do you feel is the most important article that the publication has run?
Our comprehensive overviews on the prison phone issue, which sought to lower the price of phone calls from jail, was pretty significant because it kicked off our phone justice campaign. Four years after running the first article, the FCC has capped the cost of prison phone calls. To my knowledge, no one had ever run a national article before about the cost of prison phone calls and how that was impacting prisoners and their families.

We've run important articles on the impact of the Prison Litigation Reform Act. We've done big articles on prisoners who've been raped by staff and employees in jails. We've been told that the articles published in PLN have been super helpful in advocating for change at the prisons where readers are locked up. There have been guys who've written us and said, "I didn't have any access to law books or the law library, but I got access to some copies of PLN. By using those, I was able to put in an appeal that I won."

The bigger struggle or dilemma as an editor that I have faced over the past 25 years isn't about what we should or shouldn't publish, but what do we have room to publish, since there's limited space in the publication and we have to prioritize what's going to be most useful to our reader, what will help them in their struggles, what information they need the most.

For more on prison reform, watch an extra clip from our HBO documentary on President Obama's historic visit to a federal prison:

Can you tell me about your censorship disputes in the past?
We started publishing in May of 1990 and literally have been dealing with prison and jail censorship since day one of our existence. It's been pretty much just a nonstop battle. The first three issues of Prison Legal News were banned in the Washington State prison system. Our first 18 issues were banned in the Texas prison system. We've successfully challenged bans at nine or ten state departments of corrections. In Washington, we sued them because they were censoring Prison Legal News when prisoners bought it using their prison trust accounts. We sued them based on our mail classification. We got injunctions on those issues and they started censoring our renewal letters and our subscription forms.

We've won virtually all of our censorship suits. Over the years, we've filed about 60 or 70 suits, yet people still censor us today. All of this goes to show the inherent arbitrariness and power of prison and jail officials. And, amazingly, they're never held accountable for anything. Even when the systems we fight against lose in court, the money doesn't come out of their pockets and they have free lawyers at taxpayer expense. There really is no downside to violating the law for them.

Do you think you'll ever overcome censorship?
We've had to fight very hard to get Prison Legal News into prisons and jails. A lot of what we've done, which I am very proud of, is not only change prison and jail rules to allow Prison Legal News in, but also we've always affected a lot of these policies that censored a lot of other publications. As result of our litigation, I'd say probably around 700,000 prisoners from across the country from California to New York to Washington to Georgia, and pretty much anyplace in between, are getting publications and media from the mail that they otherwise wouldn't.

How has Prison Legal News grown since it first started and what kind of impact do you feel you've had?
We have a small circulation but our impact is really disproportionate to our circulation and it's really increased due to the internet. Times have changed so much. Now we have all of our back issues on our website. We've published something like 27,000 articles on prisons and jails. The internet has been able to have a huge impact on the dissemination of news. And our website is accessed every month by over 150,000 people from all over the world.

What do you imagine is in store for Prison Legal News in the future?
When we started publishing, we said we would keep publishing as long as the money was there. I've always said we would do this as long as we are fulfilling a need, and here we are 25 years later—I definitely think there is a need for what we are doing. I hope we are remembered as the publication that was one of the first in this country to start writing about and documenting mass incarceration. The magazine providing timely and accurate reporting about prison as it was happening.

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Long before she was known to Americans, or the Taliban that would target her, Malala Yousafzai was already being cast as a dead girl. When choosing a student to diary about life in Swat for the BBC in 2009, the commissioning journalist posited that Malala could be Swat's Anne Frank. That same year the New York Times contacted Pakistani journalist Syed Irfan Ashraf to help them produce a documentary on schools threatened by the growing influence of the Taliban, "We want it to play out like film," their email said.

Malala's eloquence as the daughter of the man who ran Khushal Girls High School and College had caught the attention of journalists before, appearing on Pakistan's Dawn channel, and Ashraf connected the Yousafzais to the Times' Adam Ellick. Malala's family and Ashraf thought the documentary would be about Taliban school closures more generally but instead it focused on Malala. From January to March, Malala also blogged for the BBC about life in Mingora, and the violence that was becoming routine. Despite her use of a pen name the media attention was worrisome, but everyone thought a child would be immune from the dangers other journalists risked in Pakistan.

Malala survived the assassination attempt, but the way those outside Pakistan celebrate her life almost presupposes her death instead. So shrill and uninformed is the call to be inspired by her that it's easy to imagine it all as a posthumous hagiography.

The preference for narrative is equally apparent in Davis Guggenheim's recent documentary He Named Me Malala, which closely follows the events that made Malala Yousafzai an icon. That Malala is named after a folk hero who also stood up against armed forces without fear of reprisal is a poetic symmetry the film enjoys lingering over. And so would I, if the story were in fact the children's folktale that the animated vignettes punctuating the documentary suggest, and not about living activists.

The war on terror is not a feel-good tale of triumph over adversity; yet He Named Me Malala is. How do we evaluate a movie whose central narrative is activated by a reality the film ignores?

At first they're effective, carried by Malala's incredible life story thus far, and especially moving when paralleling her father's victory over his stammer and fear of public speaking with Malala's own journey toward discovering her skills as a public speaker. Familiar with the ungenerous assumptions made about Pakistani fathers, I was especially grateful that the co-star of He Named Me Malala is Malala's father, teacher and firebrand activist Ziauddin Yousafzai. But the animations are styled as if for a children's public programming special—a hint of what the movie could have been like had the producers stuck with their original plan for a feature film as opposed to a documentary. The title of the movie references the film's implication, that perhaps Malala's name, shared by the storied Malalai of Maiwand, inscribed a fate upon her from birth. Guggenheim should have saved such prophesying for the Disney reboot.

Guggenheim replaces the events that shaped Malala, her father, and their home for a story of individual resilience, a single rising note held for poignancy. The war on terror is not a feel-good tale of triumph over adversity; yet He Named Me Malala is. How do we evaluate a movie whose central narrative is activated by a reality the film ignores?

The memoir the movie is based on, co-written with journalist Christina Lamb, comprehensively traces Malala's experiences along her homeland's history—from the Buddhist ruins that can still be found across their hills to the drones that terrorize their skies. Malala describes Swat valley in stirring detail:

We lived in the most beautiful place in all the world. My valley, the Swat valley, is a heavenly kingdom of mountains, gushing waterfalls, and crystal-clear lakes. Welcome to Paradise it says on a sign as you enter the valley.

"Paradise" is a word repeated in the film, and in just about everything ever written on Swat before 2007. The events that violated that paradise gain far less screen time, an omission increasingly painful the more Malala and her family reminisce about the idyllic past of their old home, and their desire to one day return to it, understanding how slim the chances of such an opportunity have become.

Located roughly 50 miles from the Afghan border, Swat's history is intertwined with Afghanistan, and its people are spread across the hills between the two countries. These are areas with ties much older than modern maps would show—"We Pashtuns," Malala writes, "are split between Pakistan and Afghanistan and don't really recognize the border that the British drew more than 100 years ago."

In 1979, Russia intervened in a civil war in Afghanistan that had broken out after socialist Nur Mohammad Taraki's coup began a regime that violently suppressed opposition. The Russians wanted to install a socialist of their own preference and found themselves mired for ten years. The last headscarved girl who captured America's imagination was fleeing Soviet airstrikes when Steve McCurry photographed her for the 1985 cover of National Geographic.

Back then, there were other groups resisting Taraki's Marxist-oriented regime, but the US chose to support the ideological mujahideen. Among those championing the power of radicalized Islam to further US interests in destabilizing the region was Graham Fuller, deputy director of the CIA's National Council on Intelligence. This support, named Operation Cyclone, had begun before the Soviets intervened and ultimately became one of the longest and most expensive covert operations the CIA ever funded.

Pakistan is a young nation, founded in 1947. Zia-Ul-Haq's 1979 coup inducted only the sixth president the country had ever had. Under Haq, Pakistan experienced a radical departure from the vision of its founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. At a speech to a women's school in 1940, Jinnah said, "No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men," and indeed insisted throughout his life that "Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic state to be ruled by priests with a divine mission." But Haq instituted oppressive reforms in the name of religious piety. Malala's memoir recounts how Haq barred the women's national field hockey team from wearing shorts, banning women entirely from other sports. Religion classes suffered a curriculum overhaul, with tolerant representations of other faiths excised and a brand of religious nationalism emphasized. The appetite for being remembered is exaggerated in unremarkable men—the man Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had once dismissed as a "monkey" later ordered Bhutto's hanging. "We started off with an open hand, a hand of love and affection for the people of Pakistan," Haq remarked. "But then I find that at times a squeeze has to be applied."

The execution of his elected predecessor repelled the international community, and the US cut off aid to Pakistan. When Haq started training the Afghan refugees escaping Russia's bombs as resistance fighters, the US returned with money and weapons. At a state dinner in winter of 1982, President Ronald Reagan honored Zia-Ul-Haq, effusing:

We find ourselves even more frequently in agreement on our goals and objectives.... Your country has come to the forefront of the struggle to construct a framework for peace in your region, an undertaking which includes your strenuous efforts to bring peaceful resolution to the crisis in Afghanistan—a resolution which will enable the millions of refugees currently seeking shelter in Pakistan to go home in peace and honor.

For Pakistan it was a way to exert influence in an area out of the national government's range. For the US, it was a way to gain a regional ally after losing Iran in the Shah's overthrow in 1979, counter Soviet influence, and establish an access point to the natural gas-rich lands of then Soviet-controlled Central Asia. Ziauddin Yousafzai's memories betray the nature of the shared goals Reagan alluded to, in her memoir Malala recalls:

My father says that in our part of the world this idea of jihad was very much encouraged by the CIA. Children in the refugee camps were even given school textbooks produced by an American university which taught basic arithmetic through fighting. They had examples like, 'If out of 10 Russian infidels, 5 are killed by Muslims, 5 would be left' or '15 bullets - 10 bullets = 5 bullets.'

In the early aughts, Pakistan's President Musharraf, another coup-installed army general, eroded some of Haq's legacy by appointing the first woman governor of the state bank and the first women airline pilots and coast guard, while also loosening restrictions on the entertainment industries. At the same time, the North West Frontier Province experienced the emergence of a "mullah government" in the form of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a fundamentalist party backed by Musharraf. These men took power and began erasing women from public life. In 2004, the high school where Ziauddin taught was no longer allowed to be co-ed. "But some people supported them because the very religious Pashtuns were angry at the American invasion of Afghanistan," Malala writes.

By early 2009, the US and Nato forces had militarized Swat and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) had overtaken the Swat valley. In an utterly remorseful op-ed after Malala's shooting Syed Ashraf recalls the lead up to the attack, "I realized the gravity of the situation only after the New York Times released the short documentary, Class Dismissed... While I then disassociated myself from such projects, the media helped turn Malala's advocacy for education into a solid campaign against the TTP over the next three years. Politicians jumped into the fray to help the media in commodifying Malala's youthful energies. A strong anti-TTP structure was erected on her frail shoulders. This is one aspect of the story, and it concerns the media's role in dragging bright young people into dirty wars with horrible consequences for the innocent."

Malala at the Kisaruni Girls School in Massai Mara, Kenya. Photo by Gina Nemirofsky/Courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures

Last year Ashraf was working on a doctorate in journalism at Southern Illinois University with a grant from the State Department. In an interview with the Southern Illinoisan, Ashraf described how his appeals to Pakistanis in Swat are undermined by American policy:

I am teaching about love, and social relationships and they would say, "Wait a minute, you just came from the US and are telling us about these things?" That is the reaction from the huge militancy around me there and that militancy is a result of the militarization from which the US and NATO forces have done... despite all of the positive things I can say about America, I will be less influential there as long as officials here do not engage in social interaction, but through metals and bombshells.

When I met with Guggenheim in September over coffee in New York, he said he "made a very conscious choice not to get into the geopolitics of all that," a baffling attitude from someone known for the political import of his documentaries. He went on to admit, "In the end it's very important, especially for Americans, to understand our role in destabilizing the region, and the roots of fundamentalism. But I chose not to make that movie." That decision, which doesn't prevent the film from being an eminently watchable 88 minutes, yields a very bitter aftertaste.

The chief convenience of a far-away tragedy is that the commiseration, a voluntary engagement, can feel like charity.

As wonderful as it is to see Malala show us the bookshelf in her new room in Birmingham, England, and watch her be teased by her brothers, safe and sound, I'm left disturbed. The documentary offers a comfort those of us in America and England have not earned. Reviews exclaim how inspiring the film is, but it isn't illuminating. What exactly will viewers be inspired to do? There's nothing to challenge the prevailing ignorance about the region's history, the land Malala came from and why she can no longer live there.

Military interventions in Afghanistan and Pakistan have been sold to the public as a rescue mission to save Muslim women from Muslim men. When shot at 15, Malala became one of those women. Despite her love of her homeland and proud identification as a devout Muslim, her story is shared with the assumptions about a region that remains clouded by shallow, manipulative representation.

Media outside of Pakistan talk about Malala as a girl shot for wanting to go to school. Like the way clueless parents urge children to finish their vegetables because some kids somewhere in Africa are starving, Malala is often introduced with a reminder of how some American kids have the gall to complain about attending school. There is little curiosity about why she couldn't—instead, we are led to assume that the barbaric attack on Malala is all that can be expected of a barbaric people. In the Western imagination, the Middle East and Pakistan exist in a state of crisis that assumes an ahistorical retardation of the so-called "Muslim world."

Malala Yousafzai at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City in 2013. Photo courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures

Guggenheim admitted sharing the general public's ignorance about the devolution of the region Malala calls home. "When I look back at when I started the movie, I realize how ignorant I was. You could easily assume that the problems of the Taliban in these parts was just a continuation of problems for centuries," he told me. "But it's not."

If you search pictures of universities and public spaces across the Middle East before the 80s, you'll find many women, many of them dressed chicly in skirts of varying lengths and with hair uncovered. Today, from Cairo to Kabul, the women are often sequestered indoors or underneath mandated niqabs and burkas. The Quran, a text preaching intellectual inquiry, tolerance, and equality, is used to justify intolerance, misogyny, and suicide bombings. Countries with Muslim-majority populations, who can claim women heads of state long before it was even a possibility in the US, devalue women's standing in society with restricted access to the public sphere. The same country in which Malala was shot for insisting upon her education also boasts a greater percentage of female members of Parliament than there are women in the US congress.

Contradiction between preaching and practice are common to our species, but these particular disparities have ballooned through the special circumstances.

If Malala's father is a good man, it's only because he's not like all the other men "over there." If Malala was shot on her way to school, it's simply because people "over there" can't stand girls in schools.

The oil crisis of 1973—in which Saudi Arabia embargoed the US and others in response to US military support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War—proved Saudi Arabia's power internationally. America realized its dependency on Saudi oil, and as such it became paramount to never again alienate the House of Saud. Saudi Arabia constitutes barely three percent of the world's Muslim population, but Wahhabism was born and bred in a country with the petrodollars to export it around the world.

Wahhabism is patriarchal, uncompromisingly intolerant of anyone who isn't Wahhabist, and offers only absolutes in a world of uncertainties, replacing a sense of faith with a sense of mission. An estimated 100 billion dollars has gone toward evangelizing this shuttered worldview, mostly through Wahhabist translations of the Quran and the funding of madrassas—religious schools devoted to a Wahhabist form of Islam. These schools, often the only option in the most rural and impoverished of communities, teach pupils the rigidity of Wahhabism and invite them to participate in what is presented as a global struggle against nonbelievers. In her memoir Malala describes how these schools mushroomed in Swat:

During the Afghan jihad many madrassas had been built, most of them funded by Saudi money, and many young men had passed through them as it was free education. That was the start of what my father calls the 'Arabisation' of Pakistan.

While its ascension outside of Saudi Arabia overlapped with Operation Cyclone, Wahhabism dates back to the late 1700s, when Muhammad ibn Saud and Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab agreed to support each other in their respective mission toward an Islamic state. Wahhab entered into this agreement with a view towards a "purified" Islam; Saud with a view towards increased land assets. Eventually, through a series of strategic, armed campaigns justified as an expansion of Wahhabist morality, the Saud family established the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1926. That alliance produced an ideological juggernaut, an autocratic monarchy dependent on an informal body of religious authorities and rich off international oil dependence.

Islam has no ruling body, no Church, no Vatican, no priesthood. That hasn't stopped men from insisting on their religious authority through varying levels of scholarship. Besides, as the land of the final prophet and Islam's holiest sites, Saudi Arabia flexes an Arab-supremacist view of Islam.

Quietly unchecked, Wahhabism could one day be viewed as among the most important determinants of the modern world as we know it. ISIS, which emerged out of post-Iraq War sectarian violence, may be anti-Saud, but only because they're the competition for the actualization of a Wahhabist state.

In an interview with Frontline in October 2001, extremism expert Professor Vali Nasr explained:

...the main source of funding for these groups is Saudi Arabia. In fact, this whole phenomenon that we are confronting, which Al Qaeda is a part of, is very closely associated with Saudi Arabia's financial and religious projects for the Muslim world as a whole... There is an undercurrent of terror and fanaticism that go hand in hand in the Afghanistan-Pakistan arc... For instance, in one madrassa in Pakistan, I interviewed 70 Malaysian and Thai students who are being educated side by side with students who went on to the Afghan war and the like. These people return to their countries, and then we see the results in a short while.... At best, they become hot-headed preachers in mosques that encourage fighting Christians in Nigeria or in Indonesia. And in a worst case, they actually recruit or participate in terror acts.

The oil and weapons trade funds an economy devoted to the proliferation of an ideology masquerading as the one true expression of Islam. It's hardly recognizable to me, as a practicing Muslim, but it's the one that's increasingly taken to represent the faith I subscribe to. Muslims around the world insist Islam is a religion of peace every time a Wahhabist carries out a terror attack, and everyone else grows increasingly bigoted toward the Muslims around them despite our testimony. We perform a respectability politics of ideal, upwardly mobile patriotism, but it's unable to compete with the jihadis who shriek for death and chaos and politicians who channel public fears toward furthering the surveillance apparatus against Muslims.

Saudi Arabia, however, enjoys American allyship and protection. The pages of the 9/11 congressional commission that allegedly detail Saudi Arabia's ties to terrorists are redacted, but a Wikileaks cable in 2009 quotes then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as saying, "Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide." When Biden made similar comments last year at a Q&A at Harvard's Kennedy School regarding Gulf monarchies and the money flowing to extremists, he was forced to issue formal apologies. Meanwhile, countries in its orbit suffer the influence of Wahhabist imams and the American weapons we send in after them. In the 80s, Osama Bin Laden was among the millionaires who helped Saudi Arabia match the American funds to Pakistan during Haq's presidency. Since then, most of the victims of Wahhabist attacks, suicide bombings in markets and assassinations, continue to be other Muslims in the Middle East and South Asia.

Saudi Arabia currently leads the US-backed coalition of fundamentalist Gulf monarchies bombing Yemen in an effort to suppress a revolution. Amnesty International has called for a suspension of the US weapons supply that has been devastating Yemenis for the past seven months, but America remains steadfast. Today, the State Department identifies Saudi Arabia as a "strong partner in regional security and counterterrorism efforts."

You don't love Malala because you're grateful she survived—you love her because she's not angry. Despite the starstruck media's insistence, the star of this story isn't an astoundingly gracious child—it's the resounding relief of politicians and officials whose violent foreign policies aren't indicted.

When the mujahideen took root, so did a vision that would be inherited by generations, thanks to a Saudi investment in its dissemination. Since Operation Cyclone, the mujahideen who didn't become Al-Qaeda became Taliban, and imams in madrassas around the world deliver made-in-Saud narratives of an infidel world and a martyrdom rewarded with virgins. As the memory of Soviet bombs cools, American invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan and drone deaths in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, heat these sermons with a fresh urgency. There were many men with guns before one appeared between Malala and her life.

"It was a very enlightened society generations before," Guggenheim explained. "It was a very peaceful world. It was like a paradise. This Taliban thing was a very recent thing, and a lot of American's don't understand that." However Guggenheim's film does little to alleviate the misapprehension.

Listening to Guggenheim explain his film to me felt a lot like watching the film, pleasant until you realize what you're being distracted from. By what right can Americans allow ourselves to feel good about our embrace of Malala? The casualties of an imperial war effort shouldn't be cordoned off into charity projects with marketing teams. This is not politicizing a tragedy—rather, this is remembering that the depoliticization occurred, and continues. Positioning Malala as the hero of the process veils that process.

Malala is demonstrably attached to unassailable social goods like education and women's equality; the media uses that attachment to obscure the wars that interrupted education and women's equality around the world. In July, during a speech at the Oslo Education Summit, Malala stated, "There is a whole generation of children in Syria and many other war-affected areas such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine where children have been kept away from the classroom by conflicts." Those feting her have yet to make such connections.

He Named Me Malala might allow us to connect with a family, but it's a shameless intercession. American media, including Guggenheim's documentary, focus on fringe Pakistani conspiracy theorists to insist Pakistanis don't love Malala like the West does. Yet Malala was Pakistan's hero first and foremost. Pakistanis held vigils when she was shot, and when she won the Nobel peace prize, Ahmed Shah, a school principal in Mingora, echoed the nation's sentiments when he told Pakistan's most widely read newspaper, "Malala's achievement is a great pride for Swat and all of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but especially for Pakhtuns who are always perceived as terrorists. We are jubilant that it is our Pakhtun daughter who has brought laurels to the entire Pakistani nation."

But outside of Pakistan, if Malala's father is a good man, it's only because he's not like all the other men "over there." If Malala was shot on her way to school, it's simply because people "over there" can't stand girls in schools. And if America doesn't center itself in Malala's adulation, no one "over there" will appreciate her. The unengaged engagement we're called on to perform doesn't deserve to count as support of Malala and her goals: It hardly understands either.

Malala Yousafzai in New York City in 2013. Photo courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures

The chief convenience of a far-away tragedy is that the commiseration, a voluntary engagement, can feel like charity. Leaving a public stirred, but undisturbed, charity offers a release valve that depletes the radical potential of outrage. Neoliberal responses to tragedy preclude justice in favor of non-state icons of "goodness." And once branded to endorse values without controversy or actionable commitment (like network-wide social-media avatars), these figures can be deployed to safely verbalize an alliance with what is good, while presenting no disturbance to the conditions preventing that good, or their own biases. Malala exercises her limited agency to defend the right to education—since the attack, she has opened a school in Lebanon for Syrian refugees and committed to rebuilding 65 schools in Gaza. But pundits, politicians, and corporate media partners, all rely on appeals to "humanity" that abstract historical timelines and ignore present-day context.

Celebrities walk red carpets leading up to Malala events, and politicians who approved military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan eagerly smile in photos next to her. Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio recently expressed his openness to barring Muslims from receiving student visas in America; when asked who he'd "most like to have a beer with," he confidently named our 18-year-old Muslim heroine.

Two months after the assassination attempt on Malala, Hillary Clinton—who voted to escalate the war in Afghanistan and supports ongoing drone strikes in Pakistan currently—dedicated a video to Malala and their "shared cause." Today, Clinton's campaign website hosts a GIF of Malala being interviewed by Emma Watson. Television hosts gloss over Malala's critiques of war to dote on her insouciance. Classroom guides formed around her memoir are taught in schools. But it's unlikely that any include chapters on the repeated invasions of the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands or how the rise of Wahhabist Islam was funded to support terrorism like the kind that placed a gun between a young girl and her classroom. Neither the gun nor the man holding it appeared overnight.

The applause from everyone who can't name a thing about Pakistan besides Malala is, in reality, gratitude for allowing us a war hero minus the war—in which we are unassailable champions, in which all the mythos of an enlightened, forward-thinking West and a violent, perpetually stunted East hold true. I believe Malala. I don't believe the people posing next to her.

You don't love Malala because you're grateful she survived—you love her because she's not angry. Despite the starstruck media's insistence, the star of this story isn't an astoundingly gracious child—it's the resounding relief of politicians and officials whose violent foreign policies aren't indicted.

"Malala and her family are truly forgiving people," marveled Guggenheim. "They don't live with bitterness. They also don't live with their faith on their sleeve. It's very private and very beautiful. I was very inspired." Kind and not confrontationally Muslim: perfect for audiences worldwide. I don't doubt Guggenheim's sincerity, just its usefulness in an environment deaf to Malala's words and primed for a mascot.

Two years ago the Rehman family traveled from Pakistan to speak before Congress about the trauma drone violence is causing—they'd watched their grandmother killed as she tended their garden and now no longer go outside. Like many in northwest Pakistan, they've grown to fear clear skies; drone weather. Rehman told reporters, "I knew that Americans would have a heart... That's why I came here—I thought if they heard my story, they would want to listen to me." Malala has had audience with most heads of state, the UN, and Bono. Just five congressmen attended the Rehmans' hearing.

Thousands have been killed in the routine drone attacks in Pakistan. In Yemen, US drones have killed more than Al-Qaeda. Newspapers insist these are militants, but almost all are civilians. The army retroactively categorizes anyone killed by a drone (for things likeholding a cell phone or appearing in a gathering) as a militant if they're a "military-age" male, making the recorded deaths just as obscure.

Related: The VICE Guide to Karachi:

The film briefly presents Malala's criticism of drone warfare, unabashed in her memoir, as teenage precociousness, not knowing better than to be blunt with heads of state. We're encouraged to find her most courageous statements cute, and her cutest impulses, like crushing on actors and athletes, courageous.

Almost every review of the documentary has thought to mention the scene in which Malala shyly giggles over online pictures of Brad Pitt and Roger Federer. I cringe each time an article remarks upon the innocuous gesture. It's like we're proud of ourselves for her participation in teen frivolity, of her interest in Western celebrities tinged with the typical fascination in Muslim women's sex lives, which non- Muslims tend to think are disallowed. My own appreciation for the scenes that showed Ziauddin Yousafzai's love and care for his family expressed the undignified gratitude of someone used to being saddled with gross stereotypes.

"What I knew about Pakistan was what I read in the New York Times," the director confessed. What was revelatory for him was learning what a Muslim family from a small town in Pakistan is like. "Sitting at their kitchen table, seeing how they raise their children, and seeing how they manage the complicated mission of building a family. It was a lot like mine. That's what I was drawn to. Their kitchen table is like my kitchen table, and there's teasing and joy and laughter and how beautiful the Islamic faith is." At the time, I was ecstatic hearing Guggenheim share what I already knew about Pakistani families, and recalled how I enjoyed watching scenes of Malala's father make breakfast and Malala's mother practice her English. In hindsight, to be so impressed by such basic recognition of a Muslim family's normalcy was a depressing reminder of how much bias against Muslims I'm used to.

Guggenheim's reasons for "leaving politics out" of a story that wouldn't exist without a series of political decisions made by America—first to arm and train the Taliban and then to fight them in Afghanistan, pushing them into Pakistan—reminded me how Guggenheim, and many of the white viewers of his film, can exist on a very different plane than the one I and Malala occupy. "Sometimes, when you tell the political story, it can dehumanize what is happening to everyday people," Guggenheim noted. "And I wanted to talk about one family and what they experienced. What does it take to speak out, how do you find your voice? To me, that was a very small intimate family experience." This definition of "humanize" was new to me.

Guggenheim uses "humanize" to mean relatable; relatability as a requisite for empathy is only a very slight improvement on dehumanization. And it's a power move. The film doesn't avoid dehumanizing Malala—it radically reduces her experience to be accessible. Taking the opportunity to universalize erases what is at stake for Malala and her family until it's available to everyone, regardless of whether or not it should be. Guggenheim interprets his film the way many viewers might. "I identify with it a lot," he told me. "Maybe when you have struggle, it makes you appreciate things more. The fact that has trouble speaking, but it makes his voice stronger and more passionate. I had trouble in school, and now I cherish it more."

Zia Yousafzai, Malala Yousafzai, director Davis Guggenheim, and crew at the Za'atari Refugee Camp, Jordan, in 2014. Photo by Gina Nemirofsky/courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures

When the Taliban entered Swat, Malala was roughly the same age as her father was when Operation Cyclone began. Decades later, the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands remain caught between the US and Pakistani governments. When the US brought the war on terror to Pakistan, it completely destabilized the FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, with the Taliban moving east, and the CIA and Pakistani ISI following. Regions that had previously enjoyed anti-statist self-governance and functioned as tourist destinations are now unrecognizable, with hundreds of thousands if not millions of people displaced.

The US continues attempts to angle that chaos into a control of energy resources in Central Asia. Meanwhile, Pakistan's government clumsily juggles both the US demands for greater military aggression in the region and the Taliban's violence-bartered insistence on free reign. The United States and Europe, too dependent on buying oil from and selling weapons to Saudi Arabia to ever critique the Saudi monarchy, routinely escape shame for what their decisions have wrought, and the entertainment industry routinely facilitates that escape.

Guggenheim's film seamlessly furthers our ability to keep on celebrating ourselves for celebrating Malala. The international community exploits Malala's status as a failsafe crowd favorite, press tours with a native war hero, minus the wars, with nothing less than the half smile the remaining nerves in her face generously offer to those culpable in her fate.

The extent to which Malala Yousafzai has been heralded has been enough to trigger the paranoia of Pakistanis who, after years of being bombed by the United States, now feel they have no choice other than to distrust anything America insists is good. Thankfully, the conspiracy theorists, convinced of Malala's staging as a pawn of Western illuminati, are far outnumbered by the Pakistanis who see Malala's struggle as theirs, too. Like Malala, Pakistanis desperately wish to reclaim their country from the Taliban—risking their lives as every protester against extremism is added to Taliban hit lists.

Last December, the man who ordered Malala's assassination organized another attack on a school for the children of army members in Pakistan. Orchestrated by seven foreign nationals, the shooting killed 141 people in Peshawar. He Named Me Malala briefly profiles this man, but only from the point at which he is already an infamous Talib. He rose to prominence after joining Afghan fighters resisting the US invasion of Afghanistan. Prior to that, "Maulana" Fazlullah lived in a village selling wooden window shutters off a pushcart.

Ayesha Siddiqi is the editor in chief of the New Inquiry. Follow her on Twitter.

He Named Me Malala is playing in theaters now.

Illustration by Thomas Pullin

Chemsex—the use of drugs during sex, often over the course of a couple of days—is increasingly becoming a problem for a section of the UK's male gay community.

Besides drug addiction and the crushing comedowns of a three-day binge, drugs like GHB/GBL are notoriously dangerous: Take the right amount and ride a wave of euphoric horniness; take just a little bit too much and it's a spasming descent into a temporary coma. Some men have even died from G overdoses. Crystal meth and mephedrone are both known to incite paranoid psychosis, where guys who haven't slept for days start hearing voices, and long-term crystal use can cause physical damage to the body.

The sex itself is often without condoms, contributing to rising STI rates. Add "slamming"—the injection of crystal meth or mephedrone mixed with water—to the pot and there's an additional path for viruses like HIV and hepatitis C to body-hop on a needle's prick.

It's important to note that not every gay drug user has a problem with chemsex; that chemsex is still a relatively small issue, in terms of the number of people engaging in it; and that some are able to do so without it affecting their lives too much. But that clearly isn't the case for everyone—the rise of people (mostly, but not exclusively, gay men) using drugs during sex has prompted experts to issue a public health warning about chemsex.

As we see in the new VICE documentary CHEMSEX, there are various factors involved in its rise: The allure of drugs and sex is the obvious starting point, but for many there's more to it than that—issues around identity, self-worth, and a sense of wanting to belong all come up regularly. So how do we go about tackling the chemsex epidemic when there are so many potential causes to address? I asked five experts for their opinions.

THE CHEMSEX EXPERT
David Stuart, Substance Use Lead, 56 Dean Street

Competently addressing chemsex is challenging, because though it may be perceived as a drug problem, it's more of a sex problem; a cultural problem associated with how gay men understand and pursue sex, intimacy, and relationships.

A gay man can come out of the best rehab facility, but is still grossly unprepared for what he might encounter on the gay scene: widespread normalization and availability of chems; a culture that can be defensive about its right to use drugs; HIV stigma; online rejections; and body-fit, masculine, porn-star expectations.

A dialogue within our gay communities about how lovely—and very real—our vulnerabilities are would be a great start. There's a huge reluctance to admit we're vulnerable as a population. Let's address our needs to fit in, avoid rejection and seek affirmation, particularly via sexual avenues. If that dialogue extended to gay-inclusive relationship and sex education in schools and homes for our young people, then we could protect future generations of gay men from chemsex.

At the public health level, chemsex is best addressed in sexual health clinics, where the consequences of chemsex are most acute. In the UK, sexual health clinics not only treat and assess sexual health risks, but they talk comfortably about gay sex, they have the favor of gay men and they have robust psychosocial support services to address sexual behavioral issues.

Read on Broadly: Why More Women Are Having Sex on Drugs

THE MEDICAL AND PSYCHOLOGY EXPERT
Dr. Owen Bowden-Jones, Consultant Psychiatrist for the Club Drug Clinic

Drugs have always been used by some to facilitate sex, both by straight and LGBT communities, but there is something new about the recent trend known as chemsex. At the Club Drug Clinic, we have seen drug use and sexual intimacy bound together, some where you can't find one without the other. Sober intimacy can become unthinkable, as does drug use without sex. Some manage to find a balance, but those who come to the clinic asking for help have lost control.

The challenge for the clinic is to help people untangle the chemsex knot. As with most problems related to drugs, the key issue is not just the drugs, but why people are using them. This is particularly true for chemsex. Fear of intimacy, low self-esteem, and internalized aggression are just some of the reasons we work with.

Although chemsex is largely a problem for men who have sex with men, it is important to remember than most gay men don't have chemsex. Challenging stereotypes is part of our work at the Club Drug Clinic, keeping the door open for those who need help, while avoiding stigma for those who don't.

THE HIV EXPERT
Matthew Hodson, Chief Executive at GMFA

Some gay men use drugs to escape because they feel unable to cope with their lives, or because of difficulties they've experienced coming to terms with their sexuality, or because they're struggling to cope with an HIV diagnosis. Tackling that hurt and damage that some gay men feel as they come to terms with their sexuality, even if it were simple to do, may not be enough.

But we should not lose sight of the main reason that many gay men take drugs: because, just like our heterosexual brothers and sisters filling the clubs in Ibiza or Ayia Napa, we think they're fun. A report by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs found that campaigns intended to stop people taking drugs were not effective and, in some cases, increased the chance of people taking drugs.

At GMFA we're not going to tell men to stop using drugs. That simply won't work. Instead we concentrate our efforts, through our campaigns and the information we provide to gay men, on reducing the harms that may come from drug use, whether that's sexual harm, or other health harms that can arise from prolonged use or overdosing.

Related: Watch the trailer for 'CHEMSEX,' released in UK theaters on Friday, December 4.

THE LGBT CHARITY EXPERT
Monty Moncrieff, Chief Executive at London Friend

Antidote gives men a safe space to talk, and they really value having a specialist service. Ninety percent of our clients tell us it's important to have an LGBT service, and only 12 percent say they'd be happy going to mainstream drug treatment. Sexual health clinics have a big role to play here, too, as guys will go there for PEP or to get a STI treated much sooner than they'd come to a drug service, so setting up outreach in clinics like Mortimer Market and 56 Dean Street was important for us.

The wider LGBT community can help lead the discussion about chemsex through events like Let's Talk About Gay Sex and Drugs. These are a great opportunity for the community to shape our own responses and talk to our peers, and not stigmatize others' drug use and sexual choices. When problems occur with chemsex they're connected to much wider issues about belonging, identity, relationships, and intimacy, and our confidence to navigate all of this improves when we understand and support each other.

For Antidote it's about helping people do it safely, if they choose to, and helping them recognize when it's not so much fun any more, providing opportunities to get some support, hopefully before it becomes a bigger problem.

THE RESEARCH EXPERT
Dr. Adam Bourne, Sigma Research, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Perhaps surprisingly, I actually think one of the priorities needs to be around helping gay men who choose to use drugs to do so more safely.

There are lots of guys who don't know enough about basic harm reduction—about dosing of G, timings, potentially dangerous interactions with other drugs or alcohol. The UK is a world leader in drug harm reduction, but we haven't previously focused on the drugs most popular with gay men nowadays. Drug use isn't going to stop, so we need to provide the information to help men use them more safely.

In relation to sexual health and wellbeing, it's important that gay men are encouraged to reflect on whether the sex they're having on chems is what they really aspire to. I'm not anti-drugs and I'm absolutely not saying that guys engaging in chemsex are doing anything wrong. But I am saying that so many of the men I've interviewed about this didn't actually seem to be happy with their sex lives. Reflection and contemplation is the first big step in behavior change. We have a responsibility as a community and as health or social care professionals to start those conversations.

Follow Patrick Cash on Twitter.

Chemsex support is available in most sexual health clinics. 56 Dean Street offers one-to-one chemsex support; visit chemsexsupport.com. Antidote (London Friend) offers drug and alcohol support for the LGBT community. Call 0207 833 1674.

CHEMSEX is released in the UK on Friday, December 4. To see a full list of cinemas showing the film, click here.

CHEMSEX will be released on DVD and On-Demand in the UK on January 11.

To read the rest of the articles from our Chemsex Week—a series exploring the people, issues, and stories in and around the world of chemsex—click here.

All 'Tangiers' work-in-progress screenshots from Steam Greenlight

Whatever your favorite "big" game of 2015, chances are that it's playing on existing themes, whether they be real life sports or weapons, styles of monster that have been around for generations or a man in a silly costume beating up other guys. But enough about the latest Madden.

Anyway, there's more to creativity than this "established canon of influence within the medium," as Alex Harvey, lead developer on Tangiers, tells me. Tangiers is a "first person, immersive stealth game," driven by 20th century avant-garde. It's set in a surrealist world that "can loosely be summed up as 1960s inner-city Britain meets William Burroughs."

Well, that's certainly a unique location for a game. So where did the idea come from?

"When I first started thinking about making Tangiers, it was really a reaction to what I perceived as an industry that didn't cater for me. There's a comfortable space when you stay within the territory of The Lord of the Rings, Aliens, Blade Runner et al, but personally I'm getting rather fatigued with that."

At the beginning of the 20th century, it turned out that people were getting pretty good at drawing portraits and painting landscapes, so some forward-thinking artists started to branch out. In the 1920s, Surrealism was born, where artists would explore illogical compositions and things outside of the norm. Are these same steps starting to be taken within game development?

"It all falls back to gaming's sluggish cultural progression," Harvey continues. "We're broad, yes. Dig deep enough and you'll find something for everyone. But in terms of discourse, in attempted forward motion, that's all taken in baby steps and is very inward looking. You have noticeable voices loudly pronouncing that forward movement involves making games with 'empathy' or 'emotions.' As creators, we need to throw that mentality in the bin and plough forward with more commitment and creativity. Embrace what external culture has done and has been doing for decades. Let's have a Burroughs, a Ballard, a KLF, and a John Waters. Let's aim for a definition of transgression that's more than Hatred's shock-yer-grandma lurching.

"So, so many developers, outside of the development, are just people who play video games. They grew up on video games, they go home to video games. Sometimes they go to the cinema, but video games are the main cultural reference point. A thousand games influenced by Mario and retro-styled games such as Fez, that are nostalgia for a childhood of Nintendo. That is changing, though. As development becomes more accessible, artists, creatives, people who wouldn't consider themselves 'gamers' have greater opportunity to take advantage of the medium."

New on Motherboard: Decide 'Who Must Die' In This Live-Action Investigation Simulation

It was the adherence to the norm in video games that made Harvey perceive the industry as one that didn't cater for him to begin with. Rather than quit, though, he decided to make something that would cater to him, and hopefully people who feel the same way. That's not to say he's not looking forward to other games, however.

"I am more than a bit over-excited for the remake of Pathologic," Harvey tells me (this interview took place a while ago, and the game is now out). "The original was one of the few games that just clicked so hard with me. Points of influence, visual stylings, thematic bent, gameplay aspirations, and an off-kilter approach made it love at first sight for me. That they've improved its failings is the best industry news I've heard in years. Next to that, I'm really hoping Zeno Clash developers Ace Team take their Endless Cylinder prototype further. The four minutes they uploaded were enthralling."

The Endless Cylinder video shows a surrealist game set on a planet where an odd little creature hatches from an egg and walks around while a monolithic worm stretches as far as the eye can see. It looks like where I imagine all the creatures from Maxis' Spore were sent after people stopped playing the game.

Watch VICE talk film with Gaspar Noé

But what about Tangiers? It's all very well wanting to break through the zeitgeist, but if the game is no good, then what's the point? "When we first designed the game, we started off as a sort of 'Thief Lite,'" says Harvey. "Inherited mechanics, but a third-person perspective, reduced world interactions, and a very straightforward, mechanical AI." The game's changed since those original ideas. "As we've developed things and explored our potential, we've committed ourselves to evolving that into something far more mature."

A successful Kickstarter campaign helped bring new ideas to fruition. "It was a wonderful thing to bring to completion, but following that, to say we've had a rough development would be an understatement. We've had more than our fair share of unavoidable problems, and we're running a year over what our budget was designed for. But, we've managed to beat everything into shape and crawl up to the finish line, so it could have gone a lot worse. We've got plans to develop Tangiers with new features and content and console ports throughout the next year. We've no chance to catch our breath until the whole project's done and dusted."

With surrealism, there's always the worry that people won't "get it." Some may look at Dali's The Persistence of Memory and say, "OK, there are melting clocks and a weird creature on the ground... but what is it?" I ask what Harvey is doing to combat this.

"One of the challenges I set myself with the project was to create a healthy balance of accessibility and the obtuse. At the heart of Tangiers is a tried and tested model of gameplay. One that, for the most part, is readily usable and understandable. It collides and bleeds into the abstract and avant-garde, but gives the player obvious things to hold onto."

Other people may not understand that surrealism isn't synonymous with "randomness." "Sure, you can throw any old crap together and it might be surreal," says Harvey, "but that wouldn't mean anything, would it? You need to back that up with something. An understanding of subject matter, of composition or of emotional impact—ideally all three. Most important, I think, is a focused creative drive behind it. Take the Dada movement, where practitioners, notably Duchamp, would purposefully lay down anything and call it art. That's a snide remark on the nature of art, but becomes a noteworthy entry in and of itself because of the channelled energy behind it."

Tangiers doesn't have a release date just yet, but you can track its progress on Twitter. Whether it will show gamers and developers how much more creative games can be remains to be seen, but it will at least be refreshing to have something a little bit different to play.

Follow Matt on Twitter.

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The New 'Adventure Time' Video Game Is More Mediocre Than Mathematical

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The Joiner's Arms in Shoreditch, now closed (Photo via)

Beleaguered by redevelopments and rising rents, London's most iconic queer venues have had a rough year. Stalwarts such as the Black Cap and the Joiners Arms have shut their doors and many more are currently under the avaricious leer of property developers and landlords, so their cards are likely marked too. But while the well-documented gentrification of London is leaving an indelible stain on the capital's queer scene, the reality is that it's always been in a state of flux.

"Over the years, the scene has always been fluid and moved from area to area," says club promoter Wayne Shires, a titan of London's gay scene since the early 80s. "When I was 15 or 16 and first out, people were still going to Earls Court. It was everyone's scene really. People used to go out there because it was a little group of bars: Bromptons, Copacabana and the Coleherne."

All three venues have now either been closed down, reopened as mixed venues, or redeveloped entirely. Once the city's most prominent gay village, Earls Court's queer quarter—a bustling hive of pubs, cafes and saunas—has all but vanished. That particular moniker passed to Soho in the 80s, a title it's held for some time. Such is the rate of closures now though, there are fears it could suffer a similar fate. Madame Jojo's, Candy Bar, the Green Carnation, and Manbar are just some of the establishments that have recently closed. It's left many asking, what next for queer London?

East London has always housed a handful of queer venues, but it was in the 90s that the scene really thrived, with venues like the Bull and Pump on Shoreditch High Street, Oak Bar in Stoke Newington, and the legendary Joiners Arms. All may now be closed, but the area has experienced something of a resurgence; Dalston Superstore, The Glory, East Bloc, and Vogue Fabrics (now VFD) represent a new slew of gay bars and pubs.

"The scene shifts to different locations in London and that's down to economy," says Shires, who now runs East Bloc. "There were always gay things in east London; the George and Dragon was one of the first places and the Joiners had been there for 20 years. They were very much the fledglings. But obviously, over the last five years, it's really taken off. Pubs have come and gone, but it's always been about the energy and the music and the vibe that clubs and the scene create, rather than the bricks and mortar. It's always about people."

WATCH: The trailer for our new film, Chemsex

In post-war Britain, London's scene has never been stagnant. As the city, social attitudes and economic climate have changed, so too have the city's queer "villages." The scene in some areas will respond to these shifts by flourishing, others flicker and fade. Trying to deduce any sort of consistent pattern to the LGBT scene's evolution seems to be a futile exercise.

"What's interesting, when you start picking apart London's gay scene, is that at any one point there will be two or three different scenes going on," says historian Matt Cook, author of Queer Domesticities: Homosexuality and Home Life in Twentieth-Century London. "There's queer stuff happening at different levels now as well. What you can see is the commercial scene, but then there are movements like Queeruption who are squatting in places, putting on ad-hoc exhibitions, and cinema stuff and one-off nights."

"The scene will reflect a number of things, in particular the cultural positioning of queer people," he continues. "It's no surprise that some of the bars in the 1950s were private members clubs which were very discreet, where you had to sign in and be a member. So maybe it's also no surprise that there's less appetite for gay bars now that people are tending to socialize in mixed bars."

As well as a more dramatic physical shift, London's gay scene has also witnessed something of a psychological one. At the height of the AIDs epidemic in the 80s and 90s, gay pubs provided sanctuary, a platform for launching the kind of activism that raised essential awareness and funds. They fought back against a belligerent government and media.

"When I came out in the late 80s, it felt very important to have our own space," says Cook. "It felt very politically important at that moment of rampant homophobia, acute anxiety and grief, and all that community activism around Aids. Now LGBT people are much less affiliated to the Left and feel much less embattled."

The community may now be less embattled, but bigotries remain. Despite unparalleled social acceptance, LGBT-designated places are still a necessity. Places like the Royal Vauxhall Tavern offer a much-needed safe space for the vulnerable and alienated, not to mention queer artists and performers. So much so that grassroots preservation societies like "Royal Vauxhall Tavern Future" are springing up, campaigning for them to be protected against the developers. Huge support from the community has since earned the Vauxhall Tavern a listed status.

The Vauxhall Tavern is now a listed building (Photo via)

"There is still tension between queer people and straight people," says Jonny Woo, legendary drag queen and performer, and one of the owners of the Glory in Haggerston, east London. "There's still that tension so there is still a need. In that sense we've got a gay scene in east London, but I don't feel like it's ghettoized. Gay bars are definitely part of the wider community now. Dalston Superstore is partly responsible for Dalston's revival, its resurgence. I bet it's really connected to the places up there and I bet all the businesses have a lot of respect for those guys."

Aside from the usual antics that go on in an east London drinking hole, Woo's venue the Glory has become something of a hotspot for community campaigners and activists. In the last few months, it has opened its doors to HIV activists organizing blind date nights, held a fundraiser for the refugee crisis, provided a space for underground feminist publication Polyester to hold workshops and panels, and challenged chemsex culture through a performance of Tennessee William's cult classic "Suddenly Last Summer." It even held its annual "Boobathon," a night designated to raise money for trans women in the midst of their transition.

Johnny Woo (Photo Holly Revell)

Venues like the Glory and Royal Vauxhall Tavern champion their inclusivity. Progressive, considerate attitudes, particularly on the alternative queer scene, are now a fundamental expectation from patrons. As a group that faces greater persecution than most in mainstream society, the trans community has perhaps been one of the bigger benefactors of the scene's progressiveness.

"Before, it may have been the case that stealth trans people didn't go out to trans nights or gay nights, and trans people that didn't pass only went to trans nights," says Munroe Bergdof, DJ and trans activist. "The trans girls who would go out with their gay friends would get constantly confused with drag queens. Now, it's completely blended; trans girls can go out with their gay friends and not have to worry about that because everyone's a bit more clued up about what trans people go through."

Munroe Bergdof

"We're also now talking about the problems that we have on the scene like racism," continues Bergdof. "My black gay friends wouldn't go out in Soho because they felt they were looked down upon, no one would find them attractive. Now I think they don't even think about that, really. Racism does go on in the scene, but I think it's a lot less."

The rise of chemsex over the last decade is another issue Bergdof feels the community is finally addressing. As well as the media attention it's got, out on the scene nights like "Let's Talk about Gay Sex and Drugs" have been set up as an open forum for discussing the topic in a non-judgemental environment.

Queers are like cockroaches – we'll be kicked out of somewhere and we'll infiltrate somewhere else

"I do think there's much more social awareness," says Miss Cairo, a drag artist. "People are being a bit kinder to each other. People are understanding where people's insecurities are coming from better. Being queer is about a way of thinking, a way of engaging with the world and the things around you. You're not going to be able to please everyone, but you can try your fucking hardest to understand others, and I think that's definitely happening."

"Queers are like cockroaches; we'll be kicked out of somewhere and we'll infiltrate somewhere else," she continues. "It's really important that we as a community find ourselves in places where we are needed the most. Not everyone has access to the community in London, and it's about finding spaces inside and outside the capital where people can feel safe to be themselves."

With near total legislative equality, there's been some suggestions that there is no longer any need for LGBT-designated spaces. Integration, not segregation, is apparently the way forward. There's even a fear that a lack of patronage, and ultimately profitability, is the reason bars are shutting—that people feel comfortable enough in straight venues and simply aren't using their local gay spaces anymore. However, the success of new venues that have opened in the last year suggests the appetite is still very much there.

Wayne Shires

"There will always be some sort of scene and I think it would be a shame if there wasn't," says Jonny Woo. "People have different tastes and needs and wants. The energy in a gay bar, a queer venue, is different to the energy in a straight venue. I don't think gay people should stop being gay or flaunting their gayness and a safe environment is where you can do that."

For the doom-mongerers, every venue closure represents a death knell. But the strength of the scene is far more complicated than just cataloguing the number of bars that have opened and closed each year. Judging it solely on its commercial effectiveness does it a disservice.

"We're going through very conservative times," says Woo. "We've got very liberal laws and kids are very liberal now, but it's a very straight society. I think there are a lot of people who naturally have the urge to rebel or to be different, so there will always be some underground, subversive culture. I think sexual identity is always going to be part of that."

Protecting historic, iconic, and valued venues represents the latest battle for a community that's won tougher fights before—in many ways it has galvanized queer London. As the pace of gentrification quickens, the bricks and mortar may be lost, but the community, its people and its values, will remain.

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"At least when you're being fucked by someone you're worth something to that person in that moment," says an anonymous man halfway through VICE's new documentary, CHEMSEX. He's talking about sex on drugs like mephedrone, GHB/GBL, and crystal meth—"chemsex," as it's come to be known in the UK—which commonly happens in private homes at gatherings called "chillouts" and can last for days.

While chems are a big part of any chillout, he's not describing the appeal of having sex on drugs, but the importance of connecting with another person. Because beneath the sex and the drugs, men are seeking out chemsex parties and chillouts to belong—yet these bonds often seep away as soon as the drugs wear off.

"I'd gone on a weird quasi-date with someone I'd had a chem encounter with, and it was so awkward. There was no connection," said a young man I interviewed last year. "There was an awkwardness in that we have opened up ourselves to each other in such a way, but actually I don't know anything about you."

Another guy I spoke to said a similar thing: "You make all these plans to go out together, be bezzies forever, and then you wake up and delete his number."

I won't deny that the initial attraction to the chemsex scene for most is that taking drugs can make you feel fantastic, and that having sex while you're on those drugs is normally going to be a lot more intense than having sex sober. But besides the drugs, what's getting people hooked on chillouts? What is the modern gay community missing that leads to some men choosing the illusion of friendship over reality?

"In a recent study of chemsex in London, it was found that over two-thirds of participants in chemsex parties felt able to enhance their sense of connection with their sexual partners in these contexts primarily because they felt that they were on 'another level' with their sexual partner," says Professor Rusi Jaspal, Chair of Psychology and Sexual Health at De Montfort University. "Some men may feel that they are more able to connect with other men in chemsex settings than in sober settings, which could be attributed to the weak bonds of community perceived in sober settings."

For Dominic Davies of gender and sexual diversity organization Pink Therapy, these weak bonds coincide with the social media revolution our generation has experienced: "The way the internet helps people remain anonymous and often unaccountable compounds shame and guilt, which in turn leads some people to see others as disposable commodities," he says. "The instant block on Grindr being a prime example of eradicating gay men."

Another problem is the diminishing number of spaces for the "real life" gay community to convene. While the few bars and clubs that haven't yet been closed down remain important, there is no centre in London for the communication integral to a strong community.

Sal Mohammed is a lecturer-practitioner with a research focus on psychosocial factors affecting cultural and societal values. "It's about balance, and shifting focus from providing party places to multifaceted spaces for a variety of uses," he says. "There is not one queer venue in London which offers solely a platform for discussion, performance, campaigning and so forth. And many have the space but choose not to host such events, which is a shame."

However, Sal does cite Jonny Woo's pub the Glory in Haggerston, the RVT in Vauxhall, and Ku Bar in Leicester Square as venues exhibiting positive "shifts of responsibility."

Without adequate dialogue in queer spaces, perhaps it's unsurprising that the gay scene's focus is less on mind and spirit, and more upon the body. Sex and the male torso has become its currency. Has this obsession with bodily perfection become damaging to gay men's sense of community ethos?

"Those outside the able body ideal of gay magazines and poster boys are targets for prejudice, mockery and pity," said Stuart Forward, editor-in-chief of queer body positive website EQView. "I am partially disabled through a condition which affects bone marrow and restricts mobility... My experiences have exposed me to certain ugly attitudes within the gay community. A guy in a club watched me dance, before coming up and asking, 'What's up with your arms?' then circling me with his friends and mock-dancing, mirroring my movement as his friends laughed. Or four months ago, when the guy marking me on the football pitch whispered 'cripple' in my ear."

WATCH: The trailer for CHEMSEX, released in UK cinemas on Friday the 4th of December.

As well as ableism, Professor Rusi points out the stigmatization of people living with HIV on the gay scene and the ongoing faux-masc demonization of camp. Both Sal and Professor Rusi also highlight the lack of inclusion for gay men of ethnic minority backgrounds, and point out that racism within the gay community needs to be discussed.

"There are some aspects of racism online," says "Luke," who didn't want me to use his real name. "'Don't contact me if you're this.' Before I'd actually contact them and say, 'I was born and raised here, but yeah, I'm Asian,' but they don't usually reply. It makes me hateful or ashamed of myself. It's not nice."

I ask Professor Rusi why the gay community can sometimes be marred by this kind of hurtful, judgmental behavior. "Psychologists have long been interested in a concept called 'downward comparison'," he says. "This refers to a defensive tendency that human beings have to compare themselves to others that are, in some way, worse off to themselves to feel better about themselves and their own situation. This can bolster your own sense of self-worth, but it often results in the stigmatization of others and the construction of further divisions."

Sadly, this can result in gay men who've moved to big cities in search of a sense of belonging instead finding themselves subjected to the kind of shaming and marginalization they were hoping to escape.

"To have a sense of community in which one is accepted for who they are is an integral part of recovery from early childhood trauma," says Dorota Mucha, who works with gay men at Us in Therapy. She cites depression, anxiety, loneliness and commitment issues as common topics she sees in her patients, often a result of troubled pasts at school or at home. All of this may result in "low self-esteem, internalized homophobia, self-hatred"—and if you hate yourself for being gay, it's unlikely you're going to like anybody else for being gay.

"There are many reasons why people decided to use drugs for sex: It takes away inhibitions and gives a false sense of being wanted and loved; frequently gay men mistake intimacy and affection for sex," continues Dorota. "One of my patients told me recently that he attends chillouts to talk, kiss, and cuddle more than for sexual intercourse itself."

Remziye Kunelaki, Lead Psychosexual Therapist at sexual health clinic 56 Dean Street, identifies one particular recurring theme. "In my clinical experience, weak bonds among gay men ultimately cause a great sense of loneliness," she says. "At the core of what is really behind sexually risky behavior or chemsex is a deep fear of being alone. Most of the work we facilitate in psychosexual therapy at 56 Dean Street is about recommending tools in order to achieve self-care at a basic level and then sexually. The idea is once you are able to look after and respect yourself, you have the capacity to do so with a partner or friends. If the gay community becomes more supportive of each other, there might be better chances to be forgiving and inclusive, regardless of one's body shape or sexual performance."

How, then, does a community facing both external and internalized homophobia make itself stronger?

I asked each person I interviewed this question, and their answers ranged from education about social stigma to initiatives increasing sexual confidence when sober. But the overarching response was the need for greater dialogue. Communication. Understanding. Emotional truth gained by the sharing of similar experiences.

I'm writing this article because I run a night in Soho dedicated to this purpose called Let's Talk About Gay Sex & Drugs. Other events, such as Simon Marks's A Change of Scene and David Stuart's Dean Street Wellbeing Programme, also do important work. The narrative is beginning to change. Speaking and listening are incredibly simple things to do, and they're vital for building community. Ultimately, perhaps we can work towards solving this chemsex problem by creating a shared space where every gay man can feel he belongs.

Follow Patrick on Twitter.

Chemsex support is available in most sexual health clinics. 56 Dean Street offers one-to-one chemsex support; visit chemsexsupport.com. Antidote (London Friend) offers drug and alcohol support for the LGBT community. Call 0207 833 1674.

CHEMSEX is released in the UK on Friday December 4. To see a full list of cinemas showing the film, click here.

CHEMSEX will be released on DVD and On-Demand in the UK on January 11.

To read the rest of the articles from our Chemsex Week—a series exploring the people, issues and stories in and around the world of chemsex—click here.

Slash piles burn near the TransCanada pipeline right-of-way construction adjacent to the Unist'ot'en Territory in northern British Columbia, October 11, 2015.

The Unist´ot´en Camp is located on unceded traditional Wet'suwet'en Territories in northern British Columbia and stands amid a high-profile oil and gas pipeline corridor. Over the summer, energy-industry helicopters had been landing there—without permission—to continue their survey work as heavy machinery cleared trees for a TransCanada pipeline right-of-way toward the Wedzin Kwah (Morice River). The purpose of this camp is to protect the land from several proposed pipelines that would run from the tar sands in Alberta and extracted shale gas projects in the Peace River Region out to the West Coast.

While preparing for my first trip in late summer, the camp was on high alert after receiving information that the authorities were planning a raid. Access wasn't easy and I had to take appropriate steps for them to verify my credentials as a journalist. Upon making contact via social media, I was instructed to meet someone in Vancouver near the sea, and to keep my eyes open for a bearded guy in a Zodiac boat. Eventually we set out on a 15-hour road trip to northern BC.

"No pipelines, No entry" is spelled out using natural materials to be seen by industry helicopters in a high profile oil and gas pipeline corridor on Unist'ot'en Territory in northern British Columbia, October 18, 2015.

It felt strange going to a resistance camp in my own backyard. Before returning to BC, I had spent nearly three years covering the conflict in Afghanistan, and the same feeling of insecurity came over me as I approached this spot in my home province.

An unusually high number of police cruisers and black SUVs was scattered throughout the area. Convoys of white pickup trucks rushed past us on a narrow forest service road as we neared the camp in the late-night darkness. Suddenly there was a blast of light, and the next thing I knew it felt like daylight. I heard a voice yelling, "Who are you?" We were at the checkpoint; it felt like a customs crossing into another country. The gate opened and we crossed the bridge after going through the protocol that included several standardized questions.

A camp supporter relaxes as he is tattooed at the Unist'ot'en Camp in northern British Columbia, October 15, 2015.

Like everyone who crossed to the other side, I had to respect the traditional Indigenous culture and hereditary hierarchy. I learned quickly that camp supporters leave their bullshit at the bridge as they learn how to live off the land and in an off-the-grid community.

Once I entered the camp I was looked upon as suspect: I was a new face, after all, and they prepared to be infiltrated by authorities or industry . At the same time I was worried that I might be arrested and have my gear seized. At night I slept in back of my Jeep facing the checkpoint, looking up every couple of hours to make sure I was still safe. I even had plans to stash my film in the woods.

Over the three weeks I spent there, I met people from all walks of life, who had travelled from across North America, leaving their families and lives behind to come together for a cause. They were standing up and willing to be arrested.

Obstructions created from natural materials prevent trespassers from using the Wedzin Kwah (Morice River) as an entrance to the Unist'ot'en Camp in northern British Columbia, October 16, 2015.

Nature is an incredible source of medicine both for the body and mind. Drinking fresh water from the river, hearing the silence, devouring the wild berries and meats is part of the healing process as you disconnect from everyday distractions. This is the place where proposed pipelines, some already under construction, are slated to run through pristine valleys and under glacier-fed waterways. When I first arrived I had the idea that this was a stand against pipelines and to protect the environment. Soon I realized that it's much more; it's a collective effort to reestablish sacred traditions, languages, and practices that have been suppressed for generations.

A wrap of MDMA. Photo by Michael Segalov, from 'I Walked Around Bestival Asking to Test People's Drugs'

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

Gay drug users have long been seen as "early adopters" of new club drugs. The powders, pills, and bottled liquids sniffed and swallowed in the cubicles of gay clubs today will be the substances passed around the straight clubs of tomorrow—or so the thinking goes.

In reality, as we enter what could be described as a new, post-clubbing era, the days of drug trends trickling down from cutting edge dance floors—gay or straight—to the wider population appear to be numbered.

In June of 2013, VICE published a report on the phenomenon that would later become known as "chemsex"—groups of gay men injecting crystal meth and mephedrone at private orgies arranged on dating apps. Since then, there have been academic studies on the subject, new clinics set up to deal with the fallout, and public health warnings. A VICE documentary film, CHEMSEX, will be released in UK theaters on Friday.

One thing worth noting about Britain's chemsex scene two years down the line is that, fortunately, it's remained a minority sport. It's true these extreme sex parties are now bigger in Manchester than they were in 2013, but as yet chemsex has not rippled out to the wider gay, drug-using community. What's more, there are scant reports of this practice spreading to straight drug users.

That last point is reflective of a broader change in how gay club culture relates to the world outside of it. Neither mephedrone nor GHB—two of the most popular substances on the gay clubbing scene—have become particularly fashionable among mainstream clubbers, who have fallen back in love with MDMA. Crystal meth, a drug with a high prevalence in many parts of the world, remains largely confined to the gay community in the UK. And poppers and viagra, the other mainstays of gay club nights, aren't exactly all the rage at Ministry or the Warehouse Project.

Yet, there was a time when gay drug users—particularly those on the club scene—set the pace. In fact, nightlife as we know it is owed to a dance revolution invented by gay black men in America. It was in venues such as the Warehouse in Chicago and the Paradise Garage in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s where the cocktail of MDMA-enhanced house and garage music was first brewed. Until then, the use of ecstasy—synthesized by Alexander Shulgin in his backyard lab in California in the late 1970s—had been largely restricted to small cliques of new-agers and psychologists' patients.

These clubs were intense places, sanctuaries where the oppressed could dance, get high, and forget about their worries for 24 hours. They attracted British pop stars such as Marc Almond, Mark Moore, Steve Strange, George Michael, and Boy George, who all spread the love back home. Almond took ecstasy for the first time in New York in the early-80s and loved it; the result was Soft Cell's debut album, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, said to be the first British ecstasy record.

Eventually, the drug trickled down to the clubs and football terraces of England, as well as the sandy beaches of Ibiza, and—surfing on a wave of acid house—became fully democratized during the second Summer of Love in 1988. "The biggest gift gays gave to club culture was house and garage 30 years ago, from the black gay clubs in America," says legendary club promoter Patrick Lilley, who ran LGBTQ activist organization Queer Nation.

Gay clubbers were early adopters of ketamine in the late-1990s, when it was commonly used as a partner to cocaine under the name "CK1," after the Calvin Klein perfume. As the drug filtered into the mainstream it was snorted by straight clubbers to bring them down from the high of MDMA or ecstasy. By 2012, after being virtually unheard of in the UK before the turn of the millennium, ketamine had become more popular than cocaine and a rival to ecstasy on the student and festival scenes.

And it wasn't just drugs and music where gay clubs innovated. The concept of the after-hours club—an inevitable result of the passion for drug-taking and excess that has characterized gay club culture—was pioneered by the iconic gay night Trade at Turnmills in London.

A night at Trade. Photo courtesy of Trade

So why have gay clubbers historically been seen as the early adopters of new psychoactive substances? Partly, it's because they're more prolific drug takers than straight clubbers. According to the British Crime Survey, gay people—and gay men, particularly—are three times more likely to take drugs than straight people. They take them more frequently and from a wider menu of substances, and are also bigger drinkers.

The normal clubbing experience is intensified in gay clubs because of what American therapist Alan Downs calls "velvet rage"—many of those on the dance floor will have escaped to city bars and clubs after suffering years of repression and bigotry. The music and the drugs offer a release and a place of sanctuary almost unimaginable to most clubbers just trying to shake off the working week.

"Gay people are more prolific and adventurous drug takers," says Professor Fiona Measham, who has spent two decades interviewing people in gay clubs in London and Manchester. "There is a work hard, play hard attitude, a willingness to experiment with different drugs and an openness about that."

There is a strong common bond between people who may have had similar experiences growing up—i.e. coming out and being discriminated against—and the unity around drug taking and dancing in clubs is amplified by these collective emotions. Measham points out that academics have compared the unifying intensity, hedonism, and liberation in gay clubs to the spirituality and escapism of historical "dances of death," rituals used to cope with pain and plague in the medieval era.

The more shit people go through, the more willing they are to take risks and do impulsive things, which in the context of the gay club scene means experimenting with drugs and sex. Gay clubs offer a more important role for their guests than their straight equivalents, because the stakes are higher.

"Gay men, historically, have had their lives, recreation, and sex associated with risk and danger and disentitlement," says David Stuart, head of substance use at 56 Dean Street, a charity helping gay drug users in London's Soho. "Communities do inherit historical and communal trauma, a kind of mass post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The most common symptom of PTSD is experiencing a constant sense of danger and risk."

Related: Watch the trailer for 'CHEMSEX,' released in UK theaters on Friday, December 4.

It's this context in which chemsex grew, being not only a representation of the dark side of this hedonism, but an indicator that gay club culture is dying a death.

"There is spin we are all party animals having a fantastic time, but my experience is many of us are repressed, stressed, and self-medicating with drugs," says Matthew Todd, editor of Attitude magazine. "In my 20s, going to Fridge and Astoria seemed more happy. Now, it's more intense, harder, and more sexual."

The number of nightclubs in the UK has halved in a decade, a trend that started with gay venues. The roll call of iconic but now dead gay bars and clubs is a long one, and it's not just a result of gentrification and stricter licensing; attendances are also down. Why bother going to your local club if you can meet people, buy drugs, and arrange a weekend-long orgy using an app on your phone? As David Stuart says: "The shameless queuing in nightclubs for drugs has become the shameless sharing of them online."

If a new drug—an updated ecstasy, say, or the next ketamine—were to appear tomorrow, would we see it first on the gay clubbing scene? "Five years ago I would say yes, but now it's far less likely," says Professor Measham. "Because of the internet, people don't need to hear about drugs from trendsetters who are part of some fashion and music zeitgeist. Today, a new drug is more likely to rise up from a lab in Amsterdam with some clever internet branding than some uber-subculture scene."

In his 1997 book, Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House, Matthew Collin observed how through the 1970s, 80s, and 90s "black and gay clubs consistently served as breeding grounds for new developments in popular culture, laboratories where music, drugs, and sex are interbred to create stylistic innovations that slowly filter through to straight, white society."

Now, it seems, those days are well and truly over.

Follow Max Daly on Twitter.

CHEMSEX is released in the UK on Friday, December 4. To see a full list of theaters showing the film, click here.

CHEMSEX will be released on DVD and On-Demand in the UK on January 11.

To read the rest of the articles from our Chemsex Week—a series exploring the people, issues, and stories in and around the world of chemsex—click here.

A portrait of Ashraf Fayadh, taken in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 2013

Ashraf Fayadh, a poet recently sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia by beheading, relayed a simple but grim message to the world from his prison cell.

"I'm an artist and I want my freedom," Fayadh, 35, said over the telephone last week as he spoke with colleagues from the art collective Edge of Arabia, who have been advocating for his release along with a number of other artistic and human rights groups.

Fayadh is charged with blasphemy for penning a book of love poems allegedly containing atheistic writings and uttering religiously blasphemous comments in an Abha café in 2013.

On VICE News: Why the Paris Climate Summit Is a Really Big Deal

An avant-garde painter and celebrated curator whose family is of Palestinian origin and is not a citizen of any country, Fayadh is also accused of having illicit relationships with women. He was originally sentenced to four years in prison and 800 lashes in 2014, but his appeal was dismissed and he was retried. He denies all of the charges.

"It's a pretty shocking case," says Adam Coogle, a Human Rights Watch researcher based in Jordan who has seen and verified the court documents of Fayadh's case. Coogle says that Fayadh can appeal the charge.

"This gentleman was essentially sentenced to death based on the analysis of some love poems he had written many years before which were determined by the religious authorities to contain atheism and all kinds other things," Coogle says. "For this this thin evidence to result in a criminal conviction, much less a death sentence, tells you how problematic certain aspects of the Saudi criminal justice system are."

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The judge's ruling was so severe, Fayadh's father had a stroke shortly after learning of his son's sentence; Fayadh's friends confirmed to VICE that the elder Fayadh died last week.

"I was horrified by death sentence," says Christopher Stone, an Arabic literature expert who directs the Hunter College Arabic Program in New York. "It's absurd that the things he was accused of are crimes in Saudi Arabia to begin with. The death penalty is a savage response to crime."

In Saudi Arabia, a deeply puritanical country where many aspects of life are governed by religious sharia law, censorship is common and artists must be careful not to push boundaries lest the authorities crack down on them. Fayadh's case, extreme as it is, highlights the risks involved in challenging conventions. In January, a liberal blogger was flogged for questioning the powers that be, and few people risk showing films of any sort in public.

The death sentence is shockingly common in the country—there were at least 151 executions in 2015 as of early November, according to Amnesty International, the most since 1995. People can be put to death for offenses ranging from blasphemy to dealing drugs.

"The religious authorities have a real stranglehold on the propagation of free ideas in society," explains Coogle, the Human Rights Watch Middle East expert. "They have instituted a very top-down, very homogenous narrative about what society is and how it should be. It's intolerant of other opinions. To go against that and all it's might, makes it very, very difficult for . Artists have been stifled for many, many years."

A piece from artist Nouf Alhimiary titled "Free," which features the Arabic letters "حره," the female-specific variation of the word for "free."

Nouf Alhimiary is a 23-year-old Saudi Arabian conceptualist feminist photographer based in the port city of Jeddah who has felt constrained by the religious state in every aspect of her work. "It's goes beyond censorship," she says. "There are 'no photography' policies everywhere," she added. "People will be in their niqab and they're still afraid to be photographed. A picture is used against you here."

Alhimiary, whose photographs were featured in a 2013 exhibit curated by Fayadh, learned of his sentencing last week on Tumblr, because Saudi media was not reporting it. Given the tense climate artists operate in the country, Alhimiary was not overly shocked by the ruling

Although women registered to vote for the first time in Saudi municipal elections this year, they are forbidden from venturing into public without male chaperones and are forced to conceal much of their bodies. This sort of ideology bleeds over into the art world.

Alhimiary once applied to a gallery to exhibit a series of photos she took of women in public, showing the clothes they normally wear underneath their abayas or niqabs. To avoid government interference in her work, Alhimiary exhibits mostly outside her home country, in places like the British Museum in London or exhibitions in Venice.

"I feel really sad that I can't share here that I can't freely speak about the things I want to address," she says. "Even sometimes when I want to post an opinion I have to think and rethink is this appropriate for everyone to read while I'm in Saudi."

The Ministry of Culture and Information—the governing body responsible for regulating all publicly displayed art in the country—rules the Saudi Arabian art world with an iron fist. The ministry goes so far as to perform on-site inspections before shows open. Criticizing religion and the royal family are absolute no-nos in any medium, punishable by imprisonment, lashings, and even death.

Earlier this year, Basmah Felemban, a Saudi mixed media installation artist, was censored by the ministry before an art show for referencing a verse from the Quran in an installation.

" the Qur'an shouldn't be in artwork," explained Felemban, 22, who's now based in London and working with British architects to bring Saudi art into the Jeddah public transport system.

"When you're born there, you're just raised with a natural ability of filtering your thoughts in a way to say them to people in a specific way so you don't offend anyone or put yourself in danger," she said.

Dorian Geiger is a Canadian multimedia journalist, photographer, filmmaker, and freelance reporter for VICE. He's based in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

Correction 11/30: An earlier version of this article misspelled Ashraf Fayadh's name in the title.

Dennis Oland, charged with second-degree murder in the death of his father, arrives at his preliminary hearing at the Law Courts in Saint John, N.B. on Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2014. Photo courtesy The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan

Rumours ran thick and fast in Saint John, New Brunswick on July 6, 2011, when Richard Oland, president of the Far End Corp, and from the sixth-generation of the Oland beer dynasty, was beaten to death on the floor of his office in the heart of the historic uptown. The cause of death: dozens of slashes and blunt-force wounds. Somebody seriously pissed off had wielded a heavy object with enough force to break apart the bones in his face, leaving fragments lodged in the wounds. Gashes on his hands indicated he fought for his life. The blood soaked through three layers of flooring, permeating the ceiling of the office below.

Murders are rare in Saint John, a port city of 70,000, a melange of massive oil refineries and wild ocean views, dead malls, and 19th-century brickwork draped with film-noir fog. For 230 years, Canada's oldest incorporated city has kept it old school, in the sense of both strong family and community loyalties, and in that it's still an old boy's club. At some point, almost all Saint Johners have been hired and fired by a small coterie of millionaires and billionaires. Irving- and Oland-owned companies pump the gas, brew the beer, and sign the cheques: that's enough to shut up most of their critics. Generally, it's only when things get so bad that a dispute ends up in court that the juiciest scandals of such wealthy elites enter into public record.

The Oland case ripped the lid off the private life of Richard Oland. While well known in Saint John, he wasn't well liked. After losing a bitter battle for the helm of Moosehead, Canada's oldest independent brewery, to his brother, he rapidly racked up his own professional successes—but according to his wife, he was verbally and emotionally abusive, and "never the same with his children" afterward. Richard's great joys seemed to be arguing with people, winning sailing competitions, making a lot of money, and carrying on an eight-year affair (which was increasingly difficult to hide). His shrewdness extended to his wife, whom he required to provide receipts for any expenditures from her $2,000/month allowance. By his death at age 69, he was worth a cool $37 million. Hundreds of mourners, including the premier, mayor, and lieutenant-governor, filed out of his funeral to the strains of the Sinatra classic, "My Way." The lyrics ("The record shows I took the blows / And did it my way") were spookily fitting.

From the moment cop cars arrived at the murder scene on Canterbury Street, Saint John crackled and sparked with rumours. Cabbies, co-workers, and coffee-shop regulars all had their pet theories and suspicions. Among them: Richard was beaten to death with a drywall hammer (which, strangely, turned out to be probably true). The killer was his jilted lover or the jilted lover's husband or a pissed-off investor or the Russian mafia.

The top guess, however: Dennis Oland, Richard's only son.

Dennis Oland, accompanied by his mother Constance Oland, arrives for the start of his trial in Saint John, N.B. on Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2015. Photo courtesy The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan

At face value, this was a slam-dunk theory. Richard's son admitted being the last person to see his father alive, at the office, where he said they were talking about a genealogy project. Dennis was also hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, according to testimony from a forensic accountant, spending around $14,000 per month more than he earned on items such as trips to Hungary, Italy, England, and Florida. Most awkwardly, he also owed his father over $500,000, a loan that bankrolled Dennis' divorce from his first wife. With Richard's death, Dennis became either co-director or president of his father's three companies. He also received a payout of $150,000 as the co-executor of his father's will and trustee of an additional fund. Good financial news, at least, in a time of tragedy—but also, some said, a fiscal motive for murder.

The Saint John Police Department—which has since been dragged into allegations of corruption and other major fuck-ups in the Oland investigation, first realized something strange was happening with Dennis during a videotaped witness statement to Constable Stephen Davidson.

What started as routine questioning quickly turned into a laundry list of his late father's ugly traits. In the video, Dennis describes his father as "a really difficult" person "lacking in certain social skills." Unsolicited, he outlines Richard's infidelities, and how he alienated his friends and family with his constant disses and arguments. When asked if he knew anything that could help police, he airily theorized that "some crackhead looking for $20" was probably the killer (never mind said crackhead forgot the Rolex, laptop, and BMW keys sitting on Richard's desk). But while some people called Richard a "ruthless bastard," Dennis said, he didn't want his father dead.

The chattiness dried up when Dennis was asked where he was during the murder. While he admitted coming to his dad's office, he couldn't recall the route he drove or what he did afterward. Left alone in the room, Dennis appears confused on the video, tracing an imaginary map on a piece of paper, mumbling to himself. After 2.5 hours, police informed Dennis he was a suspect, and they'd be executing search warrants.

Inside the Far End Corp. building, where Richard Oland was killed. Photo by Julia Wright

But then, very strangely, the case seemed to go cold. The searches of Dennis' home, Volkswagen, and a boat co-owned by his wife turned up nothing. No other suspect was advanced: still, nothing happened. For two years. Dennis continued to work occasionally at the office where his dad was killed. Reporters, meanwhile, were going nuts: lawyers for the local paper and CBC started contesting the sealing of several search warrants, as police threw shade at the forensic lab for taking forever processing the scene. The media were forced to dance around a court-ordered publication ban on naming Dennis as a suspect for almost two years. While the ban was eventually overturned, the radio and print silence had only intensified the rumours.

Public feeling was equal parts shock and "no shit, Sherlock" when, two years after the crime, Dennis Oland was charged with second-degree murder. He was released after a few days in jail on $50,000 bail posted by his uncle, Derek Oland, who issued a public statement defending Dennis' innocence and pledging the family's full support during upcoming legal proceedings.

As with his highly public self-presentation leading up to the trial, it appeared as though Dennis Oland was trying to send everyone a message via social media November 9, 2013. Just a few days before he was charged, he changed his publicly-visible profile pic to a still of Harrison Ford in The Fugitive. In the 1993 flick, Ford plays a man wrongfully convicted of murder, trying find the real killer while being hunted by police. It was either a truly ballsy bit of vaguebooking, or a strange attempt at black humour. Whatever the intended message, few people, if any, remarked on the reference. In any case, it was eclipsed by the re-emergence of another strange photo of Dennis, re-used by various media outlets, in which he appeared to be smiling as he exited his father's funeral.

Four years after the murder, those proceedings drag on. The trial, which started September 16, 2015 and is scheduled to run into December, is poised to be one of the longest criminal trials in New Brunswick history. It's drawn a remarkably vivid, dysfunctional portrait of the Olands. But it's an even more powerful illustration of just how much appearances matter in small towns, where gossip is a tie that binds, and burns. Peeping over the hedges to see what your neighbours are up to is a favourite recreational activity.

Dennis Oland's estate, Sevenacres, has been in the family for generations. On one of the toniest roads in Rothesay, a Saint John suburb with an average household net worth of $2.29 million, Sevenacres is screened from the road by a double-barrier of log fencing and box hedges, further buffered by spacious paddocks, a barn, and stables. While private, the situation is extremely cozy in other ways: it's just a five-minute walk from the mansion where Richard once lived—and closer still to neighbour and Oland family lawyer Bill Teed. The court-ordered conditions for Dennis' release include that he maintain this residence, surrender his passport, and advise police of any travel outside New Brunswick. In other words, he's basically trapped in this genteel seclusion.

Saint John, New Brunswick. Photo via Flickr user Thomas Duff

So, on a certain level, it's kind of easy to see why Dennis has, in recent years, turned into quite the man-about-town—a shift from his quieter, pre-2011 lifestyle, according to some who knew him. While Dennis is seen daily above the fold of the local paper, as well as entering and exiting court in a swarm of media, he's almost as frequently sighted at bars, restaurants, auctions, and concerts. In a city the size of Saint John, this is not a huge circuit. In fact, it appears from the outside a hellishly claustrophobic, Panopticon-like situation, enough to drive anyone mad. But it seems to have had an opposite effect on Dennis.

On November 26, the same day his preliminary hearing ended, Dennis Oland and a group of friends attended a Bob Seger show at Saint John's biggest hockey arena, Harbour Station. While Bob and the Silver Bullet Band revisited classics like "Against the Wind," he and his buds conspicuously rocked out—to some eyes, an odd way to cap off 37 days of court proceedings determining he'd be tried for murder. As Dennis and friends stood up in their seats, working on their night moves, saucy fellow Seger fans surreptitiously snapped pics of the local celebrity in their midst, stealth-texting photos with captions like "OMG look who it is!"

In a bizarre small-town twist, when Oland pleaded not guilty on September 8, 2015, he attracted a bigger crowd to Harbour Station than Bob Seger. Five thousand people were summonsed for possible jury duty: one of the biggest jury pools in provincial history, and larger than the pool for either Paul Bernardo or Robert Pickton, necessitating the makeshift venue. Even the typically yawnworthy process of jury selection felt like the casting for a reality TV show. Offered a choice to be tried either by a judge alone, or by judge and jury, he choose the route of public spectacle. And so, the concession stands were open and prospective jurors chowed down on nachos as Oland sat in the middle of it all, watching the masses filter in. He entered his not-guilty plea into a microphone, on the arena stage, in front of thousands.

Several months ago, I was out with a fellow journalist at Port City Royal, around the corner from the former crime scene. We'd both covered the Oland case. So it felt a bit weird when we walked in and instantly spotted Dennis and Lisa. When Dennis left to bring the car around, we watched a mint-condition, dark-green 1967 Volvo Amazon roll down steep Grannan Lane. In a town of 12-year-old Toyota Corollas and brand new Ford F-150s, a ride like that stands out: I'd often spotted it parked on Charlotte Street. I'd even tweeted a picture of it, once: "My ride's here." I'd had no idea, then, who it belonged to. I sure did now.

As Lisa got in beside Dennis, she looked back. For a second, I saw the scene from her perspective: us staring out at her, framed by the glowing rectangle of the window. She looked pained and annoyed: we were caught red-handed, watching. Indeed, it was impossible not to watch the car's silhouette, like a getaway vehicle in a Turner Classic Movie, as it disappeared into the darkness.

"If one does not think that the privacy of my clients has not been invaded, let me suggest to you that it's not only been invaded, it has been run over by a truck," defence lawyer Bill Teed told a closed-door hearing in August 2012.

"What this family has had to put up with and deal with as a result of this murder, as a result of the investigation, as a result of the media attention, their privacy rights and...the innocent rights that we try to protect for them, has been just about drowned." The trial, for the Oland family, has no doubt been a humiliating, painful airing of dirty laundry. Literally: the court has seen pictures of Dennis' Hugo Boss jacket, stained with trace amounts of blood matching Richard's DNA profile.

All this stuff about privacy and appearances hearkens weirdly back to something Dennis said, early in his video statement to police. Describing the ill-fated genealogy project he and Richard were working on, he unconsciously may have revealed an irony in how he sees himself—and how he thinks Saint Johners see him.

"We have our family You could see all these fabrications were built up about people being, y'know, more than they actually were."

His public appearance of carefree innocence aside, Oland may well see this four-year nightmare quietly resolved. The expertise of his top-flight Toronto lawyers, the bungled police investigation, two-year delay in laying charges, no murder weapon ever found, and innumerable other factors all cast enough reasonable doubt for a jury to, very soon, potentially find Dennis Oland innocent.

But whether he'll ever walk freely again in Saint John again is another question.

Follow Julia Wright on Twitter.

The rally makes its way down Melbourne's Swanston Street. All photos by the authors

On Friday, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Melbourne ahead of this week's United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. Led by Indigenous environmental group Seed, it marked the largest climate action of its kind in Australia's history, kicking off protests in hundreds of other cities around the globe.

Stretching from the steps of Parliament House back to the State Library, the march attracted a broad cross-section—farmers, check-out chicks, students, baby boomers, and even Labor leader Bill Shorten.

On VICE News: Why the Paris Climate Summit Is a Really Big Deal

When VICE went down to speak to the marchers, most voiced frustration about Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's lack of reform on climate policy. Some, however, remained quietly optimistic about the potential of their movement to push for action on global warming.

Corina is a member of the Indigenous youth-led climate network Seed.

VICE: Why are you here?
Corina: Today we're here for the People's Climate March, which was led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This is actually the first time that has happened in Australia, in a non-Aboriginal movement. It's really amazing, particularly because we're leading off the marches globally.

You're a part of Seed. What is that?
Seed is Australia's first ever Indigenous youth-led climate network. We launched in July last year.

Why was it important for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to lead the march?
With climate change it always hits the most disadvantaged people the hardest. In Australia that quite often is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. When you think about our people, how they have been able to take care of this land for over 60,000 years, it's so important that we use that knowledge and take the lead.

Earth Guy was sporting an impressive paint job.

Earth Guy: I'm here because I'm really concerned about how the Earth is being treated by big corporations—big energy, big coal, and big money.

How has the world changed since you were a kid?
That was a long time ago. When I was born there were 2 billion people on the planet. In my lifetime that's increased to over 7 billion... all of them want cars, all of them want the latest gadget but the planet can't support it.

Writer and comedian Judith Lucy (right) doesn't think we're totally fucked.

Judith Lucy: I think, like a lot of people, I'm frustrated and this is a way of feeling like I'm doing something.

Are we fucked?
It feels a little like we are... but the fact that we're out here means that, obviously, there's still hope.

This is Fergle from the Socialist Alliance, holding a sign.

What brings you to the march today?
Fergle: I believe that if we don't take action on climate change the world will end and we'll all die.

What needs to change?
The whole system. We need to get rid of capitalism and this whole system that's based on constant growth and constant consumption. We should replace it with a democratic means of production and I think that is "ecosocialism."

Other than marching today, what are you doing about it?
I'm a member of Socialist Alliance, I'm a socialist. I believe in people-powered solutions.

Looks like heaven's missing some angels.

Why are you guys here?
Gabrielle: We are, as angels, protesting the actions of governments and of fossil-fuel industries. Sending a message to these people that greater action needs to be taken in order to protect this place that has so dreadfully gone into a state of disrepair.

What do angels have to do with climate change?
Well, we look down on the earth and we see the earth and everything that's occurring here. And we look down and we weep.

"We're on the frontline of impacts but we're also, as we led the march today, on the frontline of changing this world."

Can you tell me why you've come here today?
Millie: We're here today... Oh man I don't even know where to start, there are so many reasons why I'm here today. I'm here with all of my Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters who are standing up for our land, standing up for our culture, our people, our community.

How are Indigenous communities affected by climate change?
Well our communities often don't even have access to basic human rights. So when we have things like extreme weather events hit us, we're the ones who are hit first and worst. Left for weeks without emergency services coming for assistance. Our people are on the frontline of extractive industries that cause climate change. We're on the frontline of impacts but we're also, as we led the march today, on the frontline of changing this world.

Old Billy wants YOU

Why are you here?
Old Billy: Because the world is at unrest. The whole planet is in crisis and the human psyche is reflecting what we are doing to this planet. It is part of our suffering, our blindness, and our lack of awareness about ourselves and the wider world.

What needs to change?
Change ourselves! Start really communicating, be open, be honest. Love one another and respect one another. Do away with all these hierarchies and structures and money. Just be kind.

Where can we catch your next gig?
This Sunday at the Thornbury Market.

Michelle made a hefty sacrifice for climate change, but the whole family made great signs.

So Michelle you're a scientist. Give us the facts.
Michelle: We're almost averaging 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is making the climate very much like the Pleistocene. That was a period of a lot of environmental change and a lot of species had to adapt very quickly. Here's hoping we can adapt quickly too.

What do we need to give up?
We've divested our shares in oil and gas.

Andrew: She made, not quite the ultimate sacrifice, but a significant sacrifice to give up her job.

Michelle: I was an oil and gas geologist. Not anymore.

Tanzy from Less Meat, Less Heat.

Why are you marching today?
Tanzy: I'm part of Less Meat, Less Heat an organization advocating reduced meat consumption.

What's something people really should know?
If you eat a hamburger that's the equivalent of 27 showers but people don't really know that. Fuck four-minute showers, that does nothing. You could have one-minute showers but as soon as you eat a 300-gram steak you've counteracted two months worth of showering.

One of the few banners at the rally to feature Latin

What brings you here after school?
Matt: We are here representing Aquinas College at the climate march to make sure that we are recognized as supporting the charge on climate change.

What would you tell your students coming up Christmas?
Buy less presents, don't buy junk. Buy something that's practical, functional, useful, and not wasteful.

Follow Maddison on Twitter.

Two years ago, VICE published a report on the "slamming" parties that were ravaging London's gay scene, a phenomenon that became known as "chemsex." Soon after, we started to make a feature-length documentary. The film tells the stories of men involved in a world of parties that last for days, where they have multiple sexual partners, on cocktails of drugs that lower inhibitions and increase desire. It's also about the consequences that this behavior has had on their lives. It paints a frank portrait of men trapped in a cycle of addiction and self-destructive behavior; it also shows that, thanks to the pioneering work of sexual health clinics like London's 56 Dean Street, and people there like David Stuart, there is a way out, and there is hope.

It is clear that health services do not yet know how to address the complex range of issues involved in the chemsex scene, in part because they are so wide-ranging. In November, a British Medical Journal report suggested that chemsex is leading to an increase in sexually transmitted infections, and particularly HIV. Regular involvement in chemsex may exacerbate serious mental health issues. The drugs involved, such as GHB and crystal meth, can be, and have been, fatal.

But chemsex is not just about sexual health or addiction, and it demands a deeper understanding. As much as it is about sex and drugs, it is also about isolation and intimacy and loneliness in the age of hookup culture. The difficult questions this film asks could be asked by many—if not all—of us: If we feel alone, where do we go to find acceptance and love?

All week, VICE will be going beyond the sensationalist headlines and exploring the many intricate threads in the chemsex story. We'll go inside the murky world of the HIV denialist movement, whose followers deny the link between HIV and AIDS. We'll look at why sober sex can be such a problem, we'll examine the need for more same-sex education in schools, and we'll report on the experience of HIV positive dating. We'll also find out how the experts would solve the chemsex crisis if they were in charge.

In order to address a new healthcare emergency, new tactics are required. We are telling the stories of those caught up in the chemsex world so that their voices are heard. Chemsex needs to be brought out into the open so it can be properly addressed.

—Rebecca Nicholson, Editor-in-Chief, VICE UK

Click here to browse Chemsex Week

Lots and lots of marijuana plants. Photo via Flickr user Mark

Read: Blood, Beer, and the Maritime Rumour Mill: The Dennis Oland Murder Trial

A Quebec judge has called out Canada's "ridiculous" marijuana laws, noting that lawyers and others who work in the legal system are probably getting high themselves.

Judge Pierre Chevalier recently handed down a $1 fine to man who was prosecuted for possession of 30 marijuana plants.

Mario Larouche, 46, suffers from pain stemming from a car accident; he was found in possession of the plants illegally after he tried unsuccessfully to get a medical marijuana prescription from his doctor. According to Le Droit, the crown counsel in his case requested he be jailed for 90 days and ordered to pay a $250 fine.

Chevalier dismissed that recommendation and said Larouche was the victim of a system that "does not give people access to a natural medicine that goes back centuries."

Characterizing current marijuana laws as "obsolete," he added that there's little doubt that crown attorneys, defence lawyers and judges are among the 50 percent of Canadians who use weed.

"I think it's time we look much more leniently things that happen."

He also expressed approval of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's plans to legalize weed.

"We've stagnated on this in Canada because, politically, the people were probably not ready for laws to evolve to this level," he said, adding previous politicians have been too afraid of losing votes to change the laws.

Members of Quebec's Liberal government have expressed concern over legalization. Public Security Minister Lise Thériault said public safety needs to be a priority when the new laws roll out.

With taxes, Larouche was fined a grand total of $1.30.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.