A playlist of all the EDM tracks people in this article have commented on. You should probably listen to it as you read.

The comments section on YouTube is not a place of joy. Even the most benign videos have a way of eliciting rage-filled, hateful responses from people who might otherwise be perfectly pleasant individuals. If you're looking to feel good about yourself, humanity, the future, the internet itself, the odds of there really being a god, or the odds of any existing god out there giving a shit about a shower of dicks like us, YouTube's comment section is not the place for you.

Yet not all commenters are dying to tell you they're going to fuck your wife and steal your dog. There are pockets of happiness and decency online, usually to be found, of all places, beneath music videos. Scroll down from the right video, and you'll discover beautiful recollections and meditations on life, glimpsed through a sepia prism. Sometimes they become, without getting too wobbly lipped about it, an ecstatic kind of poetry. A while back, VICE's Clive Martin explored the life-affirming world of comments left beneath the YouTube videos of rave-era tracks. It's a time in our culture that has since been aggressively mythologized, whether that's by film, TV, revivalist fashion trends, or Jamie xx.

But what about nostalgia for the things that aren't cool? What about, for example, nostalgia for the most notoriously and studiously basic EDM on the planet? Are Scooter or Armin Van Buuren really capable of provoking any tears that aren't tied to incredulous laughter? I'd never stopped to think that on some planet far from my own, people might really, really care about this stuff. That somewhere there might be those for whom "Tiesto" was a synonym for transcendence. I wanted to understand, and I was going to use YouTube comments to help me.

Let's be clear at the outset: When I talk about EDM, I'm referring to the tracks you know intimately through the simple process of relentless exposure. The stuff that reverberates across every 18–30 package holiday strip in Europe and the meatpacking district in New York. CIA rendition music, brewed in diabolical, pristine mega-studios by eyeless, Versace-clad gym bunnies who call themselves things like "Bro Safari" and "Jauz" and "Thugfucker." The audio-anaesthetic devoured by millions of people you never seem to meet.

Could anyone really find transformative freedom in this music?

A comment on Martin Garrix LIVE @ Sziget Festival (2015)

Yeah, OK, I guess they can. To these dudes in Hungary, watching Martin Garrix gurn and fist-pump was comparable to the collapse of the Soviet era. Not something many New York/London/Miami kids can say about Yachty mixtapes.

There are many comments like this: lengthy, carefully calibrated, appreciative messages full of sunny cheer. There is a sense of innocent joy here. You know no one had to summon a shock squad of emergency medics to wrap any of this user's frothing friends in tin foil, there's no way he had to take the following week off work because he'd left all his serotonin in a shallow puddle somewhere in central Europe. No, he stayed hydrated, swerved the molly and were primed to drop this first thing Monday morning: an earnest, good-humored YouTube comment full of kudos and exclamation marks.

Yet the same cannot be said for every EDM maniac:

A comment on DJ Tiesto – Adagio For Strings – Live at Pinkpop 2004

Clear Blue Water there—unafraid to express clear, cold, steely sentiment. If you were (or "was") there, you might as well give up, Clear Blue Water is saying, because nothing in your paltry, grayscale existence will ever compare to the two hours of ready-made transcendence served up by Martin Garrix on an island in the Danube in the halcyon summer of 2015.

This one, on the same video, rides the same train of thought. It's kind of heartening to think how one Dutch DJ's Hardwell x Bastille remix can make so many people preemptively regret the rest of their lives.

A comment on Deorro Live @ EDC Las Vegas 2015

Inevitably, there are a litany of wreck-heads itching to add their hoarse, disorientated voices to the digital dawn chorus. No true raver could read D&B B1TCH INSIDE's testimony without feeling a few pangs of chemical solidarity, this stream-of-consciousness promise, probably unrealizable, to get loaded up on co-codamol and lose your remaining capacity for movement 800 rows back at Deorro in Las Vegas. That's a level of dedication I can't imagine mustering while delivering the eulogy at the funeral of a close friend. It makes me want to go out immediately and get absolutely shit-hammered on whatever drug it was that stole D&B B1TCH INSIDE's ability to punctuate.

A comment on Hardwell- I AM HARDWELL United We Are 2015

This one cropped up everywhere, the lyrics to a track called "FTS (Fuck The System)" by Dutch dance brothers DJ Showtek. Charged with the twin voltages of sadness and exhilaration, it's a clarion call for the perpetually-too-fucked-for-the-Sunday-shift crew, battling valiantly against the sunrise in misshapen living rooms the world over. A clarion call that better judgment usually leaves stuck in our throats for a reason.

Lord knows, it'd be easy to mock the Trainspotting-poster rhetoric, the Fight Club justification for refusing to accept the inevitable responsibilities and disappointments of adult life. Yet there's something beautiful here. It's the lyrical equivalent of a big, fat EDM drop, and it basically sums up the point of going out, getting wasted, having fun, finding transcendence in a field of strangers—it's the primeval urge not to let the 9–5 job drive you completely fucking insane.

A comment on Avicii Wake Me Up (Official Video)

But if I was pressed, really pressed, to nominate one EDM YouTube comment that really left its mark on me, it'd be this one. There's something so poignant about a person in the last season of life leaving a comment like this under an Avicii video. The calm enthusiasm. The generous advice ("Enjoy kids"). The tone of a slightly concerned, yet slightly envious, grandfather whose eyes go a bit funny after one too many Proseccos at a family wedding. A few golden memories of a golden time, unknowable to us, lured back by a by-the-numbers slab of laboratory EDM.

But for all the joy and passion I'd witnessed, my snobbery lingered: How is it possible to feel this about that?

A comment on Dj Tiesto in Concert CD 1 2003

It still smacked me as inexplicable – so I decided to ask. I wanted to know how one man's weak punchline could be another's musical JFK moment. "Where were you when we were draped in body paint, dilating our pupils behind shutter-shades during an especially punchy Calvin Harris drop at Tomorrowland 2012?".

I left questions beneath the YouTube videos, hoping someone would respond.

While I waited, I tried to figure it out myself. I started to realize there's a reason why Tiesto has more Instagram followers than Wales has actual people. Perhaps stadium EDM is so utterly mainstream and disconnected from local scenes, that anyone can and does end up loving it. It's music that your dad is comfortable sticking two index fingers in the air to as he proclaims it to be a "tune"; it's music that two teenage lovers can listen to as they skip class to pleasure each other with the very same fingers. It's music that's so inoffensive and odorless it's almost homeopathic; something you could bottle and sell as a backne cure. It's a 4/4 blank canvas on which to paint whichever emotional picture you desire.

A comment on Tiesto & Barber: Adagio For Strings

Tiesto in San Francisco. Photo by Noel Vasquez via Getty

There's a reason the comments are composed in such a wide array of languages, from a clean sweep of continents. EDM really is music that transcends borders. Anything so light and formulaic is going to be easier to export around the globe than a tightly packed subculture with its own local slang, arcane dress sense, and codes of etiquette. There's a reason that, the world over, men and women in Obey vests scrimp all year long to get to these mega-festivals in Las Vegas or Barcelona. It's undeniably massive, conveniently undemanding. By obliterating nuance, you can make things go an awful lot wider. You can make things universal.

Just when I'd given up hope of any responses, a notification popped up alerting me to a reply on a David Guetta Live in Miami video. It says more than my dim conclusions ever could, in a way that's more honest and heartfelt than I could ever muster.

A comment on David Guetta Miami Ultra Music Festival 2015

Having clicked the link through to that David Guetta fan page, I still don't know if I'll ever be able to listen to Big Davey G's music and hear a man who's capable of uniting us all in global ecstasy. But what I do understand is the urge to be united in global ecstasy. I understand the urge to, as Liliana says, be "dancing all the time.!!!" And after my journey into the multimillion-view purgatory that is EDM YouTube, I think I finally understand what it is about this music that could satisfy those urges in people. Every commenter I encountered seemed to be having an epiphany on some kind of epic scale—EDM made them talk about the planets and about aging, world peace, life, and death. It's hulking, stadium-sized, colossal music for people who are still able to see their lives as blockbusters rather than as kitchen-sink cinema or post-modern micro-drama. Sure, I might not truly agree with Gee Sunray's assessment that Tiesto and Barber's version of "Adagio for Strings" will one day bring peace to Palestine. But I'm glad there are people who still think the music that they listen to in their happiest moments is capable of that—it's hopelessly naive and romantic in a way that seems much closer to that original "one world" rave ethos than anything that's cool enough to get played in warehouses in Bushwick or Dalston.

In short, EDM superfans might be easy-to-please music fans with vanilla tastes—but in what seems like an increasingly cruel, dark, and fragmented world, at least they've got fun. At least they've got hope. And at least they've got one another.

XXX

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Our new show STATES OF UNDRESS—airing March 30 on VICELAND—is not your typical dive into the high-fashion worlds of Paris, Milan, London, and New York. This travel and fashion series follows the host, Hailey Gates, as she explores the different and unexpected fashion scenes around the world, addressing the issues that the mainstream industry often ignores and investigating what people in other places are wearing and why.

Her first stop is Pakistan, a country that boasts a small but vibrant fashion scene that sits in stark contrast to the more religious areas of the country where clothing options for women are extremely limited and self-expression outside of the norm can lead to violent repercussions.

In addition to the progressive designers, models, and fashion enthusiasts she encounters at Karachi Fashion Week, Gates meets a trans hair stylist who was able to embrace her gender identity in the sanctuary provided by Pakistan's fashion world.

Watch the clip above and make sure check out the premiere of STATES OF UNDRESS airing Wednesday, March 30 at 10P ET/PT on VICELAND.

When you live in a city north of the 60th parallel, where the sun only rises for a few hours a day by the middle of December and the roads are covered in ice and snow for more than half the year, seeing February finally come to an end is cause for celebration.

For the past 21 years, the people in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, have been shaking off their winter blues by partying in a snow castle built on the frozen waters of Great Slave Lake. The castle has been built every winter under the watch of a house-boating versifier known simply as the Snowking. It originally started as a modest project so his children could have somewhere to play, but over the years, the Snowking and his crew have become increasingly ambitious with their plans.

As the castle has grown the festival has evolved into a month-long party in a frozen fortress that hosts concerts, burlesque and fashion shows, art exhibitions, as well as more family-friendly performances. For the past 10 years one of the most anticipated events has been the Royal Rave, which is hosted by the local Bush League DJs (King Friday and Soda Jerk). The rave is one of the biggest electronic music events in town, so partygoers tend to take the celebrations pretty seriously.

The castle is slowly melting back into the lake whence it came, but VICE captured this year's scene—including a giant two-lane slide made of ice that partygoers could race on.

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Illustration by Ben Thomson

Have you ever looked at a tub of coconut oil and drunkenly considered injecting some into your dick to make it larger? No? Well this is a thing people do. Specifically this is something people are doing in Burma and Thailand, where my friend Koko encountered the phenomenon in a refugee camp.

Koko is a med student who was attending to Karen refugees in a camp on the Thailand-Burma border. The Karen people are an ethnic minority trying to escape centuries of persecution in Burma, for the slightly more tolerant Thailand. In these camps, Karen people require medical attention for a range of ailments, including this rather weird thing some of the guys get into.

It's called "Karen Viagra," and any description of it will etch itself onto your frontal lobe like the ultimate Cronenberg nightmare. Koko took me through what she saw.

VICE: Hi Koko, you've explained this to me a few times now, and I'm still having trouble getting my head around it. What is happening exactly?
Koko: Basically, Karen men inject their penises and sometimes their testicles with coconut oil, which makes the penis look and feel bigger.

And why do they do this?
I wish it was some complicated cultural thing, but really, it's just because these men have small penises, and they want them to seem bigger.

But there's a catch.
Yes. That's putting it lightly. The "effect" can last anywhere between two and three years. Then things get bad.

Go on...
Oh boy. Well, firstly, the coconut oil solidifies around the penis—the actual penis—so between the skin of the shaft and the organ itself. Then after a few years your penis just stops working. Difficulty peeing, reduction in sensitivity, pain, and no erections, so no sex. Basically, it makes the whole thing pointless. I think shame plays a large part in them delaying medical attention.

Has Karen Viagra ever worked?
Well there must be some success stories, otherwise, why would they do it? But they're doing it when they're drunk a lot of the time. They're just filling syringes with coconut oil and putting it under the skin.

So what happens when they do seek medical attention?
They come onto the operating table, which is literally just a table with some plastic on top of it. All they have in the surgery is local anesthetic. You just inject the local anesthetic in different points around the penis. These men are just so sad. The ultimate result of the surgery is that you're going to have less of a penis than you began with .

Can you run us through the surgery?
What they do is they use a scalpel to cut around the penis—this is after the local anesthetic—down to the level of the actual organ. Effectively, you're giving a circumcision until you're cutting around the base and basically just pulling a layer of penis off. Then you're trying to tug the coconut oil off, while also whittling at it with a scalpel. It's just a really brutal surgery.

Related: For more on penis modifications, see our documentary 'ResERECTION: The Penis Implant'

This sounds horrifying.
The worst part is that when you're doing this, you can actually hear the crunching of the coconut oil. Because the coconut oil is injected as a liquid and solidifies. So imagine just cutting through wax or coconut. That's what you hear and see. And these are mainly female medics. They're not nurses or doctors; they've had no formal education and only two years of training. And now they're doing this... coconut dick surgery.

How do the patients respond?
I mean, they're crying. They're given enough local anesthetic to numb it, but that goes away after about twenty minutes. And you can feel the procedure, like that feeling when you have stitches removed. It's not so much the pain I guess so much as being conscious while your penis is flayed in front of you. Occasionally, you'll hit an artery and blood just squirts everywhere. I'll just always remember that little snip, snip, snip sound.

They used to make me bandage these penises up every day, because they'd come in to get them dressed every singly day. The nurses would take photos of me bandaging these penises. Because they are so ulcerated. I think the medics loved the fact that a white woman in her twenties was dressing all these ulcerated penises.

Does this happen all over the world? Or is it specific to this region?
I think it's quite specific to the Karen community.

Why?
I never managed to get an answer. The most I got out of the medics was that these men wanted to be thicker and bigger.

So it's really just that universal anxiety that runs in most men, taken to an unbelievable extreme.
I guess so.

A screenshot from (the crisper Xbox 360 port of) 'Sonic Adventure', via YouTube

The first console I ever owned was a SEGA Mega Drive, or, to you Americans, the SEGA Genesis. It was a cherished gift received from my parents when I was six. My second was a Sony PlayStation, a birthday present three years later, with the Mega Drive having been sold to help fund it. I loved them both as a kid, but the SEGA Dreamcast—my third console—occupies a special place in my gaming memories.

For one thing, I was the right age: The Dreamcast came out in Europe just as I was becoming a teenager. Not only did I have a lot of free time to get into it, but was old enough to start getting into more complex fare than the simple charms childhood favorites like Toki: Going Ape Spit or Crash Bandicoot could provide. Secondly, the Dreamcast was a genuine surprise to me, and had all the makings of a cult console even then with its unusual library and design features. I only knew one other person at school who had one, so owning a Dreamcast made me feel like I was part of something special.

SEGA's swan-song console burned briefly and brightly for a period of only 18 months in Europe and the US. To put that in context, its production run was outlived by earlier also-ran systems such as the Atari Jaguar and Panasonic 3DO. Released in North America on the memorable date of September 9, 1999 (9/9/99), and in Europe a month later, the Dreamcast was hindered in part by poor timing. Most people I knew at school held off on one because they were waiting on the fabled PS2, and I actually felt the same way. Even though I was SEGA daft as a wee one in the early 1990s, thanks largely to Sonic, Sony was perceived as the cooler games company by the end of that decade, and Nintendo more dependable.

My folks asked, at one point, if I wanted a Dreamcast for Christmas, and while I considered waiting, my brother correctly pointed out that the only game I even wanted a PS2 for anyway was Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, which was being released about 18 months down the line at that time.

So I did my research. I purchased Dreamcast magazines and tried to work out this strange white console, with its weird controller, built-in modem support for online gaming (a revelation for consoles at the time), and unusual Game & Watch–like memory card, the Visual Memory Unit (VMU). The screenshots of the games in the magazines looked wonderful—loads of colorful titles with telltale SEGA-blue skies. There were pictures of Sonic Adventure and Shenmue, which both looked fantastic. I remember thinking it was such a big deal at the time that the characters in Shenmue had properly defined fingers and faces; the benchmark for 3D-console graphics before the Dreamcast came along were games like Metal Gear Solid and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, so Shenmue's visuals blew them away by comparison. I decided then that I had missed SEGA, and actually did want a Dreamcast. And I still have one now, so many years later.

A big memory of owning SEGA's little white box around that time was the constant plight to convince pals how good it was—but when they eventually tried it, they were always impressed. The Dreamcast had many excellent multiplayer games, especially in the fighting genre. Namco's launch title, Soulcalibur, is still one of the highest-rated games of all time—it looked incredible and still plays well today. Capcom in particular produced some real gems for the system; great 2D fighters like Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike and Marvel vs Capcom 2; and cult 3D brawlers like Project Justice: Rival Schools 2 and Power Stone and its sequel.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch 'Street Fighter V: KO Dreams', co-created with Capcom

Other fun multiplayer titles included Bizarre Creations' Fur Fighters, with its split screen "fluffmatches"; an excellent version of Quake III Arena; light gun ports The House of the Dead 2 and Confidential Mission, both replete with hilarious B-movie voice acting; and Virtua Tennis 2, for all intents and purposes a perfect sports game.

For more solitary gamers, there were much-loved RPGs like Skies of Arcadia and Grandia II; cult classic shlocker Illbleed; the above-mentioned Shenmue and its sequel; Crazy Taxi, which was fun to play in turns; and the then-exclusive Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, another winner from Capcom and considered the best in the series at the time. Except for that Tyrant battle at the end of disc one—that was some cheap shit.

And how about the stylish graffiti-tagging skater classic Jet Set Radio? No other game encapsulated that rebellious SEGA style quite like this superlative trendsetter, with its cel-shaded looks and exceptional soundtrack. The Dreamcast library was arguably the most esoteric out there, and represented some of SEGA's most experimental output ever, with games like Chu Chu Rocket!, Space Channel 5, Rez, and Seaman all carving niches of their own.

Yet still the PlayStation 2 loomed.

A screenshot from (the crisper Xbox 360 port of) 'Space Channel 5', via YouTube

It's hard to think about it now, given all the console went on to achieve, but the PS2 was actually a rather expensive and underwhelming system at first. Pre-release, game mags were showing off screenshots of dry-looking obscurities like war strategy title Kessen (one star in CVG), and Densha de Go! 3 (a train sim). Indeed, its launch lineup was lackluster compared to the Dreamcast's, and for about six months after launch, the best game to be found on Sony's monolithic console was FantaVision, a firework-based puzzle game that, while impressive, was hardly indicative of the PS2's abilities. Some of the PS2's early Dreamcast conversions, such as Dead or Alive 2 and Grandia II, actually looked worse on Sony's machine, and it would only really see the emergence of its first true "must haves" in Europe around the beginning of 2002, with the likes of Grand Theft Auto III, Final Fantasy X, and Metal Gear Solid 2.

And speaking of Metal Gear Solid 2, by the time I did get around to playing it, not only was it via the later Xbox version (my fourth console, having bypassed the PS2 entirely), but I was also underwhelmed, feeling Hideo Kojima and his team at Konami had pulled a fast one with its bizarre story. When I think back, if I hadn't gone for a Dreamcast, and waited instead for the PS2 to come around, I would have missed out on so many classics.

The Dreamcast was SEGA's final console as a hardware manufacturer, being discontinued in March 2001. It sold about 9 million units worldwide, a figure comparable to its predecessor, the Saturn, but a far cry from SEGA's popular peak with the Mega Drive, which estimates place as having sold anywhere from 29 million to just under 40 million units worldwide.

A screenshot from (the crisper Xbox 360 port of) 'Crazy Taxi', via YouTube

The company's ill-advised flirtation with Mega Drive hardware add-ons such as the Mega-CD (half-decent) and 32X (disastrous), as well as the company's subsequent poor handling of the 32bit Saturn in the West, were all marks against it in the promotion and launch of the 128bit Dreamcast. It was also incredibly easy to pirate, containing only the most rudimentary deterrent in the form of its proprietary GD-ROM format discs. Unlike, say, the PlayStation or Saturn, the Dreamcast didn't even need a modchip or tricksy CD swap tricks to play pirated discs, so its copy protection was a disaster in this regard. It was also disappointing that several well-reviewed Dreamcast games produced toward the end of its lifespan, such as Seaman, Bomberman Online, and Cosmic Smash, never saw commercial release in Europe. Others, such as Daytona USA 2001, saw online play removed for EU release.

The Dreamcast corrected many of SEGA's previous mistakes—it had a great launch lineup, was technologically advanced, and reasonably priced. But a combination of piracy, the sheer strength of PS2 anticipation,—remember the Emotion Engine?—and, quite simply, lack of funds, were all factors contributing to its premature demise.

Though the discontinuation of the Dreamcast marked the end of an era for SEGA, it lives on through home-brew culture and indie titles—mostly scrolling shoot 'em ups, such as Last Hope, Sturmwind, and Fast Striker—that are still being released for the console to this day. It has gone down in gaming history as a system in many ways ahead of its time, and there are few gaming fanbases out there that remain quite so dedicated.

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Nobody loves a spoiler. The recent trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which opened this weekend to less than stellar reviews, was torpedoed with hate after fans thought it revealed too much of the plot. But if spoilers are the ultimate trailer buzzkill, then what is it that makes them work?

There are plenty of people on the internet who think they know the answer. Now almost all movie trailers are subjected to a complete autopsy online. There are Reddit threads, movie sites, and YouTube channels dedicated to picking the trailer apart, as dialogue is over-analyzed, easter eggs are unearthed, and individual frames are militantly dissected. It's little wonder that this fascination with trailers has blown up: The promotional campaigns for most blockbusters begin as early as 18 months before the release date, so there are now innumerable trailers that movie fans are able to deconstruct.

Matt Brubaker, president of one of Hollywood's top marketing agencies, Theatrical at Trailer Park Inc, explained why there 's so much fuss around trailers now. "The new generation has an attention span that is geared more toward two minutes rather than two and half hours, so we can't afford to make any mistakes," he told me over the phone from his LA office.

Trailer Park Inc collaborates with film studios to make trailers for practically every blockbuster movie. Matt oversaw trailers for The Jungle Book, Captain America: Civil War, and Finding Nemo sequel Finding Dory, among many others. With his team of editors, music supervisors, and motion graphic designers, Brubaker said there's a simple format for a successful trailer. Essentially, the format is to give moviegoers a clear idea of what the film is about before they enter the cinema—which explains the tendency towards revealing the plot. "People like to do their homework before they go to the theater," said Brubaker. "They want to make sure that they're going to something that they're really going to enjoy." This is true. If we can't go out for dinner without first googling every morsel of information on the restaurant, why should watching a film be any different?

Brubaker also explained that it's now customary for film studios and marketing agencies to make trailers for specific audiences. "There might be one trailer for a specific retail partner or one for Japan and one for the UK, " he said. "All these trailers have different content but also have to be part of a cohesive campaign."

Take Straight Outta Compton, which released separate trailers on Facebook for specific ethnic demographics: one for a white audience (who, it was assumed, didn't know what the rap group NWA was) and one for an African American audience (who, it was assumed, did). With such tailor-made marketing in place, it may one day be impossible to dislike a trailer, because it will have been made specifically for you.

"The only trailer I remember seeing as a kid was for The Shining," said Mark Woollen, director of Mark Woollen and Associates, another of Hollywood's top trailer-making agencies. "It was one single shot of a corridor with scrolling titles and music to set the tone. That's all I needed."

That trailer really is as basic as it sounds and looks alien in today's world of rapid cuts. Woollen, unlike a lot of his contemporaries, is still an advocate of the "less is more" approach: " I like going and feeling like I know as little about the film as possible." A big statement from a man whose job it is to capture the essence of an entire film in roughly two minutes.

Clichés and tropes are banished (where possible) from Woollen's portfolio, which includes trailers for many major films from the past 25 years, from 12 Years a Slave to Fargo. "The movies that we work on have original voice and vision behind them, so we have to create trailers that follow that," Woollen said. "We are not going to package the films we work on in a cookie-cutter mold—it doesn't work like that."

One such mould-breaking trailer was Woollen's cut for The Revenant, Alejandro González Iñárritu's epic tale of survival that featured an Oscar-winning performance from Leonardo DiCaprio. As the film is full of remarkable cinematography but limited in terms of dialogue, Woollen had to find something else to pace the trailer with—Leo's breath.

"I noticed you could visibly see the breath coming from Leo in a number of images. I thought that would be the perfect element of sound design to connect us to him. It made sense as a way of representing this constant pushing on to survive."

For Woollen, much of the process behind an enticing trailer stems from sound design, whether that be DiCaprio's breath or the Scale & Kolacny Brothers "hypnotizing cover of Radiohead's 'Creep,'" as used in the trailer for The Social Network.

"When you find that right piece of music, it can be the spirit and guiding force of a trailer, that gives it its pulse and rhythm," said Woollen, who used "Creep"to emphasize the human relationships within a film that tells the story of a technological phenomenon. "I started to find connections with the lyrics and the film's story... the lines 'I don't belong here' and 'I wanna have control' made me think of adding friends on Facebook and feeling isolated."

I asked Woollen about the trailer for Room. I realized, after seeing the film, that this trailer seemed to reveal the entire plot. "That film has a difficult first half—there is a darkness to it," he replied. "Honestly, in cases like that, there are going to be concerns with how can you let people in and show that it's going to be OK." Perhaps sometimes, you have to promise a happy ending in order to get audiences into the cinema in the first place.

Woollen has never found it challenging to assert his vision of how a trailer should be, but he is aware that many trailers are still edited to the cookie-cutter mold that film fans have an issue with.

"I don't think that film marketing traditionally is known for being extra bold or risky," Woollen said. "The movie business overall thinks, If it's worked once before, then why not do it again?"

Despite the reviews, and despite the spoiler-filled trailer, Batman v Superman still racked up the fourth-biggest global opening in history. But for those films that aren't massive sequels or superhero blockbusters, the ones that can't rely on a pre-existing fanbase, the trailer must stand alone. "Trailers are now their own form of entertainment, in a way," Woollen said. "And come to think of it, there are films that should exist just as trailers."

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All images courtesy of Wizard Skull

There's an art to crafting the perfect Tinder profile. You only have 500 characters to explain yourself in words; the rest has to come through in your pictures. Last year, Tinder CEO Sean Rad shared the recipe for a great Tinder photo: "Choose a picture that represents you best—whether that's you in a suit, or jeans and a T-shirt," he told British GQ. "Your pictures should give others a sense of your personality, hobbies, and interests. If you like to go rock climbing or hiking, show it. If you're kind of a goofball, show it."

And if you've had an Eat, Pray, Love moment in some exotic locale where elephants live, I guess you should show that too.

Brooklyn-based artist Wizard Skull first noticed women posting photos with elephants on Tinder two years ago, as he was swiping through profiles. He started taking screencaps, and today, he says he sees the elephant photos all the time. He had enough screencaps to furnish two zines, the second of which (Women with Elephants Found on Tinder) was just published.

The last time we wrote about Wizard Skull, he was editing new characters into the original animation cels of cartoons like The Smurfs and My Little Pony. Besides the elephants, he's collected photos of women on Tinder with guns, ice cream, pizza, and fake mustaches.

You can see more of Wizard Skull's art on his website and Instagram.

"For me, being British is just as important as being a Muslim. They're synonymous, not contradictory," says 25-year old imam and volunteer with the Ahmadiyya Muslim Caliphate, Abdul Khusus. "That's what really attracted me—the fact that I could be both."

As we talk, he leads me through the vast corridors of South Morden's Baitul Futuh Mosque. Built in 2003, it's the largest in Britain and the headquarters of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Caliphate, which is hosting its annual dinner and peace summit this evening.

As we approach the complex's main mosque, which is the size of an aircraft hangar, Khusus takes me how he became an Ahmadiyya imam: "I went to imam school after my GCSEs, when I was 16. We studied sciences, comparative religions. We learned translations of the Koran and the commentary, and really had an in-depth look into what Islam teaches, to come to our own conclusion as to whether it's a religion that is based upon jihad or not. And it's not... Islam literally means peace."

Led by Khalifa Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the Ahmadiyya Caliphate has a presence in over 206 countries, and its 10 million followers make it one of the most widely followed Muslim organizations in the world. It's also the foremost organization to arrange itself around a spiritual leader, known as the khalifa. Viewed as progressive by many in the West, and heretical in many Asian and Middle Eastern countries, Ahmadiyya is the only Muslim organization to endorse the complete separation of church and state.

The Baitul Futuh Mosque, the South Morden headquarters of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Caliphate

Based on the belief that Ahmadiyya's founding father, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was the second coming, as foretold by the Prophet Muhammad, the group follows Ahmad's belief that individuals should "protect the sanctity of both religion and government by becoming righteous souls as well as loyal citizens."

With headlines so focused on the radicalization of Muslims and the rise of groups like the Islamic State and al Shabaab, the central message that Ahmadiyya Muslims are keen to highlight—both at tonight's summit and through their teachings—is one of social inclusion and community, condemning acts of terrorism as un-Islamic.

"We're fortunate that, in our community, we have zero experiences of radicalization or any kind of extremism," explains Jamal Akbhat, head volunteer for the Ahmadiyya Youth Association. "They start at the age of seven, and we involve the children in all sorts of activities, from seed planting and selling poppies to feeding the homeless. It's by giving our youth an association and by integrating them into communities that we avoid any radicalization."

Walking toward a small press conference the Khalifa is holding, the sheer density of both the complex itself and the community built around it is starkly evident. Ahmadis were some of the first Muslim immigrants to settle in Britain, and the mosque itself—which cost about $21 million—was financed entirely by donations from UK community members.

Far from being a Spartan, stripped-back place of worship, the complex includes a sports hall, libraries, and a gym. At full capacity, it can hold 10,000 worshippers and is also the broadcasting headquarters for the organization's 24-hour satellite TV station, Muslim Television Ahmadiyya International.

Khalifa Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, fifth successor to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Caliphate

As we cram ourselves around the press-packed table, the khalifa is led into the room. Questions fire off on tangents as far-ranging as his stance on Donald Trump to divestment from fossil fuels and the anti-immigrant rantings of Dutch politician Geert Wilders. But the khalifa appears most interested in bringing each answer back to Ahmadiyya's desire for world peace and an understanding of Islam. He's also keen to address the actions of radical groups carrying out waves of violence under the banner of Islam.

"These cruelties and brutalities they're teaching are all against the teachings of Islam," he says when asked about the actions of ISIS, Boko Haram, and al Shabaab. "I don't think a true Muslim can ever behave like this... and if they are big groups, then this is for their own economic and geopolitical gains."

Ahmadiyya Muslims agree with both Sunnis and Shias on the Five Pillars of Islam providing the framework for worship and practice. But followers of the organization itself remain heavily persecuted worldwide, especially in countries like India, Bangladesh, Egypt, and Pakistan, where the organization was declared illegal in 1974.

Ahmadiyya is officially banned in Saudi Arabia, with Ahmadis forbidden from undertaking the pilgrimage to Mecca known as the Hajj. In Pakistan, its members are routinely attacked and beaten, with 11 members of the faith killed there in 2014; it's for this reason that the community in South Morden is home to a huge Pakistani diaspora.

As the khalifa rises to leave, we make our way toward the main arena for the beginning of the peace summit. The sprawling gymnasium and its lacquered floor are filled with dinner tables and an eclectic crowd of young and old, caucasian and Middle Eastern, Muslim and non-Muslim—though it's immediately evident that there are no Muslim women among the diners.

During the speeches, several MPs and community members take to the stage, including MP for Mitcham and Morden, Siobhain McDonough; MP for Putney, Justine Greening; as well as 2016 London mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith, who centers his speech around his wish to "make sure has a voice at the highest levels of government," should he be elected this May.

As the evening progresses, Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad takes the stage. After a long speech on the worsening situation in Syria, he addresses the uncertainty many feel toward Islam amid the refugee crisis and the attacks by ISIS militants in Paris, remarking that the "overriding objective should be to establish peace."

The khalifa also says that Muslims can and should be permitted to leave Islam, should they desire—a view that is held in contempt by many followers of the faith. Though we're told that the women's branch of the organization is extremely active, with Ahmadis championing the importance of women's education and social inclusion, the lack of emphasis on this issue does stand out against Ahmad's other rousing remarks.

As the speeches wind down and dinner is served, I consider the message of the Ahmadiyya Caliphate. It's not a particularly groundbreaking one, but in some ways that almost makes it more powerful: love for all, and hatred for none.

Follow James on Twitter.

Outside Yellowknife Court House. Photo by Cory Punter

A Northwest Territories court case has put a critical spotlight on how RCMP handled a 13-year-old girl's sexual assault complaint in 2014. Instead of taking the girl to a hospital or contacting victim services, cops locked her up in a jail cell overnight.

Over the last six years, almost 350 libraries in the UK have been forced to close because of drastic cuts to local authority spending. These closures have resulted in nearly 8,000 jobs losses and the deterioration of one of the last remaining freely accessible community spaces in the country.

The surviving libraries aren't just about books any longer, but a whole range of community services, from homework clubs to résumé advice sessions. Many also offer free access to the internet, a blessing for those who don't have access to WiFi at home as it turns the humble library into a multi-functioning office.

Apart from once having to console my sister after she sat down at a library computer on a chair that was soaked in piss, my own experiences with public libraries have been extremely positive. My mom was a librarian, so I spent most of my childhood in libraries, learning to love their potential for imagination and knowledge.

I went down to my local library in London to meet the people who use them today and to figure out what place libraries have in the modern world.

Fatumata, 18: "My distractions disappear here"

At first, I met a lot of college students who used it as a place to study for their exams. Fatumata, who is revising for her English literature exams in May, only recently started to use this particular library. "I used to go to another library, but lately there's been a group of girls who go there that just giggle all the time, and I couldn't get my work done."

Fatumata has used this quieter revision venue to her advantage. "The library is a great part of the community, especially for young people who find it hard to study at home. A lot of us have a lot of siblings, and it can be very distracting sometimes. Whereas when I come to the library all my distractions disappear."

Fatumata says the library is responsible for her passing her exams. "The first time I did my AS exams I failed because I wasn't going to the library very often. When I re-took my exams, I went to the library every day, and I passed."

Sebastian, 27: "I organize meetings here; there are good communal spaces"

Sebastian was using the library because he doesn't have access to a printer at home and had to print something. (Who owns a printer these days?) He was also pretty positive about his local library. "It's a great environment to work in," he said. "I'm a freelance producer, so I organize meetings here; there are good communal spaces and a small cafe that are perfect for them."

Nirayo, 36: "I've come here to improve my English"

Nirayo moved to the UK from Eritrea a year ago and has a very specific reason for coming to the library. "I've just started coming here to get books to improve my English," he told me, while flicking through the pages of his newly borrowed textbook.

"I'm definitely going to stay here to learn. It's such a nice building—I've never seen anything like this before."

A lot of libraries in inner-city areas offer free help with learning English. At Shoreditch library in London, there is a coffee morning every Tuesday that offers advice on learning the language.

The majority of people I met saw free internet access as the biggest draw to the library. David, who is currently jobless, comes to the library daily. "Access to a computer is vital for people like me. Universal Jobmatch has now moved online, so I need to come here every day to look for work—the job center is always rammed."

Rosina, 81: "It lets you use your imagination"

Internet access and printing facilities have changed libraries into places that are no longer used to simply borrow books. In fact, the number of people who borrow from libraries has fallen in almost every area of England over the last two years. So I was pleasantly surprised when I met big-time borrowers Rosina and Anna.

Rosina, who is now retired, has been using public libraries since she was nine years old. When I met her, she was visiting the library to return a set of books and pick out some new ones—a routine she does once a fortnight.

"I think it's a great part of the community because it gets children reading; I think its essential for all children to read, because it gets your mind working and lets you use your imagination."

"There is something wonderful about having a physical copy of a book," Rosina said. "Every time someone says they are going to buy me a Kindle, I hit that person over the head."

Anna, 7: "I go to the library because I want to learn"

Elementary school pupil Anna said, "I go to the library because I really want to learn," while clenching an armful of books. She was with her mother, Caitlin. "I'm not very good at poetry, but I've borrowed a book about poems now, so I will get better at it," she explained.

Anna really was obsessed with the library and looked absolutely horrified when I asked her what she would do if it were no longer there.

But however popular local libraries may be with the community, they are entirely publicly funded, and as government cuts increase, the number of libraries will diminish. Next year another 111 libraries are due to close across the UK.

Follow Amelia on Twitter.

Ecstasy pills, this customs officer's drug of choice. "At work, I would be confiscating drugs, and outside of work, I would be partying." Photo via YouTube

This post originally appeared on VICE Australia and was told anonymously to David Benge.

I grew up in small town New Zealand. Nothing out of the ordinary. I liked to skate. I liked to draw and paint. Drugs weren't really a thing when I was a teenager. I didn't even smoke weed. I was just a regular run-of-the-mill, well-behaved kid.

When I was 17, I applied for a number of different jobs. The first place that got back to me was the Bank of New Zealand to be a bank teller. On the first day, I was driving to work when I got a call from the New Zealand Customs Service. They offered me a job that seemed better than the bank one, so I accepted on the phone, then walked through the doors of the bank and quit. I was going to be a fucking customs official.

I was 18 years old, and I moved to Auckland to start out on the front line at the mail center. Our main aim was to try and find drugs. At this stage in my life, I'd still never had a drug experience, so I guess I was kind of removed from the whole process. Essentially, this shit was racial profiling. If the package was addressed to an Asian name, then we'd open it looking for amphetamines, or precursors to make amphetamines. If it was to a heavily populated European area, we'd be looking for ecstasy or MDMA. It felt pretty strange opening personal mail based purely on the simple profiling criteria supplied to us. But it was early days, and that was the job, so I did it.

Naturally, in the mail center ,we found a hell of a lot of porn. Most of it was just shitty tapes of shitty porn involving ugly people. Every now and again, there was something more fucked up though. Once I tagged a package as possibly suspicious. We were all huddled around the screen watching the usual ugly fat dude, banging some girl from behind, when from out of nowhere a blade appeared and slit her throat open. She collapsed, and the screen went black. To this day, I cannot get that image out of my head.

New Zealand Customs Service Container Inspection Unit at Auckland Port, photo via Wikipedia

I graduated from the mail center to targeted inspections at freight companies like DHL and Fedex. It was a nine to five gig. I didn't realize it at the time, but it turned out this was the best place to be. You don't have to deal with people, there's no real face to anything, and it's not personalized. That's where we got the big hauls. We'd look through large shipping containers, searching for something. Anything. You'd seize upward of 100 kilograms of meth at a time. It was a whole different ball game to the mail center where maybe you'd find a couple of grams here and there, hidden in between the pages of a letter.

Around this time, I met Sarah at a party. She was fiery, drop dead gorgeous, and a drug dealer. I didn't take drugs for the first couple of months we were together, but eventually, I started. At first it was cheap speed, a line or two here and there, and then it was MDMA.

At work, they really drilled into you that taking drugs ruins lives. By seizing drugs and preventing them coming into the country, I was contributing to the greater good of society.

As I moved further up the ranks, I had to do house raids. Nothing can quite describe the feeling of being part of a drug raid. In some ways, it's exactly like in the movies. Kicking someone's door down and chasing him down the street, with small children in the house, crying and freaking out. It wasn't until that point that I really made the connection between what I was seizing and the fact it was having an impact on real human lives. Breaking up real families. Fucking with real people.

By day, I was breaking into people's houses and seizing drug shipments. At night, I was taking the drugs that had slipped through the cracks.

Meanwhile, I was turning up to work coming down from the night before. I had begun to hate my job. I was getting high to cut off from my professional existence. By day, I was breaking into people's houses and seizing drug shipments. At night, I was taking the drugs that had slipped through the cracks.

One night, Sarah had a friend staying from overseas. He didn't know what I did for a job. He was leaving the next day and suggested that we help him finish off his MDMA before he went. It turned out it wasn't MDMA at all, but 2CP. After a couple of lines, I got dressed up in my work uniform, high as balls. No one thought it was as funny as I did.

Living this double life began to take its toll. At work, I would be confiscating drugs, and outside of work, I would be partying. I would stay up all night on ecstasy and then turn up to work without having slept to try and stop drugs coming into the country. I began to get seriously depressed. I was a complete and utter wreck, strung out, and on edge. I would have been the first to be profiled if I'd come off a flight and had to clear customs as a passenger.

I quit my job, and my life began to improve immediately. I also broke up with Sarah and started taking a lot fewer drugs. I still dabble on occasion, and I still enjoy it. I guess I'll never know whether it was the drugs or the job that was really destroying me, but the one thing I'm certain of is that the combination of the two nearly drove me fucking insane.

The most frustrating thing was that it just didn't feel like what I was doing made a scrap of difference. Having the worst case scenario of meth addiction shoved down my throat on a daily basis by my bosses, I guess whenever I seized meth, particularly in the beginning, I felt like I was making a difference. But people getting arrested and locked up for bringing in precursors to be able to make the drugs, well, it just felt like it was the wrong approach. It all felt pointless.

There's just so much money spent on customs. It feels like you're trying to build the most intense secure gate for a horse that has already bolted into the next paddock. The way it works at the moment feels like you're constantly pushing shit up hill, and more often than not arresting the wrong people. Spending that money on rehab and drug education would be a much better use of resources.

This piece was published in partnership with The Influence.

In 1995, Marque "Tate" Lynche walked onto the stage in Orlando, Florida, with his fellow All New Mickey Mouse Club members, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, and TJ Fantini, to perform "Always in My Heart" in front of a screaming audience of kids. The child actor and singer's other co-stars on the Disney Channel's long-running show included Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and JC Chasez, later of 'N Sync.

Lynche was among the most talented stars of the show. He would convey genuine excitement as he led the camera crew around his hometown of Clearwater, Florida, for short MMC segments. He also starred in at least one music video for MMC, which also featured Ryan Gosling and Justin Timberlake.

On December 6, 2015, the lifeless body of Marque Tate Lynche was discovered by his roommate, Christopher Freeman (who currently stars in The Lion King on Broadway), in the Harlem apartment they shared. Worldwide media reported the death of a Mouseketeer and fans mourned a lost talent.

And then, days later, TMZ ran the headline: "Ex- Mouseketeer Arrested for Punching Cop Months Before Death," and claims made by two NYPD officers in a report relating to an arrest in August 2015 smeared Lynche's name around the world.

This is the story of what happened in between.

Marque Lynche never experienced the roaring success of his fellow MMC classmates. While Britney Spears, Ryan Gosling, Christina Aguilera, and Justin Timberlake became global sensations, Lynche morphed into a relatively successful working artist. He landed a prime role as Simba in the The Lion King on Broadway from 2000-2001. He went on to compete on season three of American Idol in early 2004, but was eliminated before making it to the final 12.

Lynche had always lived in the shadow of his child stardom, but he didn't seem to have been destroyed by it. When his mother, Michelle, became ill with cancer in 2003, he decided to step back from the limelight for a spell to help take care of her. His younger brother, Michael, who would go on to place fourth in a later season of American Idol, dropped out of college, too, to help care for their mother. She finally passed away in 2004, leaving her elder son deeply depressed.

On October 15, 2004, Marque Lynche was pulled over in Florida and caught with 57 Vicodin pills for which he did not have a prescription.

That incident only resulted in a court warning for Lynche, but his world was becoming more chaotic. A struggle with addiction saw him do at least one stint in a rehab facility. Videos of him joking around and playing music with other clients at the Antelope Valley Rehabilitation center in Acton, California, in 2011, have been posted on YouTube. "I'm trying to get footage of the famous Marque Lynche and sell it TMZ or extra extra extra... I'm just kidding," joked the YouTube poster.

In retrospect, considering what TMZ would eventually publish, it was an unfortunate joke.

Lynche continued to write music. He toured Scotland and Ireland in 2012 as part of a production called "An American Gospel Christmas." But overall, his career had stagnated and he had struggled to find high-profile work.

After the death of his father in 2014, Lynche relocated from Jersey City to Harlem. He began attending AA meetings, and this led him to attend meetings at Grace Congressional Church of Harlem. Soon, he was singing in the choir there.

Reverend Nigel Pearce,the pastor of Grace Congressional, tells me Lynche was eager to go from simply attending AA meetings to becoming an active participant in his congregation. "That's how he came to us. We have Alcoholics Anonymous on Mondays and Fridays and somebody from our church spoke to him and that's what brought him to our church on Sunday mornings." Lynche was instantly beloved by the congregation, Rev. Pearce adds: "A lot of people were gathered around him, a lot of grandmothers... and I know that they cared for him very much."

Rev. Pearce got to know Lynche and hoped to be a positive influence in his life: "Marque was sort of happy-go-lucky. He had been coming to church for about six months; he sang for us quite a number of times, and even when I went to preach up at a church out two hours north, I asked him to come and join me with the pianist and he came and sang some songs for us. We would have lunch periodically, and I was getting to know him and his story and how he sang with JT and Christina."

It was at around this point that Marque Lynche's life collided with my own.

On August 12, 2015, I was sitting on the bench on the platform of the 145th Street 1-train subway stop in Harlem, when two police officers approached the young man sitting next to me, who happened to be Marque Lynche, although I did not know it at the time.

The two cops—I would later learn that their names were Officer Christian Diamante and Officer Nicholas Moutselos—asked Lynche to follow them past the turnstile. He agreed. I also walked off the platform and back through the turnstiles, because I had a feeling something was about to happen.

They then accused Lynche of jumping the turnstile. As they were running his information, he became upset, but he never raised his voice.

I saw one of the cops take his handcuffs out and make an attempt to cuff Lynche while they were standing there talking. Lynche was clearly unhappy about this, and he argued with Officer Moutselos.

I watched the whole encounter, and at no point did Marque Lynche raise his hands or strike either of the officers. He was uncooperative, locking his hands to prevent the officers from cuffing him.

Officer Moutselos then shoved Lynche against the gate. (Lynche's lawyer later speculated that the impact from this shove is the only possible way Lynche's open hand, holding the soda bottle, could have inadvertently swung and made contact with Office Moutselos; I saw no such contact.)

Officer Diamante joined his colleague at this point, and they forced Lynche to the floor and cuffed him.

Another bystander and I filmed parts of the encounter.

In this clip, filmed by Jezeil Jimenez, Officer Moutselos can be seen holding cuffs in his right hand while Marque Lynche searches for ID:

Marque Lynche spent several days in jail, and I was able to track him down a few days after his release. I was shocked to find out that he had been charged with assaulting a police officer.

I was then able to obtain the police report, written by Officer Christian Diamante. (You can read the full report obtained by The Influence and view photographs of it here.)

It is illegal to make a false statement in a police report, yet what Officer Diamante wrote shocked me.

Officer Diamante stated in the report that he "observed the defendant strike Officer Moutselos about the head with a half-full soda bottle approximately three times." He wrote that "I am further informed by Officer Moutselos that he observed the defendant strike him about the face with a closed fist."

Having witnessed the whole event, suffice it to say, both of these statements contradict what I saw.

"I am further informed by Officer Moutselos," continued Officer Diamante in the report, "that at the conclusion of the altercation, he had suffered redness and lacerations to his face, and a dislocated right shoulder."

The two videos below show the officers using force against Lynche to get him cuffed. The second of these two clips—which shows both officers actively engaged with both arms in successfully cuffing him—offers evidence against the dislocated shoulder claim.

In this clip, filmed by Patrick Hilsman, Officers Moutselos and Diamante can be seen forcing Marque Lynche to the ground:

In the following clip, filmed by Jezeil Jiminez, Officers Moutselos and Diamante can be seen cuffing Marque Lynche:

Another eye-catching aspect of the report is that Lynche was charged with "possession of a weapon in the fourth degree"—the half-empty plastic soda bottle he was carrying.

I was not the only witness of Lynche's arrest. Jezeil Jimenez, a 22-year-old man who has just graduated from SUNY Purchase with a degree in literature, also witnessed and filmed the incident. Here is how he recalled it when I spoke to him last week:

"As I was buying a new Metrocard, I saw the two officers walking in as a whole, even though there are good officers. If there are channels for things like this to happen, for a blatant lie to become the truth and treated as fact ... It doesn't bode well."

Rev. Pearce is more sad than angry.

"For me, it was hard to believe that he hit anybody, especially anybody in authority," he said. "He was very respectful of me as a pastor. I have a hard time imagining how he would hit somebody... He was thirty-four years old. It was a life that had a promise."

Tragically, that report filed by NYPD Officer Diamante is likely to define how Marque Lynche is remembered by many thousands of people. Marque Lynche didn't need to be convicted of a crime for his guilt to be widely assumed. The police narrative has been treated as a piece of his biography and engrained in his online obituaries. Lynche will never get to tell his side of the story of the last months of his life.

Patrick Hilsman is an associate editor of The Influence. Follow him on Twitter.

A version of this article was originally published by The Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow The Influence on Facebook or Twitter.

If you were where I was in initial hours of Easter morning, you might have thought you had slipped down a literal rabbit hole. Not a proverbial one—an actual one, punctuated by neon-coloured flashing lights while a shirtless DJ played industrial to a room full of bouncing, scantily clad bondage bunnies. Sure, there were typical festive decorations you might see at your family's house during a holiday dinner: multicoloured plastic eggs in baskets, hanging pastel streamers, rainbow lollipops. Here, however, there were also whips, a ridiculous amount of leather, and people being led around on leashes.

The main room at the Subspace Easter Fetish Ball, which was held at the Great Hall in Toronto, didn't seem that different at first from some of the raves I've attended in my life, except for the increased amount of skin attendees were showing and an increased amount of leather being donned. As I entered the dungeon portion of the party, which was in a large back room at the venue with hardwood floors and white walls, though, I started to become more aware of where the fuck I was spending my Easter weekend.

After reading the rules posted on the door outside—which notably stated no genital nudity and no penetration allowed, but did allow piercing and "limited knife play"—I'll admit I was a bit confused. On my way to the party, I was going back and forth in my head about whether or not there would be actual sex, whether or not Easter fetish was a legitimate sexual inclination, whether or not I would walk into a scene much like the infamous Sasha Grey lesbian bunny porno. But luckily the organizer of the event, Craig Galbraith, was able to clear up the misconception that me and so many others outside of the subculture hold.

"Fetish has less to do with sex—it has to do with sexuality," Galbraith told me. "It's about an agreement between two people to participate in an activity that is erotic, but it doesn't have to conclude in sex... it's almost like a naked massage."

As I took a seat on one of the barstools next to the sectioned-off area that contained five pieces of furniture—including a wooden X-shaped fixture called a St. Andrew's Cross—for people to position themselves on while being tied up, whipped, and/or spanked, I met a friendly catgirl named Sabrina wearing a short purple skirt and black ears with tiny ribbons on them.

"It's a great way to enjoy Easter, and I know for sure some people don't have a lot of family," Sabrina told me. "It's amazing for me especially—I've met many awesome people, and being part of the BDSM community is like being part of a family... you're not alone, and you're all sharing something." As Sabrina started to effectively become my fetish spirit guide, I looked over to the dungeon area and noticed my two friends who had accompanied me to the event had wandered off—one was bent over a bench while her boyfriend smacked her ass with a long metal shoe horn and was moaning and squeaking as he rhythmically hit her.

The Easter Fetish Ball is an annual event held by Subspace, a fetish community in Toronto that was founded in 2006. Subspace, which is named for the altered mental state a sub can go into during a scene with a dom, has had many themed events over the years: everything from military, to medical, to alien abduction. The ball on Saturday was the second to last large-format event Subspace will be holding. Galbraith, who is 45, has told me he's retiring from the big parties and will soon be focusing primarily on more intimate events at his studio. Tonight, though, the crowd was heavily populated by rabbits, pigs, and various other spring-themed creatures.

When I asked Sabrina if there's such a thing as an Easter fetish, she told me basically anything is possible: "They could be into bunnies, and there's definitely religious fetishes—someone could be really into feeling like they're Jesus and being on a cross."

Armed with this information and with the fact that Sabrina mentioned she thought she saw someone with stigmata earlier at the party, I decided to try to find Jesus at the fetish ball.

And I found not one, but an entire trinity of Jesuses at the party, including one with a crown of thorns and red-glittered stigmata. One I spoke to was a professional makeup artist who was dressed as a deranged, black-and-red bunny and went by the name Helly, showed me real scars she had from piercings on her wrists as she explained to me what Easter meant to her.

"At one point I had a huge family, and we had turkey, stuffing, all that bullshit, then for a little while I was homeless and bouncing from house to house," Helly told me. "Up until recently, it's just been another day... but I had a lovely date last night who wanted to celebrate Good Friday by crucifying me—that didn't end up happening, but I want to do it so badly!"

Galbraith, the owner of Subspace, told me that in addition to the big-production monthly fetish balls, he (and a couple of dedicated volunteers) have also hosted small, intimate Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with the fetish community at Subspace's studio in Liberty Village—which serves both as his home, a dungeon, and as a venue for fetish-related classes like Japanese rope bondage. And though there is an undeniable sexually charged atmosphere at Subspace events, it is not a place where you could find men aggressively prowling on uninterested women. The community has strict guidelines when it comes to respect and consent.

"I really like partying with hot, naked women, and as I started to throw these events, I realized there wasn't a lot of places available for girls to express sexuality in a protected environment where they wouldn't be creeped on by random men," Galbraith explained. He then started to build a setting with Subspace events (listed on Fetlife) where his guests could feel like they were in a safe space to express their fantasies, including the implementation of dungeon monitors to ensure attendees were abiding by rules.

"It's about the right people coming together understanding respect and etiquette so that people can be themselves without feeling embarrassed or judged," he said.

Galbraith's sentiments were echoed by literally every single person I spoke to at the event, including a couple I met named Stuart and Rachel, who have been going to Subspace events for as long as they've been together—seven years. When I asked Stuart, a 51-year-old insurance lawyer who was wearing fitted black leather pants, why they come to Subspace events, he told me, "No matter what we're interested in at the moment, we can indulge... Our sex is not all that vanilla, so if we want to find extra partners, this is usually a good place." Rachel, his partner, said, "People are much more open . At a sex club environment, it's very closed, and it tends to be very hetero."

Like Stuart and Rachel, many of the people at Subspace events are veterans of the scene. On the sidelines of the dancefloor toward the end of the night, I met Mstress Leah (who was scarily insistent about ensuring I leave out the "i" in Mstress), a woman with black mesh covering her massive breasts who was wearing leather from shoulder to toe and has been part of the fetish community for 23 years. "I love the aesthetic of it, the visuals—but it's functional as well... when I'm dominating someone, I feel a buzz after for days," Mstress Leah, who mentioned she was going to a potluck the next day for Easter, told me as she motioned to the woman tied up in a rope bondage device in the corner of the main room. "If I could get someone on the St. Andrew's cross and flog the living shit out of them, that would make me really happy about holy days... the symbolism is just too much not to have fun with."

By the end of the night, my bunny ears started to feel tight on my head as I neared sensory overload, but I finally worked up the nerve to participate in the dungeon at least once. As my friend bent me over a piece of equipment, I covered my face, feeling slightly embarrassed as my face reddened, and allowed her to hit me several times with a long metal shoe horn. The metal felt cold on my skin, though I was surprised how little it actually hurt.

I asked her to hit me harder.

"I have a feeling you're going to be back here," Sabrina told me.

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Trump supporters in Wisconsin. All photos by Abazar Khayami

Editor's Note: You might know Bun B as the Texas-based rapper, professor, and activist who's one half of the legendary Houston duo UGK. He's also VICE's newest political correspondent, reporting on the ground from the campaign trail of the strangest presidential election in recent memory.

We're in Wisconsin, baby. Home of cheese, and the Green Bay Packers, and, well, cheese. It's also the latest stop in the traveling political flea circus of 2016. The remaining presidential candidates have arrived in America's Dairyland, and it didn't take long for the shit to hit the fan. By the time I arrived this week, protesters had already staged a sit-in at a Holiday Inn Express in Janesville in an attempt to stop Donald Trump from holding a rally at the hotel conference center the next day. The demonstration ended with six arrests, giving us an idea of what we might expect this week. Trust me, it's never a boring day on the Trump beat. And unfortunately, that's the beat I'm on today. But it's cool. I'm after the truth, and there's no better place to find and expose it than in the presence of a liar.

The 35-degree Wisconsin air slaps my face like a mad wife, welcoming me to Milwaukee with a cold-ass breeze coming off Lake Michigan. But I'm bundled up and ready to see what Wisconsin's about. I've had shows here before, but never really ventured out. And we'll be all over the state before the week is over. First stop: Janesville.

Most of you have probably never heard of Janesville, Wisconsin. Those who have may know it as the hometown of Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, or alternatively, as the place where, in 1992, Geraldo Rivera staged a confrontation between members of the Ku Klux Klan and anti-Klan demonstrators and ended up sparking a fistfight. On our way into town, we pass by the General Motors plant, which used to be the engine of Janesville's economy but is now shuttered after the collapse of the economy in 2008. We jump out the whip to look around, but a security guard immediately says we have to keep it moving.

We get word that the crowd is growing around the Holiday Inn Express, where Trump is still planning on holding his town hall Tuesday afternoon. As we pull up, I realize that's an understatement. There are tons of people here, spanning the entire spectrum of Trump sentiment. The line of supporters trying to get into the event winds around the entire parking lot. A crowd of protesters is swarming right next to them, and it's the largest I've seen at any Trump campaign event so far. And another crowd has gathered up nearby, protesting the protestors. Capacity inside is 1,000, and there's at least double that number of people outside. Sheriff's deputies, SWAT teams, and Secret Service are all on site, and for the first time, I can see snipers on the roof. Like six—on the roof of a Holiday Inn Express. It's bananas.

Protesters gather outside the Holiday Inn Express

The anti-Trump crowd is loud and organized, congregating in a corner of the hotel parking lot with signs that say things like "Shame on White America" and "No Hate in Our State." Every five minutes or so, they break out in a "Dump Trump" chant, or some old protest song. They don't even seem to notice the line of gawking Trump fans winding around them. Eventually, one of the demonstrators gets too excitable, and is removed from the cordoned-off protest area—which doesn't surprise me. Emotions are running high. I ask the ejected protestor, Neal Fletcher, why things escalated, and Neal tells me it's because the Trump supporters couldn't define "Democratic socialist."

I track down the Trump fan in question and ask why he's supporting the unlikely Republican candidate. His name is Justin Ferguson, and his answer mostly boils down to economic issues. Trump supporters seem to think their guy is a perfect businessman, and I get the sense that a lot of the real-estate mogul's fans are living vicariously through the candidate and his lifestyle.

Eventually, the conversation turns to foreign policy, and that's where Justin loses me. He stumps himself talking about banning travel to, and immigration from, "high-risk countries"—in other words, religious persecution of Muslims. By the time he tries to redirect the discussion, the damage is done. Much like Trump, Justin's blanket statements about Islam and ISIS have left him without ground to stand on, misinformed and misguided by the guy he thinks should be president. It's time for me to move along.

Sheriff's deputies stand in front of a crowd outside the Trump event in Janesville, Wisconsin

Other than Justin, most of Trump's faithful are quiet as they file into the hotel's convention center. We make our way around the hotel to the media check-in at the back entrance, where reporters are milling around, taking smoke breaks while they wait for Secret Service to empty everything in their bags. But there are about 20 cops back here, so my smoke break isn't gonna work. Good thing I didn't bring it, because the K-9 is coming by, getting his sniff on. The entire scene is a madhouse, and it takes a good hour to get to the door, but eventually we get in.

The place is packed—there are no seats left for attendees or the press at this point. The opener—a former Apprentice contestant from somewhere else in the Midwest—takes the stage, talking about how much money Trump raised for veterans by skipping the Fox News debate in Iowa this year. She makes the vets in the room stand up, and then sit down until she finds the oldest one, an 87-year-old. Then she tells the audience to buckle up for the ride "because the Trump train is leaving the station!" Allow me to jump the fuck off.

A few minutes later, security gets onstage to let everyone know that the room is now at capacity, and that those still waiting in line outside will have to settle for listening to the candidate over blaring loudspeakers in the parking lot. The attendees are also reminded that if someone starts to protest inside the venue, they are to notify the nearest law enforcement officer, and not touch or harm the protestor themselves. That's funny, considering that we're at a town hall for a candidate that considered paying legal fees for a supporter charged with assault at one of his rallies.

Sheriff's deputies outside the Janesville Holiday Inn Express

Irony aside, though, the scene inside the Janesville Holiday Inn Express seems relatively peaceful. Plus, S.W.E.P.T.—that is, the Southern Wisconsin Emergency Preparedness Team—is in the house. They're like a volunteer SWAT team with none of the resources SWAT has at its disposal—somewhere between a Red Cross crew and neighborhood watch, I think, with whistles and neon yellow vests. I feel safer already.

As the room waits for Trump, I notice that I haven't seen any elected officials here, which seems a little strange; usually, a couple of local businessmen and politicians warm up the crowd before the main act. Besides that Apprentice lady, the only other person to get on stage was the human loudspeaker with his crowd control PSAs. Trump is late, and the crowd outside starts to dissipate slowly, until only the most ardent supporters—albeit hundreds of them—are left outside, waiting in front of the lobby doors to hear the candidate's disembodied voice come out over the speakers. Most of the protesters get bored too, though a few remain scattered among the "Make America Great Again" hats and homemade campaign swag.

Inside, as more time passes with no sign of Trump, excitement eventually turns to anxiety, anticipation to aggravation. People who came in with huge, giddy smiles are no longer laughing. Some start to ask each other whether or not Trump is even coming. The older folks in the crowd start to switch into nap mode, nodding off in their hotel ballroom chairs. The locals are getting restless, and so is the media. There's no water, no snacks, and even if there were, it's unlikely the campaign would let us out for refreshments available anywhere. We got here at noon, and it's now 5 PM. Bring this guy's ass out already.

Finally, the campaign's signature opera music starts to swell. Then Elton John comes on. Trump's Rolling Stones intro song plays twice. Cue the combover. And in walks the Orange Creamsicle himself, grabbing the mic to thunderous applause. He says he feels bad that the "over 5,000 people are outside that can't get in." The crowd in the parking lot is nowhere near that big, but accuracy doesn't concern Lyin' Don. Then he shouts out the motorcycle community, wondering aloud why the biker crowd loves him so much, considering that he's "not a motorcycle guy." But Janesville is Harley Country, so it's well received nonetheless.

And with that, the Republican frontrunner launches into his standard speech, teeing off with a couple of lines about Wisconsin's lost manufacturing jobs, the ones stolen by China, and the crowd eats it up. The message hits home here. Brushing off Scott Walker's endorsement of his rival, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, that morning, Trump says the Wisconsin governor gave him a plaque that the mogul never bothered to read, and that someone eventually found buried under a pile of other plaques people had given Trump.

A Trump supporter in a strip club parking lot

After a little while, I walk out to the lobby to see how the fans in the overflow crowd are reacting to Trump's speech. But they kind of aren't—applause lines that get huge cheers inside the ballroom don't seem to resonate with the audience outside. Because the point of being at a Trump event is not to hear Trump speak—it's to see him, to take selfies, maybe get a handshake. Having been denied this opportunity, interest seems to have waned. Most people are standing around, talking to each other, cracking beers in front of the rent-a-cops. The protesters—the ones that stuck around—move closer. For a while, everyone's sharing the same space. But it doesn't last—a little later, after I've gone back inside, tensions apparently escalated, until Trump fans pepper-sprayed a teen girl in the face.

Back in the ballroom Trump is taking a few questions from the crowd, starting with the bikers. He gets a question about the tragically high suicide rates among US veterans. No problem—Trump's gonna fix it, he says, it's the illegal immigrants who've been robbing vets of their benefits, and everyone knows Trump will fix that problem. He gets question about unemployment, and one about Social Security spending; easy—Trump'll fix that when he takes our money back from China. When someone asks about foreign policy, Trump says he doesn't plan on telling voters his plan, because he wants to maintain his "unpredictability." Bruh. Bruh. Cut it out, dawg.

At this point, they've totally lost me: This dude says any fucking thing, and his fans, uninformed and disaffected by a political system that made them promises it couldn't keep, eat it up. They scream questions at him, not realizing that the whole thing is staged, and not some open call.

Eventually, Trump winds down, and the town hall closes with a final act: An impassioned speech from a woman named Melissa Young, who was introduced earlier as Miss Wisconsin 2005, makes an impassioned speech, getting up from the front room and informing the audience that she is suffering from a terminal illness, but that the fame she gained from Trump's pageant—and a kind note from the pageant master himself—changed her life, allowing her to set up a scholarship fund for her son. A son who, she notes several times, is Mexican-American. I'm sorry for her, and pray the whole thing isn't staged.

But it's Trump, so it's hard not to have doubts. At this point, I'm so sick of hearing the dude. For real. The rhetoric, the pandering, the blatant bullshit—it's all too much. The divisiveness is sickening, and the hate is harder and harder to take. I make my way outside catch some fresh air, and soon everyone else starts to exit the building too. Good—hat means I'm done here. Trump's campaign staff is handing out flyers, pleading with people to vote in the Wisconsin primary on April 5, informing their fellow Trumpians that the race here is closer than most anticipated. That's news to me—and it sounds so sweet.

The author outside Diamond Jim's Isabella Queen Gentlemen's Club

On the way out of Janesville, we decide to stop at a local bar and check the temperature of the town. And then we spy the greatest club advertisement ever: Diamond Jim's Isabella Queen Gentlemen's Club is offering free lap dances to anyone with a ticket to the Trump event. Just as we're jumping out of the car to take the greatest selfies in Wisconsin, a car pulls up; the door flies open, and the man inside asks if I'd like a picture with a one-legged preacher. Oh man, do I. The man is Reverend Jim, the owner and operator of Diamond Jim's, and true to his word, he has one leg.

He's giving away lap dances because, in Jim's words, if Democrats are giving everything away, he might as well give something away too. He asks if I want a lap dance, and I respectfully decline. He's more than happy to have one for me, though. The dancer tells me she doesn't plan on voting because she thinks all the candidates are the same. As she does a flip in his lap, I tell Jim he's got the best view of an asshole I've seen all day—and I should know because I just saw Donald Trump in person. Boom goes the dynamite.

Follow Bun B on Twitter.

If you want to live in a stately hillside house in Los Angeles, but you've been holding out for one where a horrible tragedy happened over a half-century ago, now's your chance: the Los Feliz Murder Mansion, one of LA's premier goth makeout spots, and perhaps the crown jewel of Southern California murder lore, can be yours for only $2,750,000.

The Murder Mansion, for the uninitiated, is the site of a murder-suicide from 1959. Since the house has remained unoccupied ever since the night of the crime, legend has it that the worldly possessions of the murderer and his family remained untouched for decades—and were visible through the windows.

"This isn't the first murder house I've sold," said Nancy Sandborn of Berkshire Hathaway's real estate operation in Los Angeles. Sandborn's job is to find a new owner, and that's precisely what she plans to do. On Tuesday she held an event known as a "broker's caravan"—an open house for real estate agents only—in order to drum up interest in the property. She told me over 200 people showed up armed with stories. That was how she learned she was selling a legend, and that she was going to have her hands full.

Photos courtesy of Nancy Sandborn unless otherwise noted

Sandborn compared the interest in the Los Feliz Murder Mansion to the fervor over the 1998 demolition of Rockingham, the home where Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered. "People still drive by just to look at it, and that house doesn't even stand anymore!" she laughed.

Locals describe it as a "murder mansion," but at just over 5,000 square feet, 2475 Glendower Place is actually just a big, Spanish Revival murder house. It boasts an incredible location, just a stone's throw from Griffith Park, and comes with a breathtaking view of Los Angeles from its front doorstep. And it's also been the location of very few heartbreaking and grisly murder-suicides, at a total of just one.

In 1959, the house's owner, a doctor named Harold N. Perelson, had some kind of mental and emotional breakdown and attacked his family with a hammer. He struck and killed his wife Lillian, and then turned on his 18-year-old daughter, but fortunately her injuries weren't fatal. She and Perelson's two other kids escaped. Dr. Perelson then drank poison and died.

From that night until the present day, the house has stood empty and mostly neglected, and it's become increasingly dilapidated in the process.

That's how the Los Feliz Murder Mansion became a curiosity for adventurous locals, and a source of irritation for neighbors. A 2009 story in the LA Times about the house pointed out that explorers brave enough to sneak up to the windows could peep at 1950s furniture and a TV, along with what appeared to be unopened christmas gifts. By implication, the Perelson family's stuff was still in there, frozen just as it was the day of the crime, like a morbid time capsule.

Here's a photo taken through the living room window from when I visited one night in 2014:

Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

And here's a daytime photo of that same room now that Sandborn has cleared it out:

The house may still be creepy, but if anyone was clinging to the hope that the scene would be preserved, that ship has sailed.

Sandborn, however, thinks your romantic notions about the place are hogwash, "just like alligators in the sewers of New York," she said. She pointed out to me that a couple named Emily and Julian Enriquez bought the house just after Dr. Perelson died. The explanation, she claims, for the midcentury bric-a-brac strewn around inside the the house is that "The Enriquez family bought in the mid-century," so there's no reason to think that was murder memorabilia.

And anyone with any attachment to the Los Feliz Murder Mansion legend had better hope she's right, because those items are gone now. "They were removed," is all Sandborn would tell me. It's been cleaned up to prepare it for the market, but that's not to say it's necessarily habitable. Sandborn made no assurances about the structural integrity of the house, nor the condition of its fixtures and appliances, except to say that the new buyer should "investigate."

One interesting development that only emerged when Sandborn cleared the place out and took pictures: the old timey bar upstairs in the ballroom (It has a ballroom) is still intact. So far there's been no word about what time Lloyd the ghost bartender clocks in every night though.

Sandborn's real estate listing certainly doesn't mention the murder. "First time on the market in over 50 years!" it says, but it doesn't mention why. According to California law, violent deaths in a home only need to be disclosed to new buyers if they happened in the past three years. In other words, legally speaking, Sandborn doesn't need to tell anyone she's selling a crime scene.

But when I talked to her, she wasn't coy about the murder at all. "Some people care. Some people don't care, and if you care, then it's not a house that you're gonna buy," she said. And from her perspective as a real estate agent, a house like this in such a great spot and at such a modest asking price relative to the surrounding homes is a big deal. "There are very few pieces of property like this just sitting around waiting to be purchased," she said, adding, "Sorry to be so cavalier."

When I last reported on the Murder Mansion in 2014, a former neighbor named Jude Margolis, told me 2475 Glendower is "just an old empty house that was at one time beautiful, that is now a teardown."

Sandborn disagrees, and would prefer to not see it knocked down. "It's a beautiful house," she said. "Hopefully someone will buy it and restore it."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Obama will host more than 50 world leaders to discuss nuclear security and Islamic State.

US News

Obama Hosts World Leaders for Nuclear Summit
Obama welcomes leaders from more than 50 countries to Washington DC today for his fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit. Despite a boycott by Russian President Vladimir Putin, leaders will discuss how to stop the Islamic State group developing radioactive "dirty bombs." —the Washington Post

Trump Attacked by Both Sides for Abortion 'Punishment' Comments
Donald Trump received flak from both pro-choice and pro-life advocates for saying women should face "some form of punishment" for abortions. Despite later attempts to backtrack, Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life, said Trump's comments showed he was "out of touch with the pro-life movement." —NBC News

Anger in Minneapolis as Officers Cleared
Hundreds of protesters gathered on Wednesday night in Minneapolis shouting "No justice, no peace" near the spot Jamar Clark was shot by police last November. A state prosecutor declined to charge two police officers for the 24-year-old's death. —CBS News

Clinton to be Interviewed by FBI Boss
FBI director James Comey is reportedly likely to interview Hillary Clinton within days as part of the investigation of her use of a private email server. Former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and former State Department staffer Philippe Reines also face interviews by investigators. —Mediate

International News

New Libyan Leaders Arrive by Boat
Leaders of Libya's new unity government have arrived in Tripoli by boat in an attempt to take control of the country. Tripoli's airspace has been closed, preventing the Presidency Council, based in Tunisia, from arriving by air. Libya has been ruling by warring militias since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. —BBC News

UN Condemns Israeli Army Killing
Senior UN officials have condemned the killing of a Palestinian man by an Israeli soldier, saying the evidence indicated a "clear case" of extrajudicial execution. A video showed the soldier shoot Abed al-Fattah Yusri al-Sharif, 21, in the head at close range as he lay on the ground. —Al Jazeera

Qatar Accused of World Cup Forced Labor
Amnesty International has accused Qatar of using forced labor to build a stadium for the World Cup in 2022, saying workers have had their wages withheld and passports confiscated. The rights group also accused FIFA of failing to stop the World Cup being "built on human rights abuses." —CNN

Argentina Approves Debt Deal
Argentina's Senate has approved a landmark deal to repay creditors holding defaulted debt, marking the end of a 14-year period without access to international capital markets. The country has until April 14 to pay $4.65 billion to a group of hedge funds. —Reuters

Whoopi Goldberg. Photo via Wikimedia.

Everything Else

Conservative Christians Say Disney Declared 'Public War' on Them
A Texas-based conservative group has blasted Disney for supporting LGBT rights, saying the company has declared "public war" on Christianity. Disney has threatened to boycott Georgia for considering a bill discriminating against LGBT people. —the Huffington Post

Controversial Anti-Vaccination Doc Gets Early Release
The documentary Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe will be released in New York City this Friday, weeks before the Tribeca Film Festival. Robert De Niro's festival recently canceled a screening of the film because it controversially links autism with vaccination. —Variety

Snoop's Brother Launches Canadian Label
Snoop Dogg's brother Bing Worthington has started a record label in Canada: a merger of Dogg Records and Urban Heat Legends. "I feel like Canada's the only place that treats you like a person," said Worthinton. —Noisey

Whoopi Goldberg Launched Weed Products for Period Pain
The actress and talk show has dived into the world of marijuana edibles, launching a line of products aimed at women experiencing menstrual discomfort. "I don't see how it can be pushed back," she says of the legalization of marijuana. —Munchies



Done with reading today? Watch our new film 'Poland's Independence Day March Was a Right-Wing Victory Parade'

Look at Simon's Instagram, check out his webstore, and buy his new book from Fantagraphics.

The Bob Baker Marionette Theater has entertained Los Angeles audiences for half a century, bringing to life intricately designed wooden marionettes with the tug of a string. But now, with the theater in poor financial straits two years after master puppeteer Bob Baker's death, the famed theater could soon be converted into a lobby for a seven-story apartment building.

We sent LA-based photographer theonepointeight to capture the puppeteering magic at a recent performance, knowing it could be among the last. His photographs show the art of puppetry through the eyes of the many children in the audience, who sit cross-legged on the theater's floor in awe and wonder. Below are scenes from Sketchbook Revue, a revival of the Bob Baker Marionette Theater's first-ever production in 1963, as well as behind-the-scenes glimpses of Los Angeles's most beloved puppet theater.

Read our feature story on the fate of the Bob Baker Marionette Theater here and see more of theonepointeight's photography on his website and Instagram.

A 24-year-old from Liverpool who was jailed after police found photos of him holding guns on his phone

Earlier this week it was revealed that more than 1,500 children in the UK—some as young as ten—had been held over alleged firearm offenses between 2013 and January of this year. Ten years old. An age at which kids are typically more into playing with glitter-art kits than imported handguns.

This piece of news was the latest in what's been a pretty gun-heavy few months. Among multiple other stories, a spate of gang-related shootings in Manchester at the beginning of the year had police "very, very concerned." In February, police warned that a legal loophole was allowing gangs to easily buy, convert, and use antique firearms. And last week, two men were convicted of an ISIS-inspired terror plot that would have seen them shooting at people from a moped, using a gun they had purchased from a London-based criminal.

To put all of these stories into perspective, I got in touch with firearms consultant David Dyson. His job involves providing advice in all sorts of cases involving guns, from the criminal—shootings, murders, attempted murders—to the more mundane, like someone getting hold of the wrong type of blank firing gun. His website URL is firearmsexpert.co.uk, so he seemed like the right person to speak to.

An antique hand gun (on the left) seized by police in east London Photo: Metropolitan Police

VICE: From what you've seen, is gun crime in the UK increasing or decreasing?
David Dyson: In my experience, things don't seem to have changed greatly. I don't notice any particular trends as such—though, over a period of time, you do get gradual shifts. For instance, you find that certain types of guns have been imported and become prevalent for a short time. Then you get different things used in crime that will overtake the guns used previously.

Where are they all coming from?
Well, it varies. Over the years, we've found guns coming in from overseas. For instance, there was a thing called a bi-cal pistol that started off life as a self-defense pistol produced in Russia. The barrel was pinched, so it wouldn't fire a conventional bullet, but it would fire CS gas. It would also fire hard rubber balls, which would compress past the squeezed part of the barrel. So some guys in Lithuania got hold of these and were converting them, putting 9MM barrels on. They were very good; they compared well to conventional pistols, and for a few years, there were many of these things recovered in crimes. I know that, before the forensic science service in London closed, they'd had over seven hundred through the doors, so God knows how many were still floating about. But they do seem to have dried up a bit now.

What about antique firearms? There was a story recently about how a load of them had been converted for use by gangs.
Yeah, the bulleted cartridge has been around for well over one hundred years, so things that you could call antiques are actually still capable of being used. There's an exemption to various provisions of the firearms act that allows somebody to posses an antique firearm without any form of certification, as long as it's possessed as a curiosity ornament. Criminals have picked up on this and started buying guns, then manufacturing ammunition for them. This is why there are more antique guns being recovered in criminal circumstances than there were previously.

So anyone could buy one of these guns?
In order to sell these guns lawfully as antiques, the ammunition has to be obsolete. That's fine, but there's a lot of ammunition that can be modified—you can buy modern cases and shorten them with a pipe cutter, then load them in a .44 Russian caliber revolver. Effectively, you've modified ammunition so that it can be used in a revolver that was never intended to use that ammunition. But as soon as you have that "antique gun" together with ammunition for it, it becomes unlawful, and you're looking at a mandatory five-year minimum sentence just for having it.

In the UK, do you think people buy guns more for status and the intimidation factor, rather than with any intention of using them?
There's a lot of street cred attached to possession of firearms. A lot of the crimes involving guns are between gangs. Operation Trident, for example, was set up to deal with gang-on-gang crime in London. You tend to find, generally speaking, that victims of gun crime are people who are involved in that line of "work" themselves, so you will find criminals possessing guns to shoot other criminals. If you are aware that there might be trouble with a rival gang, and that gang has guns, then you may feel you need to get a gun yourself to protect yourself.

So why, according to the data released yesterday, are so many children being held for gun possession?
Traditionally, criminals give guns to junior members of gangs to look after on their behalf, so the more senior members of the gang won't be caught in possession. That's one way kids end up with guns, simply minding them for somebody else. But I also think that, over the years, the age of the criminals has lowered, and I come across many instances where the people involved in a shooting or being shot are younger—late teens or early twenties.

What would happen to a minor caught in possession of a firearm?
Well, they're still guilty of a civil offense, but different sanctions will apply to kids. Obviously kids will go to young offenders institutions, but the offense is the same.

Which are the worst affected areas in the UK?
No surprises: It's the big cities. The sort of places where there are a lot of gangs, drug trafficking. Most of these cases do relate to gangs, and gangs are far more prevalent in the inner cities.

So gun possession is very closely related to drug activity, in your opinion, rather than something like armed robbery?
Yeah, it's a different form of use. You tend not to get that many armed robberies these days, and you see things on Crimewatch like kids going into post offices with air pistols. It's kind of pathetic. What we're talking about is professional and organized crime—those people have more sense than to wander around with a gun. I guess that's where we come back to the kids possessing guns, rather than the senior guys taking that risk.

How would you go about lowering gun crime?
There are many different issues. First of all, you have to get rid of this mystique that's attached to guns. Quite often, guys will get nicked for something and police will find pictures on their phones of them posing with guns. There's obviously an element of bravado, making you look big—and that's something that needs to be addressed. Some people want to be seen with them, so a lot of it is education, but whether people will be receptive to that education... God knows.

A good start would be reformed criminals, using people who have been involved in it themselves—people they will listen to. They won't listen to me. They won't listen to the police or anybody in the judiciary. But if it's somebody who's been there—somebody from the same background who's learned the same lessons—there might be a chance.

Photo via Flickr user Christian Ostrosky

Read: What It's Like to Be on a Plane When It's Hijacked

When Hyongtae Pae left his seat to do yoga on a Japan-bound flight from Hawaii last weekend, passengers never expected things would get violent.

The FBI told the Associated Press the 72-year-old South Korean farmer was feeling uneasy during the flight, so he tried to align them chakras in the back of the airplane. When Pae's wife and the flight crew told him the aisle wasn't really the ideal spot to perform sun salutations, the guy went full beast mode.

US Attorney Darren Ching says Pae—who apparently took up yoga and meditation to help combat anxiety—tried to headbutt and bite Marines who happened to be on the flight and tried to coax him back into his seat. After he allegedly threatened to kill passengers, attacked his wife, and shouted that God doesn't exist, the pilot turned the plane back around to Honolulu.

Pae's defense attorney says his client was in Hawaii celebrating his 40th wedding anniversary, but the man was suffering from crippling jet-lag and hadn't had a decent night's sleep in 11 days.

The would-be yogi is currently being held at Honolulu Federal Detention Center. But after reportedly urinating on himself and being placed on suicide watch, even if he gets out on bail, Pae can't leave Oahu* before undergoing a mental health checkup.

*Correction 3/31: An earlier version of this story referred to Oahu as a city rather than an island.