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Welcome to the Future According to VICE. Basically, it's a series of essays about how various aspects of our world are going to change in the next few years. Why? Because it's January and hopefully we're all ready to shrug off the calamitous mess that was 2014 and stride onward into the rising sun. Although, on a global level, that plan has already been pissed on from a great height thanks to Boko Haram in Nigeria, those behind the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris, the world's most terrifying newscaster, and so much other bad news that the first couple weeks of January have felt like a miserable stretch in some CIA black site.

Anyway, here for you is a collection of pieces on things we think are interesting. From drugs to terrorism, plastic surgery to video games.

Cheers,

Alex Miller
Global Head of Content, VICE

The Future of Drugs:

The possibilities for buying drugs online while avoiding the attentions of future cyber rozzers are endless. Jonny Y, a seasoned online buyer, former psychonaut, and onetime online vendor, told me the internet now has a thriving number of close-knit online drug-trading communities who've gravitated away from the dark market and moved onto the clear web. Funded by monthly subscription fees rather than commissions from Bitcoin transactions, they're helping to make hiding in plain sight a new camouflage for the online drug buyer.

The Future of Video Games:

"Have the people who are strongly against VR actually tried it? We find that when people try it, they are immediately hooked and want to try more demos and experiences. There are a small number of people who find it a bit too much, but there is a scale of comfort with all software and experiences. Like all new technology, there will always be the luddites who dismiss and show disdain; but this time around, the market is ready and the hardware is available for those who want it."

The Future of Terrorism:

"We're entering an era of the democratization of destructive capability," says Paul Rosenzweig, a former senior US Department of Homeland Security official who wrote a book in 2013 on cyberwar. "Things that only governments could do are now being done by individuals."

The Future of Sex:

In the last year, I have received a blowjob from a machine, wore a spandex diaper to a strip club, slept with a dude I met on Instagram, and fucked at least 14 guys I met on Grindr. Yet somehow, according to sex experts my love life is about to get even better in 2015 and beyond, largely thanks to sexy robots and more apps devoted to getting people laid.

The Future of Plastic Surgery:

Social media continues to dominate more and more of the cultural discourse, which could lead to an even bigger demand for artificial enhancements to the human body. The future of beauty might not be as sci-fi freaky as Tyra Banks predicted in the summer of 2014, but it's certainly moving toward accessibility and ease of use.

The Future of Television:

We're not discerning viewers. We're content vacuums. We used to be snobby about how Nielsen ratings supposedly didn't measure the real viewing habits of America, but ever since they started crunching numbers from social media, they got a clearer picture of what we're really watching, and it's not good. Now they know we mainly just watch The Bachelor, Pretty Little Liars, American Horror Story: Freak Show, Teen Wolf, The Bachelorette, The Voice, and Dancing with the Stars.

The Future of Social Media:

"In ten or 15 years social media will probably just be a 3D hologram of a Coca-Cola bottle angrily shouting at us to buy Coca-Cola, then rewarding us with a meme .GIF if we buy Coca-Cola, or shocking us with a high-voltage electrical current if we don't."

The Future of Religion:

In the Western world, at least, religion is going out with a whimper, not a bang. Christianity is in a slow, long-term decline. About 60 percent of Brits say they're not religious at all, and in the US about a fifth of the population doesn't belong to any religion, including a third of people under 30. In other parts of the world, sure, the Muslim and Christian populations are growing, but that's mostly because populations in Asia and Africa are growing much faster than ours, not because they're persuading more people to convert.

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Photo via Flickr user owner_3rd

Dear wife,

I don't know you, but I know that it's possible that your husband will cheat on you with a sex worker. I say that because I am one, and I am not short on clients.

But not your husband, you say, not him! Other husbands, sure, but your relationship, your sex life, is different. You had a threesome with your college roommate ten years ago. You get a sitter and head to Vegas every August. You have that special thing with Law and Order marathons. You have a great marriage!

Let me ask you: When was the last time you had sex three times in a week? When was the last time he complained about that? Don't you think that maybe it's possible that he's instead taken the problem out of your hands, which is to say into mine?

The good news is that if your husband is seeing me, it's because he wants to stay married. He is choosing to get some ersatz affection in the least messy way possible. Imagine if instead of me it was the babysitter, your neighbor, your best friend. I could go on, list, but you get the idea.

I'm a professional. I am discreet, but more than that I am discrete: My time, attention, and sexuality are measured in hours, beyond which he is yours. And importantly, I don't love your husband and never will. It's quite unlikely that I feel more than favorite-barista level affection for him.

I will never be a threat to your marriage because when I'm off the clock I don't want anything to do with either of you. I will never go out to dinner with him or call you in the middle of the night or bring up divorce. You won't find out from me. And if you find out from him, he's either stupid or angry with you.

Yes, some clients trip and fall in feelings, but it's a shallow puddle since they know that what we're doing is fake. You don't think your plumber adores toilets, do you?

Men know that my affection for them is conditional on their affection for giving me money. He's not visualizing having The Talk with you and the kids and then running away to my hotel room and lovingly moaning my made-up name. I am outside of life. I'm an employee. As much as he might sexually fixate on me, his emotions will not get deeply invested in what we do together.

If things threaten to get "complicated," as the kids say, on his end, there's a fail-safe: I cost money.

If he does liquidate his 401k to buy my time, I hope you soak him in the divorce, because he has no business handling money.

In my experience, men generally spend only what they can afford on sex. If your husband needs it every two weeks, and can sneak $1,000 out of the monthly household budget, he sees someone who charges what I do. Even if he wants more, he can't pull an extra grand out of thin air. The kind of roller coaster that ends in, "Baby, I have something to tell you," requires acceleration, which requires recklessness.

Whatever he thinks he feels, he'll forget in two weeks like any other craving. If he does liquidate his 401k to buy my time, I hope you soak him in the divorce, because he has no business handling money.

What about disease? Despite what you see in the movies, most sex workers these days are probably healthier and more safety-conscious than your average amorous secretary. Remember what I said about my extremely limited affection for him? That includes his epidemiological profile. And there are also no love-child concerns. The chance of me carrying a work-related baby is roughly 0 percent of Absolutely Not with a standard deviation of You Have Got to Be Kidding Me.

Maybe you still don't want him sleeping with me. I'll ask again: When was the last time you had sex three times in a week?

I'm not saying it's your job to keep him happy. I am saying maybe you don't want to sleep with him that often. You're busy, or stressed out, or he doesn't do it for you anymore. I get it; he almost certainly doesn't do it for me.

That's the point. I am the secret ingredient in a lot of healthy marriages, because when he's seeing me, both of you are getting the amount of sex you want. As long as you leave his cellphone alone, you might make it to your 50th anniversary. You're welcome.

April Adams is the pseudonym of a sex worker living in New York City.

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Screenshot via NBC Dallas–Fort Worth

Welcome back to the fear digest, which ranks the top ten things Americans are terrified of. Read last week's column here.

10. The Worship of Technology
Fear comes in all sorts of flavors. There's the spike of adrenaline you get when you see an out-of-control car veering toward you, the dread that creeps over you when you realize the institutions of this world aren't on your side, and the dose of hopelessness mixed with a kind of awe that washes through you when you contemplate how warped some of society's core beliefs are. It's that third type that hits you when you read Ian Bogost's essay in The Atlantic about our blind faith in technology, particularly the "algorithms" used by tech giants like Google that ordinary people invoke the way ancient Greeks might have talked about soothsayers. "The next time you see someone talking about algorithms, replace the term with 'God' and ask yourself if the sense changes any," writes Bogost, and goes on:

Our supposedly algorithmic culture is not a material phenomenon so much as a devotional one, a supplication made to the computers we have allowed to replace gods in our minds, even as we simultaneously claim that science has made us impervious to religion. It's part of a larger trend.

The scientific revolution was meant to challenge tradition and faith, particularly a faith in religious superstition. But today, Enlightenment ideas like reason and science are beginning to flip into their opposites. Science and technology have become so pervasive and distorted, they have turned into a new type of theology.

Last week's rank: Unranked

9. The Academy Awards' Racism
This week also saw a sort of fear blended with rage, as an obscure organization known as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released a list of films, actors, directors, makeup artists, set designers, sound engineers, and others that its members thought did an especially good job. The most prominent categories were 100 percent white people, leading Al Sharpton and others to be like, "Hey, that's sort of racist, right?" And yeah, it looks pretty bad—though as usual, the Academy's bias against minorities wasn't as severe as its bias toward drama-filled biopics that make film people feel like what they're doing is important. On the upside, maybe the Academy is merely representing the racism of Hollywood as a whole?
Last week's rank: Unranked

8. People Who Hate the Cops
Though the thinkpiece-industrial complex largely moved on to focus on racism in the film world this week, activists continued to demonstrate against the institutionalized racism of the police. This week protesters in Boston handcuffed themselves to cement-filled barrels and blocked a highway, while their West Coast counterparts disrupted public transportation in the Bay Area by causing a commotion in BART stations and "banging spoons on passing trains," according to Reuters. This filled commuters with annoyance, if not exactly fear, and as everyone knows crankiness is the first step toward revolution.
Last week's rank: 3

7. The Cops
Of course, this being the weekend of MLK Day, there were plenty of other, less disruptive protests, as people from Texas to New Jersey marched against police brutality. Over the last 12 months it's become increasingly impossible to deny that the shootings and beatings of black men are symptoms of the disease of racism that's infected this country for its entire history. Maybe sometimes activists' tactics aren't successful or it's not clear what individual protests achieve, but we live in a world where Florida cops use mug shots of black men as gun range targets—perhaps it's not that unreasonable to take to the streets in rage and terror?
Last week's rank: 2

6. Mitt Romney
On the lighter side, like a grizzled con man coming out of retirement for one last big score, Mitt Romney has all but announced he's running for president—on an anti-poverty platform, apparently. Last go-round Romney was mocked by his opponents not only for his extreme wealth but for saying that 47 percent of Americans relied on government support to get by and therefore would never vote for him, so this approach looks pretty desperate. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal—the paper of record for the big-business conservatives that are theoretically Romney's natural constituents—published a mocking editorial that began with the line, "If Mitt Romney is the answer, what is the question?" BURN. The scary thing about all of this is that Romney is actually a viable candidate by some measures.
Last week's rank: Unranked

5. Global Warming
While we get all excited for the train wreck of a horse race that is the 2016 presidential campaign, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon reminded us this week that we're living in the last generation that can effectively fight climate change.
Last week's rank: Unranked

4. Gay People
Of course, while many people are worried about climate change, it's much more common for us to be terrified of our fellow humans rather than the thing that could wipe us all out. This fear leads to some rather nasty responses, as it did last Saturday, January 10, when a Colorado chaplain stopped a funeral service because he wouldn't show a memorial video that included photos of the deceased woman kissing her partner, who was also a woman. The church knew in advance the woman was a lesbian, but "the church policy is that people with alternate lifestyles can have services, but there can be no pictures or videos of overt kissing or hugging," the chaplain told the Associated Press, explaining a horrible policy that is guaranteed to upset and offend people. "The church has to answer to its board and the members who pay their bills."
Last week's rank: Unranked

3. Muslims
That's just one pastor at one church being a dick, however. In the Dallas suburb of Garland, thousands of American flag–waving protesters demonstrated their dickishness on Saturday when they picketed a Muslim conference that was, ironically, about combatting homophobia. The local news broadcast featured one man who literally said, "You're not welcome here"; another protester held up a sign that said "Go home and take Obama with you." From reports, it wasn't clear that they had a specific political gripe with the event, which was called "Stand with the Prophet Against Terror and Hate"—they appeared to just be upset that Muslims were gathering.
Last week's rank: Unranked

2. Unsupervised Children
If there's anything more terrifying than a group of religious people getting together to talk about ways to fight against hate, it's kids wandering the streets of American suburbs. In Silver Spring, Maryland, police hassled a couple for letting their ten-year-old son and six-year-old daughter walk home alone from a park a mile away. Danielle and Alexander Meitiv are part of the "free-range" parenting movement, which is all about giving your children independence and responsibility, and the idea that the government would interfere with that choice is pretty horrifying for people across the political spectrum. Though writers like Hannah Rosin have pointed out how insane it is for the police and Child Protective Services to get involved in cases like these, it happens a lot. Parents can get in trouble—and even charged with crimes—for leaving their kids by themselves in the house or allowing them to walk down the street or even letting them play by themselves outside. The world is indeed a scary place for kids—a lesson that they will learn when their parents are thrown in jail for letting them roam freely around their neighborhoods.
Last week's rank: Unranked

1. Terrorism
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, governments across Europe have been upping security at possible terrorist attack targets. In Belgium, an anti-terror raid left two suspects dead; the French authorities investigated anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala for making a joke on Facebook. That anti-terror terror has spread across the Atlantic as well, with the Transportation Security Administration increasing the number of random bag searches at airports, even though the Department of Homeland Security admitted, "We have no specific, credible intelligence of an attack of the kind in Paris last week being planned by terrorist organizations in this country."

It's become a routine over the last decade and a half: an attack, a sense of panic that ripples out in its wake, then a series of arrests and violence justified by the panic, and finally a heightened level of security that becomes the new normal. This week it might have been jarring for citizens in Brussels to see armed paratroopers on the streets, and travelers might grumble as some bored TSA agent shuffles through their sweaters, but we get used to such indignities—or we're told we have to, anyway, in the name of security, though whatever measures we take, there's always another attack, another crackdown, and more men on the streets with guns.
Last week's rank: 1

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

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The author at work in the French Quarter

I laid in a hotel bed in New Orleans's French Quarter, the nightstand beside me littered with liquor bottles, pretending to be stoned. I pulled up the covers, donned my sunglasses, and turned on the TV. Soon, a small group of men walked in: uniformed Marines, there to recruit me into the military.

"No," I slurred, as planned. One of them pushed me harder. "No way, man, the military's not for me," I repeated. Despite their weak reasoning, I softened, and soon I'd promised them all I would join the Marines. They shouted victory, high-fived, then dashed out of the hotel room with the password I'd given them. Soon, another group of hulking, crew-cut young men entered, suggesting that I join the Marines.

This was not a surreal dream. It was my job. These Marines were playing the Go Game.

The Go Game is a sort of cellphone-based scavenger hunt designed to build team skills, mostly among office workers. "Bring us your over-competitive salesperson, your skeptical product manager, and stressed out director," says the game's website. "The Go Game will braid you all into a friendship bracelet of professional effectiveness that will be the envy of your professional peers."

The San Francisco–based company travels to conventions countrywide, and since its inception has hosted games for groups in Canada, Asia, Australia, Europe, and Mexico. A convention Mecca, New Orleans is a top market for the Go Game. It's also one of the last places anyone wants to be stuck learning to be a better corporate drone.

"We understand—team building can sometimes feel like a forced activity that makes people roll their eyes and wish they'd skipped out to play golf," the website says. "After ten years and over 10,000 games run, we have refined the art of engaging engineers, marketing teams, lawyers, and everything in between, turning them into Go Game enthusiasts."

With a new baby at home and in need of a little extra Christmas money, I jumped when the Go Game producers wrote to me recently about a job in New Orleans. Not long after, I found myself dressed as a ninja in the French Quarter.

On that day, I met Finnegan Kelly, the Go Game's co-founder at, coincidentally, Finnegan's French Quarter Pub at three in the afternoon. He handed me my cheap, thin ninja costume, and I dressed in the bathroom. Just enough of my face remained visible that anyone who knew me could recognize me immediately—a great possibility in New Orleans, which has the social dynamic of Sesame Street, but with more alcohol. "If it's OK with you," I told Finnegan when I came back out, "I'm going to do a shot of Jim Beam before I head onto the street looking like this."

"Whatever you need to get into character, drunken master."

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As I downed the shot I realized, much to my relief, that I'd overlooked the extra piece to the face mask, which would further obscure my identity. Between that and my dark sunglasses, I felt much safer on the streets.

Finally, Finnegan then handed me a plastic lightsaber. My job was to "try to sort of hide" and wait until a group of participants discovered another lightsaber hidden in a newspaper box. At that point I would jump out and engage them in a duel that I was not allowed to win. As Finnegan explained all this, I tried to keep my mind focused on the new, warm jacket I planned to buy my daughter for Christmas. No way was Santa taking credit for that.

Finnegan then sent me down to Royal to stand near the corner grocery store, across from the giant statue of Jesus who lost his giant pinky in Katrina and where French Quarter maven Gypsy Lou Webb once famously sold her paintings. I grabbed a tallboy of Corona from the store en route to my post.

I "tried to sort of hide" by crouching down inside the entrance of a locked door. I set my beer can behind my foot, out of sight, to look more respectable but still, within five minutes, an angry white woman in her 30s stormed out of a nearby business and shouted at me to move along. I sprang up off the ground like an actual ninja and tried to explain to her that my job wouldn't allow me to move any further.

I didn't think I could possibly feel more uncomfortable than I already did, but then I began to notice that most people walked by me looking tense. I smiled to reassure them of my benevolence, but the ninja mask obscured my good intentions. People continued buzzing by me unusually fast while making a clear effort to avoid looking directly into my sunglasses, as if this small, accidental recognition might trigger some crazy response from the ninja. Only then did I realize how much bigotry and hatred real ninjas must face on a daily basis.

Cops walked by, scanning me. I took a step backward to retrieve my beer and sip it in the shadow of the doorway.

"NO!" the woman shouted, running back up to me. Her hands were a blur in front of my face. "NO! NO!"

I stepped toward her unthreateningly and in my calmest voice said, "Hey, listen for a second. I'm sorry, but let me explain: This is part of a corporate team building game for..."

"I am going to have you arrested!" she bellowed, eyeing my beer can. "STAY OUT OF MY DOORWAY!"

I did as told and tried not to shout back when I told her, "I'm sorry, but I can't leave. Like I tried to say, I am working."

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About an hour into the job—not one of the teams had come by to fight me—I started to need a break from the banjo-driven music being played by a nearby busking group, and so I dipped out for a second to go use the restroom. Upon return, I rounded the corner to my contentious post to find the first group, six people whom I immediately lunged at and engaged in a lightsaber fight. Surprised, they screamed with delight.

Once they had slain me, they took pictures and left extremely happy. I'd made them happy. The Go Game had made them happy. I felt much better, and confidently leaned beside the forbidden doorway, sipping Corona on city property so as not to enrage that angry woman again.

With just one hour to go, I played the game, "Who is from New Orleans?" It's an easy game with just one rule: Whoever said hello to the masked ninja without flinching at all, they were clearly from here.

I spotted two actor friends of mine, Diana Shortez and Donald Lewis, strolling up Royal wearing elaborate Victorian costumes, waving hello to all the tourists. Clearly they were working a similar gig. But since their costumes were much, much nicer, I couldn't bring myself to flag them down.

Finally, the day's second group rounded the corner. We acted out our roles, and took a lot of photos together. They offered to buy me a drink, and left happy. The third group, though, didn't look to be having fun at all. Crouching in the forbidden doorway, I heard one women gripe, "This fucking game is cutting into our drinking time." I pounced on them, shouting a war cry, before finally dying dramatically on the sidewalk. And suddenly, they too were happy.

The street band finally stopped playing, packed up their old-timey shtick, and we ended up walking a couple silent blocks together, all of them looking sideways at me.

Back at Finnegan's Pub, Finnegan wrote me a check for $70—a $10 tip.

I decided to take Bourbon Street back to my car, and on the way watched a tall, handsome young guy scream at a government street worker, and then proceed to break the noses of several old men who tried to intervene. My mind, though, was on my money, and Christmas, and a big decision: Should I buy my daughter the Annie soundtrack she'd been singing for the last few weeks, or else just skip directly to buying her a clawhammer with which she could beat me to death. Which would be more painful?

Follow Michael on Twitter.

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An execution in Hatred

Destructive Creations isn't the first game developer to realise it's better to be widely reviled than ignored, but it's surely among the most shameless. "Bring it everywhere and let the haters hate!" reads the announcement post for charming shooter Hatred, in which a hulking hairy man guns down cops and civilians.

The game's website blurb is also calculated to provoke. Promising players the "pure gaming thrill" that apparently only protracted face-stabbing can provide, it picks on the "politeness" and "political correctness" of other indie developers, in what seems a brazen attempt to profit from the culture war between liberal critics and the games community's dug-in reactionaries. If that was indeed the plan, it's been a spectacular success. Hatred was yanked from the digital store Steam Greenlight over Christmas following a press backlash and gossip about far-right affiliations, only to resurface a day later and zoom through the approval process in a perfectly managed feedback loop of fear and loathing.

I'm no fan of Hatred – going by the gruesome trailer, at least – but I can't say I'm a "hater" (and I certainly don't want it pulled from sale, as some fans have alleged of certain critics). Its brutality seems an obvious ploy for attention, but I do think the game deserves some interrogation – less for what it is and does; more for what it says about comparable scenes of carnage in celebrated mainstream titles like Grand Theft Auto V. The latter claims to be a satire and offers narrative justifications for its slaughter, but how much of that is window dressing? Is Hatred an exception, or simply more upfront about its bloodlust than most?

Here's an extended chat on the subject with Destructive Creations business developer Przemysław Szczepaniak. (I've made a few cosmetic edits to clear up Szczepaniak's English, but for transparency's sake, the original transcript can be read here.)

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The gameplay trailer for Hatred

VICE: Hi Przemyslaw. Did you create Hatred expecting it to be controversial? And did that expectation ever influence your design decisions?
Przemysław Szczepaniak: From the start, the idea of Hatred was supposed to be like it is now. I mean, we somehow knew that the media and some people would find it disturbing and shocking, but we also felt that gamers need something like Hatred, because the market is filled with too many sterile and far too polite games. A little bit of dirt and murky atmosphere never hurt anyone. As you have seen lately, gamers have rushed into support this project, with amazing numbers of Greenlight votes. So if there is a need for such games, we feel that we did the game concept well.

Does your lead character have a backstory? Why is he so angry?
No, he doesn't have any story – he is out of his mind and he hates the world. Just like any other psychopath, he only wants to watch the world burn.

Who does your protagonist kill in Hatred? How did you decide who to use as the game's non-playable characters (NPCs)?
We've used as [many] generic clothes, faces and hairstyles as possible. There are no real-life references for those NPCs. Who does he kill? If we would even reference a computer-generated character as "who", I would say, "He kills everyone."

You say on your website that "a lot of games are heading to be polite, colourful, politically correct and trying to be some kind of higher art". Which particular games are you thinking of?
It's not that hard to interpret this statement in a proper way, looking especially at the present indie game development scene.

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The staff at Destructive Creations

I realise that you don't want to single anybody out, but it's difficult to make sense of this claim if you don't give specific examples. Can you at least talk about the types of game that you think are too politically correct? Do you think your statement applies to all game genres equally?
There are no particular games. I'm speaking of all genres equally. But, of course, there are modern titles we respect. We were tired of the style of gameplay where every protagonist's actions need to be justified, where everything needs to be explained. It makes the gamer feel stupid sometimes.

We were tired of games that always lead you by the hand, where the game becomes so ridiculously simple that you are lacking the fun and participation in game action. I mean, most games nowadays are not like those from the past. In the past, you had a lot of fun from gaming itself – from exploring, thinking, combining, searching. Nowadays, it is only about being a great graphical creation without the immersive and entertaining game elements.

Do you think it's a bad thing that game developers are trying to create art, then?
First of all, I think that game developers are creating an art, not trying to do so. Games are a great alternative to movies, TV and music. Many of them give you the goosebumps because of the beauty of graphics, the story or the mechanics of gameplay.

Do you think other video games have been held back by a fear of controversy?
It is possible. I mean, take a look at our case – after the trailer release, we've been attacked, hated, banned, pulled off Steam... but finally we went to the top. If we had been afraid to create Hatred and held it back, we would never have known what would happen to the project.

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You've said that a player of Hatred will have to ask himself, "What can push any human being to mass murder?" and that you will "provoke this question" using the game's physics and visuals. How exactly will you make this happen? Are there any other ways in which you're trying to raise the question, such as in the writing and story?
Hatred shows a disturbing atmosphere and murky gameplay. By playing it, you will expose your mind to a totally different experience. You will go into the mind of a maniac and you will play him. If you are a healthy and balanced person, you will know that Hatred is a game with fictional characters, and you will know that it will not harm you or anyone around you. It will be your choice to play it, and it will be up to you what conclusion you will get out of the game.

Wouldn't Hatred work just as well as a shooter where you kill evil Martians or demons or something? Why does it need to be about killing innocent people?
From the gameplay mechanics point of view, we could easily use evil Martians or zombies or anything. But hey, find me a twin-stick shooter where you are fighting against people. Zombies and demons are in most titles nowadays, and we see people are kinda bored with them. And besides, killing virtual "people" who are pretending to be something more than a pile of meat (like a zombie) [always makes more of an impression]. And it's more interesting, because innocent zombies wouldn't run away from you.

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Here's your protagonist

So the game stands out because innocent human beings, unlike zombies, behave in an interesting way when they're shot at?
Yes, you get something more interesting than current games [have got us] used to. But it is not said that those virtual people will act predictably – they can surprise you in gameplay. Would a zombie surprise you? Not really; they just run towards you and moan, growl... nothing more.

Are you worried that Hatred will be used by people who already dislike games as evidence that they're all about senseless violence?
No, we are not worried, because there is no evidence that games are the cause of violence. Electronic games have existed on the market only for around 30 years in a commercial form. A huge amount of violence has already been shown in TV, movies and books, and I don't think that games with a proper parental control can cause any harm. Violence has been present in human history since the beginning, and it has always had social, psychological, political or religious roots. It never came from computer games.

Your creative director has said that your game is more "honest" than other action games because it doesn't pretend that it isn't about killing. But isn't the real difference that your game is built around indiscriminate slaughter, while other action games at least try to discourage it? You can kill civilians in Assassin's Creed, for example, but you're penalised for doing so.
Any killing game is about violence. It doesn't matter if you try to justify it by a twist in the storyline, because you are still killing to reach a certain goal. Killing is always wrong. We show with Hatred how killing can be cruel; we did not justify anything about [it] – this is our honesty.

Why do you think Valve took your game off Steam, and why do you think they brought it back?
Frankly, we have no idea why it was pulled down. The message we've got was kind of, "No because no." But it seems that almighty Gabe Newell reminded everyone what Steam is about – it is about creating tools for content creators and customers. It directly means that he didn't accept the previous decision of Valve representatives. Hatred, like any game, has a right to exist, and it is up to customers if they will buy it or not.

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Bar close-up executions, the Hatred gameplay is seen from an isometric perspective

Do you see being reinstated on Steam as a victory for creativity?
Yes, but it is not only a victory of creativity or freedom of speech; it is also a great victory for our fans and supporters. As you have seen [from] the number of votes, gamers demand games such as Hatred, and they proved that by making it possible to be released on Steam.

What would you have done if Valve had refused to allow you back on Steam?
For sure it would be harder without Steam support, but we had a back-up plan. We would distribute the game through other channels; we would have found another partnership for distribution, so it wouldn't be the end of the world for us.

Has your relationship with Epic Games changed after they asked you to remove their Unreal Engine logo from the Hatred reveal trailer?
We purchased the engine license just like any developer, and they only asked us – in a polite manner – to remove the logo from the trailer. Nothing more has happened. We've gained a lot of respect for them, because they acted in this case like normal people, not some kind of huge corporation.

Was there anything you cut from Hatred because you thought it would be too offensive?
We didn't cut anything, because we planned and designed the game in a form that you have seen in trailers and descriptions. No compromise!

Will you now make the game more violent, given how much attention the violence in the trailer has attracted?
Not really. As I said, we are not changing the main concept of the game. And to be honest, it's not as badly violent as people think. There are more violent titles, even those mainstream ones.

- - -

Thanks to Jon Hicks for his insights on a few of my questions.

@dirigiblebill

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Every year I've lived in London I've had to move house because the place was too much of a dump, or rent went up and I couldn't afford it, or both. Last time I moved, my flatmates ended up locked in a bitter dispute with the estate agent over a fiver charge on a lost lamp, part on principle and part because the extortionate rent they charged left us – a bunch of just-grads – so broke we desperately needed our fiver back.

This story is by no means unique, and with rents soaring, it's unsurprising that a recent poll shows that almost nobody in the UK is opposed to introducing a rent cap. The logic is pretty direct – rent is too high, so the government should take action to force it down. It sounds completely obvious, but would it work?

A rent cap could come in many different forms, but realistically the most likely is a proposal by housing organisation Generation Rent, backed by Diane Abbott, one of the few MPs to support capping rent. Under this scheme, the monthly cap would stand at half annual local council tax, but landlords would be allowed to charge over this, providing they're willing to pay a 50 percent surcharge on anything above the cap.

According to Abbott, "The funds raised through this could then be channelled towards building genuinely affordable housing and we can begin the process of alleviating the intense pressure the current property market is placing on Londoners." So, lower rent, more affordable housing and landlords would probably be a little bit less smug, too. In theory this is a triple win.

However, lots of people think it's a bad plan – and they're not all greedy landlords coming out in hives at the thought of their income being attacked. Among the detractors to the idea – and there are many – are homelessness and housing charity Shelter, who oppose the idea on the grounds that a rent cap could end up making things worse for struggling renters. Welcome to the world of unintended consequences.

Writing on the Shelter blog, Toby Lloyd, head of policy, says that he believes that implementing a rent cap in the current housing market could have pretty undesirable side effects. Most of these are connected to the idea that if property owners weren't allowed to charge extortionate rents, they wouldn't bother renting their places out in the first place. That could mean demand for places to rent massively outstripping supply – it would be even more of a sellers' market, with landlords in a stronger position and renters with little option to take the few properties on the market.

A petition demanding a rent cap has reached over 60,000 signatures, further demonstrating the policy's popularity. But the comments section is littered with doubters picking holes in the idea. Some are idiots, sure, but a lot aren't. Emma Reynolds – one of the more clued up nay-sayers in the comments on the petition – has an MSc in Housing from the London School of Economics and works in housing policy and development. She suggests that fewer landlords would mean less competition, meaning minimum standards might drop even lower and revenge evictions could increase as tenants become desperate enough to take anything they can get, and uppity tenants would be easy to replace with more desperate tenants.

Lloyd suggests that this would be most harmful to the people who need the most help – the poorest renters. That's because landlords, who already believe well off City workers to be more reliable than badly paid benefits claimants, could become increasingly discriminatory as there are more people looking for homes than there are houses. The poorest could be forced into a black market with no controls, and a landlord would have more incentive to turn a big flat into two tiny flats to get as much as possible out of their property.

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When the UK had a rent cap in the 1970s, many landlords went bust. Emma is worried that in the UK's current, oversubscribed housing market, a rent cap would cause the private rental sector to dry up almost completely, leading to "extreme deprivation" in some areas, as tenants find it difficult to rent property at all. Back in the 1970s, though, social housing could pick up the slack somewhat. With that now largely sold off and almost no new social housing having been built since the 80s, that couldn't happen. Housing scarcity could increase, making the housing crisis much worse than it already is. When you consider these scenarios, punishing private landlords seems little more than a populist vote winner. We may not like them, but private landlords provide a service – albeit a shitty one. If they were driven out of business, there would be a vacuum – so the argument goes.

Let's row back on the scepticism for a minute though. The situation described above probably isn't far off what many people have experienced already; revenge evictions and poor minimum standards are already a massive problem in London, even though we don't have a rent cap. Housing is already scarce. How many people do you know who live in a formerly functioning house that has been converted into more than one cramped "maisonette"?

But bad housing isn't inevitable. According to Alex Hilton, director of Generation Rent, housing standards are better in Germany – even in places where rent is controlled. Hilton believes that a rent cap could be implemented cleverly, alongside new regulations to protect tenants' rights. "[Poor conditions are] only a valid concern if it isn't addressed," he told me. "So yes, there was an era in this country, back in the olden days, when that happened but it doesn't happen in Germany. In Germany you have a right to stop paying your rent if the landlord doesn't maintain your property, so the landlord has to maintain your property. We want very, very strict minimum standards." In other words, rather than a panacea, a rental cap could work as part of a wider package of reform.

Almost by its nature, a rent cap merely addresses the symptoms of a screwed up housing market, not the cause. If the market worked, you wouldn't need these fixes. In the past decade the UK's private rental sector has doubled in size, to larger than it was before rent caps implemented widely in the 1960s and 1970s. Meanwhile, research suggests that 65 percent of renters would rather own their own home, and 10 percent would rather be in social housing. This leaves only 25 percent of private tenants renting because they want to, according to Hilton, the rest are "just captured consumers being exploited." In this situation, we don't need private rental properties that are a bit less eye-wateringly overpriced, we need house prices to drop and more social housing so that people have genuine alternatives to renting privately.

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Ultimately, a rent cap working, or house prices coming down, are both dependent on another factor – how much affordable, social and every-other-kind-of housing is being built. "Rents can only be reduced sustainably by increasing the overall supply of all types of homes," writes Lloyd on the Shelter blog, "so that more people can get a social home or buy their own with a mortgage, and fewer private renters have to compete over each available home."

In theory this is where that surcharge on rents that are higher than the cap comes in – that money being fed into the building of social housing. But would the benefits of that money be felt quickly and strongly enough, or at all? Reynolds thinks not. Not only would the money get swallowed up by bureaucracy she says, but " What housing associations need, and councils in fact, is the ability to invest a significant amount of capital in building new buildings and the only way they can do that is by being given a large amount of capital. A paltry little charge on the occasional landlord who chooses to charge a little bit over is not going to work." And that seems to make sense – how many landlords would have to charge significantly over the cap to build a significant number of social houses?

Hilton, argues persuasively that, sure, there may be flaws in capping rents, but the flaws in the current system are so huge that a different set of flaws might be preferable. Lloyd, meanwhile, posits a less drastic form of rent control, where tenants have long contracts and rent can only increase at the same rate as inflation.

What's clear is that something needs to change. "If you take this many people and you put them under this much pressure, then one day it breaks", Hilton said, pointing out that in 1915 tenants in Glasgow went on strike and just stopped paying rent entirely. The only real way out is for there to be enough homes for people to live in. The housing system is a desperate mess, which is what makes the idea of a rent cap so seductive. But for the same reason, policies that sound so simply attractive end up being fraught with problems. Unfortunately, there are no quick fixes for the UK's beleaguered renters.

@Charlottengland

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Photo via Flickr user mpeake

Activists organizing protests against police brutality in New York are marking Martin Luther King Day with a march beginning in Harlem. Some attendees might be surprised along the way to encounter officers in blue jackets with the words "NYPD Counter Terrorism" emblazoned on the back. But Linda Sarsour, a prominent Muslim-American activist and member of the anti-police brutality group Justice League NYC, one of the sponsors of the march, is almost used to it by now.

As head of the Arab American Association of New York, Sarsour has been a leader in the fight against police misconduct. Much of her energy has gone into speaking out against the NYPD's expansive spying program that since 9/11 has targeted Muslims and activists. She's part of a broad coalition trying to change policies ranging from surveillance to " broken windows" policing, the philosophy that going after minor offenses will deter serious crime.

"When I see counterterrorism folks amongst protesters, it sends me a message that I'm the enemy, and that they are trying to keep other New Yorkers safe from those protesting for their civil rights," said Sarsour. "It vilifies the people who are being peaceful and asking for something they should already have, asking for things like ending of police brutality."

The police wearing the counterterrorism jackets at protests are perhaps the most palpable sign of the agency's transformation since 2001. Before 9/11 the NYPD had no counterterrorism bureau and the Intelligence Division focused its resources on gang activity. After the September 11 attacks, however, billions of dollars were poured into the department to counter the threat of terrorism, as a 2011 60 Minutesreport showed. Critics of the NYPD's post-9/11 turn have been arguing that practices devoted to fighting terrorism have violated the Constitution.

Now, they say, the NYPD is unleashing its counterterrorism tools on activists against police brutality, conflating legitimate protest with the threat of terrorism.

After a grand jury declined to indict former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown, the NYPD's Intelligence Division—which plays a leading role in the department's counterterrorism work—was sent to monitor protests in Missouri. A few weeks later, when thousands of New Yorkers flooded the streets, bridges, highways, and landmarks to protest the grand jury decision to not indict Daniel Pantaleo, the NYPD cop who placed Staten Island resident Eric Garner in a chokehold that resulted in his death, counterterrorism officers were deployed at the demonstrations. And after the murders of two NYPD officers by Ismaaiyl Brinsley, an 18-year-old Brooklyn resident was arrested and charged with making a "terroristic" threat after allegedly posting a violent anti-cop cartoon on Facebook. (The NYPD did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.)

Mathieu Deflem, a University of South Carolina sociology professor who has studied the NYPD's counterterrorism policies, wrote in an email that "from the police viewpoint, certain measures will be needed as they do have to engage in crowd control." But he cautioned that the vast security apparatus set up after 9/11 makes it "likely that counterterrorism measures will be applied to other forms of crime or problematic behavior... This brings about, as a consequence, a criminalization of protest and possibly even a 'terrorization' of other crimes."

Still, Nicholas Casale, a former detective who was involved with NYPD counterterrorism operations in the mid 1990s, told VICE that there was nothing inherently nefarious about the presence of counterterrorism police officers at protests.

"When you have a protest, that protest has to be policed. You have a limited finite number of officers. So you're going to have to reorganize your deployment of officers," he said. "When there's an extemporaneous demonstration as we saw, let's say with Occupy Wall Street—where they would appear in different locations—the police department has to draw officers to police the crowd, to stop traffic, to separate from the crowd from people who want to get to work."

But counterterrorism agents have gone beyond just policing protests by getting directly involved with arrests.

On December 13, tens of thousands of people marched through Manhattan to call attention to police violence and demand accountability for the killings of Garner and Brown. After the sanctioned march petered out, a smaller number of protesters headed to the Brooklyn Bridge. At one point, the demonstrators split in two, with one group on an elevated pedestrian walkway and another group on the highway. According to the NYPD, officers saw Eric Linsker, a 29-year-old professor, holding a garbage can. Fearing that he was going to throw it on officers below, they moved to arrest him. But at least six other demonstrators intervened, allegedly assaulting the police and allowing Linsker to escape.

In the early hours of December 14, law enforcement—which had identified Linsker by an ID card in the backpack he left behind—raided his home and arrested him. The arresting officers, according to media reports, were members of the New York–area Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), a unit that includes NYPD officers and FBI agents. Under former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, the number of NYPD detectives assigned to the JTTF went from 17 to 125.

Martin Stolar, Linsker's defense attorney, says that the involvement of JTTF officers in an arrest of this sort was "extremely unusual." He added that "to have the Joint Terrorism Task Force misappropriated to [a] demonstration arrest [is] something that is shocking... [The NYPD] overreacted to September 11, and they see terrorism under every corner." Linsker is not being charged with anything close to terrorism, though. Instead, he's accused of a litany of crimes like inciting a riot, assaulting a police officer (though even prosecutors acknowledge it was other demonstrators who hit officers), possession of a weapon (he had hammers in a backpack), and resisting arrest.

Stolar has kept a close watch on the NYPD for decades. As Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman—the Pulitzer Prize–winning former Associated Press journalists who exposed the NYPD spying program—recount in their book Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD's Spying Unit and Bin Laden's Final Plot Against America , Stolar helped discover that the NYPD had effectively set up the New York City chapter of the Black Panthers. In 1971, while representing Black Panther members accused of planning to bomb a series of targets, Stolar and other lawyers learned that undercover NYPD detectives founded the chapter and then spied on those who signed up, according to Apuzzo and Goldman.

After a team of lawyers got the Black Panthers acquitted, Stolar and other attorneys sued the NYPD in federal court, charging that their surveillance of activists violated the Constitution. The lawsuit eventually exposed how the NYPD cast a wide net in its surveillance activities. The police had a "black desk" that monitored black people, and an "extremist desk" that spied on anti-war organizers. In 1985, the parties finally settled what came to be known as the Handschu case, named after plaintiff Barbara Handschu, a civil rights lawyer.

The court imposed guidelines, now known as the Handschu agreement, on when, exactly, the NYPD can spy on activists. Under these rules, the police initially could only investigate activities protected by the Constitution when a crime was about to be committed. Undercover agents were to be deployed only if necessary. And the police were barred from keeping intelligence files on people unless they engaged in criminal activity.

September 11 changed the game. In the aftermath of the attacks, the NYPD went back to court to ask for a change in the Handschu agreement, and was largely successful. Now, the department is free to use undercover officers to investigate without knowledge of a specific crime; there only has to be a possibility that a crime is being committed.

Much of the NYPD's subsequent spying activities have targeted Muslims, as police officers have infiltrated mosques and employed informants who use inflammatory language to ferret out terrorists. The NYPD also created a "Demographics Unit" that mapped out Muslim communities in the city and in Newark, New Jersey, a squad that was shut down by Mayor Bill de Blasio to much fanfare earlier this year.

But as he tries to appease both bitter cops and protesters enraged at a broken criminal justice system, the mayor is discovering that just having officers with "counter terrorism" on their uniforms around demonstrations is source of tension.

"It's conflating dissent with terrorism," said Stolar, "and that's really extraordinarily dangerous and very un-American."

Alex Kane is a New York–based freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Mondoweiss, Middle East Eye, AlterNet, Salon, the Los Angeles Review of Books and more. Follow him on Twitter.

This post originally appeared on VICE Germany

Anis Ferchichi, a.k.a. Bushido, a.k.a. Sonny Black is Germany's answer to Rick Ross when it comes to scandals, and Maybach Music when it comes to success. One of Germany's most successful rappers and label owners, Bushido is also the most controversial and provocative mainstream star in Germany. The unclear extent of his Islamic faith, his ties to the shady figure Arafat Abou Chaker, rumors about domestic violence, and his frequently sexist and homophobic lyrics have earned Bushido a lot of media attention in recent years.

Germany's premiere feminist Alice Schwarzer has been in an ongoing beef with Bushido, politicians have sued him over lyrics that sounded like death threats, and rapper Kay One was temporarily under police protection after denouncing his former mentor as a "mafia puppet" and "lapdog of the Abou Chaker clan."

Regardless of whether you agree with his simplistic worldview and the ambiguous messages of his music, one has to acknowledge the fact that his success, reach, and media presence give him a large influence on German youth—particularly young male immigrants with a Muslim background.

One day after the Charlie Hebdo attack Bushido posted a selfie wearing a Nike sweater with a "Paris" logo and the claim "Things are going to kick-off again soon! #ccn3 #ccn3willtearafewnewones" on his Instagram. Understandably, outrage ensued and few people—apart from his die-hard fans—believed that all he was trying to do was promote his upcoming album CCN3. Once again, Bushido demonstrated a clever—if not very thoughtful—ability to manufacture PR stunts. Reproaches hailed down, of course claiming Bushido was mocking the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack, while many fans and even some music journalists said the outrage was racist—the caucasian German rapper Prinz Porno wore the same sweatshirt the same day and got virtually no media attention whatsoever, they said.

VICE Germany's long-term contributor Marcus Staiger visited Bushido in his home to talk about the reasons for the inappropriate post and his role in gangster rap and Islam. Staiger used to own RoyalBunker—one of Germany's most influential hip-hop labels and the birthplace of many of the most relevant German rap stars today.

You can find everything from poodles to Labradors to Tibetan mastiffs in Beijing's Tongzhou district, but not all the canines are what the sellers say they are. Saline solution is injected into mutts to turn them into fashionable Chow Chows. A quick shave and some skin-stretching iron wire can turn a Pekingese into a popular Shar-Pei. But it's the xingqi quan, or "week-long dog," that transcends class and breed—these are animals that often die just one week after purchase from ailments either caused or concealed by breeders. All of this is just part of the daily routine at the Liyuan Dog Market.

"Everyone in Tongzhou is in the dog business," said Song, a roadside dog entrepreneur (who would only provide his surname). Peddling his bike along Rixin East Road, the man stopped me to offer directions to the market. But not before trying to sell me a corgi.

Liyuan is the largest canine bazaar in China. It's slated to close later this month, but for now, business booms on Tuesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. When I visited a few months ago on an off day, few shops were open, though there were breeders selling puppies out of car trunks along Rixin East Road. (At a nearby animal hospital, the chief veterinarian told me Liyuan had already closed and invited me to his home to sell me a dog. Only after receiving a tip from an intern at the veterinary clinic did I realize Liyuan is still open.)

Banned during the decade following China's Cultural Revolution from 1976 to 1986, today dog ownership is making a comeback in China's capital. Some estimate there are 1.2 million registered dogs in Beijing (a city of approximately 22 million). But, in a country boasting the second-highest number of rabies cases in the world, the Chinese Communist Party views large dogs as "vicious." Government crackdowns on dogs taller than 13.7 inches occur nearly every spring, and pet registration fees are set deliberately high to price people out of ownership (they currently stand at $160 per animal).

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Despite being formally discouraged, dog ownership is still on the rise, with people mostly buying the pets online or at markets such as Liyuan. The tension between people willing to pay hundreds for a purebred pup and the Tongzhou breeders flipping dogs for a quick buck illustrates how confusing the pet industry can be to regulate in China. Closing Liyuan may just be the most convenient answer to a bureaucratic problem that has animal-rights activists complaining loudly.

The puppies sold at Liyuan are often mistreated—they're taken from their mothers at too young an age, they're fed scraps instead of nutritious dog food, they're either not vaccinated or vaccinated illegally, and if they do get sick the disease spreads quickly in the high-volume mills where they're raised. Painkillers and stimulants are injected into dogs to keep them bouncy.

China's Law on the Protection of Wildlife specifies that market vendors need a permit for dealing dogs, but offers no standard for how animals should be treated. Complicating matters is the fact that three separate government ministries oversee the way business is done at Liyuan, meaning that buyers who are seeking recourse after being sold a week-long dog have to navigate what can be a bureaucratic nightmare.

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Activists began campaigning for Liyuan's closure in October 2012, after the Beijing Morning Post published an article about the cruel treatment of puppies at Liyuan, inspiring animal-rights supporters to pen spin-off pieces berating the market's insensitive breeders. (The article was later removed from the Post's website.) This June, Chinese activists organized and reached out to the foreign press to protest the Yulin Dog Meat Festival, an annual event where locals celebrate the summer solstice by killing, skinning, and eating canine. Perhaps the level of organization the campaign demonstrated—including circulating an English-language petition online demanding the festival's closure—made officials nervous. Vendors said Hongdian Dog Market in neighboring Hebei province closed in late November 2014. Later this month Liyuan will follow suit, perhaps in response to public demand, and vendors will be forced to either move their businesses online or illegally hawk their puppies from car trunks.

The market has likely remained popular because animal adoption remains uncommon among Beijingers. Equivalents to the Humane Society or the American Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals do not exist in the city. Mary Peng, director of the International Center for Veterinary Services in Beijing, said that "people are purchasing online or at markets because they don't know that there are any other options."

That leaves pet lovers at the Liyuan vendors' mercy.

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"I've bought six dogs at this market and two of them have died," said Sisi Guo. "When you buy the dogs they seem healthy, but when you return they [the vendors] say it's not their fault and you're responsible. There's no way to get your money back."

Liyuan didn't always have such a bad reputation, vendor Huang Feng said. His family has been selling at Liyuan since the market opened in the 1980s. Back then, it was the largest dog market in Asia. Liyuan was shut down and scattered multiple times because of its shady dealings, but the roadside vendors always returned to illegally sell their puppies from car trunks. Unable to crush it, the municipal government legalized vendor's stores.

Feng's shop is decorated with pictures of his huskies winning international pet competitions. He doesn't seem too concerned about the coming shutdown of Liyuan.

More than half of his sales are already conducted online, he said; his award-winning huskies fetch him $65,000 per year. Once Liyuan closes, he plans to move his entire stock online to Taobao (a Chinese equivalent of eBay), save nearly $10,000 in annual rent, and, if worse comes to worse, sell along Rixin East Road.

Weng, who was peddling poodles from a Volkswagen trunk when I spoke to her, also plans to continue breeding and selling her dogs. When asked about the possibility of her selling sick dogs, she shrugged. "All animals die," she said.

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Xinxin Deng wasn't so sanguine about the fate of her dog. Deng decided to buy a pet on China's National Day, a holiday celebrating the birth of the Communist Party. Out of the more than 300 Taobao vendors advertising Labradors, Deng chose the highest-rated vendor on the site, which claimed that its puppies were approved by the American Kennel Society.

When the 32-year-old made plans to meet the seller with her father, the man wouldn't give her his full name or the address of the puppy mill. Instead, he told them to come to a spot on Beijing's Fifth Ring Road and led them on a 20-minute trip down a side street to a house where ten large men greeted them at the door. Inside, 20 Labrador puppies were crammed into a small cage. Only one was moving. Deng's father entered the mill.

"They said, 'We've spent so much time showing you the dogs, you have to buy," Deng told me. "We'll lower the price, how much do you want to buy?'"

Two minutes later, Deng's father had the only puppy that moved wriggling in his arms. Communist Party officials might have describe Deng's new pet as a bourgeoisie import from the West, but Deng felt happy when she saw the black dog. She named him Dongguan—"winter melon," a fruit that is traditionally a sign of good fortune in China—and paid the breeder $325.

"I thought I could give a better life to this small, small dog," Deng said.

A month later, Dongguan was dead of kennel cough, despite Deng spending $1,300 in vet fees. Deng must wait at least six months before buying a dog again—her apartment itself is now infected.

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After her dog's death, Deng and her friends posted on the WeChat social media site to raise awareness about what she went through. Deng also called the breeder back and pretended she wanted to refer a friend to the mill. The man then told her his full name and the exact address of the site. Deng recorded the phone conversation, and may take the information to police. But she is not optimistic about her chances for retribution. This is just how dogs are bought in China, she said. And besides, the vendor seems to have vanished from Taobao's listings.

"I just wish he [the breeder] would kneel down in front of me and tell me sorry," Deng said. "I don't want money. I just want the mill and the dog markets to shut down."

Photos and additional reporting by That's Beijing editor Stan Aron. Follow Nona on Twitter.

Every so often, an album comes along that makes your ears feel like they're being diddled by an alien creature's bizarre tentacles. Head Wound City's EP is one of these albums. The band is a noisegrind supergroup with two members of the Blood Brothers, two members of the Locust, and Nick Zinner—the guitarist from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It's the sort of music that might make you want to drive a motorcycle across a thinly-iced lake, or start a PCP-fueled wrestling league.

The record came out in 2005, but Justin Pearson's label Three One G recently had it remastered to be reissued on March 10. The entire EP is under ten minutes long, and each song is an invigoratingly terrifying assault on everything sacred. It's fantastic.

Preorder the reissue here.

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Former oil refinery in Montreal. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

If the oil and gas industry has its way, Quebec will soon be turned into a hub for tar sands oil transit. With US President Barack Obama reiterating his opposition to TransCanada's $5.4-billion Keystone XL pipeline and now falling oil prices and continued public opposition keeping Enbrige's Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline projects stalled in British Columbia, Quebec might be the industry's best bet in the near future.

TransCanada's Energy East project has yet to be approved by Canada's National Energy Board (NEB), but Quebec's provincial energy board has already rubber-stamped it. If approved, the project will have the capacity to move 1.1 million barrels every day. That's roughly half the current production of the Alberta tar sands.

The Régie de l'énergie's review, released by Quebec's Energy and Natural Resources Minister on January 7, focuses on the positive impact the project would have on Quebec's natural gas supplies but does not take into account either the environmental impacts or safety hazards, which are the main concerns of opponents to the projected pipeline.

"The risks and consequences are far too high," the traditional council of the Huron-Wendat First Nation wrote in a letter on January 6, voicing what critics have long been saying about such projects.

Indeed, TransCanada's safety record is far from flawless. CBC reported last year that an NEB audit "found TransCanada to be non-compliant in four of nine areas it examined: hazard identification, risk assessment and control; operational control in upset or abnormal operating condition; inspection, measurement and monitoring, and management review."

On January 2 of this year, Suncor—an early partner of TransCanada's controversial deep-water port project—experienced a massive leak from a gasoline terminal in Rimouski, QB, which was first detected by local residents.

This is only one of the latest events that highlight fossil fuels safety issues and flaws in industry control processes. Last fall a Hydro-Quebec pipeline leaked over 100,000 litres of diesel in the Magdalen Islands, only a small fraction of which was recovered. On January 14, a leak in a diesel tank at the city of Longueuil's water treatment facility on the south shore of Montreal caused a 28,000-litre spill in the St-Lawrence River, contaminating the drinking water of close to 300,000 residents.

The diesel is leak was the equivalent of just about 350 barrels of crude oil, based on American Petroleum Institute conversion standards. TransCanada's Energy East pipeline is expected to carry 130 times this quantity every hour.

Nontheless, the Energy East project review is expected to go forward in the next few weeks, despite the fact that the NEB has recently refused a request for the project documentation to be translated into French. The board agreed with TransCanada's argument that documents "specifically pertaining to the project in Quebec and in New Brunswick, as well as a few other over-arching aspects of the project" have already been translated and posted on the company's website.

If what's happening with the Kinder Morgan pipeline review in British Columbia is any indication of what's going to happen in Quebec, TransCanada's dubious safety credentials might not get in the way of its project being approved by the NEB.

"This so-called public hearing process has become a farce, and this Board a truly industry-captured regulator," former BC Hydro CEO Marc Eliesen said as he pulled out of the Trans Mountain project NEB hearings.

But no matter what the NEB says, TransCanada will still have to convince the population of Quebec that its $12-billion project is worth the risks. For that, the company will have to find other tactics than the aggressive "Win Ugly or Lose Pretty" communication strategy proposed by PR firm Elderman, officially abandoned after it was leaked to Greenpeace last November.

In the end, if public opposition does not convince TransCanada to back out of its Energy East project, maybe the impact of dropping oil prices will.

Still, on another front, shale oil and gas exploration and, eventually, extraction projects might get on the way in Quebec even if a report released last month by Quebec's environmental review board raised serious questions about the safety of hydraulic fracturing. The idea of an all-out fracking ban has already been put aside and some advocates are trying to get Quebec's shale gas industry up and running.

After a long fight against the municipality and local activists, Quebec-based junior exploration company Pétrolia announced that it had completed its horizontal drilling in Gaspé and might soon be ready to try extracting oil from the Haldimand 4 well.

The fact that all these developments are happening while Quebec starts work on the renewal of its energy strategy and before the Strategic Environmental Assessment on fossil fuels development in the province has been concluded raises questions as to how much control the provincial government exerts over the oil industry. An analyst from the Common Sense Canadian notes that Quebec's Liberal government might actually just be "preparing the terrain with inadequate or smoke screen environmental analyses to facilitate full-tilt fossil fuel and natural resource development in the province."

Environmental groups, which have gathered momentum throughout the last year, held a day of visibility against fossil fuels on January 17. Environmentalists demanded the province "immediately halt oil exploitation in the context of the global ecological crisis," an urgent message that echoes a recent Nature study which found two thirds of currently exploitable fossil fuels—and up to 85 percent of the Alberta tar sands—need to remain in the soil.

One way or another, 2015 will be a decisive year for the development of Canada's oil and gas industry. And what happens in Quebec over the coming weeks and months will be a good indication of which way things are going.

VICE asked the Quebec Oil and Gas Association for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of this story's publication.

Follow Simon on Twitter.

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This article first appeared on VICE UK

People=Shit is a statement that will forever be locked in the basement of my brain. Around the turn of the millennium—just as I was turning into a proper, deodorant-using teenager—it was a sentiment that was reinforced to me on a daily basis, printed on the back of the countless Slipknot hoodies roaming the corridors of my school.

I probably encapsulated the "shit" they were talking about pretty accurately. My group of friends dressed like semi-professional darts players—all luminous shirts, buckled loafers and wet-look hair gel —and actually referred to our chosen cigarette brands as "classy." We thought the Slipknot kids were weird, and they no doubt thought we were cunts.

But looking back, I have a lot more respect for those guys than I do for myself at that age. They weren't fickle and eager to please; they were defiant and dedicated. Despite the trend at the time, they didn't spend their pot-wash pay on Ben Sherman shirts and squirty bottles of CK One; they invested it in leather dusters and more ball-bearing chains than could have ever been physically necessary. They didn't hide behind the safety blanket of conformity; they braved the streets of suburban Britain in black nail polish and slowly decomposing Criminal Damage jeans.

Over a decade later, I noticed that Slipknot and Korn were touring the UK together. I wanted to see whether that sense of dedication has held strong—whether the rock and metal kids of my youth had survived emo, indie, and the inevitable vanilla-fication of your personality that ensues when you have to spend your free time reading HMRC letters rather than Metal Hammer. Whether there was a new generation of angsty teens, or if the class of 2004 were still dyeing their thinning dreadlocks green and upgrading their hoodie size once a year.

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Arriving at Sheffield's Motorpoint Arena, the first thing I noticed was how mixed, gender-wise, the crowd was. At school, the flesh tunnel mafia was always way heavier on the testosterone, so it was nice to see that balanced out 15 years down the line.

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In fact, the crowd was generally a big old melting pot. There were anime-eyed kids who'd inexplicably taken MD for the moshpit; a girls' night out shotting mini bottles of wine; white-haired 70s metal blokes stuffing hotdogs into their mouths with nicotine-stained fingers; lonely men propped up against the wall drinking Coke; groups of tattooed lads drinking paper pints of Carling; a couple of genuine potential psychopaths; and, generally, lots of people who were very nice to me despite the fact I was acting like a massive narc, approaching strangers and asking them about their "musical allegiances."

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Those closer to my age seemed to mostly have stuck with the same kind of stuff they were wearing in my school days. Metal's an aesthetic that people just kind of adopt forever, isn't it?

Find me a full-on, wet-shaved-bald gabber who's had to properly think about school catchment areas and I'll give you a tenner. Go to literally any mid-to-large sized rock bar and I guarantee you'll spot a group of men and women in their late forties, still wearing bullet belts, spiky bracelets and boots covered in lots of extraneous bits of steel.

It's a bit like musical herpes, metal—once you've got it, it never goes away.

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After spending some time lingering around the bar, trying to count how many boiler suits were in attendance, I had a walk around and chatted to some fans.

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Janne (left) and Nathan (right)

VICE: Hi. Are you guys here for Slipknot or Korn?
Janne: I thought it was Emperor!
Nathan: Slipknot are one of those bands I used to listen to when I was younger, so it's a bit of a nostalgia trip seeing them again. We're into a lot more darker, heavier stuff now, but it's still nice to revisit where it all started.

Have you kept up with their more recent material?
I've dipped into it now and again, but mostly I've been working on my own stuff of late. Still, it's nice to revisit the classics.
Janne: I liked Korn when they did their first album, when they used to build their own distortion pedals. I really respected them for that, creating their own unique sound.

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Hi Scott, who are you here for?
Scott: Mainly for Slipknot.

You a big fan?
Yeah, I'm a big fan. I've been into them since I was 15, and I'm 21 now, so it's been quite a few years.

What was it that attracted you to the band initially?
It was completely different to what everyone else was doing at the time, and there was a vibe from the band that pulled me towards them. From then on they brought me into this whole other genre of music, and it's taken me everywhere. I was in a really bad situation before and it helped me through it by listening to it, and it's brought me to where I am now.

So it's something you've found therapeutic, almost?
Yeah, absolutely. I've followed the fashion that goes with it, too—and yeah, I'm really happy and I can't wait to see them onstage. It's the first time I'm seeing them.

What are you expecting?
I'm expecting massacre and absolute brutality. I reckon they'll be mental. I'm expecting brutality; if they don't bring the brutality, I'll be disappointed.

Cheers, Scott.

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People having their lives drastically affected, inspired or improved by Slipknot was a common running theme; people who'd felt marginalized as teenagers found solace in this group of masked men from Iowa who sang about spitting and bleeding, and huffed up the scent of dead crow onstage to make themselves projectile vomit. They found a unity in the other.

Interview a Wembley Stadium full of Stereophonics fans and I doubt you'll hear much about life-changing experiences.

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Korn were the support act, presumably because frontman Jonathan Davis has been too busy both creating dubstep and then jumping on that Borgore flex with his J Devil project to concentrate too heavily on the band that made him.

Still, the crowd were still lapping it all up, especially on old favorites like "Freak on a Leash" and "Blind." Some people even applauded sincerely when JD brought out his bagpipes.

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Actually, the guy with the Marilyn Manson neck tattoo completely lost his shit at that point.

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Carole (left) and Caroline (right)

How long have you guys been fans for?
Carole: Well, I'm 37 and have been into the alternative scene a long time. It was [Slipknot's] record in 1999 that really got me into them.

What is it that's kept you interested for all that time?
They're different to anything else—they don't copy anyone else. They don't go by image; they wear masks so they look mysterious and have that horror-movie vibe to them. So many bands come and go that look like someone else or resemble someone else, but with Slipknot you don't think, Oh, they're like this other band. They're just Slipknot.

Speaking to people tonight, they clearly have a hugely dedicated fan base. I suppose you could say that they're making niche music—in the mainstream sense, at least—but they're still enormously popular. Why do you think that is?
I would say it's the alternative, heavy metal lifestyle. It's more a lifestyle choice than anything else—it's not an image or a religion, it's a lifestyle choice. I think fans are dedicated because it's like a big family, a big group of friends. There's a really good atmosphere at rock and heavy metal gigs that you don't get at any other concert. The fans are their own people; they're not fake, and I think that's why it works.

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Charlotte (left) and Ryan (right)

What first attracted you to Slipknot and Korn?
Ryan: Teen angst, pretty much.
Charlotte: Yeah. I was always a fan of rock music growing up, too.

What's made you stick with the band for the last ten years?
Ryan: It's reminiscence—a bit of nostalgia.
Charlotte: Yeah. Like, the first album I ever bought was Sum 41, and I still love them. You grow up with those bands.
Ryan: Slipknot are in my top three favorite bands to see live. The energy, the entertainment—they've got flames going off... it's just a show.

Is it the wilder, the better for you?
It's not the wilder, the better—they just know how to put on a show. Not a lot of bands do these days. I hope my boss doesn't see this; he's a devout Christian like those lot outside.

What lot?
You didn't see them? There are groups of Christians with banners and signs saying things like "sinners repent" protesting the gig.

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We ran back outside (past those two above) to catch the Christians, but were told by police we'd missed them. I found it genuinely bizarre that, in 2015, a concert could still provoke such a response from the religious right; you'd have thought, with the many, many brothels in operation in this part of the country, they'd have switched their sights by now.

Mind you, there was a nice irony to the protests; they were demonstrating against a tour called "Prepare for Hell" by preaching the very same message to everyone in attendance.

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Ethan (left) and Daz (right)

How long have you two been fans?
Daz: I first saw them in '99.

You wouldn't have been born then, would you, Ethan?
He was born in '98.

So you've brought up with Slipknot?
Ethan: Yeah, pretty much.
Daz: He's had no choice!

What's kept you coming for 15-plus years, Daz?
It's a hard question, that. It's an instant thing; I know I like it and it gives me exactly what I need out of music. It gets better and better every fucking album; you can't get anything better than Slipknot, really.

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As Tash, our photographer, was escorted to the photo pit ready for Slipknot, she was asked by security whether she had insurance against piss. There would be lots of piss chucked around, she was warned.

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Thankfully, Tash and her camera remained piss free, because it turns out Slipknot's fans aren't nearly as keen to drench each other in bodily fluids as Kasabian's—the gig the security guard cited in his piss speech.

"I've never seen so much piss thrown in all my life," he said. "It's how they get their kicks."

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As soon as Slipknot burst out through the pyro and onto the stage, the entire crowd was whipped up into a series of splintering circle pits. Chiropractors across the country rubbed their hands with glee as 35-year-old men lost themselves in the maelstrom and started to thrash their heads back and forth, yanked in and out of the pit by kids half their age.

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I expected the night to be a mix of young teens cathartically blowing off the same kind of angst many my age did ten years ago, and others still captivated by those formative years, hanging in despite the fact their boss keeps telling them they really shouldn't wear their lip ring to work.

I found lots of both, and, just as I'd expected, all those my age—while allowing themselves some other tastes of various cultural niches—had more or less kept rock and metal as their constant. They hadn't been swayed by the perversive tide of fashion; they'd remained loyal to the subculture they allied themselves with at an age where virginity and hazard perception tests were still very much at the forefront of their minds.

Mind you, along with that lot, I found plenty of people who'd only just discovered the bands a few years ago—entire families, moms and daughters, dads and sons—proving it's never too late to go all out, shave your entire head and get that Slipknot tattoo on your skull that the 14-year-old you always wanted.

Follow Daniel Dylan Wray on Twitter.

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This post originally appeared on VICE France

In 2009, I decided to start photographing nightclub facades. I first got the idea while on a trip around Burgundy, in France. Passing by a roadside disco, I stopped the car to take some pictures.

From the outside, the place looked like an old farm, on which someone had just randomly stuck a neon sign. The parking lot was covered in torn flyers and pieces of glass that came from broken bottles of vodka and whiskey. That picture immediately took me back to my teenage years—the nonsense drunken evenings with my friends in the French countryside.

I was instantly seduced and decided to work on a series about the many nightclubs of this kind in France. These clubs have fueled many fantasies and mysteries in my teenage brain; I used to view them as truly subversive places back then.

Traveling across the country in my Ford Fiesta to photograph nightclub facades made me feel like I became a kind of doorstep salesman—except that instead of selling vacuum cleaners, I was buying into an idea of adolescence I had long lost.

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This post first appeared on VICE UK

While we may be rubbish at many things, one league table where the UK triumphs is in locking people up, with one of the highest rates of incarceration in Western Europe. Despite this, prisons are usually pretty far down the political agenda, only cropping up when our politicians bravely defy attempts by bleeding-heart Eurocrats to give inmates things like the right to vote. With prisoners themselves having no say in policy making and attempts to pursue a more rehabilitative approach to offenders enough to send the Daily Mail into reactionary spasms about "holiday camp" jails, it's hardly surprising that most politicians steer clear of the subject.

So few people, least of all the SNP Government, were expecting prisons to become one of the most contentious issues in post-referendum Scottish politics. But in the past few weeks, the Scottish Government's plans to construct a new "super jail" for women prisoners have come to dominate the news agenda north of the border, with opposition flaring. Awkwardly for SNP ministers, one of the most vocal opponents of the prison plan has been the non-party Women for Independence group, which they've spent the last two years sharing platforms with.

What's the big issue here? Presently, Scotland only has one women's prison, Cornton Vale in Stirling, which holds around 280 inmates. The jail has long been the subject of controversy, particularly following a spate of suicides in the mid 1990s, and there's a consensus that it needs to be replaced. Statistics from the jail make for depressing reading, with two-thirds of inmates on suicide watch, 80 percent suffering mental health problems and 71 percent having no qualifications.

There are now slightly creepy "projections" showing that there will be lots of new criminals, necessitating a big new jail. Plans are now at an advanced stage for a new £60 million ($91 million), 350-space prison, to be sited near Greenock on the west coast. This is now provoking fury from campaigners.

When Women for Independence became aware of the proposals in December, they rapidly put together a plan to oppose them and propelled the issue into mainstream debate. They have pointed to the recommendations made by the Scottish Government's own commission on female offending a couple of years ago, which as well as calling for the demolition of Cornton Vale, proposed a small, specialist unit to house those on long-term sentences. Others would be placed near to their own communities. Going further still, with 75 percent of women prisoners serving sentences of six months or less, campaigners raised the question of whether many of them should be there at all. A tiny proportion of female prisoners— around 6 percent—are inside for violent offenses.

It didn't take long for the same guy who originally approved the plans for the new prison, former Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill, to suddenly decide that it wasn't such a good idea after all, essentially acknowledging that prisons don't really work in terms of reintegrating prisoners to society. Writing in The National—the new pro-independence newspaper—in December, he wrote that they "more often harm than help" offenders, that increasing capacity would "embed... unacceptably high prison numbers" and called for his successor to have the "political will" to rethink the plans. Given that he'd been Justice Minister until just a few weeks before, it's slightly strange that he didn't have the "political will" to do so himself. It's a bit like the ever increasing number of former world leaders who make incredible about-turns in their attitude to drug legalization the second they're no longer in a position of power.

Women for Independence are optimistic that the current plans—or at least the capacity of the new prison—will be amended, with an understanding that the new Justice Minister Michael Matheson has called them back in for review. However, the group's Maggie Mellon told me she's wary of the issue becoming a party political football. Unfortunately for them, it does now seem to be heading that way, with Scottish Labour backing the cancellation of the prison, probably as part of their strategy to win over left-leaning Yes voters. Although Mellon is cautiously welcoming of the view Labour have taken towards the jail, she points out that prison numbers have spiraled under Labour governments in the past. Jim Murphy's attempt to make the issue about "mummies and kiddies" also comes in for criticism. He points out that when men go to prison, their children are likely to stay with their mothers, but when women go to prison, fathers are less likely to step in. But Maggie isn't too keen on this line of argument. "We want to reduce prison numbers across the board, for both men and women. We've never said anything else", she said.

Scottish Labour's ongoing efforts to be everything to everyone, meanwhile, mean that while issuing pronouncements about the SNP locking up mums on one hand, they're happy to appease the likes of the Daily Mail with pledges to end "soft-touch justice" and make "time mean time" on the other. The press in the deprived Greenock area—which is set to be the site of the new women's prison—are also reporting that the party are saying they'll just build a new men's prison there instead. Such is the baffling reality of post-indyref Scottish Labour, where nothing is quite as it seems.

The independence campaign saw, particularly from the Yes side of the debate, a lot of emphasis on Scotland's apparently intrinsic aspiration to be a Nordic-style social democracy—the kind of place where prisons really are like rehabilitative holiday camps—if it just wasn't for the nasty Tories at Westminster holding the nation back. The extent to which the SNP can live up to their much vaunted progressive aspirations, on a matter in which they have full devolved powers, is now being tested to the limit. There's been a lot of chatter about Scotland being able to set an example to the rest of the UK when it comes to social justice issues. The country now has a chance to show that there is a workable alternative to locking women up – it's just a pesky matter of political will for it to do so.

Follow Liam Turbett on Twitter. @parcelorogues

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George Osbourne: "We would never allow the public interest to subjugate to the commercial interest or the vested interest." Image via altogetherfool

This post first appeared on VICE UK

"Public Interest." It sounds like an ill-advised side project where George Osborne and Mark Carney attempt to rap about fiscal policy. Thankfully, it's not. But what does the term actually mean?

It's one of those phrases you hear so frequently in the news, you assume there's some widely-agreed upon definition, i.e. that, if something is in "public interest," it's something that the public want and that will be of benefit to society. Only, that assumption might be wrong. "Public interest" appears to be a bit of a misleading phrase.

In September 2014, the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) issued a response to a consultation that they had held over changes they wanted to make to existing trespass laws. The changes would allow companies to drill under people's properties without permission. This was to make it easier for them to extract energy sources such as shale gas, oil and geothermal heat. Shale gas—is extracted through a process known as hydraulic fracturing—you've probably heard it being referred to as "fracking."

The consultation had an overwhelmingly negative response. There were 40,647 respondents, with 99 percent opposing any changes to the law. The DECC's reply? "Taking all factors into consideration, we consider that there is a strong case that these proposals will be in the public interest."

This confused me. How can the DECC say that the proposals are in the public interest after a huge majority of people responded saying that they were decidedly not interested? Well, it's because "public interest" doesn't really mean anything, not from a legal standpoint.

The "public interest" was a key factor in the Leveson Inquiry, too. When The News of the World had been found to be hacking into Milly Dowler's voicemail, among others, an ex-NOTW journalist defended the practice by saying that the stories were "in the public interest."

But how can one journalist claim to have a clear grasp of what's "in the public interest" when others admit they haven't got the foggiest? The Guardian's Nick Davies said at the inquiry: "If I'm working on a particular story in particular circumstances, do I or do I not have the public interest on my side? The answer very often is: I don't have the faintest idea because we don't know where the boundary lines are."

Nobody seems to know. The same question has been asked in studies published by the media regulator OFCOM, the Carnegie Trust, and, somewhat bizarrely, The Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales. None of them propose a strict definition, but all agree that having a framework in place would help clear up the ambiguity.

Despite this ambiguity, "public interest"—with no discernible fixed definition—is a key consideration in a lot of decision making processes.

When Google receive a request to remove an article from their listings, they say they have to take "public interest" into account: "When you make such a request, we will balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public's interest to know and the right to distribute information."

If I'm working on a particular story in particular circumstances, do I or do I not have the public interest on my side? The answer very often is: I don't have the faintest idea because we don't know where the boundary lines are." – The Guardian's Nick Davies

When News Corporation wanted to fully take over BSkyB, George Osborne said that "public interest" was of the utmost importance: "We would never allow the public interest to subjugate to the commercial interest or the vested interest."

Since 2011, the letters that the royal family write to ministers and government departments have been exempt from the Freedom of Information Act under Section 37. Before the 2010 election, the Conservative Party made democratic accountability and transparency in politics a key focus of their campaign. This, apparently, didn't extend to the royal family.

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However, it also states that it isn't an "absolute exception":

"In considering whether or not to use this exemption Departments should consider whether or not the public interest in withholding the information outweighs the public interest in disclosing it."

To be clear: when responding to Freedom of Information requests regarding the royal family, government departments should consider the "public interest" (an ambiguous concept) in keeping the information secret, and weigh that against the "public interest" (again, an ambiguous concept) in revealing the information.

Somehow, through all that ambiguity, they were able to establish that the majority of decisions should fall in the royal family's favor. Funny, that.

"It is likely to be in exceptional circumstances only that the public interest will come down in favor of disclosure of this information."

While the Royal Family are said to not really have much of a say in how the country is run, they do write a lot of letters behind the scenes. Prince Charles has been accused of lobbying the health secretary to support homeopathic remedies being provided by the NHS. Prince Andrew has allegedly written to US government officials in support of his friend Jeffrey Epstein – who is now a convicted sex offender. Thanks to Section 37, we have no idea how the royal family are using their influence on our government, and this is said to be in the "public interest."

In his opening address to Leveson, Robert Jay QC put it perfectly: "Put simply, the public interest is very often deployed as some trump card."

So, what is "public interest"? A nice-sounding phrase with very little meaning, it seems, and one often used to suit the ends of whoever is claiming to have the public's well-being at heart. It's a comforting concept, but, as Davies suggested, a dangerous piece of – highly subjective – rhetoric that invites little further thought.

Follow Liam Butler on Twitter.

Who can say they nearly got their boss sacked for writing a feature on menstruation porn? Who can win pub chats with tales of interviewing a dude from Hull who fantasises about being cannibalised by women in angora sweaters? Who suffers at least one sleepless night a week due to flashbacks from researching videos of men shoving live worms down their bellends? Me, that's who.

Writing for alternative culture magazine Bizarre has given me and my comrades enough effed up brain material to last a lifetime. But after 18 years of newsagents across the land muttering things like, "Where the fuck do I put a magazine with a Charles Manson blow-up doll giveaway on the front cover?", the freak show has been run out of town.

The first issue of Bizarre went out in February 1997. It was hailed as Britain's first alternative publication and its job was to muscle into a mag scene dominated by the likes of Loaded and Maxim cracking the lad culture whip over Donna Air's back. "It was a more extreme Fortean Times, a brasher Sky, a weirder FHM," says former Deputy Editor, Kate Hodges. "It covered the counterculture and the counter-counter-culture. It was the only place you could read an interview with Edward Bunker next to an A-Z of voodoo, followed by a poster of a pin-up dressed in an inflatable, latex frog head."

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Photo from a Bizarre Ball, 2011, by John Hoang

The internet spoils us now. You can search "Lactation Porn" and get 1,530,000 Google results in under 0.33 seconds. But remember, kids, there was a time when you couldn't hunt down a snap of a milky tit fuck for love nor money. For a while, Bizarre was the only British publication brave enough to dedicate whole features to topics like this and delve unflinchingly into the underworld of pretty much everything your mother warned you about.

Jonathan Ross and Kevin Smith were fans, Louis Theroux and Courtney Love wrote for us, Vic Reeves drew for us and, allegedly, Charles Bronson perused our pages in the clink. We built an incredible family of regular contributors, like trans porn pioneer, Buck Angel, Lauren Harries and Harold Ivey, a kindly pensioner who lived in the Biloxi woods and wore ridiculous leather outfits.

"If you'd ever flicked through Bizarre in passing, you might have thought it was weird, gross, shocking, or all of the above," says former Production Editor, El Goodman. "But if you paid attention to the ink on its pages, you'd realise that, like all good magazines, it was about people and their stories. We covered weightier subjects, such as the practical, emotional and financial aspects of what it's like for men to be gay for pay, transgender issues and government legislation on porn."

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Photo from a Bizarre Ball, 2011, by John Hoang

Former Front Section Editor, Alix Fox, never shied away from trying out the more extreme stuff to give a first-person perspective. "One of the most intense things I've ever done in my life was a report on underwater bondage for Bizarre," she recalls. "I was dressed as a mermaid in a suit that had lead weights in the tail, fitted with a SCUBA tank, tied up by a shibari [Japanese rope bondage] expert at the bottom of a swimming pool and then had my air supply taken away. I was utterly dependent upon my captors to swim over and give me oxygen when I shook my head to indicate that my lungs were going to burst. It was the ultimate in submission. I lived and breathed my job on that magazine. Even when I couldn't breathe."

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Bizarre freelancer, George Binning, reading the mag in a cockroach outfit (Photo by Etienne Gilfillan)

Readers' letters fantasised about us hammering away on our keyboards, ball-gags in mouths, casually dildoing ourselves silly at lunch in between bites of a Pret sandwich. The reality? A dysfunctional version of Press Gang, with the strains of Christopher Lee singing opera on the stereo and shouting out things like, "Dave... can you add in that picture of the girl licking the bloody pig's head on page 42?"

A typical day would see us lurking in the darkest recesses of the internet, casually striking up an email exchange with a guy into eating his own shit, or venturing outside to attend a sex party in Kent, or sit in on a gory facial scarification session.

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Answering the work phone and opening the post became a game of Russian roulette. While I imagine the offices of Cosmo were bombarded with complimentary pots of fancy face cream and fashion week invites, we got biro sketches of men being tossed off, tortured and killed by aggressive female Nazi soldiers and an envelope of dried skin scabs from an amateur death metal band.

Every week for a year, I was plagued by phone calls from an annoying old guy called "Little Ken" who begged me to do a feature on "tall, strong, powerful women". He liked the idea of paying an Amazonian dame to pick him up and throw him across the room. I'd have fucking done it for free. Alix found herself talking to a Jackass fan who had a cunning plan to catapult his way into the aeons of fame.

"I ended up having to explain to him why it would be unwise to circumcise himself with a pair of nail scissors, wrap his severed foreskin in a condom, swallow it, shit it out, and attempt to stitch it back on using a sewing needle," she remembers.

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Bizarre Cover, from the Bizarre Facebook

Up until the death knell, only four staff members had been bravely battling to keep the mag afloat, painfully aware that the end was nigh. One of them was Bizarremag.com editor, Stephen Daultrey. "The closure is very sad, but certainly not unexpected," he says. "What pains me most is that the Bizarre brand never got a chance to adapt with the changing times and consequently, evolve, grow and flourish into something really big, new and spectacular – a digital portal of weirdness, individuality and subversive culture."

The stories, characters and experiences are endless, but I can't wrap this up without mentioning our community of readers. If it made us laugh, we knew it would make them laugh. Serious features like the self-harm one we put together were constructed entirely from their own letters and experiences. They sent us homemade cookies, wedding snaps, 20 pages of geeking out on how to improve the mag. Hell, they even had portrait tattoos of staff members etched in their flesh.

Our readers got firmly behind our Proud To Be Different campaign, in support of the S.O.P.H.I.E. charity, set up after Sophie Lancaster was murdered because she dared to dress differently. We even got to meet over 2000 readers in the sweaty flesh at our now-legendary live events; the Bizarre Balls. The mag also entertained the British and American troops on tour in Afghanistan. They took the time to write to us, pose for silly pictures and try to charm us into sending them free copies, begging, "It's the only thing that keeps us going in this shit hole!"

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I felt like Brooks Hatlen leaving Shawshank when I said goodbye to the mag in 2012. Spat out into "civilian" life and awkwardly trying to fit into a normal working routine that didn't involve test driving a pneumatically powered dildo before breakfast. So long, Bizarre. In the grand scheme of things, you were just a magazine. But to a tribe of outsiders, misfits, deviants, freaks, perverts and open-minded souls, you were a lifeline, a celebration of the flipside, a nod of recognition and a smack in the mainstream's kisser.

More stuff about magazines:

This Ex-Bank Robber Edits the UK's National Prison Paper

'Accent' Magazine Captures Lives Outside the Ordinary

The Magazine Exposing Glasgow's Criminal Underworld