[This piece first appeared at The Blaze.]
In the end, Vice Media was little more than a hipster Ponzi scheme that preyed on the elderly.
Last week, the company announced that it would lay off hundreds of staffers and stop publishing content at Vice.com. Following last year’s bankruptcy filing, CEO Bruce Dixon said it was “no longer cost-effective” for the company to distribute its own content, and pledged to pivot, once again, to a business model that might profit. Now, they’d like to be a production studio for the established media companies they used to mock.
It was a company built on the sizzle and BS of founder Shane Smith, who dressed like a Blues Brother and sold a great story to “traditional” new executives. Its pitch: Vice understood the secret sauce of capturing the next generation of news consumers, the ones fleeing mainstream media.
The company did things that might have sent anyone named Trump to jail. Like paying someone to pretend he was an MTV executive interested in a show to mislead a reporter profiling the company. Or having Vice employees bring friends with laptops to pose as workers. They were accused of hidden techniques to artificially inflate their audience numbers. According to a former girlfriend, “Shane would talk all the time about how stupid people were for giving them money.”
After being warned by a Vice employee of the company’s sizzle-minus-the-steak, one investor replied, “You were totally right, but the story is good, and we’re just gonna pass it on to the next guy.”
An early, important investor was my boss, Rupert Murdoch, whom Smith reportedly told, “I have Gen Y, I have social, I have online video. You have none of that. I have the future, you have the past.”
It worked, and Murdoch invested $70 million in 2013, pushing Vice’s valuation to $1.4 billion.
A few months later, I noticed a problem. At the time, I ran FoxNews.com, and was looking to boost our social media presence. Analyzing other media outlets, it became apparent to me that Vice’s Facebook numbers were inflated to the point of nonsense. They had millions of supposed followers, but their posts generated a tiny number of comments and interactions. It was a clear sign of either bot accounts or, more likely, overseas “users” who would follow a Facebook page for pennies.
Since the boss had just dropped $70 million, I thought I should give him a heads up. After a meeting, I mentioned what I had found to Rupert, summarizing it as “they’re full of shit.” I expected him to be perhaps a tad bit worried, but that wasn’t in Rupert's DNA. He just chuckled, and said, “Of course they’re full of shit.”
The next year, a venture-capital firm and A&E invested $500 million, raising Vice’s valuation to $2.5 billion. By 2017, another $450 million investment pushed its worth to nearly $6 billion.
Money like that buys a lot of video production, articles and audience. With it, Vice spawned two feature film studios, a publishing arm, a cable TV channel and more. All gone.
Shane Smith pocketed over $100 million personally, telling a friend he’d become “post-economic.” His lavish lifestyle signaled prosperity to investors, but his purchase of a $23 million Los Angeles home reportedly drove lowly Vice workers to join a union. (Remember the massive mansion in Beverly Hills Cop shootout scene? That was the one, and Smith eventually sold it for $49 million.)
But there was something Vice couldn’t buy: profitability.
The company did produce some fascinating content, albeit with a healthy dollop of youthful smugness. When you have a billion dollars to spend without really caring about a profit, that hobby can be quite entertaining.
Its website, however, will also leave us with some of the most ridiculous far-lefty nonsense spewed into the world.
Here’s a small sampling of my favorites:
Why Some Men Choose to Surgically Remove Their Penis
The Girl’s Guide to Tucking Your Dick
How to Make the Perfect Mangina
A Modest Take on Why Men Traumatize Women with Poop
All Masculinity Is Toxic
Yes, There Are Trans Animals
The Trans Woman Who Became a Dragon
32 Unbearably Cute Things About Beto O’Rourke
As Vice Media staggers into the sunset, its legacy isn’t the edgy content it promised, but shenanigans, debt, and fleeced investors. In the world of media, being the coolest kid in the room doesn’t always pay the bills.
– Ken
I kind of want to read the article on why men traumatize women with poop. It sounds like an interesting study. (Kidding)
While this kind of grift has been and will always be part of the human condition, unfortunately it continues in the Truther Movement which is really sad, given that the stakes are the future of the greatest country in world history, along with Western Civilization.