10 Soul-Destroying Modern Pursuits
· Vice
This feature is from THE SELF-DESTRUCTION ISSUE of VICE magazine. Find it in a store near you, or get 4 issues each year sent straight to your door, by subscribing.
SHIBARI
What goes through your head when the dirty-fingernailed warehouse dwellers pull your hogtied body up from the floor with a butt load of Japanese kink rope? Obviously we’re sex positive here at VICE, but who else is going to warn you that some things just can’t be enjoyed in a vacuum? First it’s the kink rope, then it’s the property-guardian polycule, and before you know it the most important knot in your life is leashed around a maudlin three-legged staffy named Swampy. Mark our words: it’ll be your neck next.
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REWILDING YOURSELF
As with most things in life, there’s the question of how far you should take it. Tell your friends you’ve “gone paleo” and they’ll still be there when you admit you dropped it after three agonizing days of total bowel paralysis. They might not be, though, when you return from that meet-up with the prominent “barefooting” influencer having been brutally feral-mogged by the lad who’s spent six months full quadrupedal. He calls it “gorilla mode.” Why the fuck didn’t you think of gorilla mode?
ILLUSTRATION BY JOHNNY RYANREFERRING TO ANY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE AS A ‘PROTOCOL’
Wiping your sweaty forehead with a beer-soaked sleeve as you feel your teeth go numb from the bump you just did in the toilets. Smoking cigarette upon cigarette, pulsating with the knowledge that you and the man you just met will go home and fuck. Turning the sand-crusted page of some shit thriller, gazing out at the Aegean, before summoning the tanned waiter for another beer. It all sounds lovely, doesn’t it? It’s called “life,” and you can forget about having one if you refer to any aspect of it as a “protocol.” Bryan Johnson might have the vascular function of a teenager, but is he happy? What does he seem more like, a credible person or a husk? Handing your soul over to “metrics” is the first step on the road to measuring your son’s erections every night. There shouldn’t be any steps on that road.
POLYAMORY
Like communism and movies starring Jacob Elordi, polyamory is a nice idea in theory. A quest to blow clean through the glass ceiling of monogamy by fucking and love-bombing a bunch of people at once with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved? ‘Awesome,’ you might think. ‘Tell me more.’ Well, the catch is that it actually takes quite a lot of admin to tend diligently to one relationship, let alone five. Whether you genuinely believe the cadre of farmers’ market enthusiasts unbuttoning their Lucy & Yak dungarees to finger each other senseless after a crazy night of tabletop board games are your soulmates, or simply see yourself as a conniving Don Draper type on the make, is irrelevant. Ultimately, you will end up in a group chat arranging “radical honesty” sessions whenever someone leaves the toilet seat up and an org chart for everyone’s alternative milk preferences.
Read Next Pokémon Cosplayers Are Buying Weapons to Fend Off Sex PestsBECOMING A MILITANT
Before parasocial relationships, ADHD hyperfixations, and autistic special interests, I had what we used to call an “obsession” with @PissPigGranddad—a Twitter leftist who left America to fight ISIS. I was working a desk job in a government office and passed the time cheering for Brace Belden (aka LeninLover69) as he advanced on Raqqa. At the time, my idea of a struggle was getting the office printer to work—and here was a punk musician from San Francisco battling Islamofascism. I followed with religious devotion as Brace, and the other international volunteers, faced down an army of jihadi chauvinists who had fled lives of comfortable humiliation in Europe and the United States to establish some kind of video-game caliphate in Syria and Iraq. These opposing militias represented two sides in an epic battle of good against evil, which felt more real than the mindless, repetitive activities that made up my days. I looked at photographs of Brace posing with stray puppies and an AK-47 and thought, ‘This is what I would do if I wasn’t too much of a coward to even quit this job I hate.’ We’ve always needed militants to provide us with a little perspective; while you’re agonizing over which electric toothbrush to buy, they’re fighting for a socialist revolution; while you’re hanging out the washing, they’re strapping themselves to C4 and getting ready to do a human-rights violation. And perspective is useful, to everyone who isn’t dead.
SYNTHOL
Synthol is one of those great ideas that appears to have emerged directly from the teenage unconscious (see also: “What if having sex could be my job?”). The dubious muscle-boosting serum is made up of oil (often sesame, walnut, or paraffin), the local anesthetic lidocaine, and benzyl alcohol—ingredients that can be found, variously, in vegan protein bars, head lice shampoo, and industrial paint. Maybe there’s some logic here: in a culture of instant gratification, where petrochemicals are used to make clothes, grow food, and produce the microplastics that have turned your balls into bean bags, it makes a certain amount of sense to simply become oil. But while synthol might be a shortcut to a bulkier appearance, it won’t make you any stronger. This modern pursuit is strictly for those who regard their body as a machine that converts vanity into permanent muscle damage. As well as the health risks that come with introducing Diddy party levels of lubrication to your own bloodstream, Synthol also gives you this weird, unnaturally swollen look. There’s a reason why bodybuilders have historically preferred to risk the shrunken testicles and rage fits that come with steroids.
ADOPTING A FLESH-TEARING WILD ANIMAL FOR SOCIAL MEDIA CLOUT
If you’re gonna learn anything from anyone in this world, learn it from someone who got their face ripped clean off by a chimpanzee. The fate of Charla Nash is not one any of us should be forced to endure, yet all over social media, wannabe Dr Dolittles are forcing creatures programmed only to shit, fuck, and kill into difficult choices. The jaguarundi does not want to sit on the couch watching Schitt’s Creek with you; it wants to be nose-deep in 5000 grams of pulsing armadillo flesh somewhere in the jungles of Surinam. The slow loris is not your friend. Pretending so might snag you followers in the short term, but no one’s sticking around for the face transplant recovery journey photos.
ILLUSTRATION BY JOHNNY RYANCOVETING A LOFT-STYLE APARTMENT
Catch you on the flip, David Mancuso. In 2026 the only people who think living in a loft is cool are spiders and Australians.
GOOD OLD-FASHIONED ALCOHOLISM
Ketamine addiction this, can’t stop tugging it to videos of anime girls’ boobs exploding in size until they bust the windows out of an office block that—why not just hit the bottle? Like a real loser? Alcohol is the highly social, highly charismatic person’s poison of choice. Just look at what the abuse of it has given the world—Tennessee Williams, Marguerite Duras, Robert Downey Jr. in his Natural Born Killers era. Yeah, buddy. You could be the last of the big-time drunks. And the best thing about that would be that there are no other big-time drunks left for you to have to listen to and smell.
Follow Amber, Adam, Emma, and Kevin on Instagram: @amberrawlings, @yungtolstoi, @emmaggarland, @kevinleekharas
This feature is from THE SELF-DESTRUCTION ISSUE of VICE magazine. Find it in a store near you, or get 4 issues each year sent straight to your door, by subscribing.
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