Back in the year 2017, Vice Media was worth $5 billion.
Then, in February of 2024, Vice said they were laying off just about everyone as they emerged from Bankruptcy. The list of companies that have burned through that kind of capital in such a short amount of time is not very long.
Vice also announced that they would discontinue all new content. Within a week of the announcement, I was very surprised, on a number of levels, to read the story How to Get Free Coke by Jewel Nichols. From Beacon of Speech in February: While many Gen Z writers are cranking out woke garbage, Jewel Nichols rolled out of bed and penned something like Hunter S. Thompson in 1971. How to Get Free Coke crackled with youthful cynicism and joyful nihilism. Nichols' perspective of using men for drugs mirrored many Rock Star Biographies that, less eloquently, stereotypically described using women for sex.
Jewel Nichols appeared out of nowhere, wrote 5 articles for a zombie website, then disappeared. Technically she didn't work for Vice, but subsidiary Vice Australia. At the time we speculated that Nicols was either uncredited AI or the alter-ego of another Vice Australia writer. (Prime Suspect: Arielle Richards.)
It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out this mystery. Richards was churning out content like crazy, writing half the website's articles since Memorial Day. Good, provocative, in-your-face content, something that is desperately missing in the States. She was almost single-handedly keeping her website current, at least on paper.
Arielle Richards was workin' it on Instagram. I don't have Instagram.
Arielle Richards was workin' it on Tik Tok. I don't have Tik Tok.
Arielle Richards was workin' it on X. I don't have X.
And her fearless writing style was suspiciously similar to that of Nicols'. Now Vice's content is worth SOMETHING. They could have a virtual garage sale, but it's not worth $5 billion. They will eventually sell its content for pennies on the dollar. Arielle Richards' prose should be auctioned off like fine art.
The talented Arielle Richards herself? This quote from Google ''Am I “unemployed”? No I'm employed… in having fun with my friends and family, I'm employed in my appreciation of nature, I'm employed in cleaning my room....'
I hope Arielle Richards lands on her feet and her next job doesn't try to sand off her rough edges...
Why in the heck are we waxing poetic about a young writer in Australia? We have one eye on the clock. Vladimir Putin is going to do something historic. And when I say historic, I mean bad historic-
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