Mymag ripercorre la storia chiaroscurale di uno dei media più innovativi dell’ultimo quarto di secolo, Vice.

Vice was founded in 1994 when Suroosh Alvi, Gavin McInnes, and Smith used money from a government welfare program to start a magazine in Montreal that was funny, hip, and off-color in a way that hasn’t always aged well — “The Vice Guide to Shagging Muslims” — but offered an outlet for young people who found mainstream culture lame. While Alvi kept a steady hand on the wheel, McInnes gave the magazine its editorial voice. Smith handled sales, and told everyone they were going to get rich. McInnes called him Bullshitter Shane, and the sales strategy included sending a few copies of the magazine to a record store in Miami and a skate shop in Los Angeles and telling advertisers they were distributed across North America. “Shane would talk all the time about how stupid people were for giving them money,” says Jessica Low, who dated Smith and helped with the magazine at the time. In 1998, Smith told a reporter that a wealthy media mogul in Montreal named Richard Szalwinski had invested in Vice. Szalwinski hadn’t, but he was impressed enough by the gambit to take a meeting with Vice, invest, and encourage a move to New York. “The reason those lies were so successful was because even we believed them after a while,” Alvi said later.