Illustrations by Ania Leonova/Zona.media

Translated for MEDIAZONA and VICE by Shelley Fairweather-Vega and Benjamin Hugh

A version of this article was published on MEDIAZONA, a new website devoted to covering Russia's criminal justice system.

Andrei (not his real name) served time in Maximum-Security Prison Colony 27, a colony near the town of Gorlovka, Ukraine, from 2013 until March 2015. In September 2014, troops from the separatist and pro-Russian Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) entered the prison camp, allegedly to suppress a rebellion; fighters seized part of the camp's security arsenal and treated prisoners extremely brutally. Rumors of violence towards prisoners in Prison Camp 27 spread to other prisons of Donetsk Province, and as a result many inmates refused to take part in military action on the side of the separatists—though many were forced to become soldiers after their release due to lack of any other work.

MEDIAZONA recently talked to Andrei about the attack on the prison and the conditions that prisoners face in Donetsk Province.

MEDIAZONA: Let's start with the events of autumn 2014. That's when the media reported that fighters from the DNR had entered the prison camp.
Andre: The DNR fighters showed up on September 16, 2014, at 20 minutes till midnight, and they put the whole camp on its knees. Inmates always turn out the lights right after roll call at 10 PM. When there's soccer on, though, especially a cup game, the inmates get together, swarm the fences between barracks, and shout for a while, but that's all. That spreads and the guards turn on the lights. The guys could get away with a certain amount, you know? But there was one section chief everyone hated who was somewhere in the outside perimeter just then. When he heard the shouting start up he didn't know what was happening, and he fired two shots from his rifle. I think that was planned. The DNR fighters had just come back from the front lines. They call him and ask what's up. And he tells them there's a riot at the prison colony. So they came in and laid everyone out flat—the guards, the administrators, everyone. They clubbed people with their rifle butts, shot people. You're lying there, and one of them is standing over you, some fat idiot, firing right over your head. He went through three clips and knocked out all my teeth. It was this crazy bloodbath.

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While there was real shooting back and forth [during the battle for the city of Donetsk], a few shells fell into the camp. One landed between the barracks but thank God, nobody was on the way to the cafeteria just then and the yard was empty. Another fell between the garage buildings. The bathhouse burned down, the building for conjugal visits burnt down, and all the glass was blown out of the barracks windows. But during that fighting, nobody died, and nobody was even injured. It's when they actually came into the camp that people started getting hurt. I was in Division 10, Sector 5, back then. One person was killed and two were wounded. One guy had his hand cut off, because he was so badly shot up that they had to amputate. In Sector 6, where the tuberculosis patients are, people got shot in the sides and in the shoulders. They stood people up against the fence and beat them with their rifles, tortured them, demanded to know where our telephones were and so on, because half of them had served time, too.

How did the prison camp staff behave?
When the DNR guys came in, the guards let them take over right away. There was one who resisted, but they got rid of him fast. They called him out, set him down, and worked him over for a few days. Anyone who didn't want to work for them left for Ukraine, and everyone who was left totally caved. Since the DNR can come in and out of the camp as they please and the prisoners are all terrified, they're selling the humanitarian assistance they receive. You have to pay for everything. They squeeze cash out of you any way they can. They're supposed to send you out to work for two-hour periods, and not every day, but now they do it every day for as long as they want. If you touch a fence somewhere, talk back shit to someone, get fed up with this fucking shit and shove a cop because he loses his boundaries, they bring you into the headquarters building, put a helmet on you, and start clubbing you on the head. Or they put a bulletproof vest on you and give you a pounding, or they stand you up against the wall and they shoot at you with live ammunition. Or, I won't name names, but they suffocate guys: They twist your arms back, one guy holds you, and the other takes a rod for cleaning a rifle and shoves it up under your collarbone. That's how they treat you. Nobody's going to talk things over with you.

Have there been any attempts to rise up against that kind of treatment?
After what has happened so far, nobody is even thinking about rebelling. Everyone has seen how that will turn out. The DNR took half the weapons for themselves then, the better half, and let the guards keep the rest.

Watch: Young and Gay in Putin's Russia

What about food and other services?
Some good humanitarian aid comes through from Russia. A lot gets delivered, but not to the prisons—it all gets sold, both in the prison camps and in the stores.

Did the inmates organize themselves in any way to help each other out?
Sure. We'd arrange for shipments on the outside, from Artyomovsk, figure out how to get to the colony, where they'd let packages through. We'd hunt, gas up the cars, ship things in. That's how we survived.

Gorlovka itself was totally fucked over. This war is no fucking good for anyone. I came here, to Kramatorsk, and everything is alive here. But there, everything is dead. There are still taxies waiting at the train station, but other than that, no people at all. Nine o'clock and the city is totally dead. There have been shootings, executions.

Shootings of civilians, or in the prison camp?
Civilians. They don't give a fuck who gets killed in the camp, who or why.

What do they shoot the civilians for?
Well, I knew one guy, for example, who just got released. He was free for about ten days. He's walking by and these [DNR guys] are standing there. He walks up to them and asks for a light. But he used a Ukrainian word [rather than a Russian word], and for that they broke his ribs and killed him.

Have a lot of inmates gone to fight with the separatists?
The ones who were still there after the release have almost all gone to fight. Especially the ones with families, who have nowhere to go. There are no jobs here, and it's pretty clear that the only way to earn a living is to go fight. You don't earn much, just 8,000 rubles a month [$160], Russian money. If you go to the front lines, you get a little bit more. But in the city you can't earn anything.

And the people still in the camps aren't going to fight for liberation?
That's not happening. When the trouble started, half the inmates were for the DNR and the other half for Ukraine, but after the shooting in our camp—and they didn't come in shooting like that in any of the other prison camps except ours—everything changed. In any case, anyone with any brains knows that we have it much better with Ukraine. When you have some authorities to write to, you have a little bit of power over the guards. But now there's nobody back there. Nobody to complain or appeal to.

The worst part is that decent people are dying on both sides and nobody knows for what. Things have just played out this way and it's shit wherever you look.

Jerry standing at a local taxi stand, Katlehong, 2014

This article appears in The Photo Issue 2015

Photos by Lindokuhle Sobekwa and Mikhael Subotzky / Magnum Photos

In 2006, when Magnum photographer Mikhael Subotzky started his yearlong project documenting life in and around a prison on a traffic island in the rural South African town of Beaufort West, journalist Hazel Friedman published the crime novel Hijack! Written under the alias Guy Brown, the book is one of the first published references to nyaope, a popular street drug that is a cocktail of low-grade heroin, cannabis, and antiretroviral drugs. Friedman recorded that nyaope was (as it still is) "all the rage with the youngsters in Soweto, Mamelodi, Soshanguve, and Atteridgeville," black settlements surrounding Johannesburg and Pretoria.

It is also popular in Thokoza, the black residential neighborhood southeast of Johannesburg where photographer Lindokuhle Sobekwa lives. Sobekwa started documenting the rituals associated with nyaope in 2013, after a local Thokoza youth asked him to take a photo with his crew. "I was nervous, but I told myself if they try anything I would run away with my camera," Sobekwa told me. "I held my camera very tightly." He had good reason to worry: Youth unemployment is a key driver of crime. But it turned out that all they wanted was a photo.

That evening, reviewing his photographs, Sobekwa was struck by the access he'd been given to a shack owned by a man named Mabhuti. He started returning to Mabhuti's shanty. Photographs of drug addiction and pictures of poverty share a generic sameness: Bare circumstances mirror bare lives. While his photo essay contains familiar scenes of idleness, argument, and narcotic collapse, Sobekwa, who was born in 1995 into a working-class Xhosa family and is considered part of the "born-free" generation, also followed users farther afield, where they panhandled and foraged for scrap metal to sell. This is how he met Jerry, a white drug user living on the street.

Similar to Larry Clark's work in Tulsa, Sobekwa's photos (the black-and-white pictures in this series) are defined by their focus on an insecure family, one created by circumstance rather than biology. Unlike Clark, who was implicated in the good times, Sobekwa has merely been a dispassionate observer motivated by a belief that his photos might have an educational value. When he started out making photographs, Subotzky, who is 14 years older than Sobekwa, had a similar outlook. Photography was a way of learning and communicating.

Much like Sobekwa, Subotzky made his breakout 2004 photo essay in his backyard. Raised near Pollsmoor, a maximum-security prison outside Cape Town, Subotzky—a second-generation descendent of well-off Latvian immigrants—voluntarily spent time locked up with prisoners. "I would explain to as many people as possible in the room what I was doing before I took photographs," he said. "Anthropologists talk about the term 'deep hanging'—I suppose I tried to do that."

While at Pollsmoor he saw a corpse for the first time. Christopher Sibidla had died in a prison fire. Subotzky photographed his body at the request of Sibidla's mother and presented it to her before the funeral. "I could hardly look at the image, but she took one look at my print, kissed its surface, and pushed it to her chest, thanking me for helping her to put her son to rest." The image continued to haunt Subotzky, and in 2012 he smashed it, along with a number of others from his archive, for an exhibition. The gesture was his way of reconciling his feelings about witnessing as well as photographing a violent and traumatic act, and writing it back into the photographic object itself.

The difficulty at stake here is not unique to Subotzky. Documentary photography, a practice that doesn't mind its own business, is bound by ethics. Sometimes it is better not to make an image, but as Sobekwa's photos of Thokoza attest, the instinct to make them can be powerful and brave. But knowing exactly when to be mindful and say no—that is the ongoing challenge for every photographer.

—Sean O'Toole

Sobekwa's series of photographs was initiated as a part of the Of Soul & Joy Project, organized by the Rubis Mécénat Cultural Fund and Easigas.

All photos courtesy of Maartje Smit

I first met Maartje Smit in a hostel in Bogotá, back in 2013. I hung out with her and her Australian friend Choppy for a few nights and we all ended up becoming friends on Facebook. When I got home to the Netherlands, there was nothing but rain—unlike on Maartje's wall, where there seemed to be nothing but sunshine, pearly beaches, and groups of scantily-clad backpackers.

How long can somebody keep a vacation going for? In Maartje's case, it's been three years. I skyped her to get some insight into how the hell such a jaunt is even possible.

VICE: Hi Maartje, where are you right now?
Maartje Smit: At the moment, I'm in Israel. I'm staying with a friend that I met in Honduras. When I was planning my trip here, I discovered that I had 32 Israeli Facebook friends so looking for a hostel wasn't really necessary.

You're quite good at making friends. We went out for drinks as soon as we met, even though you were tired from a long bus trip.
That's true. I believe that when you're traveling for this long, it's all about making friends. If you have less time, you usually just hop from one landmark to another. I go sightseeing too, but it's not my main goal. I stopped buying souvenirs years ago. No one needs a bag full of unnecessary shit.

Is there anything in your suitcase that was there three years ago?
Yeah, my gray sweater. Oh wait, no, I bought that at my first stop. So nope, nothing.

What do people think of your permanent vacation?
Most people wonder whether I refuse to go back home because of something bad that happened to me. But that's not true: I worked as a project manager at a software company and my life was just fine. People often wonder what I'm doing with my life and how I can afford all this.

Well, how are you able to pay for all this?
I saved a lot. Like, more than a few thousand. I'm also an extremely low-budget traveler, and sometimes I'll take a job if I need to. I worked for five months as a diving instructor on the Honduran island of Útila. I worked on commission for a tour company in the Galápagos Islands. Usually, the work just covers my expenses, but sometimes I'm able to save up a little. It also helps that I keep making friends who have a couch I can crash on.

The underlying theme of your Facebook photos seems to be "beaches and cocktails." Doesn't that get boring at some point?
Oh, those are usually just the pictures I get tagged in. I don't live a shallow life: The friendships I make are profound and sincere, and we sometimes travel together for months. We're in the same bus for hours and hours, we share rooms—basically, we share our entire life. If you know you'll only hang out with someone for a short amount time and then likely never see them again, you're more likely to open up to them. It's that confession phenomenon—taxi drivers and bartenders have it happen to them all the time.

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Don't you miss your family and friends?
I love my family, but I don't miss them or anything. We Skype regularly and when we don't, they just think that no news is good news.

Have you gotten sick a lot?
Not really. I've had food poisoning twice in three years. The first time was when I was in Guatemala, and I honestly thought I was dying. I went to the hospital and they handed me this mug. At first I wasn't sure because of the language barrier, but then I realized they wanted me to poop in that mug. I was like, "Hell no, I'm not doing that in a million years," but then the nurse brought out a rubber tube and told me to lay on my side for an enema. Suddenly the mug didn't look so bad. They gave me a strong antibiotic treatment and everything was fine after that.

Have you been in a lot of dangerous situations?
I never got robbed or anything, but I have ran into a few awkward situations. The other day I was in Jordan, and the bus dropped me off in the middle of the desert at a spot where there were only three cars and no taxis. I had no choice but to get into one of the cars with men whose language I didn't speak. That wasn't exactly a pleasant ride, especially because the driver took a turn I knew we didn't have to make. But nothing bad happened in the end.

Is it hard to keep your love life going when you're traveling all the time?
Love abroad is different than at home, in that it's less about investing and more about just having a good time. You say to each other: If I miss you, I'll meet you somewhere soon enough. I have no problem making arrangements to meet, but I'll never let it mess up my schedule.

So you haven't met the love of your life yet?
At some point I considered going to Australia with this guy I met, but the timing wasn't right. I was in Honduras and I had just gotten my diving diploma. I missed him a lot for a few weeks, but I got over it quickly enough.

Will you ever come back to the Netherlands?
When I was booking my one-way ticket three years ago, I never imagined it would all last this long. But this is my life now. If I want to work, I'm always able to find a job, and I always make sure I have a minimum of savings in case something happens. I don't think it would be a big problem getting my old daily routine back when I return. I know a lot of folks, and I think I can always find a job through my connections. Or maybe I could just start my own little business. I don't know.

It sounds pretty straightforward when you put it like that.
But it is! Sometimes I wonder why more people don't do this. Maybe folks are too insecure about practical details like insurance or something. I'm sure that everyone who is working away in an office, enviously looking at my Facebook albums could live the exact same life. I don't understand why more people don't do what I do.

OVADIA & SONS runway presentation. Photo by Alyssa Greenberg

After months of anticipation since the official announcement from the CFDA was made back in February, we finally got to experience the inaugural New York Fashion Week: Men's. It was the first time since 2001 that the guys showed separately from the women's collections, making the event a coming out of sorts for American men's fashion.

The reasons for the shift are manifold, but the short version is this: The men's market is growing, and it's gaining ground at an even faster clip than women's. Plus, the talent pool in the States is stronger than ever, with young guns and established players alike garnering increasing attention as men have started paying more and more attention to how they present themselves. It was time for a separate men's fashion week.

So, there we have it. New York Fashion Week: Men's. And with all eyes on American menswear, we have to ask: Did the guys in New York deliver? Was the debut NYFW: Men's a success?

"Absolutely," says menswear guru Nick Wooster. "I think it was a great start. And it really shows how, in spite of the competitive nature of the industry, retailers, publishers, and brands, all came together to make it happen."

Eric Jennings, VP and fashion director of men's for Saks Fifth Avenue, is equally enthusiastic: "For all of us who have been to each of the fashion capitals over the last month, this was very impressive. They did a great job, and they had a tremendous roster of designers. The caliber of the product that we were seeing, the balance between the edgy and the commercial, was probably the best among all four cities: New York, London, Paris, Milan."

Which isn't to say that the week wasn't without its challenges. Wooster cites the busy schedule as one thing that surprised him. "There were many things layered on top of each other that I did not expect to happen the first time out," he explains. "So personally, I missed a couple of things that I would have liked to have seen, and that's always disappointing."

N. HOOLYWOOD runway presentation. Image courtesy of Black Frame

The logistics of the central location at Skylight Clarkson Square also required some maneuvering, says designerJohn Varvatos, who notably moved his runway show from Milan to New York for the first NYFW: Men's outing. "We're much more pressured here because of the time constraints," he says, quick to caveat that he's deeply impressed with the event as a whole. "You have four hours to import everything in and set it up, versus in Milan, where we were building, and doing construction, and all these kind of things. It's different, very different."

Regardless, designers, editors, and industry insiders all consider this first effort a huge step in the right direction. "I think it's absolutely the right thing for menswear in New York, for menswear around the world," says Wooster. "It puts us on the same world stage as everyone else."

The caliber of the product that we were seeing, the balance between the edgy and the commercial, was probably the best among all four cities: New York, London, Paris, Milan. – Eric Jennings, men's fashion director at Saks Fifth Avenue

Also a boon to the week, says Varvatos, is the home court advantage. "I feel at home," he notes. "I feel super comfortable. We're a global brand, but we're New York-based, and our families, our friends, everybody's here. And there's something kinda cool about that."

In gauging the success of the effort, everyone is quick to explain that increased orders and press will prove to be the most important metrics. But when you think about the fact that, in seasons past, the spring/summer shows were presented in September, well after the buying window for stores closed in June or July, an uptick in sales seems almost inevitable. Ditto press coverage, considering the industry-wide excitement surrounding the event.

Billy Reid runway presentation, image courtesy of Maguire Steele

So now, all that's left is to look to the future. Jennings, for his part, is optimistic. Because it was the first event of its type, he explains, "This was a sort of 'watch and see' season for a lot of folks. But I think everybody was genuinely impressed, and next season, they're going to step up their game."

Of course there will always be detractors, but the very existence of an independent men's week is a victory in and of itself. Says Wooster, "There are always going to be naysayers and complainers. But at the same time, how amazing is it that it actually happened?"

Follow Jonathan on Twitter.

All images via GX.

Next year GX (formerly GaymerX), the San Francisco–based queer video game convention, is coming to Sydney. It will be the first event of its kind in Australia, and the country's sizable LGBTQ gamer community is understandably stoked. GX was established as a reaction to gaming's dominant "bro" culture, and serves as a place for queer geeks to hang out and enjoy cool shit in a safe, inclusive space. Founder Matt Conn said the experiences of queer people, women, and people of color feeling they needed to "keep their guard up" at traditional conventions was his motivation to create GX.

Seeing as Australian gamers have to wait until February before they can experience the convention themselves, VICE Australia called Matt to talk about queer culture and his approach to homophobia.

VICE: Hey Matt, so why have the first international GX in Australia?
Matt Conn: We met Liam and Joshua, the two guys who are leading the charge in GX Australia. They were just like, "I love what you're doing with GX, there's a huge gay gaming population here, we've always wanted to do something like this."

They're people who have the passion, skills, and more importantly the temperament. It's so stressful putting on GX. There have been times I thought I couldn't do it. I don't know if a lot of people have the mental fortitude to put up with the abuse. Liam and Josh are really nice, but also so passionate they can handle it. And it's going to get really nasty.

GX is about creating a positive space for all gamers, this guy included.

It's that intense?
Even just announcing it, they got abuse. I think a lot of white guys don't know what it's like to be a woman or person of color online. But they're really tough and smart, and there are a bunch of amazing queer gamers in Australia, so it's the perfect formula.

How do you respond to that stuff?
People just need to understand no one is coming to take away their things. If you want your sexy characters in games, cool. But queer people, and women, and people of color want to enjoy this medium and you're resisting them being able to create their own awesome space. And that's gross.

Generally how queer-friendly is gaming?
It's getting a lot better. But there's a mixture of American bro culture with this very conservative Japanese culture. When you combine those, it creates an environment a little behind the times on social issues.

Do you feel that's shifting?
Yeah, but for the most part if you're a queer gamer and you go out to events, read gaming publications, or play 99 percent of mainstream games, you feel like the content isn't made for you.

A handful of titles have made an effort to broach that, but are larger developers engaging a more diverse audience?
Sort of. I can see how it's tough for developers and publishers when you're working super hard, you're doing your life's dream, and people are saying, "This isn't inclusive enough." But we've got over that initial wave of people feeling like you're just criticizing them and trying to cause trouble. People are realizing inclusivity in video games is not going to ruin them.

They can still make their super bro games, but there's success in things like Mirror's Edge or Dragon Age Inquisition. Dragon Age Inquisition had a trans character and Iron Bull—who is basically there to be a sex object for the female and gay gaze. And it sold more, and reviewed better, than any other Dragon Age game.

People are realizing diversity and inclusion doesn't mean the product is going to end up not selling. It actually opens up sales channels to them.

There's still a lot of homophobia and misogyny in gaming, how do we address more aggressively?
I think more Japanese developers need to look at inclusivity. JRPGs (Japanese role-playing games) rarely tackle these issues. Or if they do, in the case of Persona 4, they handle it poorly. I appreciate queer people having a storyline, but it's obvious it wasn't written by someone who is familiar with those things.

People having a good time at a past GX convention.

Why didn't you do your first international GX in Japan?
I wanted to. I feel like Australia and America are awesome, but Japan is the birthplace of gaming. Everyone we've talked to has been like, It will never succeed there, that's not their culture, they would be very against it.

Is GX a traditional convention in an open environment, or is the content specifically LGBTQ-focused?
Both. There are people who don't give two shits about politics. They're super gay, and they love gaming. I want them to be able to come and play games with their friends in a space that's positive.

But we try have people on the forefront like Robert Yang, Naomi Clark, and Zoe Quinn who are making really cool games about queer issues.

There are a lot of approaches to consider.
I know, when I came up with the name (GaymerX) it came from a place where I feel comfortable. And I had a lot of amazing people say, "Matt I dig what you're doing, but it's problematic, or non-inclusive of this group or that group and we want to make it better for them."

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You mean because it sounds like it's only for gay men?
Yeah. So instead of being like, "Hey you suck because you're a white straight dude," it's like, "Here are some cool ways to make this more inclusive to trans and non-gendered folks." Or even for straight allies who think gaming's toxic. As long as you're cool with queer people that's all we want. We don't want it to be a space that's just for gay people.

I guess it's about making people comfortable, but to change something you need to speak beyond your audience. You need straight white guys to understand and care. But how do you do that?
In a way I can understand this weird pushback where straight people feel victimized. If you're a kid living in rural Kentucky, struggling to get by, and these people in San Fran are telling you that you have all this privilege, I can see why you wouldn't get it. So we try not to make it accusatory. We want change to come from a happy place where we can bring people in and make them see diversity isn't scary.

There are a lot of things conventions can do to make queer people feel welcome that don't make others feel bad. Like having gender neutral restrooms, or preferred gender pronouns at the registration table. That costs nothing and doesn't affect the experience of people who aren't gay. But for people who are queer, they know they were thought about.

It's more productive to engage someone with queer content than tell them they're homophobic.
We have a lot of panels that are just weird things we think are cool. We had the first openly gay WWE wrestler last year. A lot of straight people came and said it was cool to hear him talk about his boyfriend, but also being wrestler.

GX Sydney will be running from February 27-28, 2016. Keep an eye on their Facebook page for more information.

Follow Wendy on Twitter.

Not one of the fake accounts mentioned in this story. Photo by Flickr user Karl-Ludwig Poggemann

As told to Arielle Pardes

The term "catfish" has only existed since 2010, when Nev Schulman coined the word in his eponymous film about people who create fake online profiles to manipulate others. Before then, a catfish was just a whiskered, bottom-feeding fish. I resent the comparison. Catfish are stupid creatures; to convince someone that you're someone else online is careful, calculated work. I would know: I've been pretending to be other people online for the past eight years of my life.

My first-ever fake account was a guy named Joey. I was in middle school, and I was not in the "in-crowd." I realized one day that I could create a fake profile to approximate some of the attention that I wanted. I chose a few photos from Photobucket, made a fake MySpace page, and added everyone from my school. I used that account to comment on my real MySpace page, so people at school would see comments from "Joey" saying things like "you're so pretty!" It was so easy—and nobody caught on.

The fake accounts really started in 2008, as my life took a turn for the worse: I didn't have any friends. I had suffered textbook childhood abuse; my father was in prison and my mother was an addict. I wanted to be anyone but me—I wanted a different outcome, a different life. I wanted to be a different person. And with MySpace, I realized I could.

I found a girl I thought was cool on MySpace and grabbed about ten of her photos to create a new profile under the name Amanda Williams. I chose a generic name, so that if you searched for her, enough results would come up to minimize suspicion. I had stolen the photos from a girl named Samantha, who was friends with some kids at my school. She was beautiful, and a real scene queen: She had bright pink hair, lots of piercings, and most of all, her pictures exuded confidence.

Amanda, the fictional character I'd created, was the version of me that I so desperately wanted to be. She liked the same music that I did and shared the same general interests; but unlike me, Amanda was confident and bubbly. And because she was beautiful, lots of people added her, sending flirty messages along with their friend requests. That's the thing about MySpace: If you had the face, people would flock to you.

I spent all my free time on social media, building Amanda Williams' life like an avatar onThe Sims.

Soon, Amanda Williams became popular—the profile had hundreds of friends and I was finally getting the attention from men that I had always wanted for myself. I figured I could use Amanda to get in with the popular crowd at school, so I used the account to message a girl I went to school with, saying something about how awesome I was. I figured if a girl like Amanda said she liked me—Amanda the scene queen, the popular girl—then so would the real cool girls at my school. It backfired. The popular girls figured out that Amanda Williams had the same phone number listed on her MySpace as I did, and everyone found out that I had made her up. I went from being invisible to being totally shunned.

It should've made me stop, but instead, it made me smarter about how to lie online. I made a second account—it was an identical Amanda Williams account, with the same photos—but I made sure to block everyone I went to school with. I became paranoid and obsessed with the account. After ninth grade, my mom switched me from my high school into a vocational school because I was being bullied. But the new school gave me more free time, which meant I spent more time online. What should've been an opportunity to reclaim my social life became fuel for my catfishing. I spent all my free time on social media, building Amanda Williams's life like an avatar onThe Sims.

Related: Donna Simpson spent years getting paid to film herself eating on fat fetish cam sites.

I became meticulous about how I crafted the accounts: I scouted out pictures of pretty girls, but none that were too popular. If someone has over 1,000 followers on Instagram, there's a risk that someone could recognize that their photos are stolen. Once the account is created, I start by adding people from whatever city I decide she's from. It doesn't matter who I add initially—those people are just "fillers." As Nev Schulman on Catfish can tell you, if you don't have enough friends on the list, then the account looks fake (and it probably is). So you have to have enough "filler friends," who are from the city you say you're from, to make it look legit. After I have about 150 of these fillers, I start adding the people I want.

I don't upload all of the stolen photos at once: I trickle them in, just like a normal person would. I always find the girl I'm stealing photos from on Facebook, and I block every single person on her friends list. I've spent entire days doing this—actively blocking people who might catch on to the ruse—just to ensure that none of this person's friends will discover that I'm stealing her pictures for a fake account.

After that, I have to make subaccounts to convince people the account is real. If someone doesn't have any tagged photos, they're probably fake, right? So I make subaccounts—fake people who will pose as the fake friends of my fake profile. To do this, I choose videos from Instagram and post them on Facebook. I've learned how to use Photoshop to fake "proof" signs, to show that the account is "real." If I had to give people advice about the internet, it would be: Don't trust anything. It doesn't matter if somebody sends you a "proof" picture. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

When I was Amanda Williams, people cared about me. When I was the real me, I was invisible.

Even though everything on the accounts were fake—the pictures, the backstories, the friends—they made me feel the most like myself. On the fake accounts, I could open up to people in a way that I couldn't in real life. Other girls my age had boyfriends and best friends, but I had my MySpace friends—people who cared about me, who let me vent, who asked me about my day. When I was Amanda Williams, people cared about me. When I was the real me, I was invisible.

I've never asked for money from my profiles; just attention. It felt good to have someone call me "beautiful" or "sexy," even if I knew they weren't talking about me. I've never had someone call me that in real life—instead, people have called me a "land whale," because I've been overweight most of my life. I'm too scared of the rejection, of the vulnerability that comes with being me. I'm too scared of someone telling me I'm ugly, I'm fat, I'm disgusting, and I'm not worthy of love.

I had one relationship through the fake accounts that felt like love—or at least, as close to "love" as you can get on the internet. Eventually, I broke down and told him that I wasn't who I said I was, hoping that he would understand. He shut down and never spoke to me again. I've been tortured by that for years: Could I have had that relationship on my own? And where would I be now if I hadn't lied? There are people out there who make fake accounts because they are sociopaths—and maybe I am one—but I've felt heartbreak from these accounts, too.

Photo by Flickr user Jake Rust

I know that what I've done is wrong, deceitful, and very hurtful. It's become a sick addiction, and I've carried on my fake, internet relationships at the expense of having relationships in real life. There are times that I've befriended people for the sake of stealing pictures from them, and so that I could ask them, "What does your hair look like these days? Send me a picture." Most of my real friendships have been lost for the sake of manipulation.

Over the past eight years, I've made over 20 accounts. Those are just the main accounts—if you count the subaccounts, then it's probably ten times more. Throughout my life, this has been the only thing that has given me stability. The relationships I've had through fake accounts are the only ones I can count on to answer the phone when I call, or respond to a message. I never had that in real life.

The catfishing isn't fun anymore—and the fun that I had isn't worth the anguish and emptiness that I feel today. I'm 21 now, and I've never had a real friend, a real relationship. I've never had a job. I wasted all of my teenage years doing this. I've isolated myself so much that now, whenever I'm with groups of people, I get severe anxiety. I can barely leave my house, because the entire world that I've created for myself is inside of my computer.

I'm in therapy now, but I quitting is harder than I ever thought it would be. I only have one fake account still active, but I don't know how to let it go. The catfishing is part of me. I'm still so addicted, it feels like if I were to quit, I would have nothing. I would be nothing. My existence hinges on this fake account, because it has defined who I am for so long. I spent eight years guiding Amanda Williams through friendships and relationships, adapting her interests and hairstyles, and building the girl I wanted to become. But while Amanda Williams grew up, I never gave myself the chance.

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

This is the "me" I made for 'WoW,' that wouldn't actually look like this for a bit (all screencaps courtesy of the author)

It had all seemed so breezily easy 15 seconds earlier. A casual stroll with a couple of faithful hounds, while rattling off occasional pot-shots at passing werewolves, then one wrong turn and suddenly we're being chased by, what, 30 of them? It's almost impossible to get killed at this stage, apparently. Call me a trendsetter.

Or, more accurately, call me a clumsy virgin, at World of Warcraft. For years I've blissfully steered clear of this global phenomenon, due to a lifelong suspicion of anything with pointy ears: elves, dwarves, Conservatives. But recently that healthy prejudice has been unexpectedly pricked, by my intended. As if entranced by elfin magic, I've inexplicably become betrothed to a WoW veteran.

"H" (who'd prefer I didn't mention her full name, for reasons that'll become clear) quit cold turkey when we hooked up, but has gradually been lured back by the role-playing hordes. And it's not just the actual gaming, either. As a nifty graphic artist she now spends much of the rest of her time illustrating other gamers' WoW characters, which may well be paid in pixelated gold or goats or something but is still infuriatingly positive.

And so, with co-habitation looming, I'm biting the bullet—or the enchanted bloody sword, or whatever—and accepting a longstanding invitation to enter the WoW zone. Although it does strike me, as I gingerly join H at the keyboard, that this must be how it feels to be a right-wing Christian dad accompanying his son into a gay bar for the first time. It could be a short visit.

Nohawks

H has it all figured out, though. She'll set the scene by first whizzing me through the cinematics, animated trailers that whetted appetites/wetted pants for new expansions of this vast virtual world. H clearly gets a wee buzz watching them again. She's less enthused about the forthcoming film.

Be prepared, Warcraft characters could be everywhere next summer: on buses, Happy Meals, Graham Norton's sofa. At the recent San Diego Comic-Con the first footage emerged from the long-awaited live-action movie, out next June and directed by Duncan Jones (David Bowie's son), who did the fabulous Moon and great-until-the-stupid-end-bit Source Code.

Early reactions were decent but you'd imagine it'll be difficult to wow long-term WoWers. "They should just do full-length versions of the cinematics," muses H, and, true, these shorts are impressive, if often baffling for a beginner. But I do learn something: poking fun will not go down well.

In the trailer for 2007's WoW: The Burning Crusade there's a naughty night elf called Illidan, for example, which strikes me as tremendously amusing. H, much less so. "Does Illidan have a magic limp?" I chortle. "Is the bad elf in bad health?" But that reverie is interrupted by the night elf himself. "YOU ARE NOT PREPARED!" he bellows. You're not wrong, sunshine.

Character creation in 'WoW' is rich in possibility.

This is immediately evident in the character creation zone, and a word of warning to fellow newcomers: mohican haircuts are apparently a massive WoW faux-pas, due to those old Mr T. ads, I think. H looks genuinely horrified when I flirt with said 'do, clearly concerned that I'll ruin her in-game cred. It gets worse.

Swerving the tantalizing cow and panda character options, I plump for a worgen—a Warcraft werewolf—and call him Gary. But that name's taken. Hey, he's a hirsute chap: FurryGary it is. "That is honestly the worst character name I've ever heard," says my stupefied fiancé, who's beginning to see the folly of this venture, particularly when I follow the formula for FurryGary's hangdog hound: JowlySteve. H, manning the keyboard, enters those names with all the enthusiasm of a teenage Kroger employee typing the lengthy barcode of some produce that wouldn't scan. We take an early break.

Watch: 'The Mystical Universe of Magic: The Gathering':

World of Werecraft

In truth, I've mistrusted role-playing games ever since a debilitating mid-00s addiction, which hit rock bottom the night of a cartoon-themed fancy dress party. I was pretty chuffed with my homemade Hong Kong Phooey-related outfit, got it on, then squeezed in a quick game before heading out, then another, and another... I am probably the only person ever to have played a whole half-season of Championship Manager dressed as Penry the Mild-Mannered Janitor.

Beneath the bullshit bravado I'm secretly concerned about becoming similarly lost in this labyrinthine universe, and suddenly finding real life tedious by comparison. WHERE ARE THE HEAVENLY CRIMSON CLOUD SERPENTS? Seven million people play WoW regularly, some of them presumably relatively normal, and for H there's a whole community. Genuine friends, so me dicking about isn't helpful. Indeed, I'm genuinely jealous of those mysterious characters, holding that little virtual party in the corner of the screen, H chuckling away, while I'm skulking on the couch typing bitter Twitter comments that nobody reads. Who's the tragic one there?

Getting friendly with a fencepost

But even she quit, for a bit. "I needed a few years off. I was a Guild Leader, lots of different personalities to keep in check. It was like running a small corporation."

Sounds fun. My own exploits begin in a realm called Gilneas, which is enduring an awkward werewolf outbreak. I thought FurryGary was supposed to be a worgen too, but for now he's just some regular dude, which, frankly, makes the name seem a bit silly.

FurryGary looks even dumber when he's moving. I'm having kittens mastering the keyboard/mouse control combo, so the poor fellow spends his first hour lurching from VERY LARGE to FAR AWAY, disappearing completely, briefly conjoining with JowlySteve to form a disturbing man/canine hybrid, then repeatedly butting a wooden fencepost. H is mesmerized. "This is like when we used to play GoldenEye with my dad," she says, clearly wondering how I've survived in the real world this long.

I may be losing the respect of my significant other, but I am getting quite attached to JowlySteve, as we're proving pretty effective worgen killers, when I'm facing the right way. Although, given my haphazard blasting, could I accidentally kill my own dog? "No, but monsters can," says H, "so be careful."

Man, I'd be devastated if I ever lost JowlySteve.

Sure, I'll look after your dog, as it's not like I have all these beasts to murder or anything...

Worgen, Worgen, with Hope in Your Heart...

Flustered by my cack-handed ineptitude, H keeps wandering off, as does my interest. And yet during those staccato strolls around Gilneas I can't help marveling at the scale and detail of even this tiny element of the WoW environment. Although the soundtrack gets on your tits. "You know I went to see it performed live?" says H, "in Paris." Oops. This was at BlizzCon, it turns out, the regular bash by WoW makers Blizzard, where attendees were particularly thrilled to receive a code for a rare in-game pet. The lucky devils. "My one's worth £700 [$1090] on eBay now." Ah.

In Warcraft, as in life, I lack direction. Even shooting werewolves has lost its sheen. "Look for the chevron, that tells you what to do next," says H, but there's way too much happening onscreen even for me, a dedicated Sky Sports News scholar. And the controls are horribly fiddly. "It's really easy," sighs my exasperated other half. "You just can't steer. Look, now you're throwing yourself off the roof..."

Possibly on purpose. I am hopeless at this. Even my epic worgen-killing isn't great, as it transpires that JowlySteve is doing much of the actual work, like Hong Kong Phooey's cat. Then a lady called Lorna Crowley sends me on a vital mission, one that mainly seems to involve me dog-sitting her mastiff. "Now you've got an extra action bar," says H. "You're controlling the new dog too." Oh god.

FurryGary is no more, for a bit at least

H is off brewing tea when everything comes to a head. My new task is to locate and kill invisible worgens, so naturally I ignore the relatively harmless regular ones. But as we blithely saunter through a hefty worgen gathering, they take offense. Cue the comical sight of me and two mutts suddenly legging it, swiftly followed by 30 furious werewolves. Comical for a few seconds, that is.

"Errr, I think I died?'

"You died?" shouts H, from the kitchen. "In the starter zone? Wow... that's quite an achievement, hon."

To be honest, I'm not too bothered. Clearly I'm not cut out for Warcraft, and dying seems a pretty natural end point. But then H returns, hands over the tea, and breaks the news. "You know this means JowlySteve's dead too?"

'NOOOOOOOO... JowlySteve, what have I done?'

On Motherboard: Watch These Shamed MMO Cheaters Beg for Forgiveness

FurryGary is finally furry

Postscript

Anyway, it turns out you can just resurrect yourself, and your dog, and the dog we were dog-sitting, which is handy as we have to return it.

H, like a patient driving instructor, then takes the reins to complete the stage, which looks a lot more exciting when she's rattling through it, concluding with a corking animation in which FurryGary finally becomes a worgen—with half a pointy ear missing.

"I reckon JowlySteve bit his ear off," H concludes, as we stare at the hairy pair, "just for calling him JowlySteve."

She'll never let me near this world again.

Follow Si on Twitter.

Promotional imagery of Ivan, your solo campaign protagonist

"A cruel joke for Wii U owners." "The end result lurches close to disaster." "A messy, frustrating experience." Games critics have had their say on upcoming Wii U exclusive Devil's Third, in a preview capacity at least, and they are unanimous: It completely blows.

But as a Wii U owner desperately craving something that isn't a cutesy platformer or a twee puzzler or a collection of party-time mini games starring Nintendo's established cast of cartoon favorites, I nonetheless hoped for the best. I held onto the idea that Devil's Third could be more of a so-bad-it's-actually-sort-of-good experience, when played personally. That it might be a gaming world version of a poorly plotted but stupidly explosive action movie, all ham-for-brains characters barking obscene non sequiturs and firing off innumerable rounds of ammo in the name of bringing about the end of some ill-defined but most-certainly-nefarious force of doom. The sort of thing you could play after four pints, laugh at, and pass out in front of on the sofa.

No such luck, sadly. Devil's Third is awful. In many ways, the blame can't be laid entirely at the feet of its makers at Valhalla Studios, who've waded through rivers of shit to get it this far. The game's had to switch engines during its development (the commercial release runs in Unreal 3), and was originally going to be a THQ-published title for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. When that Californian company famously went bust in 2013, the rights reverted back to Valhalla, who eventually did a deal with Nintendo, hence its exclusivity for the Wii U. It's had a rocky road to completion, then, but all the same, Devil's Third is a very curious acquisition by Nintendo, a PEGI-18, blood-splattered slice of software that falls a long way short of the company's usual standards.

This is entirely practical dress for taking on vast legions of enemies, really

The game's designer is Tomonobu Itagaki, whose work on the Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden franchises suggests that Devil's Third would, even if the graphics were terrible (which they are, and the frame rate's all over the shop) and the storyline dead on arrival (assuming it was ever alive in the first place), at least be a competent brawler. But by mixing incredibly basic and disappointingly weightless melee combat—one slow strong attack, one quicker but weaker, a block that's also a dodge when combined with the left stick, and the ability to wield swords and blunt weapons—with the floaty gun mechanics found in second-rate third-to-first-person shooters of two console generations ago—fire from the hip or zoom in for a more accurate shot—it's an absolute dog's dinner of an action game. It does no one thing well, and a shit-ton of them inadequately.

It'd look ugly if the year was 2007, the acting's not so much phoned in as delivered via SMS, and everything feels like it'd have been trashed even as a 360-era title. There is simply no place for a solo game like this in 2015. Whatever Devil's Third might have been before events entirely beyond its developers' control derailed the original plan, what they've ultimately dragged out of the studio, kicking and screaming like a grizzled shut-in who's not seen the light of day for more time than it takes to go to the corner shop and back since the last Friends episode aired, begs to be put down in the street. It'd be a mercy killing. It's the best that anyone can do for this game, now.

Related: Ivan's heavily inked, and so are our stars of 'The Sacred Art of the Japanese Tattoo'

Unless... All anyone, myself included, has played so far is the solo campaign. That casts you as heavily tattooed Russian Ivan, a former terrorist turned American government operative who spends his free time drum soloing inside a luxurious prison cell and who can't find a shirt to properly fit his hunky torso for love nor money. He really likes sunglasses. There's a poster in his cell for something called "Music Beartnik"—look out for their debut album, it's a wiener. He is amongst the most charmless gaming protagonists your eyes will ever fall upon and your thumbs will ever control. He is a relic of gaming's past with all the nuanced personality of unbuttered toast (Asda Farm Stores white bread, and nothing more).

Alongside a squad of Green Berets, Ivan takes on an army of bog-standard soldiers with dumbass AI, short-sighted but blade-swishing ninja sorts, armored tank-style enemies with mini-guns, actual tanks, armored cars constructed from Duplo and depressingly clichéd bullet-sponge bosses (fuck you, Big Mouse). You use the usual array of handguns, rifles, rocket launchers, grenades, and so on. If a bad guy gets in your face, you can swing a sword, a machete, or an ever-reliable iron bar into their theirs, which duly explodes. Headshot them and their skulls pop upwards like that one coconut that isn't glued down at the shy, a silken ribbon of blood sprouting beneath it. That's pretty funny every time you see it, actually, unlike the same canned animation you get whenever Ivan slices an enemy in two, which loses its appeal the second time it plays.

You've done this campaign a hundred times before, basically, and this may well be number 101 if you had to rank them from worst to first. At best, it's somewhere in the 80s. At one point, and I shit you not, one of my buddy Green Beret dudes said, unprompted: "This is getting old." Oh, mate. I could not agree more.

Ivan plays drums, and loading screen information tells the player that he's handy with a guitar, too, which is nice.

Devil's Third isn't without its share of laughs, and I'm not sure they're entirely unintentional. The name of the terrorist gang you're going after becomes "SOD" when broken down into an acronym. Brilliant. A poster at an air force base (or an airport, I forget which it is, such is the level in question's complete blandness) has a picture of a forest landscape with the words "Good Old Japan" beneath it, as if it's apologizing for this new Itagaki work representing a moldy bread roll beside the glorious banquet of 2004's astonishing Ninja Gaiden.

Messages on loading screens treat the player like this is the first action game they've ever encountered: "Be wary of vehicles on fire (as) they are liable to explode"; "Most enemies are vulnerable to headshots." Thanks for that, Valhalla. I'm amazed I didn't see a tip telling me to "aim for the red barrels." Like this game wouldn't have those conveniently positioned beside clusters of enemies, eh? (In case I wasn't clear, just then, Devil's Third features fucking loads of red barrels.) I'm not saying that what I've seen of this so far represents the worst single-player game anyone can buy for the Wii U—that's The Letter, obviously, not that the two can truly be compared—but bloody hell, it's bad. Like, really, ridiculously, phenomenally bad. Not so-bad-it's-good bad, at all. Just bad. Really. It's not a "future cult classic," idiots of the internet, or any of that crap, so you can stop that noise right now. Seriously, stop it. I've got eyes, you know.

That's the campaign, then (as much of it as I could stomach). But the multiplayer, which doesn't come online until much closer to the game's release date, looks like it might be entirely brainless fare of the entertaining variety. An Itagaki-presented gameplay video published in June (in Japanese) shows a varied selection of avatar types chucking explosive watermelons and pineapples at each other, alongside the standard guns and ammo. Now that's more Nintendo-like, isn't it? Using fruit to obliterate your opponents. Perhaps they know what they've got after all, and that will become crystal clear once the game's servers come online in August.

On Noisey: What Your Regrettable Scene Tattoo Says About You

Until then, anyone eager to play a mature-rated new title for their Wii U, after ZombiU and Bayonetta 2, is advised to cling onto their pre-order cash. Please don't spend money on this game without further investigation, after multiplayer's up and running. I know you're hungry for something more adult-orientated than a woolly dinosaur delightfully floating around a knitted world, or a sentient zit exploring landscapes shaped from clay, but please, trust me: hold fire. Keep your sword sheathed and your shirt on. And hope that Itagaki and company can recover from this and move onto something that better meets modern gaming's entry requirements.

Devil's Third will be released for Wii U on August 4 in Japan and August 28 in Europe. A US release date remains TBD.

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.

Backstage at the Lyric Opera House this Saturday, the consensus among the cast of The Wire was that when Sonja Sohn and Michael K. Williams call, you answer. Thanks to Sohn and Williams, who played Detective Kima Greggs and stick-up man Omar Little respectively, over a dozen of their former castmates—including Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Dierdre Lovejoy and many others—came together in Baltimore for Wired Up, an event showcasing the voices of the Sandtown-Winchester community. The neighborhood was home to Freddie Gray, the unarmed black man who died from injuries sustained in police custody this April, and the epicenter of this spring's protests and unrest in the wake of his arrest and death.

The event, put on by Sohn's organization ReWired for Change and presented in the midst of Artscape, an annual public art festival in Baltimore, was part play, part concert, part rally, and part reunion. The actors read monologues culled from workshops conducted over a two-day period in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood last April, in the wake of the protests and violence. The voices represented ranged from the formerly incarcerated to police officers, teenagers to senior citizens.

Andre Royo, who played the addict and informant Bubbles on The Wire, said it was a "no brainer" to participate.

"Without Baltimore, we wouldn't be here," he told VICE. "I feel it's important for us to come back and say bravo to the city of Baltimore, to say you're not alone and you're being heard."

The day had an intimate, improvisational energy, both onstage and off. Cast and community members laughed, snapped selfies, burst into spontaneous song and dance during rehearsal. At one point a young activist laughingly told Whitlock, who played corrupt politician Clay Davis, that he kept expecting him to say "Sheeeeit," his character's catchphrase.

The community's words, spoken by the actors onstage, seemed to share a frustration at how their voices often went unheard by the mainstream media, but also a sense of empowerment and a belief that, though the price has been unthinkably high, Baltimore has arrived at a moment when its most marginalized voices can stand up and be heard.

Gray's stepfather, Richard Shipley, a reminder of that tragic cost, watched alongside the cast and community members backstage. He was quiet for much of the time, listening at one point with his head bowed, but addressed the crowd briefly at the afternoon's close, saying he was "so very, very proud" of what he sees starting to happen in Baltimore.

"I see a lot of progress being made in a short period of time," he said. "And it's just a shame that it had to take a tragedy for us to get off our butts."

Sohn told VICE that having him there was "an honor and a privilege."

"Honestly the event wouldn't have been complete without somebody from Freddie Gray's family," she said. "Because unfortunately the passing of Mr. Gray was the catalyst [...] for an entire marginalized portion of the city to activate."

Shadow, a peer advocate and gang liaison for the Penn North Recovery Center, appeared on stage to read his monologue with Michael K. Williams. For Shadow, the receptiveness of the audience and the feeling of his neighborhood being heard by its city was the true highlight of the day.

"The coolest part of the entire experience," he told VICE, "was watching people's reactions to what was being said."

"I'll be generous and say the crowd was 75% not black," he said. "And to hear them cheering for what was being said it's like, 'Oh, holy shit. Maybe we're not alone.'"

Sohn sees Saturday as only the beginning. Next, she wants to bring the piece straight to the people, erecting a stage production in the middle of Penn North.

"This becomes the story The Wire couldn't tell because of the parameters of TV," she told VICE.

"This becomes sort of like the next chapter in a sense. The real life Wire, you could say. But it then becomes the people who get to finish off that narrative."

- Meg Charlton

Eric Garner's mother Gwen with the moms of other black men killed in confrontations with law enforcement figures. Photo by the author

According to his daughter Emerald, Eric Garner "was very family-oriented" and "always loved a big gathering or a big family function." Sunday dinners were a regular tradition—in fact, Emerald had just finished talking about on such get-together with her mother, Esaw Garner, on the day of her father's death.

When the 23-year-old got another call from her mother immediately, she initially thought it was a pocket dial before she heard crying on the other end of the line.

"They said your father's not breathing," Esaw told her.

Related: Nine Months After He Filmed Eric Garner's Killing, the Cops Are Trying to Put Ramsey Orta Behind Bars

"A few hours later, we found out there was a video," Emerald said this weekend, as several events across New York City marked the one-year anniversary of her father's death on Staten Island.

"While everybody was distracted," Emerald slipped into another room and looked up the video online, but only made it halfway through before she "couldn't take it anymore." She never watched it again. "It's not something I want to replay because when I listen to video, it sounds like when I used to speak with him on the phone," Emerald told me.

The pain was too unbearable.

"People really take to it when they see strength in a tragedy." –Emerald Garner

The video that documented the chokehold that killed Garner and captured the last words he uttered 11 times before losing consciousness—"I can't breathe!"—quickly spread across the internet and sparked outrage nationwide.

Still deep in her despair, Emerald was suddenly thrust into the role of a spokesperson. Juggling grief and activism was not—and is not, a year later—an easy task. But the Black Lives Matter movement has helped to mitigate her grief, and allowed her to pay homage to a father she says "always provided for us."

Emerald said there were times she hit bottom, wondering, How am I gonna live? ... I'm a spectacle now in the media –like, I just want to end it at all. But fighting for justice after her father's death helped her cope.

"I've had those thoughts, but then it's like, 'No, I don't want to die. I want to stay around a little longer so I can use my voice and turn my anger into action,'" she said.

She hopes she can encourage others—especially young people—who might be feeling hopeless, angry, or even suicidal to "not give up" but, like she did, "use their anger as action."

"People really take to it when they see strength in a tragedy," Emerald Garner said.

Being just one of six siblings, she said, has been helpful because the family can split up responsibilities and take breaks when they feel overwhelmed: "If I need to take my time and get my emotions together, I know there will be somebody out there on the front line, and I can say, 'Thank you for handling this. I needed time to get myself together.'"

Emerald has also enjoyed support from other victims of police violence—people she believes when "[they] say wholeheartedly, 'I know how you feel and one day you'll start to feel better.'"

That sense of community was on display Saturday as Eric Garner's mother Gwen Carr shared the stage at a rally in Brooklyn's Cadman Plaza with the mothers of Oscar Grant, Ramarley Graham, Trayvon Martin, and other black men who died at the hands of law enforcement types. "You see my warriors behind me," Carr said, "Together we will stand and we will win this fight. They may knock us down but they're not going to knock us out because we are going to endure until the end."

"Y'all keep me empowered to speak... I feel like a flat balloon until I see you. You inflate me, and you make me larger than I could ever be." –Esaw Garner

The support that's poured in from across the country and even the world has helped the Garner family heal, and encouraged them to keep fighting. "To actually talk about it and hear the people, hear their responses, all in a positive manner, everybody so supportive, makes it a whole lot easier," Emerald said.

Echoing that sentiment while thanking the audience for their support at Saturday's rally, Garner's widow Esaw said, "Y'all keep me empowered to speak... I feel like a flat balloon until I see you. You inflate me, and you make me larger than I could ever be."

Emerald told me the main focus of her activism is to push the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) to indict and hold accountable the officers who caused her father's death, but she also plans to use her father's legacy to support other families in the same situation.

"My vision is to make sure nobody ever forgets Eric Garner and that they know what type of person he was. He was a very giving person, always liked to help people," Emerald said. She hopes to honor that part of him with her work, including with the Eric Garner Foundation, which she says will assist "the families and the victims and the struggles they go through, because living with life after a tragedy like this is very hard.

"Some people they grieve so much they miss work. They lose their job. How are they going to live—how are they going to support their families, their children?" Emerald asked.

A single mother, Emerald had been a manager at Payless shoes for two weeks before her father died. "I ended up having to leave because of the schedule and my up days and my down days didn't allow me to be at work as much as I needed to," she said. "If I can do a fundraiser for the victims and their bills will be paid off for a year, they won't have to worry about that. They'll know that their fight will only be for justice."

The Garner family's fight for justice notched a few victories over the past year. Last week, the family received a $5.9 million wrongful death settlement from the City (which Emerald stressed is not "justice" because it fails to provide accountability), and earlier this month, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order appointing the state attorney general as special prosecutor for police killings of unarmed civilians.

Garner's death helped spark the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the country, a movement that has been dubbed one of the more substantial and enduring since the 1960s.

That movement has laid bare the need for policing reform—an issue Emerald remains committed to—and attracted the attention of many local elected officials. Over the weekend, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Public Advocate Letitia James, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, City Councilperson Jumaane Williams, and others showed up to demonstrate their dedication to improving community relations with police. Jeffries said that this effort must focus on ending the NYPD's reliance on the broken windows theory of policing, which targets low-level, misdemeanors as a means of preventing more serious offenses. Many have linked the approach to the NYPD's overreaction to Garner's history of illegally selling loose cigarettes.

"It unnecessarily targets people in communities of color for things like riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, taking up two seats in a subway car, or having an open container on your front porch during a hot summer night," Jeffries explained.

Garner's killing was a tragedy, and no amount of policing reform will fill the void left in his family's hearts. But the movement that emerged after his death gives his relatives a sense of purpose, a support network, and a mechanism to keep his memory alive. It has also sparked a crucial conversation about race and justice in this country, and those positives were not lost on longtime activist Al Sharpton, who spoke at a vigil on Friday (as well as the rally on Saturday).

"Who would've thought, Emerald, that your father would be the impetus of a movement, that all over the world, people are standing up now?" Sharpton asked his audience. "Eric was wronged, but God has a way of taking wrongs to make the next right."

Follow Kristen Gwynne on Twitter.

All screencaps courtesy of the author

I recently discovered a game called Neko Atsume, and now it's all I think about. It's a mobile phone game in which you "collect" neighborhood cats by enticing them with food and toys. You may have seen screenshots from the game pop up in your Facebook or Twitter feeds, as your friends celebrate their cat accomplishments. That's how I first became aware of it, and from the moment I saw it, I knew I had to have it.

Made by Japanese game company Hit-Point, Neko Atsume gained worldwide popularity after Apple ran a promotion for cat-based games on an informal Japanese holiday called The Day of the Cat. The promotion boosted Neko Atsume into the Japanese top ten, and American games journalists quickly began to take notice of it. The game is entirely in Japanese, but is mostly intuitive enough that you can figure out what's going on without any knowledge of the language. (I have occasionally harassed Japanese-speaking friends for answers, though.)

Neko Atsume is a game in which barely anything happens. You leave food and toys out for cats, the cats come and eat or play, the cats leave you sardines to say thank you, you use the sardines as currency to buy them new food and toys. And on and on the cycle goes. Sometimes the cats come when you don't have the game open (you know they were there, though, because of the sardines). Sometimes they come and just sit there. The most activity that ever happens is a cat rolling around, or clawing at a scratching post. It thrills me.

And I'm not alone. Comedian and writer Emily Heller is also obsessed with the game. (Full disclosure: I introduced her to it.) I ask her what she likes about it. "I don't know why I love this game. It's barely dynamic. But cats are barely dynamic. It's realistic. I think I check it as often as everything else I check on my phone. The difference is I don't worry about which tweets I missed while I was sleeping, but I do stress about which cats came and played with my yarn ball while I was wasting precious cat-gazing hours unconscious. Also, I like their little buttholes."

Looking to spread the joy of the cats' little buttholes, Heller introduced the game to Emily V. Gordon, comedian and cohost of video game podcast The Indoor Kids, which VICE Gaming profiled earlier in 2015. She's now joined our weird cat cult, and can't stop playing the game. "I probably check on my cats 15 to 20 times a day," she tells me. "I think I like the game because I like making cats happy, and I like feeling beholden to something that is easy to satisfy. I love giving them silly names—my favorites are Fremium and Dudith—and checking to see who is eating my food and playing with my weird toys that don't seem that fun. That crystal vase doesn't seem like a toy." (She's right. Frankly, it seems dangerous.)

Why can't we stop playing this game? Almost nothing happens in it, and the stakes are comically low. You don't even own the cats you "collect"—they're neighborhood cats, and the most you can achieve is to lure them temporarily to your house. I ask Dr. Sarah Lynne Bowman, who holds a PhD in Arts and Humanities, why it's so dangerously easy to become obsessed with this game. Dr. Bowman studies games academically, and her current work focuses on applying Jungian theory to role-playing titles.

"I definitely think that evolutionary instincts are at play here," she says. "We have the instinctive urge to care for small, helpless creatures, especially when they are cute. Likely, we experience some sort of hormone release when we play these games, though I'd love to see some cognitive data on the topic. I suspect we experience serotonin and oxytocin releases when we care for people and creatures. Indeed, much of the research on happiness has indicated that money, sex, and status do not keep us happy in the long run; we are more fulfilled by challenging, yet rewarding tasks—like video game play—connections within a community, and helping others."

Related: These felines are puny, though. So watch VICE's film, 'Big Cats of the Gulf'

Dr. Bowman also tells me that games like Neko Atsume give us a lot of those benefits in the "long-term happiness" category—even if the effects are somewhat illusory. "Players are experiencing the simulation of caring for others; of being challenged and subsequently rewarded; of having this community of cats. Games like The Sims and environments like Second Life have similar effects."

Dr. Bowman notes that this virtual community of cats leads people to form actual communities of people. She finds it interesting, for example, that people share their acquired cats on Twitter and Facebook. "They are reaching out to others in a tangible, social way and connecting over this simulation. This practice reinforces communal connection for gamers, people who love cats, and even people who exist in the Twitterverse as a subculture. In other words, people are creating real communities in a virtual space based on their involvement with the game."

Over on Munchies: Watch a kitten eat watermelon, because the internet

Dr. Bowman has a small warning, though. "The game is playing a trick on us, to a degree, by getting us hooked in these virtual 'love-fests.' The balance with these games always involves making sure to stay plugged into your daily life and relationships while you are interfacing with a machine that is not actually providing you a sense of communal connection or love, but rather a virtual simulation of it. However, psychologically speaking, if a balanced engagement in these sorts of games produces similar effects, I think it's a positive development."

So if you, like me, check on your Neko Atsume cats at least 20 times a day, don't fret. It's okay if their little buttholes consume your every waking thought—as long as you maintain relationships with real people and their real, significantly less-cute backsides.

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Photo via Geograph

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Last week, the UK government had an opportunity to make some positive changes to the lives of young people across the country, but they decided not to. A Parliamentary committee said they should make decent sex education compulsory in all schools. The government said, "nah."

Here's a brief recap: Last year VICE helped kick-off the #SameSexSRE campaign to bring age-appropriate sex and relationship education (SRE) to every school in the country. State schools currently have to deliver basic sex education, which is mostly about biology and making babies—it doesn't go into relationships, body image, or anything else. Faith schools and academies don't even need to do this. That's not good enough unless you think people can sort of fumble their way through life, believing old wive's tales like you don't get pregnant if you drink a pint of cola both before and after sex, 1950s style.

Crucially, the campaign focused on teaching about LGBT relationships, so that any young gay kids growing up ashamed of who they are, or in families where being gay is not OK, receive vital acknowledgment from the education system that it's perfectly fine to have the feelings they might have.

I devised the campaign and it was supported by the National AIDS Trust (NAT). Our open letter to key party leaders was signed by over 30 LGBT organizations, and added a united LGBT voice to the campaigning work of organizations like Brook, which has been calling for young people's educational rights in this area for over 50 years.

In February this year, the House of Commons Education Committee published a report, saying statutory, age-appropriate SRE is absolutely needed as part of PSHE (personal, social health and education) lessons.

The majority of parents, the media, and teachers agreed. A lot of politicians agreed, with the obvious exception being the diehard Tory old guard and UKIP, who still believe that young people never think about their sexual identities until the age of 16, at which point they start sizing up a partner to marry and procreate with. And if you're LGBT, well, then obviously that's not to be discussed in schools because you will lead a miserable lonely life and, after you've popped your shameful queer clogs, eventually burn in hell for the rest of eternity.

David Cameron clearly didn't want to rock the boat before an election by saying that the proposals of the Committee made perfect sense in modern day Britain. Young people have a different perception of their physical selves than the image that exists in some MPs' imaginations. There's a fascination with body image, and with it, pressures to conform. In a constantly connected, digitized society, people are using hook-up apps to meet casual sexual partners, and personal sex videos are sent without a second thought. Revenge porn is, unfortunately, a thing.

While there's an overload of sexual information, crucial knowledge is still lacking. Sexually transmitted infections are on the rise. One in five people in the UK don't know you can get HIV from sex without a condom. Three quarters of gay and bisexual young men don't receive any information about same-sex relationships at school, and at the same time new HIV diagnoses amongst this group has doubled over the past ten years. And the Government's plan to deal with all this is to bury its head in the ground. Again.

Related: Stopping HIV with the Truvada Revolution—Part 1

Last week, five months after the Select Committee published its findings, Education and Equalities Minister Nicky Morgan finally responded on behalf of the Government. She failed to address the main concern that the Select Committee raised—that good PSHE and SRE is still not a compulsory part of young people's education.

In her response Morgan acknowledges that the education system should prepare "all pupils for life in modern Britain" and how "schools have a critical role to play in helping to shape rounded, resilient young people that can face the challenges of the modern world with confidence."

Morgan even agrees that high quality PSHE and age-appropriate SRE teaching is "essential to keeping pupils safe and healthy, inside and outside the school gates. Young people today face unprecedented pressures posed by modern technology."

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan. Photo via Policy Exchange

But despite accepting that these are fundamental points, the government is adamant that individual schools should decide how or—in the case of faith schools and academies—if they want to teach SRE, rather than making it a statutory requirement. So a conservative Catholic school can continue to gloss over LGBT issues, or even opt out of this "essential" lesson.

Morgan even agrees that there is "more that [the government] can do to emphasize its importance and improve the quality and provision of PSHE education which is not yet good enough in too many schools." Still, they've decided not to make these vital life lessons compulsory, in order to keep a small group of conservative traditionalists happy.

Funnily enough, it's a Conservative—Neil Carmichael, MP for Stroud—who has the most damning words for Morgan over this. As Chair of the House of Commons Education Committee, he said, "The response made by the Government is disappointing. Ministers entirely sidestep the call made by MPs in the closing months of the last Parliament to give statutory status to PSHE. They also reject or brush over nearly every other recommendation made by the previous Education Committee in their key report published five months ago," he says.

On Noisey: Hip-Hop in the Holy Land – Episode 2

He continues, "It is unclear why it should have taken the government so long to publish such a feeble response. The inquiry found the government's strategy for improving PSHE and SRE in schools to be weak. Yet there is nothing in this response to reassure Parliament—or young people—that the situation will now improve."

It's a deeply depressing situation. With the government still settling in, it could be at least five years now—likely longer—before young people's basic right to be taught about life in the modern world is recognized.

Deborah Gold, Chief Executive at NAT, was equally unhappy with Morgan's limp response. "The Government's refusal to give all young people in this country an equal access to information is creating a two-tier education system. Depending which school you happen to go to, you may or may not have access to good sex and relationships education and you may or may not learn how to protect yourself from getting HIV in real-life situations—this is a violation of the human rights of many young people," she says.

Neil Carmichael struck a critical yet hopeful note, suggesting that the battle could still be won. "Ministers know that PSHE requires improvement in 40 percent of schools, yet they appear to see no urgency in tackling this," he said. "I am confident that the new Committee will want to pursue this matter with ministers, making use of any new evidence and questioning the Secretary of State further in due course." With a big enough public outcry, as well as support from community groups and charities like NAT, perhaps the government will be forced to reconsider.

For now, the fight for the right of young people to learn about sexuality continues, and the government has spurned a perfectly good opportunity to improve the situation.

Cliff Joannou is the Deputy Editor of Attitude magazine.

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For months, the mezzanine of Milan's Central Station served as a makeshift waiting room for those refugees lucky enough to have avoided drowning while sailing rickety rafts from Libya to Italy—a treacherous stretch of water responsible for 75 percent of all migrant deaths worldwide. For many, the train station became a sort of limbo between their previous lives and the ones they hoped to forge by heading north.

Recently, after a huge surge of arrivals and the tightening of Italy's neighbors' borders, the mezzanine was cleared and new spaces were set up to accommodate the migrants. This piece was written just before that and tells the story of the migrants' journey from the floors of MCS to the streets of Paris.

The overnight Thello train from Venice to Paris (via Milan) was set up in January 2012 with the aim of "allowing passengers to rediscover the pleasures of night travel." For the base price of €35 ($38) a person can eat, drink, and share a sleeping cabin with five other people as they travel across the continent.

Since its inaugural journey, the train has shuttled nearly 900,000 people between Italy and France and, thanks to the fact that it provides a direct route between two countries with vast foreign national populations, it has garnered a reputation for itself; it's become a beacon of hope for refugees trying to find a new life in Europe. It's no wonder some call it "the train of second chances."

I decided to take the trip and experience the journey myself.

Muhammad

Upon arriving at Milan Central Station, I met a man named Muhammad. He was new to Italy and had only been in the country for four days. He'd spent the winter living by the coast in Libya, waiting for the Mediterranean's waves to die down. He then paid a trafficker €800 [$867] to get on a boat that could take him away from there. He explained that he was so terrified that he'd smoked five packets of cigarettes in the first ten hours of his trip.

His first two nights on the continent were spent in a Sicilian refugee camp and his third, on the floor of Milan Central Station. The mezzanine overlooking the station's exit had become a kind of gathering place for refugees as they awaited to begin the final leg of their journey by boarding a train heading north. Muhammad flitted in and out of the hall, wheeling his suitcase behind him. He was too nervous to sleep but too tired to distract himself. He kept coming back to ask about departure times, the price of tickets, and see if anyone new had arrived.

The weekend before I embarked on my journey, 7,000 migrants had been rescued from the Mediterranean as they were en route, via makeshift boats, to Italy from Libya. I wondered if some of them were there at the same time as me.

Generally, refugees stay at the station for somewhere between a few hours and a few days—it all depends on whether or not they have money or can get their hands on some. Every morning, a group of volunteers from SOS ERM—Milan Refugee Emergency—come to the station with tea, crisps, and biscuits. They also advise people on where to go and how to get there.

One of ERM's volunteers, Susy Iovieno, told me that Italy's welfare system "is almost nonexistent for refugees" and although there are camps around the country, the lack of jobs, opportunities or any real chance of meaningful integration means that Italy has become nothing more than a stopover for desperate people passing through. If they do stay, they often get sucked into the world of organized crime.

"I always tell them to go to Munich," Iovieno said. "A lot of them want to go to Switzerland, but they will just end up in some cold mountain village somewhere. Or they want to go to France or Sweden. You know, it's much cheaper to get to Munich. The journey is short and if you are sent back, the ticket is so cheap that you can almost always afford to try again."

On the train station's television, we heard the news that 700 people had drowned crossing the Mediterranean that morning. A man pulled out his phone and showed me a video filmed on the boat trip from Libya to the Italian island of Lampedusa. The wooden wreck of a ship was packed mostly with men, not all of whom were wearing life-vests. They had the look of people who had handed over control of their lives knowing well there was only a slim chance of ever getting it back. I saw that very same look on the faces of a lot of the people in the station and those nervously boarding the train.

As dusk settled in, the train got ready to depart. It was difficult to tell what kind of person was boarding the Thello train and even more difficult to tell why. As we were pulling out of the station, it struck me that this train was the perfect mode of travel for anyone trying to travel in anonymity—there are plenty of dark corners to tuck yourself away in that just don't exist on, say, a plane.

Half an hour into the journey, the stewards began making their way around the couchettes. They seemed to walk in pairs—one waiting in the corridor taking note of anyone leaving, while the other checked passports. An hour or so later, at Domodossola, border patrol and customs police boarded the train. They picked couchettes "at random" and questioned people about where they were from, where they were going, and which language they actually spoke. They began pulling open passengers' bags in the hallway.

I'd heard stories about how, last summer, a pregnant Syrian woman traveling with her husband and a group of other Syrian refugees had been removed from the train. They put her on a train back to Milan but she began to bleed in her seat en route. By the time they reached the station, she had miscarried the child.

I saw a man that I recognized from the station's mezzanine grab a hold of one of the stewards, trying to explain that the police had taken his wife and child and that he couldn't find them on the train. They told him to sit down and said he wasn't allowed to leave his seat to search for them. He just sat still with a look of worry painted across his face.

I noticed that people rarely talked to each other on the train. It seemed as if being in close proximity to strangers, makes you introverted. As if the less we reveal about ourselves, the less obvious our differences become.

I looked over at a Moroccan man who'd been sitting close by, staring down at his hands for an hour or so. We caught eyes and he began to tell me he needed money for a ticket: "I'm trying to get away," he said. "I don't want to sell cocaine anymore." I apologized to him and explained that I didn't have any money to give. It wasn't long before the security guards escorted him off the train at the Swiss border.

At about 2 AM, I began to feel sleepy. The train was somewhere just past the Swiss-Italian border, on its way to the flat French countryside near Dijon where it would later turn north toward Paris. I decided it was time to retire to my couchette to get some sleep. The "six-person mixed couchette" had three folding bunks stacked high on either side. Luggage is either stowed underneath or just below the roof. The central aisle was so slim that you were only ever a matter of centimeters away from the person next to you. I quietly, so as not to wake the others, tried to climb into bed, when I noticed someone was already in my bunk.

I stood staring down at the person laying there, trying to decide whether or not to ask them to leave when, all of a sudden, someone began shouting something aggressively from somewhere further down the train. The woman in my bed bolted up. She was clasping a ragged bag close to her stomach. She looked deep into my eyes, her pupils wide with fear—it was obvious that she was scared to death. I didn't even get the chance to tell her to lay back down; in one swift movement she stood up and shoved past me. She pushed so hard that I was thrown sideways ended up on the corridor floor. I watched her awkwardly fumble with the handle of the next couchette, slide the door open, stick her head in for a moment and then disappear further off down the train.

Confused, I took her place under the sheets. As I lay down in the warm bed, I couldn't help but feel like I was being watched so I decided to get back up and have a wander. Feeling restless, I took a stroll down to the bottom of the train. It was quiet down there, full of empty carriages. My phone buzzed: Muhammad was texting me. We'd exchanged numbers in Milan and I'd told him that if he ever needed anything, he could call. It turned out that he just wanted to send me a picture of the two of us standing together. I texted him back and I told him to let me know if and when he arrived in Munich. I sat and pondered what might have happened to that woman who'd commandeered my bed. I figured it was probably just a hilarious misunderstanding ("Typical her," her friends would say).

Related: Europe or Die

After heading back to my couchette, I managed to drift in and out of sleep for a few hours before finally nodding off for what felt like a few minutes. When I finally woke up, unsure if I had actually slept or not, it was morning and the train had slowly crawled back to life.

We pulled into Dijon train station. Those who were awake took the chance to get off and stand in the sun in an attempt to relieve the cumulative claustrophobia and stretch their aching legs. My clothes felt as if they were covered in a layer of mould, my breath stank, and all I could think about was hopping in a bath as soon as I got home. Everyone seemed bored and tense—as if the novelty of an 11-hour train ride had entirely worn off. People slowly began to surface for breakfast: A young couple took the only available seats in the restaurant carriage and sat down next to the man who I had seen tell the police he lost his wife and child. After a few moments of thoughtful reserve, they spread out a map and started to etch out their plans for Paris.

As soon as we pulled into Gare du Lyon, I noticed about 15 police officers stood on the platform, waiting for our arrival. The man I recognized from the mezzanine got off first, still without his wife and child. He was led to an office where he was destined to sit in silence while he waited for that evening's train to take him right back in the other direction.

It's difficult to say how many people are turned away at that station. No official figures exist, but there are plenty of accounts. In March last year, Le Parisien reported that a group of 85 Syrian refugees, including 41 children, were arrested upon arriving at the station and given one month to leave the country. They slept on the floor for a few days before trying to go to Germany, where they were blocked at the border and sent back into France.

A group of Ethiopian refugees—four women and two men—caught my eye. I recognized them from the train station in Milan. They stood hugging and laughing outside the train station. I felt like telling them how happy I was for them but shied away from it at the last minute. Just behind them, newspaper stands screamed about the fact that 700 migrants had drowned in the Mediterranean the day before.

My phone went off—it was Muhammad sending me a picture of himself giving a thumbs up. He had made it to Munich.

Read: How Soccer Despot Sepp Blatter Finally Fell to Earth

Shitty British prankster Simon Brodkin, sometimes known as Lee Nelson, interrupted a FIFA conference in Zurich Monday to toss handfuls of fake $1 bills above the balding noggin of current FIFA president Sepp Blatter, the Telegraph reports. The press conference was to announce the election date for a new president of FIFA, since Blatter has decided to resign his post following the indictment of 14 FIFA officials on charges of bribery and racketeering last May.

During the conference, Brodkin stormed the stage and said, "Sepp, this is for North Korea in 2026," in reference to a fake bid for North Korea to host the 2026 Olympics. Then, Brodkin made it rain on the FIFA president.

"It's all there," Nelson quipped as security guards shooed him out the side door and into a Swiss police van.

Brodkin has a history of storming stages. Most recently, the notoriously mediocre comedian Kanye'd Kanye's performance of "Black Skinhead" at Glastonbury, before getting his ass kicked off stage.