Welcome to RATED AND SLATED, the column that is terminally online so you don’t have to be.

So apparently there’s this new scientific study shows that online videos can mess with your brain, which is obviously nonsense:

brain-rot videos literally suppress activity in the parts of your brain responsible for cognitive control, the systems that help you resist impulses

fascinating

if used properly, short-form video seems almost perfectly designed as a cyberweapon: capture attention, weaken… https://t.co/v5yX7fBmRn pic.twitter.com/doYiEmFt1u

— vittorio (@IterIntellectus) August 18, 2026

I mean, who could possibly believe the suggestion that brainrot videos “literally suppress activity in the parts of your brain responsible for cognitive control, the systems that help you resist impulses?”

It’s not like I recently went to a music festival and, instead of enjoying Turnstile and Lorde, just held my mobile phone up in front of my face and watched videos of Tommy Lee playing bongos for a chimpanzee.

No, I also spent a significant amount of time with my headphones in, listening to ambient reimaginings of Limp Bizkit tracks.

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But none of this influenced my behavior negatively. It’s just a coincidence that I gorged myself on oysters and Chardonnay until I shit my pants and had to be hosed down while screaming about how “my body is a machine for turning natural wine into a natural disaster.”

Further research is clearly needed. Don’t worry nerds, I got you.

rated

HOW RAP BEEF SOUNDS WHEN YOU’RE 40

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If you’re rapidly hurtling towards your fourth decade in the doomed planet simulator, you might find this video funny. But whatever you do, don’t actually laugh at it. To our omnipotent, all-seeing machine overlords, the sound will be proof that you’re ready for the liquefaction process, whereby you’ll be reduced to a human lather they use to cool the servers.

“DANGER CAN”

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When I saw the footage of Hannah Einbinder talking about her favorite “dipping sauce,” I assumed, like everyone else, that she was simply trying to become a reaction GIF—now I wonder if she’s been playing “danger can” with her new podcast pals. After spending an evening smashing an entire six-pack against your frontal cortex, you might well find yourself drooling in front of a pot of ranch dressing, trying to work out how to operate a pizza crust.

TIME TO LOG OFF

https://t.co/xZFTZ4srpb pic.twitter.com/s8hWQP74Gh

— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) August 17, 2026

They say you know you’ve been online too long when you mourn lost webpages like dead friends. I say now you know why I’ve been drinking 12 beers and crying in the street every night this week.

THE TOM WILLIS TALK SHOW

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London literary impresario Tom Willis is launching his own talk show, which means that surely it’s time for London’s version of Future Islands—Jimothy Lacoste—to have his own Letterman moment, growling around onstage like he’s possessed by the ghost of Martin Amis. For those of us haunted by the memory of a dead literary culture, life is getting quite exciting right now.

SKIPPING LEG DAY WITH GLENN DANZIG

Danzig's workouts are the most straight guy gymbro routine ever, I may replicate it some day for fun. Entirely ipper body, with training legs replaced by kicking a punching bag and occasional cardio, all inspired by Nietzsche and Arnold Schwarzenegger. https://t.co/gN6TjRt5WO pic.twitter.com/yimDGo6G0P

— AgNONsis (@aGnonSIS) August 18, 2026

Danzig is what, 5 foot 3 or something? So he’s probably not used to touching the ceiling very often. He’s skipping leg day, too, so he won’t be beating Clavicular’s record for the vertical jump anytime soon. Still, most manlets would probably be better off following his workout routine than taking advice from the famous monsters on TikTok and Kick. Look kid, the original Misfits are the only ones worth listening to.

slated

YE’S BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED RUSSIAN FANTASY

ALL OF THE LIGHTS pic.twitter.com/bhgVSggVy0

— ye (@kanyewest) August 17, 2026

With Ye announcing new tour dates in St. Petersburg, it’s good to see that he’s got his mobile air-defense system sorted out so no one will have to worry about drones when they’re “Putin their hands to the constellations.”

A TRILLION HUMANS IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Jeff Bezos on why he wants a trillion humans in the solar system

"I would love to see a trillion humans living in the solar system. If we had a trillion humans, we would have at any given time a 1,000 Mozarts and a 1,000 Einsteins"

"Our solar system would be full of life and… pic.twitter.com/EzgG77N4Pc

— Jaynit (@jaynitx) August 15, 2026

1,000 Mozarts and 1,000 Einsteins? Sounds like one of those Epic Warz videos with a Wolfgang Amadeus horde battling an army of Alberts to the death. Which side are you on, my friend? The piano-playing poo-joke man? Or the guy who nuked Japan?

BLOC PARTY’S UK POO BANGER

We’ve lived long enough to see Bloc Party turn into UK Poo pic.twitter.com/vNnN8snhlU

— Callum (@CaliJ98) August 17, 2026

H.R, you’re finally awake! You hit your head pretty hard while practicing that backflip. UK poo? Bloc Party? Kele Okereke sitting by the sea in his Bad Brains T-shirt singing about “Pigwig”? C’mon bro, get up, we’ve got to go on stage at CBGBs and inspire future generations of guitar bands to keep spreading that sweet P.M.A..

GOTH BADDIES

Holy shit pic.twitter.com/0F5yBJpbvo

— Crocodile Dungarees (@CrocodileDungri) August 13, 2026

We used to argue over whether the kids who shot up Columbine were or weren’t goths, now I’m sliding into the Twitch chat demanding that alt-girl streamers name me three Marilyn Manson songs. These days, it’s impossible to tell who’s shooting content for OnlyFans and who’s doing target practice in the woods.

AI LAPTOP OTTER ON A PLANE

rapid progress, yet I cannot name a single AI-generated video that has moved me and lingered in my memory as something honestly worth watching, nor even a single good adaptation of an existing work

at some point "rapid progress" in tech demos is insufficient. will there be art? https://t.co/wFqICO4RLC

— Jack (@tracewoodgrains) August 17, 2026

Can u imagine terrorists tryin to hijack a plane that the laptop otter was on? Box cutters vs cutest little remote worker on the planet? Game over, AI.

Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoi

The post Rated and Slated: Things We Hate and Love Online This Week appeared first on VICE.

Careful: After watching our latest documentary about the Amazonian drug, kambo, you might start seeing frogs wherever you go.

Thinking about the poison, which is derived from giant monkey frogs, and then seeing the creatures dotted hither and thither as you go about your daily life would be taken by most people as a funny coincidence.

However, there are those to whom this is a clear sign that they need to dab their flesh with the venom and then vomit their guts into a bucket, in the name of a ceremonial ritual that supposedly cures almost any ailment (naturally, there’s no clinical evidence for these claims).

VICE’s Amber Rawlings has been meeting British kambo enthusiasts, who have been gathering in apartments, parks, nature reserves, and lay-bys across the suburbs to be “healed” by part-time shamans armed with venom sourced from Indigenous rainforest tribes.

Though this is not illegal in the UK, the stuff isn’t a licensed medicine. Earlier this year, a 40-year-old man died after reportedly taking part in a ceremony—one of a number of suspected fatalities around the world.

Amber first got interested in kambo while interviewing tripsitters, and although this isn’t a psychedelic, fans of the venom credit it with all kinds of powerful psychological benefits.

I gave her a call to find out a bit more about the documentary, which you can watch on YouTube now.

VICE: How did you stumble into this one?
Amber Bean Rawlings: Psychedelics can do a lot of good, but if you’re professionally into psychedelics, you’re probably gonna have a god complex. It’s funnier if someone’s got a god complex and they’re just some man you could find down the pub, but on the weekend he’s a shaman wearing a cloak. There’s something so funny about going into someone’s flat that’s meant to look spiritual, and it’s a throw from Urban Outfitters on the wall.

How would you describe the people involved in this?
Practitioners, it’s a spectrum from health and wellness to woo-woo. With the people doing it, there are health and wellness people, people who treat it a bit like a psychedelic, to whom it’s a really spiritual experience—people who probably rely too much on kambo. It also intersects with anti-pharmaceutical, anti-conventional medicine, kind of like, “Kambo’s the answer.”

How do you feel about the woo-woo side of it?
I don’t know if there’s anything actually spiritual going on. If you’re sick enough, you’re going to feel quite euphoric. You’ve fasted for 16 hours and you vomit loads, someone’s blowing sage around and there’s tribal music on—if this was in the jungle, I’d be well into it.

Did you feel awkward sitting around watching these people vomit?
I’ve had some awful hangovers in my time where I’ve vomited 30 times in a day. So I don’t mind the vomit that much. Whatever—it’s not vomit, vomit. It’s just the water they’ve drunk. It’s not like seeing someone chunder up a McDonald’s.

Any weird shit you didn’t include?
We did a whole other session with two older ladies that we didn’t have time for in the documentary. One really cried when she took the kambo, and I found it quite moving and had a little tear myself. I was like, “Maybe my mom should do kambo.”

What’s behind the popularity of kambo in the suburbs?
A lot of people are disillusioned with conventional medicine, probably somewhat due to misinformation. People are able to promote kambo through social media and make it look like this sleek package. There’s no regulation around saying, “This is going to heal you and help addiction issues.”

“It’s not like seeing someone chunder up a McDonald’s”

I don’t know, the world’s a bit fucked, so maybe people are like, “Yeah, fuck it. I’ll do kambo. Why not?”

Where’s your thinking around regulation at the moment?
There probably should be. The people I met seemed well-intentioned. People are going to watch the documentary and think they’re grifters, but if you actually chat with them and hear about how kambo changed their life, I’m kind of like, “There’s worse things going on.”

Did making the documentary change your perspective on kambo then?
It hasn’t made me want to do it. I’m happy for other people to do it. Fill your boots, but I’ve been sick enough in my life. 

You don’t want that kambo glow?
During all the ceremonies, there’s a point where they’re all gray—the color of their face changes, and it’s really freaky. Then they have a little sleep, and like 20 minutes later they look amazing. So I don’t know, maybe I can make it part of my routine, like going to the sauna. I don’t think I’d be doing it for a spiritual epiphany. It would just be to see how skinny I can get.

Since doing the documentary, have you been seeing any frogs around?
I don’t think I’ve seen a single frog, and to be brutally honest, I don’t think I will. But maybe it will happen, and then I will find myself in Preston by the motorway, vomiting up my demons and shitting everywhere.

Follow Amber on Instagram @amberawlings

The post Kambo, the Frog Venom Making Suburbanites Puke Their Guts Out appeared first on VICE.

💾

Music journalism is going to the wall, and places for sensible, well-informed, nuanced takes on the latest releases are dwindling. So we thought we might as well put the final nail in the coffin.

Read last week’s album reviews here.

Tyga
$TARFACE
Last Kings / EMPIRE

You might argue that nobody reads record reviews anymore. Tell that to the trembling, sleep-deprived publicist forced to turn up at a Bel Air mansion this week with a fistful of Xanax in both hands and a printed copy of a Pitchfork 0.0 under one arm.

“I’m sorry Mr. Tyga, but they’re suggesting the very existence of your new record $TARFACE has made the world a worse place.”

Obviously I haven’t actually listened to this album. Instead, I laid back and imagined the above playing out like that endlessly retooled scene from Downfall, except when Hitler’s entourage have to tell him he’s lost the war, and they’re all about to die trapped like rats in a cavern underground, their voices and sobs are slathered in AutoTune, as a spectral Keyboard Cat jauntily hammers out “POWDERED DREAMS” over the bunker intercom.

This, as we’ve seen this week, is the power of the music press in 2026. To reduce the audible output of an artist’s soul to a meme.

What are the protocols for giving a record 0.0, anyway? Does Pitchfork have nuclear launch codes that need to be triple co-signed before the lowest possible score is authorized? And while the warhead was armed, did no one think to point out that the suggestion that “$TARFACE places the listener in their own personal Cronenberg film” unintentionally makes the record sound pretty sick?

Then again, what do I know, I’m not a real reviewer; my process for allotting scores is to roll a bejeweled polyhedral D&D dice and then tear down people’s dreams accordingly. I almost felt bad for savaging Dresden Dolls and Twenty One Pilots last week, but now I’m feeling that maybe I was a little too merciful. Go get the arsenic, I won’t make the same mistake again.

Z/10
TIGER’S WOOD

Phoebe Bridgers
Lost Weekend
Dead Oceans

Matty Healy, Jack Antonoff, Bo Burnham, Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, Maya Hawke, Cameron Winter, Alex G, and Christian Lee Hutson are all meant to be somewhere on Lost Weekend—a roster one sad girl on X described as “the Avengers of the psych ward.” It’s been a few years since I last visited a mental health facility, but I doubt too many in-patients are jamming to the new Phoebe Bridgers album. This is music for people who don’t have much wrong with them at all, beyond a chronic case of being ghosted by men that text all in lower case.

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What’s that, you want more? OK, basically, this record confirms Phoebe’s status as the definitive songwriter of our parasocial moment. There are lyrical observations and anecdotes so personal they border on self-doxxing. The magical friction that every great (or even just good) record needs comes, amid this onslaught of relatability, from jarring nods to her celebrity existence—dating Paul Mescal, appearing in the new Robert Pattinson movie, etc. The effect on the listener is a form of delusional projection symptomatic of our modern derangement (comorbidities might include grippy socks as a fashion statement and treating DSM diagnostic criteria like star signs). 

7/10 
RAM’D ASS

Channel Tres
Enigma POV
Alta Music Group

It was a “hard relate” from me when I learned that the idiosyncratic thump of this new Channel Tres record was born from him watching The Wiz (1978) and breaking down in tears. I had a similar crash out while watching the Sixth Sense (1999) after one my school friends died. Sure, I didn’t make any music afterwards—let alone a record of soulful, uninhibited tech-rap—but I guess they’re different films. The big realization for Tres was that “the characters had everything they were searching for all along and that the Wiz was just a man.” While the main guy in Sixth Sense is literally dead and will never be able to speak to anyone he loves ever again. Still, this album is bouncy enough to get Bruce Willis dancing, even if the only person who can see him is that kid who looks like he’s trapped in a Southern Gothic painting. 

6/10
LEE HARVEY OSMENT

Getdown Services
Massive Champion
Breakfast Records

Listening to the kitchen sink surrealism of the second Getdown Services record, I immediately thought of a viral tweet I saw earlier this week claiming that “pound for pound the UK might be the funniest place in the world”—engagement-bait that has naturally been QT’d hundreds of times, along with assorted footage of the eccentric chaos that passes for life in my comedy nation which somehow used to rule a quarter of the planet. Any one of these replies could be subject matter for this Somerset duo, who pan the dirty stream of everyday life and come out with gold. They might be best described as LCD Soundsystem for people who’ve just pawned their actual sound system and, unfortunately, have no way to listen to this record. 

6/10
FRANK BLACK PUDDING

Maidenhead
Maximum Clonage
Self-released

I’m not just reviewing this because the band share a name with my hometown, but because a part of me is still trapped in the church hall where there were weekly all-ages shows. When I hit play on the purgatorial trash metal of Maximum Clonage, a ghostly moshpit consumed this teenage interzone of corpse paint and body odor, which I fear I’ll never truly escape despite disowning any music with even the hint of a blast beat the second I hit puberty.

4/10
BEVERLEY NIGHT SHIFT

James Ellis Ford
Lost in Another World
Domino

If I had a near-death experience like James Ellis Ford (who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer with only a 30 percent survival rate) and my life flashed before my eyes, would it be as impressive as his: starting out in an avant-pop band before becoming a member of certified bloghaus royalty, making symphonic rock with Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys and some other guy, producing many of the best albums of the last 20 years, and now releasing a beguiling new solo record of oblique pop songs? The answer, obviously, is no. It would just be a collection of idiotic reviews, full of jokes and digressions, signifying nothing.

8/10
LAIKA ROLLING STONE 

The Script
The User’s Guide to Being Human
BMG Records

Step 1: Come out of the womb covered in blood, shit, and piss, which are coincidentally the constituent ingredients of this new record by The Script.

Step 2: Learn to walk, talk, feed yourself, and make music (optional extras: develop taste and/or an artistic sensibility, have experiences which provide you with interesting things to say about the world). 

Step 3: Die. There are some deluded souls who truly believe they deserve more from life than this. Those people ought to spare a thought for The Script, who never progressed past Step 1.

1/10
THE BRYAN JOHNSON MASSACRE 

Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoi

The post VICE Album Reviews, August 14: Tyga, Phoebe Bridgers, and More appeared first on VICE.

Welcome to RATED AND SLATED, the column that is terminally online so you don’t have to be.

Whenever the reply guys have me feeling bad about my “pathetic excuse of a career,” I think, “oh well, at least I’m not a political journalist.”

I mean, you sacrifice your health, jeopardize your social life, and miss out on time with the family to get on the White House beat where you can enjoy such perks as inhaling Donald Trump’s recycled hamburger breath during an intercontinental flight on Air Force One. 

But the president neither respects nor understands your work and, when the credible threat of an Iranian missile being fired at the plane is detected, he’ll happily sacrifice your life, swapping flights by hiding in the catering truck like a weird, morbidly obese James Bond. 

So I think I’ll just stick to writing about dank memes and AI videos, since brainrot appears to be the only thing that the U.S. and Iran can agree on.

rated

Yung Lean’s “Robotboy”

Yung Lean releases his cover of “Robotboy” by Robyn. https://t.co/e7kaOg1I0H

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) August 12, 2026

On this new cover of Robyn’s “Robotboy,” Jonatan somehow sounds both younger and older than ever before. Robyn says that the track is like he’s “singing this lullaby to the person he once was.” It reminds me of those little tunes we used to chant in the playground while playing childish games as a way of slowly learning about the grown-up world. Dude famously looks like the kid from the Bully video game, but somehow, through all the scraps and brawls, he’s managed to keep a hold of his innocence. When you’re listening to Yung Lean, you can tell he’s in your corner. Gang! 

MARIO 64: WAR ON TERROR

nintendo lawyers having an aneurism as we speak pic.twitter.com/TzSLIENDks

— Sam Steffanina (@SamSteffanina) August 9, 2026

Gamers spent the 90s arguing about which was the superior console, Nintendo or Sega, but after the horrors of 9/11 it was Super Mario who hunted down and executed Osama bin Laden—where was the coward Sonic through all of this? You might be fast, hedgehog boy, but these colors don’t run.

DRINKING ALCOHOL AGAIN AFTER SEVEN YEARS SOBER

Brad Pitt says he's drinking alcohol again after seven years sober.

Read more: https://t.co/CKU8drIBdM pic.twitter.com/bgrx4HSjcY

— TMZ (@TMZ) August 10, 2026

If this photograph is anything to go by then Brad Pitt is spending his first night “back off the wagon” sinking Millers down the bowling alley with his friends Donny and The Dude. He claims to be drinking “in a more restrained manner,” but if someone’s toe slips over the line in a league game then he’s pulling out a handgun and warning them that they’re about to enter a world of pain.

“THE WILL TO POWER(CHORD)”

He right pic.twitter.com/bSo7vajDAr

— r̷̳̆ó̶͎m̵̞̀e̶̫͗o̵̱̚~̵̦͒d̷͕͋ỉ̶̳à̵͍b̴̧̀l̸̰̚o̵͇̐s̷ (@romeodiablos_) August 10, 2026

Short video content is great: where once you had to spend an evening getting stoned with a Vietnam veteran to learn how Jimi Hendrix’s guitar tones let you reach higher levels of consciousness through astral projection like in the CIA’s Gateway Process, now you can access this kind of forbidden knowledge from the comfort of your own bathroom. Before you’ve queued “Purple Haze” on the Bluetooth speaker, the algorithm has served up a new video of Sydney Sweeney in swimwear and now you’re lying in the tub tugging one out. Talk about the Ultimate Dionysian sound bath. 

LIVING TO 122

pic.twitter.com/G73y72E1MV

— The Internet Fish (@TheInternetFish) August 10, 2026

No one tell this guy about Jeanne Calment. If he finds out that a French woman lived to age 122 (and that she was a smoker) then we’re not talking about a reaction video so much as picking up actual bits of his exploded head off the laptop screen. I’ll be covering my mouth in shock as pieces of skull and grey matter fly towards the camera, like damn maybe how long you live isn’t as important as the way you pass.

slated

“SOMETHING IN THE WAY” BY CHET HANKS

pic.twitter.com/5VqIo4lUQB

— skeletonheads (@skeletonheads) August 11, 2026

I quit being a pescatarian after learning that Kurt Cobain’s claim that fish don’t have any feelings is not strictly scientifically accurate. They can feel pain, and so can the jacked failson of a famous Hollywood actor, so I’ll refrain from saying how I really feeling about Chet’s version of “Something in the Way,” except to point out that if you’re recording Nirvana covers that sound like they’re being played by Limp Bizkit bassist Sam Rivers (RIP) then something has gone very badly wrong. In fact, the only way your white boy summer could have turned out worse would be if you ended up living underneath an actual bridge.

THE CINDY WORKOUT

Tom Holland reveals his go-to workout for when he’s short on time.

“I do a CrossFit workout called Cindy. It's five pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 squats, as many times as you can in 20 minutes. I think my record is 27 rounds.”

[: @olivertrevena ] pic.twitter.com/ljFIgDBSYr

— Complex (@Complex) August 11, 2026

Actually, Cindy wasn’t the name of the workout, but the personal trainer who was inexplicably wearing high-heeled boots and latex mini-dress and kept hitting me with a riding crop the whole time I was exercising in her dungeon (they’ll call gyms anything these days). Afterwards, I was completely monstered, and come to think of it, this is the first CrossFit session where I needed a safe word. Maybe I should’ve known something was up when she made me put on a ball gag. Well, I’ll be back there tomorrow. After all, fitness is a lifelong commitment.

KENDRICK LAMAR’S “NOT LIKE US“ AS A SORORITY RUSH ANTHEM

You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension https://t.co/Lue5kBYFNV

— em (@NoemiTitarenco) August 10, 2026

You might not have realised, but in the title of Kendrick Lamar’s infamous 2024 diss track, the “us” does actually include sorority girls. In fact, the “they” is really only Canadians. Now the campus has been cleared of colonizers (including Drake), college baddies with matching tracksuits and perfectly straightened hair can perform choreographed dances with their mobile phone torches to celebrate The Culture. 

“HOW YEAT SOUNDS WHEN UR NOT 15 ANYMORE”

My brain is fried cause this song’s so tuff https://t.co/tuTLn2F4GG

— Tervis Scoot (@tervisscoot) August 9, 2026

Don’t worry, if you think AI Family Guy rage-rap is “tuff” then you’re probably not alone. The more brain-fried reaction is to look at the above post and assume that it’s not about the 21st century American rapper Yeat, but rather the 20th century Irish poet W. B. Yeats. “Things fall apart,” that much is clear either way. “The centre cannot hold, bitch!”

Speaking about the unexpected collision between bad rapping and the kind of beautiful art no one cares about any more because the literacy rate is in hell…

WILL THE REAL STEPHEN DEDALUS PLEASE STAND UP?

This is all Eminem’s fault btw pic.twitter.com/G6IjRk8Hwy

— NoMoreMelo (@MeloNotServing) August 10, 2026

It’s bad news for the lit bros. While you’re still struggling to get through Ulysses with the aid of multiple reading guides, this kid has already polished off Finnegans Wake and now he’s rapping about it. If that doesn’t have you feeling as pitiful as Leopold Bloom, then just wait for his next trick: a devastating couplet rhyming “cuck” with “bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk.” (At which point, it might be time for the James Joyce estate to look into what how these LLMs are being trained). 

Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoi

The post Rated and Slated: Things We Hate and Love Online This Week appeared first on VICE.