VICE UK

Jerusalem, Israel, April 1990. In the Christian part of the Old Town, ultra-orthodox Jewish and security guards are waiting for Ariel Sharon's arrival. All photos courtesy of Patrick Zachmann/Magnum Photos

This article originally appeared on VICE France

When Patrick Zachmann told his mother he wanted to be a photographer, her reaction was to open the phone book and look for a professional to ask for guidance. With all the embarrassing tenderness that is typical of anxious mothers that want to make sure their children are given a bright future, she ended up calling Henri Cartier-Bresson on his private number. His ex-wife picked up the phone, and lacking advice, started a conversation about how hard it was to live with a photographer. Forty years later, a single glimpse at Patrick Zachmann's career is enough to realise that his mother did not have to worry that much for him.

Since his beginnings in the late 1970s, Zachmann has walked the streets of Naples with anti-mafia brigades, documented the Chinese community and worked on the integration of immigrants in Marseille's northern neighbourhoods – his work often varies between black and white and colour depending on his subjects. Finally, Zachmann often explores the theme of identity – of his subjects or the photographer himself. I talked to him about his projects and about how he built his own identity examining that of others'.

Naples, Italia, June 1982. A 'mafioso' is arrested at dawn by an anti-mafia brigade.

VICE: When you started working as a photographer, you had very strong left-orientated opinions as well as a desire to change the world – what were your first projects?
Patrick Zachmann: My first "real" reportage was in Portugal in 1975, just after the Carnation Revolution. I really wanted to explore the country and its social, political and economical situation. I travelled across Portugal with a backpack and skills I had learnt by myself. My career really took off after that experience.

Over there, I met the director of Rush, a newly-born agency with which I stayed for seven years. With them, I covered a few topics that had to do with current affairs in France as well as abroad, but I always preferred working on society-based issues. In 1979, I started working on what was going to become my book, Enquête d'identité.

What made you brush away news topics?
That same year, I went to Iran at the very beginning of the Revolution. I was in the plane that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini back to Teheran. It was my first experience working as a news reporter, with the guarantee of being published. Eventually, it was a very negative experience because it made me realise I was not cut to work in the news. I just could not get used to the pace: you always need to run without having time to stop and think about what you are doing.

One day, I found myself in the cemetery where the Ayatollah was supposed to give his first speech. It was mayhem; journalists everywhere. At sunset, the light became beautiful and soft; I felt frustrated because I had to go back right away and hand in my film rolls. This experience taught me a lesson and being confronted to religious zealotry marked me a lot.

Naples, Italia, June 1982. Women crying after their sons and husbands are arrested for drug trafficking.

Talking about violence, you then went to Naples, which was rotting because of it.
After this reportage, I wanted to test my own limits and those of the people I photographed. It's important to know whether you can press the button of your camera or not in any given situation. Naples has become a learning field for me. At the time, everybody would go to Lebanon to cover the war and I didn't want to take part in this. I always preferred going where the media did not go, in forgotten or unknown places, to cover issues that were not or no longer news. I read a short article in Le Matin de Paris, which was about the mafia war that was taking place in Naples and killed 400 people each year. It was a conflict between two families of the Neapolitan mafia. Nobody talked about the Camorra then.

Once I was there, I faced three forms of violence – first, the one coming from Camorrists. Then, there was violence from the police and the people I was taking pictures of, who sometimes reacted vehemently – women that had just seen their husbands getting shot or arrested. Their reaction brought me back to an inherent violence, related to the mere act of photographing. Talking about this, Diane Airbus once said that even though she was trying to be sweet and nice with her models, the act of photographing still remained an aggression. I got obsessed with that idea. Now I don't think I could do the same reportages, nor could I take the photos I took back in 1982. Perhaps I am too conscious of the pain of the people I was taking pictures of.

Hong Kong, 1987.

What did you learn about your own limits over your stay there?
I learnt that you need to know how to wait, that there are frustrating moments where it is better not to take pictures. I built some kind of ethical code empirically. After that, I tried not to take pictures when someone suffered or when I thought that pressing the button would add an unnecessary pain; especially if this picture was not essential or there was a chance it would not be published.

It's hard to find a balance when you want to take pictures "on the go" like Henri Cartier-Bresson would say, to capture magical moments and you fundamentally want to respect the people you are photographing. It is sort of contradictory, isn't it? At times, I wish I could seize what's visually appealing in the streets, but I know that without asking, in certain countries or situations, I am exposing myself to a violent backlash. On the other hand, asking them for their approval destroys everything that appeals to me. I don't like taking pictures of people without giving them anything in return for it. I realised that going to marginalised people, listening to them and taking their pictures is the first step of a dialogue. If you give attention to those who feel weak, it feels like a gift to them. It took me a lot of time to integrate this fact. I also give a lot of little prints that I often find years later, pinned to a wall or in a photo album. I remain passionate and often moved by that strong relationship between a photographer and his models.

Furthermore, I became aware of how powerful photography was in its documentary and momentary aspect, but also the sentimental value of it. When a person passes away or a place is destroyed, photos can be precious and historical.

Paris, France, 1981. Patrick Zachmann's mother (left) and her sisters.

How do you separate yourself from your subjects in cases like Mare Mater, where you work on your own mother?
Every time I worked with one of my parents, I succeeded in breaking silences thanks to photography and cinema. Without that, I do not think I could have learnt as much about my family. This approach has always been difficult – painful at times – to undertake. Precisely because you need to keep a "professional" distance, remaining neither too close nor too far from your subject. It happened that I wanted to drop my camera and take my old and frail mother in my arms instead of taking her photo.

What gives me the strength to work on this is how necessary it is for me to do it. It is important to understand, clarify, go beyond taboos and secrets and make our own opinions. Whether it is about your pairs, yourself or the world, you need to forge your own opinion. This is what I like in photography; leaving and returning to exterior and interior worlds, conscious and unconscious.

Before Mare Mater, between 2009 and 2011, I had already photographed migrants in Calais, Paris, Malta and Greece, but the pictures never went beyond the journalistic aspect. I need to uncover the link between my subjects and myself. Of course, both sides of my family are immigrants, but those links were not enough. I was drawn to the question of separation between young migrants and their mothers – all young boys. I followed them in Marseille for more than a year and went to their home countries to visit their mothers. Then, I investigated my own mother's history at the same time I was working on this project – she was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and I wanted to hear her story of Algeria before it was too late. I finally understood what was similar in my situation and the one of those migrants separated from their mothers – as I was going to be separated from mine forever. I mixed those stories in the book, the exhibition and the film 'Mare Mater'. Perhaps we are better at telling stories we truly understand or that echo our past.

How do you decide between colour and black&white?
I find it important to ask myself the question before I start working on something. I don't want to repeat myself, which is often what happens to photographers with a particular style. It really haunts me. Truth is, we repeat and display the same obsessions over a lifetime – it's something inherent to being an artist, I believe – but we can find new ways to express them. Consequently, I often ask myself what would be the best format to express such or such subject. For my series on workers' gardens, I bought a 6x6 – it may well be a tribute to Robert Doisneau and his photographs of the suburbs.

My use of colour is another issue. For example, for my book on Malians I wanted to give a fair account of the cultural shock and geographical gap they face when they try to integrate themselves in France. Also, I was weary of pitiful and miserabilist images of immigrants we are generally shown. I thought this portrayal was not synced with today's reality of immigration. I make books where the text and photos are entwined; I make films in which my pictures are embedded. Essentially, I want to question the connection between fixed and animated images. As long as I am not repeating myself in terms of aesthetics, I am sure I will be passionate about what I'm doing.

More of Patrick Zachmann on Magnum's website.

Julie is on Twitter.

More photos below:

Naples, Italia, March 1982. Prostitutes and transvestites warming themselves up around a campfire.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, 1989. French actress Béatrice Dalle.

Naples, Italia, June 8, 1982. Ciro Astuto, known as "The outlaw", one of the leaders of the clan Nuova Famiglia, has been killed by one of his own.

Hong Kong, 1988. A young prostitute and her boyfriend, member of a triad.

Marseille, France, September 1984. Malika, a young woman who comes from the second generation of North-African immigrants.

Marseille, France, September 1984. Algerian wedding in the estate of Bassens.

Villiers-le-bel, France, 1989. This family lives in a ZAC in "Derrière-les-Murs-de-Monseigneur", which consists of 1,000 flats.

Marseille, France. 1984

Naples, Italia, June 1982. At the Police station, a group of kids (the youngest is 8) just got caught red-handed during a robbery.

New York, 1987. The Wus and their three sons, all valedictorians at Harvard.

Marc (right) outside L'Atmosphere. All photos courtesy of Marc Victor.

Running a club is stressful enough, but try doing it in a warzone where alcohol is banned. Between 2004 and 2008, Marc Victor ran L'Atmosphere, Kabul's most infamous party spot – a notorious rooftop poolside bar and restaurant, crammed wall-to-wall with journalists, aid workers, diplomats, humanitarians, spies, contractors and mercenaries. Or, as one VICE journalist described it, "the real-world equivalent of the bar from Star Wars."

In 2008, as Western hangouts increasingly became targets of terrorist attacks, Marc sold up, returned to Paris, and decided to write about it. The result is Kabul Kitchen, a comedy based on his life running L'Atmosphere.

I meet Marc in a cobbled courtyard outside his apartment in Paris. It was serene – pale green shutters, plants and window boxes – like a postcard. He shows me inside and it's completely barren. The bedroom consists of a bed, the living room a sofa. No pictures, no trinkets, no stuff. He hands me some water in a mug. "It's hard to find somewhere quiet in Paris," he says. As we discuss his extraordinary life, it becomes clear why Marc wants some peace these days.

The bar at L'Atmosphere

VICE: Hi Marc. So firstly, how did you come to set up a club in Kabul?
Marc Victor: I never set out to run a bar. I was a journalist. I started out as a theatre critic, then I went to work in Cambodia for six years for French radio station RFI. When I came back to Paris, I was bored. So in 2002, when the Taliban fell, I decided to go to Afghanistan to work for an NGO that was training journalists to rebuild the media there. When the project came to an end after a couple of years, I wanted to stay. My friends kept saying to me that there weren't any good places to go out in Kabul. So I obliged.

Was there much of a party scene there at the time?
The expat community was young – most people were in their 20s and 30s and single. It was like a university campus. These kids worked hard, they had stressful jobs and they wanted to play hard. Before I opened, there used to be parties at the NGO headquarters like Unicef, and sometimes the American Embassy would host some wild nights, especially when they had contractors in town. But when L'Atmosphere opened, they started coming to my bar. Thursday was the big party night, because everyone had Friday off.

I guess living somewhere so dangerous, you'd want somewhere to let off some steam.
Exactly. That's why we built a swimming pool. Well actually, that took a while – none of the builders in Kabul had ever seen a swimming pool before, so when I tried to get it put in they literally just dug a hole and put some water in it. But I wanted to create an oasis.

In the TV series, everyone is drinking, shagging and taking drugs all the time – like they had to make the most of every night because it could be their last. Was it actually like that?
Whenever a new young couple would arrive in Kabul, we'd place bets on how long it would be before they broke up – 99 percent of them would. There's a constant, underlying tension when you live in a warzone. You never know what's going to happen from one day to the next. That really bears down on relationships. All the NGO workers were sleeping with each other, which was made even more complicated by the fact that they all lived in these dorm rooms. Finding somewhere to actually have sex was difficult. They worked together, lived together, partied together, slept together. It was intense – they needed the release.

How do you run a bar in a country where alcohol is banned?
My life became a constant struggle to get alcohol. It's easier to find drugs than alcohol in Afghanistan. When I first arrived, there were shops that sold alcohol to expats. But then they closed, so I had to go to the military bases to buy off the army. When they ran out I'd have to buy it on the black market, which would cost a fortune and you didn't really know what you were buying. Then I'd have to get it to the restaurant without being stopped by Afghan police. If they caught me, they'd take me to the station and I'd have to bribe them with money or booze. It was always a battle – nobody could leave my club drunk or they'd get arrested. And if an Afghan drank in my club and was caught, we'd be shut down.

How do you stop people leaving a club drunk?
With difficulty. The guy I sold the restaurant to after I left in 2008 actually ended up in prison. Sometimes, there would be periods when the Afghan forces would tighten up, just to prove that they were strong enough. They broke into the restaurant, confiscated the alcohol, and put him in jail for a few days. Karzai wanted to show muscle – that he was dictating the laws, not the foreigners.

Is that why you quit the restaurant?
Six years in Kabul wore me out. Up until 2006, the situation in Kabul wasn't bad for civilians and foreigners – all the fighting was between the military and the Taliban. But then the kidnapings and suicide bombings started. In 2008, there was an attack on the Serana hotel, a terrorist walked into the lobby with a suicide vest strapped to him and killed six people. It was a clear attack on foreigners in the city. I closed the restaurant for a month, and decided that I'd leave.

It must have been hard for you to protect your customers inside.
At the beginning it was OK. But as the years went by, and the situation between Afghans and foreigners got more tense, I needed more and more security. In the end we had six armed security guards, sandbags, numerous security doors, metal detectors. It became impossible to be safe. One incident in 2006 was a real turning point for me. A group of young US soldiers, who were apparently drunk, drove an army car through a traffic jam, causing a massive accident. A group of Afghans surrounded them, throwing stones. And the soldiers' reaction was to start shooting. There was a huge riot – and its aim was to kill all the foreigners in the city. I was out at the time in my van, buying booze for the restaurant. I was stopped by the police, with a van load of illegal alcohol. I called the restaurant. All the foreigners in the city had fled. It was chaos. All of our lives were in danger. Our neighbours saved the customers' lives – they put a ladder over the wall and hid them in their houses.

How was the restaurant seen in the local community? You had a bar and swimming pool with women in bikinis in a strictly Muslim country. Like anyone who runs a club or restaurant, I had to have a good relationship with my neighbours. I hired a lot of them and their families. I put a fence around the swimming pool so people couldn't look in. Although the neighbours' kids would make holes in it so they could peek in and check out the women.

Did you ever have any moral problems with profiting from a war?
When I arrived in 2002, I did not arrive to a country at war. The Taliban had fallen, Bin Laden had escaped. Countries have to start living again after conflict. Ninety percent of everything I made there stayed within the country. Some of the NGO types would tell me it was wrong to open a restaurant, you know, "We're here to help these people not drink and eat and party." I'd watch them arrive, say they would never come to L'Atmosphere, but 90 percent of them would end up there in the end once they got bored and needed a drink.

Is the club still open?
No. It stayed open for a while but it became impossible to keep the business going. In the end it got cemented over and turned into a parking lot.

Do you like being back in Paris?
Well with the terrorist attacks, I feel right at home... No, in seriousness, it's nice. It's ok. For now.

You sound like you're bored.
A bit. But you know, life is OK.

@jenny_stevens

• Kabul Kitchen series one box set is available now for free and on-demand exclusively at All4.com/WalterPresents

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Sure, why not, can't be worse than that other guy

You begin in control of Cockney gobshite Steve – fast, and always with a running commentary of his murderous exploits, but he can't reload on the move, and his little pistol doesn't pack that much of a punch. Next comes Cletus, a Scot with a shotgun who isn't quite so nimble but whose firearm of choice will see off any close-quarters enemy, and knock others off their feet. I might be imagining a difference in their speed – but the third character you unlock (based on BunnyLord's popularity), the very Welsh Samantha, definitely is a fast mover. There's also Jesus – not that Jesus – and Clive and Kimmy and more. They're all unique, and playing around with the game's roster will soon result in you finding mainstay favourites. While you begin with Steve, you might find yourself using him until you unlock the Latin lothario that is the fleet-footed Jesus – at least if you play anything like me.

And what's key is not to be reckless. The first few stages of Not a Hero can be taken hell for leather; but while there are often sub-quest-like rewards for hitting certain achievements in every scenario, which include speed-based challenges, you'll want to feel your way into each kill zone. I really wasn't fibbing when I told you it plays surprisingly like OlliOlli – and also the likes of Trials HD and Pumped BMX – where the kickflips and fakies can flow like liquid gold only after you've taken on a run at a more leisurely pace.

The launch trailer for 'Not a Hero', possibly the greatest launch trailer for any game, ever, probably

"Although it might not look like it, Not a Hero shares a similar rhythm to OlliOlli, in that once you have the 'flow' dialed, it really clicks," confirms Bennett. "Except that this time you're exploding baddies with insane weapons rather than landing a perfect 360 kickflip." In other words: don't be surprised when you die, and die, and die, in pursuit of an all-objectives-passed run of gory glory. "The game plays awesome on PS4," Bennett continues, "and it feels really at home on the console, especially with the DualShock 4 (controller)."

I can vouch for Not a Hero's PS4 suitability – Sony's contemporary system does feel as natural a home for the game as it was the comparably unsafe-for-minors Hotline Miami (which it definitely shares a little DNA with, not to mention a publisher in the shape of Devolver Digital). But there's a significant bump in the road it followed on its otherwise smooth translation from PC, namely the lack of a Vita version.

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A bunch of fictional video game people, sitting about, right before some murdering

"On the Vita version, it was an unfortunate 'technical issues' scenario that was kinda out of our hands," Bennett says. "That's just how things go sometimes, we just hope that Vita owners can understand. It's never through lack of trying, or anything evil or malicious. If it were up to us the game would be on every platform under the sun, but that is just not possible with a team of five."

And what that team of five does next is inevitably going to attract industry attention before it's got so far as anything playable – you don't win a BAFTA in a category against the likes of the latest FIFA and Forza games, as announced by Linford Christie, and then vanish into the night with nothing to follow it. Right now, exactly what that is hasn't been announced. But it might not be more Not a Hero – at least, not immediately.

"We do love BunnyLord, and the gang," Bennett concludes. "They are now family. There is nothing currently planned , but never say never."

Not a Hero is out now for PlayStation 4 and, obviously, PC. Fine Roll7 online here.

@MikeDiver

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Photo of Kim Kardashian by Juergen Teller. Photo of woman looking at Juergen Teller's photo of Kim Kardashian at the Paris Photo Fair by Miguel Medina

January 24, 2016. E! Channel. Season 11, episode 10, Keeping Up with the Kardashian's, America's Thunderdome for tinted moisturizers, scenes of mild domestic peril, and the maniacal pursuit of salad and delicate lighting.

Kris and Kim are standing near a doorway having a conversation about some Italian marble that has gone missing. Kris is dressed sort of like Charlie Chaplin. Kim is wearing a shiny gold choker that looks like it is made of fish bones. She is very pregnant. Her hair is perfect.

Kim: Can I tell you what's so annoying?

Kris: What???

Kim: You took my ten marble slabs. So I have to either buy seven slabs of marble or I have to change two of my bathrooms. I can't have my whole house be one marble, and then two rooms another marble.

Kris says she will replace it. Kim tells her that she won't be able to because the marble is not available in America. Kim offers her one million dollars if she can. "It's not Calacatta, it's Calacatta Gold; it's only from Italy." They stare at each other. There is lots of dismayed head shaking. Kim licks her lips so hard that she literally dies, like, for real. They leave the room.

I have seen every episode of this television show, most of them multiple times. I have seen its spin-offs, its double-episode wedding extravaganzas. Hours and hours of people in the back seat of a Rolls Royce, staring at their phones, contemplating Jean Royére armchairs or apologizing to someone. People having pretend-arguments about being disrespected, sipping iced coffees. People who pronounce consonant sounds with the deliberate care of someone filling in ScanTron bubbles. People who are possibly delusional and unreasonably particular about landscaping. People who have never done a good deed or known of a noble cause that they wouldn't first synchronize with the release of a fragrance.

Here are some Wikipedia episode descriptions for the first two seasons: "Kourtney deals with relationship drama"; "Bruce experiences a midlife crisis"; "Kourtney, Kim, and Khloé go to Mexico"; "Kim shoots a sexy calendar"; "Kim battles against Kourtney and Khloé after she purchases a Bentley." Replace the names of the boyfriends and this is still the thematic basis of the show, nine seasons later. It is television as fake home-movie. It is the fevered angst of the banal. Not your banal, sure, but the rhythms are the same. It is life as a reenactment of being alive. Your WiFi stops working. Tyga crashes their trip to St. Barths. What's the difference, when you think about it?

The family is inescapable. Sometimes it feels like their lives are on a loop, for all eternity, in supermarkets, at the Super Bowl. This bothers lots of people. It probably bothers your dad. They're pregnant again. They're married again. There are Kourtney's denials about Bieber, shiny-faced post-club entering-all-black-SUV-with-camo-jacketed-Bieber about Bieber , coy half-smile just-friends about Bieber. Kylie scribbles "KYLIE WAS HERE" on Kanye's album announcement. Khloé marries a basketball player. She dates a different one. The first one almost dies. They try to work it out. Kim makes the selfie famous. Kim's NFL running back ex-boyfriend starts dating a Kim doppelganger. Hillary Clinton and the spool of polyester she's wearing pose for a picture with Kim and Kris. Kendall is 19 feet tall. Caitlyn Jenner hijacked your newsfeed.

They're preposterous. But they are driving preposterous into the fucking red.

And yet, I want more. I want it all. In the realm of humans who exist as big, powerful, collagen-filled targets of your scorn, your famous-for-being-famous hot takes, they are without peer. They are invincible. They are hate-proof. They cannot be stopped. I love them, unabashedly, sincerely.

Are we tempted to ascribe weighty philosophical meanings to the most plastic shit in our time? Do we want to validate the days we've spent with pop culture ephemera? Yeah, OK, I think a little. They're preposterous. But they are driving preposterous into the fucking red. They are pulled over on the shoulder with smoke billowing out from under preposterous's hood. If you commit to something that shamelessly, if you slow-roll your Maybach through a mob of paparazzi and wrinkly white people and Facebook statuses who think you're What's Wrong with America and come out undented, I'll ride shotgun.

I love that they have stolen "vanity" and "arrogant" back from the type of people who like to wield those words to make covertly racist judgments about black quarterbacks, and have reformed them into something empowering. These are girls who are not only eager to be sexy for millions of people, but who are willing to be ugly in front of them too. Watch 15 minutes of their show; let the ruthlessly vivid high-def cross-examine their every imperfection.

We have seen them sick, pregnant, blotchy, with unevenly applied bronzer, with hangovers, pimples festering under their cheeks, lumpy pink mosquito bites on their shins. Kris talking about getting the varicose veins on her kneecap lazered. We've seen them in grim tabloid photos, who wore it better memes, plastic surgery debates, dissecting before-and-afters, do these lips look bigger than those lips, are her tits real could her ass be real. We've seen Kim terrified, pensive, nervous, begging for Ray J's cum, begging for Ray J to make her come, big pores, her swollen feet when she's pregnant.

Just because we get old doesn't mean we have to stop trying to fuck. Be hot forever. Make another million.

Kris lists off her plastic surgeries like someone flipping through stamped passport pages. Kylie is 18 and admitted to having artificial lip fillers. In Kim's book of selfies, Selfish, the middle 39 pages are all nudes. As a caption beneath one, she writes, "I wasn't intending to put these in the book but saw them online during the iCloud hack. I'm not mad at them. lol". There is no scandal when there's nothing to hide, nothing to hack when you've made your entire life accessible since before we even knew you existed.

For all its pregnancies, KUWTK never really tries to sell you on the idea of Motherhood: The Splendor of Human Life. It's in this business for loud, ridiculous aftermaths. "How I Got My Body Back's" , weight-loss updates, #squadgoals, # revengebod, "New Year New You." If we are not transforming, we're stagnating, they're telling us. Just because we get old doesn't mean we have to stop trying to fuck. Be hot forever. Make another million. Earlier this season, when Kourtney told Kim and Khloe that she hadn't been focusing on the development of her mobile app because she was busy with her kids, Kim said, "So what. Everyone in life has a baby and they work like ten jobs."

To paraphrase Alex Pappademas , this is either a terrible show and wonderful piece of art, or the reverse. I'm never quite sure.

Kim is a woman who rarely gives interviews, whose responses seem hardwired to either sell a product or a mood, who disseminates information only through pained looks on Sunday nights and renegade glances over the shoulder at her titanic ass. But, in a way, by acknowledging that she is beholden to society , their interpretation of her, likes as currency, followers as currency, she is being more honest than anyone else in the public sphere. To make a 448-page meditation on eyebrows, a show about closets and ignoring people, an Instagram populated with pictures of people taking a picture of you taking a picture of yourself, is to admit that you are fragile, desperate, real, ready to be consumed this way. Beloved and shredded in equal measure. A selfie is like playing a game of truth or dare and picking both. It is a confession and a provocation. An acknowledgement of both our frailty and our own colossal beauty. A sale and a retraction at once. Our need to be immense, flawless, important

Does this make them frauds? Fools? Conmen? I don't think so. Isn't that all of our lives? Gorgeous forever on the internet, exhausted and pale at the gas station. The diets we broadcast to the world, the miles we ran, our ambitions, trying to look heroic, rebellious, our petty grievances with society. What are any of us doing in front of mirrors? We are all telling these same lies, some of us just get to do it on television

I don't think it is the Kardashians' burning imperative to inspire. I don't think they have even the slightest desire to cohabit with terrestrial life forms, actually. But by accident they made it all right to feel like getting dressed could be a Rocky montage. They took "feeling yourself" from a shameful impulse rotting in the MySpace caverns and dignified it. If watching a Kylie Jenner lip liner tutorial makes some lonely and damaged person feel when she enters a room like she is Helen of Troy on molly, I hope Kylie runs for president. I hope Kylie names a selfie she took in a hotel bathroom as her running mate, and a screenshot of a 3 AM hey-you-up text from the dude who left her in high school as her chief of staff.

What is modesty, really, but society telling you to sit in time-out for feeling awesome?

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'Black-ish' creator Kenya Burris. Photo courtesy of ABC

When ABC's Black-ish first premiered in September 2014, it was the beginning of a much larger, pivotal turn for the current television landscape. The show about a black family living in a predominantly white neighborhood uses a familiar trope ("fish out of water") to address an otherwise unique experience (race relations in the United States). Along with the premiere of Fresh Off the Boat (based on VICE host Eddie Huang's memoir), Black-ish ushered in a somewhat new idea that a central non-white family could be marketable enough to justify a prime time slot on one of the nation's largest television networks.

Centering around the upper-middle-class couple Dre (played by Anthony Anderson) and Bow (Tracee Ellis Ross), Black-ish looks at three generations of blackness from the top-down. There's Pops, Dre's dad (Laurence Fishburne), who serves as an anchor to the black culture of yore, while Dre and Bow's kids often function as a more modern counterpoint to Pops's and Dre's old ways. That the show manages to pull off cutting social commentary while remaining one of the most consistently funny shows on prime-time TV is a testament to the strong vision behind it.

That vision would belong to Kenya Barris, the creator and showrunner for Black-ish, who recognizes how unique his show is in comparison to other family sitcoms. Barris hopped on the phone with VICE to explain how the show—in an earlier incarnation—could have been about a white family. He also discusses his cognitive dissonance with The Cosby Show and preaches about the importance of showing successful black people while showing the alternate realities of black life.

VICE: So, how did Black-ish get started?
Kenya Barris: I think this was my 19th pilot? A couple of them had gotten made in some form another, but this one was the first one that had a network's commitment. I had sold a version of this show probably four or five times. And I think what made the other versions different were a few things: One, the other versions did not have Laurence Fishburne and Anthony Anderson attached; and two, I don't think I was as honest in the other versions. Like when you're writing for a magazine, there's a certain swag that this magazine seems to have, and you may not even do it on purpose, but you know that this is a TIME piece or this is a Vanity Fair piece. So, inadvertently or not, you end up slanting your writing to the choir. So, when I would say, "Oh, this is a FOX pilot," or, "This is an NBC pilot," I did what I had to do. Whether it was taking a family and making them white or taking a version of my story and telling it from a different point of view. I tried to do what I thought was going to get the show picked up. And my biggest advice to anyone is: Never do that. Always tell the most honest version of your story, and from that, it's either going to happen or not.

What finally led to Black-ish as we know it on ABC?
Well, my wife is a doctor, and we had a decent life, financially. My kids were going to nice schools and had nannies. We weren't rich, but we were better off than I was growing up. And I looked around and I was like, "Who are these people?" It was the opposite of what I remembered growing up. And even going further, it was the opposite of what a little black kid would be like growing up. were a different version of a little black kid. I started feeling like, "Was I a bit of a relic?" I still had these kind of antiquated views of what black was, and I was fighting that with my children, and my wife—who's biracial, and her mom's a hypnotherapist, and her name's Rainbow, and her dad's this white guy. It's just this totally different thing, so I felt kind of like the outsider in my family.

Kenya Barris on set

So the show was based around this "outsider" black father—was it always going to be Anthony Anderson?
Short answer: yes. I wrote this with Anthony in mind. We had spoken. We knew we wanted to work together, we knew wanted to do something together. Anthony, in a lot of ways, is my brother from another mother. He's from Compton; I'm from Inglewood. We've both had similar experiences. You understand if you come from that situation and are sort of now in a predominantly white world, you're constantly going to feel like you're taking a hit. And that was Anthony and my story. Now, we both have kids who are in private school and are doing things totally differently. It was a lot of those stories that we shared, and we were like, "We have to do this together!"

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Let's talk about the politics of the show. How important do you think it is to show black people in high-powered careers?
Well, my parents were great parents, but they weren't doctors or lawyers. So when I watched The Cosby Show, I was like, "I wish my parents were doctors or lawyers! I want to be a doctor or a lawyer!" I love that aspirational viewpoint for kids—especially for little black kids in this day and age. We're having this time where the black middle class is expanding in a different kind of way. But the black middle class also still has a lot of holes in the "hood" because that's where they came from, or that's where their parents came from, and that's what they understand. So I really wanted to be honest and show a different viewpoint.

Speaking of careers, I remember reading a New Yorker piece claiming that Dre's career was changed from a TV writer to an advertising executive so that ABC could cut deals with advertisers.
Well, that is not true. The switch was made because the network and I didn't think that America would as easily identify with a television writer as it would with an ad executive—which we've seen since God knows how long. You know, . You're still often that fly in the buttermilk and you're often sort of asked to be the voice of your people. How many times has someone asked you, "Why do black people do...?" And you just want to be like, "You know what? I don't know!"

That's kind of touched upon in the first season when Dre is asked to be in charge of his company's "urban" division.
Yeah, and that was based around me. I've been on predominantly "white" shows before, and I had also been on predominantly "black" shows. I would complain that when I was on a white show they would only hire me because there was a black character or they needed a black voice. But then I would be mad if they went and hired a white dude in my position. It was that duality and I kind of felt like that's what Dre felt.

"As a creative, you have to be your truest form. You can't worry about fitting into whatever boxes people want to put you in."

Tell me about a day in the writers' room.
I think our room is mixed half and half. We have Jewish writers, and white writers, and Indian writers. We have a lot of women on our staff—I think we might have more women than men—which is important to me as well. For me, it was important to have a really mixed group of people because a lot of stories aren't just about being told from a black point of view; they're about the perception about how black things in life sort of resonate with everyone. At the same time, I also want to know how things that we sort of feel are unique to one culture really aren't—we're just people, and we all sort of share.

Do you ever believe that ABC has stepped in and encroached on your vision?
ABC as a network? Almost never. The thing that I did not know, however, is that S&P company—it's almost like a third party. They run their shop in a way that they don't answer to anyone. That's the battle, S&P.

We're doing an episode right now about what it's like the first time that you have to sit and talk to your kids about civil unrest. The kids are sitting at home, they see a crowd of people, and they're waiting for the verdict of an indictment—and Jack turns around and says, "Why are all these people so mad?" Then you have to sort of decide because the house gets divided. Does Bo let Dre and Pops's sort of ideology about who the cops are—what they were used to growing up—affect how she's going to explain to her children about what's going on? It's a very heavy episode. Of course we try to use a lot of comedy, but it's a hard topic.

Is it difficult to balance that humor with reality—particularly since the show is so indebted to race-based politics?
Yeah, it's the hardest part of the show. I'm a huge fan of Norman Lear's work, and I'll talk to him in a sort of a mentoring kind of way. I still think of this thing that he said: "It's hard enough to do 'my boss is coming over and my wife burnt the pot roast' anyway." That's hard comedy to do in itself. But then when you take out the mundane ideas and put in something like, "Oh yeah, somebody got shot by a cop!" in that mix it starts to become... whew, something else. But I kind of feel that if you start letting things like drive you, you might as well just do a poll of what episodes you air every week.

What does that have to do with the race-ness about it?
Well, we don't get these opportunities a lot. Anyone who has any sort of profile or reaches out to the masses in any kind of significant way, that's his or her responsibility. I hear people say, "I'm not a role model" all the time and it's like, "Well, of course you're not!" It doesn't mean that people aren't going to look at you as one though.

Honestly, that's why it hurt me so much to hear all of the stuff about The Cosby Show. Because, you know, that show had such an effect on me. It's hard when I hear people who want to take away the impact of that show because of the man. You know, my wife and I have arguments and go through hard times just like everyone else. But , if we're not together, does my show not matter anymore? If I get divorced, does my show not count?

Do you feel like that has happened to you—now that you're kind of a "name" because of the show?
Like, I'm going to a luncheon right now, and dude, I want to wear some fucking jeans and a T-shirt! Because honestly, I'm like, I don't give a fuck about what these white people think about the way I dress. But then again, I do. I think Du Bois said it best: We do live a duality. As I'm talking to you right now, I've gone from a Tom Ford suit to leather jeans. At the end of the day I tend to err on the side of representing the show. But at the same time, I'll go to pitch meetings and I'm always myself. And that's what I would give as a piece of advice. You know, as a creative, you have to be your truest form. You can't worry about fitting into whatever boxes people want to put you in. In this country, we've let perception become our reality. But it's not.

Follow Michael Cuby on Twitter.

Jian Ghomeshi leaves a Toronto courthouse with his lawyer Marie Henein (left) after the second day of his sexual assault trial. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

This article originally appeared on VICE Canada.

Even people who weren't legal experts could tell that Tuesday went poorly for the first witness in Jian Ghomeshi's sex assault trial.

By the end of her cross-examination, Ghomeshi's lawyer Marie Henein revealed that the witness, who has accused Ghomeshi of pulling her hair and later punching her in the head, contacted the former CBC host via email a year after the second alleged assault took place. This despite her repeatedly telling police, the court, and journalists that she'd made every effort to cut him out of her life.

"I didn't have any more dealings with him after that," she told police in sworn testimony heard in court, referring to the time period after Ghomeshi allegedly beat her in the head at his home in January 2003. She said she would turn off the radio or TV when he made appearances as they forced her to "relive the violence." That wasn't true according to the emails.

The emails Henein presented in court showed the witness contacted Ghomeshi in January 2004, asking him to get in touch with her, and again in June of that year, this time including a photo of herself in a bikini.

Henein accused the witness, whose name is under a publication ban, of lying under oath. The witness said she "didn't remember" sending the emails and later claimed she was using them to "bait" Ghomeshi.

"I wanted Jian to call me so I could ask him why he violently punched me in the head," she testified, noting that she was in a committed relationship at the time and no longer had any romantic interest in Ghomeshi.

It seemed like a bombshell revelation, one that came after Henein had highlighted discrepancies in the witness's testimony regarding the details surrounding the two assaults—the make and model of his car, whether she was wearing hair extensions, if they were kissing before or during the alleged hair pulling incident.

But was the defense's revelation really as damning as it seemed? And was the witness's statement that her memory came back in bits and pieces, plausible? VICE reached out to experts to put the trial so far into context.

Are the Inconsistencies Heard So Far Enough to Raise Reasonable Doubt?

Michael Spratt, an Ottawa-based criminal attorney, told VICE the witness's credibility and reliability have been seriously compromised by her testimony.

"With inconsistencies of that magnitude it demonstrated the witness is either not credible or is not telling the truth or that the witness's memory is flawed about major details," he said.

Allowances can be made for misremembering smaller details—like the exact sequence of events on the night the alleged assault took place, Spratt said, but the emails showed more than that.

"Either she has lied to the court about having contacted Mr. Ghomeshi," he said, "or it demonstrates her memory is not reliable when it comes to sending an email and intimate messages to the person whom she says months before or a year before had assaulted her in a very serious manner."

The defense will be able to argue that her memory on other points, such as the assault itself, are suspect.

The lead-up to this case has prompted much criticism of the justice system and its tendency to rip apart alleged victims on the witness stand, but Spratt argued the cross-examination in this case has been "completely fair."

"The witness has been cross-examined on inconsistent statements... To remove the ability to do that would be to cast aside our common-law traditions which go to fairness."

Those inconsistent statements will be looked at cumulatively, said Spratt. "If you put enough holes in the hull of the boat, eventually it will sink."

Trauma Victims Often Have Fragmented Memory

Throughout her testimony, the witness explained the variances in her statements to police, media, and the court by saying her memory didn't come back to her all at once.

"These are memories," she told Henein. "You remember certain pieces of them and as you sit with them you remember more of the peripheral parts."

Henein, at various points in her cross examination, suggested the witness had false memories or was flat-out lying.

But Barb MacQuarrie, community director at Western University's Center for Research & Education on Violence against Women & Children, told VICE it's entirely possible that the alleged victim did recall things in bits and pieces.

"The details around it, the time of day, the color of the car, what she was wearing, what he was wearing, they wouldn't be the kind of details that someone who has experienced trauma would hold on to," she said.

"The experience of trauma would be the memory that is most accurate."

It Wouldn't Be Abnormal for an Abuse Victim to Contact Her Abuser

Why would someone contact a man who had allegedly punched her in the head a year after the assault occurred?

That was more or less the question raised in court Tuesday by Ghomeshi's lawyer.

The witness said she wanted an explanation from Ghomeshi, to "bait" him into calling her.

We don't know if that's true, but, regardless of the motivation behind the emails, Macquarie told VICE a victim getting in touch with her attacker doesn't mean she wasn't attacked.

"Some women will immediately leave the situation and never go near it again. Many, many, many other women have a much harder time drawing that line between herself and the abusive person."

And abusers can be very charismatic and charming, as the witness stated Ghomeshi was in his initial interactions with her.

Bottom line, according to Macquarie, is the question itself is problematic.

"It should never be implied that the woman is inviting abuse because she's reaching out and showing interest in a relationship," Macquarie said.

The trial continues Thursday.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter for live tweets from the Ghomeshi trial.

Shirley Curry fan art. Image supplied

It is dusk. In front of you lies a steep path winding up towards a fortress in the clouds. The city is Solitude, capital of Skyrim, the setting for the popular fantasy roleplaying game The Elder Scrolls. It's a sort of parallel universe, but the strangest part is that your Skyrim guide also happens to be a 79-year-old grandmother.

If you're familiar with the labyrinthine subculture of online gaming then you might know who I'm talking about. For a woman who has lived through a world war, the invention of Pong, and the advent of the internet, Shirley Curry has managed to come out on top in a world unimaginably different to the one she grew up in. Known online as Gamer Grandma, she has won the hearts of 115,000 YouTube subscribers—double the population of the quaint Virginian town she calls home.

Shirley's love for gaming was sparked in the mid-90s when her son installed her first computer, along with a copy of seminal strategy game Civilization II. She obsessively worked her way through the entire franchise until Skyrim brought her addiction to a whole new level and introduced her to the world of YouTube gaming. Thanks to the charmingly named "Jacobthebro" who shared it on Reddit, Shirley's first gameplay video went viral in less than 24 hours. She woke up the next morning to an inbox flooded with 11,000 emails. "I just sat there and cried," she tells me over a crackly Skype connection. "I didn't know what to do with all of it."

As more and more YouTubers become household names, Shirley's story of stumbling into overnight fame by pursuing a niche hobby is rare. But fame has not come tax-free. Most of her waking hours are now spent recording gameplay, fielding emails, responding to comments, and keeping up to date with other YouTubers' content. It is an endless cycle, one that allows little time to indulge in her love of quilting or sci-fi novels, leaving her feeling "trapped" and "consumed."

Ironically enough, Shirley's YouTube fame has actually restricted the gaming she can enjoy to less than 30 minutes a day. "I wish I had time to play for hours like I used to, just for myself. Having to keep it to so many minutes ... is hard," she says wistfully. But being an eternal optimist who sees the silver lining in every iCloud, she seems largely unperturbed by just how much YouTube has altered her daily life.

Where most YouTube comment sections are characterized by their ability to reach new lows in petty slander, Shirley's videos are flooded with warm comments such as "Please adopt me... I'll bake you cookies." But even she is not without her haters. She alludes to trolls she's had to ban, many of whom accuse her of being a pre-pubescent prankster masquerading as a grandma.

As it stands, Shirley is the only older gamer on YouTube public about her identity, although she insists many more are lurking behind an avatar. "Older YouTubers should use their own pictures and put their age in their profile," she argues. "Then everybody would know there are lots of older people and it wouldn't be such a big deal." In her opinion, a refusal to hide and pretend older gamers don't exist is essential to fixing the online culture.

Shirley's DogHouse Systems gaming set up. Image supplied

Discourse around the lack of older voices online doesn't have to stop when we log off either. Change can and should begin IRL. Shirley makes the case that kids these days could take the initiative to bridge the generational gap by inviting older family members to game with them, even if it requires Estragon-esque patience. And does she follow her own advice? "No," she cackles. "But my grandkids think I'm cool."

Behind the celebrity facade, she is just another "noob" slaying pixelated dragons in her pajamas, and for Shirley this is enough. She is yet to cash a single check from her YouTube career, having only monetized her channel in early January. Instead, she seems content to simply keep on playing.

Shirley's diehard love for gaming left me ready to challenge my own grandmother to a round of Tekken, but beyond this what struck me most about our conversation was the idea that within the span of a few decades, older gamers won't be an invisible minority. They will be the norm.

Follow Xiaoran on Twitter.

With the Beta for Ubisoft's hyped-to-the-nines RPG-shooter-slash-MMO The Division now behind us, it's time to assess the strengths and weaknesses of this new Tom Clancy-branded game. Did our preview fill us with hope, or did we witness teething problems enough to park our hopes for it being an essential multiplayer experience? Read on, obviously.

The Dark Zone

Let's kick things off on a positive note. The success of the game is hardly assured by the Dark Zone, but it's easily its single brightest idea, and chance of standing out in the online shooter crowd. The Dark Zone is essentially The Division's take on a classic player-versus-player area. You pass through a brief safe zone, replete with vendor and ammo chest for any last-minute loadout switches, and you're straight into a scarier version of the game's world, where other human players can kill you before stealing your hard-earned kneepads.

There are PvE missions and AI enemies you can tackle in your squad of up to three other Division agents – you're part of the good guys, trying to restore order to New York City after a particularly virulent virus has cut down a healthy percentage of the population and basically turned the place to shit. You spread out or stick together, taking out rtvals and rifling through their gear for whatever's useful – but you don't get to keep that loot unless you reach an extraction zone and attach your stash to a helicopter hoist. Sounds simple, but activating an extraction commences a countdown that anyone in the vicinity can hear. And if you attack another player character, you become a glowing rogue agent with a timed bounty on your head, too. It's an enticing risk-reward scenario that puts a tense and hardcore spin on PvP/E. Danny Wadeson

New York's Not Exactly a Player-Friendly Setting

Look, I've been to Milton Keynes. A lot. You don't need to tell me that a grid-style road layout will induce even the most committed of insomniacs into blissful R.E.M. sleep. But as I walked around the small areas of New York available the beta, the environment became incredibly tiresome. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but in a post-apocalyptic world, having to go down a long street to make a two left turns to go down another long street seemed a bit silly. Why couldn't there have been some nice short cuts? Like a fire escape of a smashed-out ground floor of a shop, or an open apartment block that connects parallel avenues? Perhaps there will be greater game-world variety in the finished product – I expect there will be. But in the beta, it all felt a bit linear. Sean Cleaver

The Seamless Transitions Between Areas Are a Joy

It's true that the American grid system leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to traversal variety, but the one thing The Division's beta map managed with aplomb was that it just kept on going. More specifically, the game was pretty much completely seamless – I only encountered a loading screen when fast travelling or dying, and you've got to say "fair enough" in both cases. While that might not sound like much to the modern gamer, consider that this is – and will become even more of – a complex, massively multiplayer online shooter and it's pretty impressive. If the full game can add a little more ever-present danger, this seamlessness will help make it a gripping, "always-on" experience. DW

Article continues after the video below

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Tunnel-Vision Combat Makes for Tired Encounters

Linear is a term that cropped up in my mind a lot while playing the beta, both solo and in a team. Go to point A, shoot things in the way, and pick up loot. This could be because of the layout issues, but there doesn't really seem to be many ways to approach a combat encounter other than to stroll up to a few hoodlums, duck behind cover and proceed to light them up. The gunplay is great and challenging for a third-person cover shooter, but if you're used to Destiny's open areas, AI that actively flanks and dodges, and those all important X-factor abilities that add up to some truly grandstand moments, then The Division might fall short. I enjoyed the shooting and the grenade tossing, including the sticky bomb; but it did all feel rather rote. SC

It Puts the "Rocket-Propelled Grenade" in "RPG"

I'm a Destiny fan, and certainly agree that the gunplay on offer in The Division is more functional than thrilling, but its class/squad system actually makes perfect sense in a way I've been missing from console games. The RPG-lite system – comprised of flexible perks, passive talents and active skills – really lends itself to experimentation. In so many games, the RPG systems are self-fulfilling prophecies; but it really feels like success in The Division will necessitate a well-rounded team. A bit like Rainbow 6 Siege but without the twitchy tweens making a mockery of your (lack of) tactical nous. Hopefully. DW

On Motherboard: Six Questions About the Zika Virus, Answered

We Didn't Start the Fire

You don't really get a sense of the whole story from the beta, and I'm obviously not going to judge the game on that. What I am confused about, though, are hostages. Why are any hostages being taken? In a city being rapidly decimated by a viral outbreak, what purpose does it serve to take prisoners? Rob people? Sure. Kill, enslave, build a gang of followers, all of this is plausible. But these poor defenceless humans, waddling around this part of New York, are being captured for... what? I honestly can't tell you, because it makes no sense to me. Leverage? Leverage for what? Supplies? Medicine? There's a big ol' free space provided by whatever government is at work about half a kilometre down the way. I'm being flippant, of course, but while freeing hostages helps you get to grips with firefights in confined areas, it brings nothing to the overall experience, so far. SC

'The Division', Agent Journey Trailer

It Doesn't Actually Matter If the Story's Shit

Tom Clancy games have always been known for their totally accessible, gripping narratives, duh. I jest, of course. But The Division, even if its core plotline is a little hackneyed and its game world greyer than a wet weekend in Gears of War, could be saved by a wealth of emergent narratives, each personal to the player (or small sets of them). Even in our brief time together in the Dark Zone, we cooked up some minor-epic flash in the pans. From stalking a lone player and trolling him with near-miss sniper shots, to kicking off spiralling cycles of rogue-agent bloodbaths by the extraction zone, the water-cooler moments are going to be way more numerous, and important, to this game than any bullshit that's built into the "story proper". DW

If I'm Playing a Role, I Want to Feel Connected to It, and I'm Not so Far

Okay, I accept that. But just to jump back to the hostages – one of the reasons that it really grated on me is because I simply don't know what I'm doing in this universe. We mock Destiny for its shoddy opening moments – you're a reanimated guardian and, quelle surprise, also the only person who can save the universe (so long as you discount the other million or so reanimated guardians, controlled by players around the world) – at least it had a beginning. I know The Division's beta didn't include much in the way of story on purpose, but taking it as an RPG, which Ubisoft wants us to do, I didn't feel like I connected in any way to my on-screen character. It was an empty avatar, walking through New York, shooting guys who obviously looted every sporting goods store going in order to uniformly clothe themselves. I didn't feel any real agency. Just saying it's a Tom Clancy game, full of clichéd action-movie motifs and dialogue, and getting on with it is too great of a pass to give this game. As an RPG, I didn't feel like I belonged in its world, in any way shape or form. But I hope that's just a side effect of the beta's limited access.

Then there's the UI. I don't mean the always-on-screen box displaying your remaining ammo, cool-down periods, perks and so forth, which could easily be shrunk down – I'm talking about the main inventory. Initially it seems very well laid-out; but once you start modding guns, some clearer visuals regarding what gun it is you're fixing these new sights to would be useful. And isn't the text small? The text is small, isn't it? Just how close to our tellies do you expect us to sit, Ubisoft? SC

The Division is released for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 8th. More information at the game's official website.

@cleaverslips / @madquills

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Payday loan shop Speedy Cash in Brixton (Photo by Ewan Munro via)

From adverts plastered on beer mats to fluffy mascots roaming university campuses, payday loan lenders are certainly doing their best to appeal to the student market. And while it might be tempting to laugh off such barefaced branding tactics, it seems their efforts are, in fact, succeeding. According to a recent survey of 850 students carried out by The Student Room, one in ten had resorted to a payday loan to support themselves through university.

To make matters worse, the Conservatives' recent decision to scrap maintenance grants is likely to push students further into the pockets of payday lenders. Just last month, the Tories announced that they will replace grants with loans for half a million of England's poorest students.

Payday loans are financially risky, high-interest, short-term loans. They are billed as stopgaps until payday – or, in this case, student loan day – comes along. But if you miss repayments, charges can quickly clock up, and what starts as a minor amount of money can quickly snowball into a sizeable sum.

Rose*, 24, has first-hand experience of the perils of payday loans. While studying Media and Cultural Studies at London College of Communication, she found it difficult to support herself.

"I ran up £6,000 of debt over four years. The loans kept getting rolled over and kept increasing," she explains. "My husband was a student like me, and we were struggling for money. My parents kicked me out, so we had absolutely no way of getting any money. Student finance was either too delayed or not enough; it was either payday loans or literally starve."

Left with few options, Rose began to seek out payday lenders.

"I remember seeing Wonga adverts on TV. There were a lot at that time," she says. "It started with Wonga, but soon spiralled everywhere; Payday UK, Quid, Smart Pig and several smaller ones. You only pay interest, so the debt gets rolled over. We'd use the loans to pay for food and bills and other basics."

Despite the fact both Rose and her husband worked on and off throughout their degrees, they still struggled to support themselves, and the debt exerted serious stress on Rose's mental health. "It's something you push out of your mind, but towards the end I felt terrified because it was getting worse. It got really, really bad. I wasn't sleeping well. I was terrified of the bailiffs coming," she says. "It caused a lot of fights between me and my husband. At one point I really considered a divorce because I just wanted to escape."

READ ON NOISEY: John Cale's 21st Century: Music for a New Society, for a New Society

Every day Rose would receive numerous phone calls from various companies. "It got to a point where they were threatening and harassing,"she recalls. "They were persistent. They sent letters. There were a few times there were calls at night. I wasn't happy. I wasn't concentrating on university like I should have. I was concentrating on finding work to pay it off."

It wasn't until her husband's parents helped out that the couple managed to break free of the debt. "My in-laws have lent us the money to pay it off. We're paying them back monthly, but it's not so terrifying," says Rose. "But it's still haunting us. We came very close to declaring ourselves bankrupt. We have no chance of getting a mortgage for a long, long time. I got rejected opening a bank account."

Rose is not the only student to have struggled with loan sharks. In 2013, 21-year-old Swansea University student Courtney Mitchell Lewis killed himself after seeing a £100 debt soar to £800 in the space of just three months. His was a rare and tragic case, and it would be irresponsible to suggest the debt was the sole reason for his suicide, but equally the added stress can't have impacted positively on his mental health.

A student protesting the cost of accommodation (Photo by Christopher Bethell)

All of this leads us to the question of why students are turning to payday loans in the first place. In a nutshell, it's because they're skint. A combination of snowballing tuition fees and rising rents has meant that increasing numbers of students are now facing a cost of living crisis. And with the average tuition fees in England now "the highest in the world", it should come as no surprise that 50 percent of all undergraduate students regularly worry about meeting basic living expenses like rent and utility bills.

If this wasn't bad enough, one in ten students are using food banks to survive. Rising housing costs are a massive problem, too. After all, the average student rent amounts to 95 percent of the maintenance loan available, leaving a meagre 5 percent for everything else.

Shelly Asquith, the vice president at the National Union of Students, is well aware of the ever-intensifying problem of payday loans. "At different times of the year, payday loan companies particularly target students. They're clever – they know when the loans are about to run out at the end of term," she says.

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Of all the payday loan companies, Asquith is most wary of Smart Pig. "They try and package them up as 'student-friendly', but look behind the nice branding and it's just like Wonga or any other payday lender," she explains. "We need far more regulation on these companies."

Over the years, Smart Pig has become notorious for their cunningly "quirky" advertising tactics. From plugging loans on beer mats to fly-posting nightclubs with loan adverts, it's hardly surprising that they've come under fire from the Advertising Standards Agency.

Set up by two students in 2011, Smart Pig were supported by the government-funded Start-Up Loans scheme. Unlike the broke students they lend to – who have been known to be charged up to 1,089 percent APR – they had to pay a far more economical, subsidised interest rate of 6 percent for their start up.

Of course, it's hardly a secret that payday lenders aren't exactly the good guys. But deliberately preying on students' vulnerability during a cost of living crisis, when conventional student loans hardly cover food and shelter, seems like a step only the most morally bankrupt of companies could take.

*Rose's name has been changed to protect her identity.

@MayaOppenheim

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In this courtroom sketch, attorneys Monique Pressley, left, Brian McMonagle, right, and Christopher Taybeck, second right, listen along with their client Bill Cosby, during Cosby's court appearance Tuesday in Norristown, Pennsylvania. (Jane Rosenberg via AP)

The lone sexual assault case against disgraced comedian Bill Cosby might not even make it to trial.

At a hearing Tuesday morning, lawyers for the 78-year-old entertainer grilled the former prosecutor who declined to charge Cosby back in 2005. That's when Andrea Constand, a Canadian who was working for the basketball program at Temple University in Philadelphia, first accused Cosby of drugging and assaulting her at his suburban home in 2004. Former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. told a judge Tuesday that he effectively gave Cosby immunity from criminal charges back then in order to compel him to testify in a civil suit instead.

"I decided that we would not prosecute Mr. Cosby and that would set a chain of events that would get some justice for Andrea Constand," the former district attorney said, suggesting that getting her money was "the best he could do." The civil suit was settled in 2006.

The problem is that there doesn't seem to be any written record of any deal—which Castor has denied was a formal one—and the lawyer who represented Cosby at the time is now dead. For his part, Kevin Steel, the new Montgomery County prosecutor who replaced Castor after unseating him last fall, says he won't throw out the case—even if evidence of a deal emerges. The whole situation is kind of a mess, and depending on what Judge Steven T. O'Neill decides, Castor's recollection of the alleged agreement could get Cosby off from the only criminal rape case against him on a mere technicality.

What makes the whole thing even stickier is that it was the very same civil suit testimony Cosby gave that inspired the new criminal case a decade later. According to an affidavit, Constand said she was at the sitcom star's house in 2004 when he offered her three blue pills and some wine. Constand added that she remembered being led to a couch and fondled, and when she came to at about 4 AM, Cosby allegedly led her to the door and said, "Alright."

According to Castor, when Constand first filed a police report, there wasn't enough evidence to charge Cosby. He added on the stand Tuesday that Constand was not behaving like a sexual assault victim when she reported the alleged crime, because she went to a lawyer before going to police. "I came to the conclusion that there was no way that the case could ever improve and get better with time absent Mr. Cosby's confession," Castor told the court Tuesday. "Andrea Constand's own actions during that year ruined her credibility as a viable witness."

For what it's worth, Castor added that he thinks the alleged victim was, in fact, touched inappropriately by Cosby, but didn't believe he could prove it.

Of course, when the deposition in the 2005-06 civil suit was unsealed last summer, key parts of Constand's allegations were corroborated. For instance, Cosby openly admitted to giving Quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with, and the unsealing had an apparent domino effect, with dozens of women subsequently coming forward to say they had similar experiences where they allegedly got drugged and assaulted by the former sitcom star.

The public was so outraged by the revelations that the prosecution of Cosby quickly became politicized, adding a final wrinkle to the whole affair: Steel, the current prosecutor going after Cosby, promised to reopen the case if voters gave him Castor's job.

Cosby is charged with aggravated indecent assault, and faces up to ten years behind bars if the case goes to trial. The pre-trial hearing is expected to continue Wednesday.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

A teacher at a public high school in an impoverished neighborhood sits down in our chair and confesses things about her job while wearing a creepy mask.

(Photo via)

Often, if you put the word Euro in front of something, it will send people into a state of panic. Eurozone, Eurosceptic, Eurovision – what does it all mean? And now we have the European Union Deal. The deal is essentially a way for David Cameron to make changes to the UK's legal bindings with the EU, before the Brexit referendum is held later this year. Cameron is hoping that this will make it more likely for the British public to vote to stay with our pals in Brussels.

In November last year, the PM set out his demands and on Tuesday some of theses changes were approved by European council president, Donald Tusk, including an "emergency brake" on in-work benefits for EU migrants for up to four years, and the curbing of benefits such as tax credits for up to four years, in order to reduce immigration. However, these changes still need to be approved by European Parliament.

So, just over 3million EU-born people living in the UK are probably wondering what this could mean for them. Then there are the 1million or so UK citizens living all over the EU. Are they getting their benefits cut too? We asked immigration expert Marley Morris, who is a research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, to tell us more.

VICE: What are the benefits UK citizens receive when they live in an EU country?
Marley Morris: The benefits UK citizens receive in other EU countries depend on the national systems but there are some EU-wide laws – these are the laws that the new EU deal is mainly concerned with.

Under EU law, there is a distinction between two types of benefits. Firstly there are social assistance benefits, which are typically means-tested – they are concerned with raising you up to the minimum standard of living if you haven't got any support. Secondly, there are social security benefits that are typically contribution-based – you pay in through an insurance scheme and then get something out at some point.

Can you explain what "contribution-based" means?
With social security benefits, say you're a UK citizen and you go to work in Sweden or Germany or countries that have quite generous unemployment insurance systems. You can use the time you were working previously back in the UK or in any EU country in order to claim unemployment insurance. It can be quite generous – up to 60/70 percent of your salary; it depends on the country you arrive in.

Can EU migrants get those contribution-based benefits when they come to the UK?
The UK system is a bit different to other countries because it is less contributory. With the UK system, you don't get the same generous unemployment insurance that you might get in other EU countries. If you lose your job, you typically either get income-based job seekers' allowance or you get contribution-based job seekers' allowance, although this is changing with the introduction of universal credit contribution, and jobseekers' allowance is not paid at a particularly generous rate – it is not a percentage of your salary.

What about social-assisted benefits?
Unemployment assistance, including universal credit in the UK, is normally paid in other countries at a much less generous rate.

Unemployment assistance is a more contested benefit – they are now much easier to restrict. The European Court of Justice has recently said (in the Dano and Alimanovic rulings) that it is legal for EU member states to curb unemployment assistance benefits in some circumstance. The new universal credit in the UK is classified as a social assistance benefit, so it will be okay under EU law to restrict those benefits to some people who are not working, i.e. first-time job-seekers.

It's worth saying that some benefits can also be exported. For instance, in some cases, jobseekers going to other EU countries to look for work can export their former country's unemployment benefits for a certain period while looking for work.

What about in-work benefits? Are UK citizens eligible for in-work benefits in other EU countries?
Yes. This is the key issue in the discussions yesterday. I think the main thing in a way for me is that in-work benefits are not so significant in EU countries other than the UK and Ireland. In EU countries, they don't exist to such a degree. In the UK, we have in-work benefits and tax credits to top up wages.

Will curbing benefits actually reduce the flow of migrants?
No, I don't think it will have a big impact on the flow of migrants from the EU, for a number of reasons. First, the proposal itself is limited in scope – it is only used in particular emergency situations. It's unclear how easy it's going to be to pull this emergency brake on benefits, or whether other member states or the European Parliament will agree on this. Secondly, there is very little evidence to suggest that EU migrants are moving to the UK in order to claim these benefits. Obviously it's going to improve their wages, so it will have some kind of financial incentive, but it's not clear if it will really have an impact – the minimum wage is going up anyway.

So the idea that we need to stop EU migrants getting benefits is wrong?
I don't think it's unreasonable to want to have a benefits system where people contribute before they can claim benefits. But it is misleading to make the case that changing the system is actually going to reduce migration from the rest of the EU. Because there isn't any evidence to suggest that would happen.

In other EU countries, do UK citizens have to contribute before they can claim benefits?
It's hard to say because there are different systems. I don't think there is any strong evidence to show that UK nationals are losing out, especially in other EU countries or being treated more fairly or less fairly. Roughly speaking the rules apply across the EU. For instance, any country could apply to pull the emergency brake on restricting in-work benefits if they so wished. In that sense they are not unfair.

Do other EU countries have issues with the benefits claimed by migrants?
Typically speaking, the concerns of other countries have been about benefit tourism or exploitation of the welfare system, focusing on the benefits people get who are economically inactive, not on people who are working, which is why Cameron is coming up with so many issues. If he was focusing on unemployment benefits, he wouldn't have so much opposition.

As you said, in-work benefits provide a necessary top-up for people working in the UK.
Yes, I have a feeling that the response from the EU to the UK proposal might be, well, sort out your low minimum wage! This would sort out the UK problem whereby we have to top up our wages by tax credits and benefits.

Thanks!

@ameliadmz

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