Remember hot-boxing something for the first time? Maybe it was a shed, or a dog house, or your mate's Yaris immediately after he passed his driving test, literally minutes within the examiner shaking his hand and going, "Well done, lad – drive responsibly now," and you're there, being a dickhead in a suburban lay-by, trying to crumble some hash into an L-plate while beeping his horn; him in the driver seat, visibly shitting it, sweat pooling on top of his eyebrows every time anything that sounds remotely like sirens comes on the speakers.

It's fun, isn't it? That bit of your life. The bit where your biggest worry is paying back your friend the £14 they lent you for a Domino's. Where you're done with school and college and have a university place sorted, or are just starting to flirt with idea of entering the working world. Where it's not a stretch to say that, really, the most important thing you've got going is trying to up your rank on GTA V Online.

By his own admission, photographer Maxwell Granger is going through a bit of that right now. Stuck in a comfy "weird pre-university limbo" in a small northern town, his friends spend their days hanging out, skating, smoking weed and listening to music. He sent us over this little selection of portraits of some of them doing just that.

Darcelle at her Showcase. Photo courtesy Greg Pitts

This article originally appeared on VICE US

The first day that Walter Cole ever wore a dress, he entered the apartment of his friend Roxy Neuhardt, whose dining room table was covered in tubes and compacts. The year was 1967. Over the next two hours, Roxy artfully painted the cheeks of his 37-year-old companion, who was closeted with a wife and two kids at home.

The pair were preparing for a Halloween costume ball at the hotel where Roxy worked as a dancer. Roxy had convinced Walter to go in drag, inviting him over before the party to put finishing touches on his debut ensemble, and as he dabbed sponges and brushed over the fine lines of his friend's young wrinkles, he had no idea how fully Walter would come to embrace drag.

Before long, Walter would be standing uninhibited on bar tables as a glittering, fully realized drag queen. And by no stretch would he have imagined that four decades on, at 85 years old, Walter would still regularly grace the stage as the oldest female impersonator in the country, or that their budding love affair would last more than 45 years, and that together they'd operate what's now considered the longest-running drag revue in the country.

In fact, it's likely that none of Walter's friends could have envisioned he'd soon become the outspoken, over-the-top character known as Darcelle XV.

"Darcelle is glitz, glamor, and comedy—overdressed, over-jeweled, and with hair way bigger than it should be," Walter tells VICE. She's a diva he's honed onstage for nearly as long as the gay liberation movement has existed.

Walter and Roxy invented the identity of Darcelle together, naming her after the B-list French actress and stripper Denise Darcel. But the character's primary inspiration emerged from Gracie Hansen, a Pacific Northwest burlesque legend. Bedecked with rhinestones and a busty standout alongside shapely showgirls, Gracie would greet her audiences with brash theatrics, yelling, "Hiya, suckers!"

Hansen would later go on to run for governor of Oregon in 1970, on the platform that she was "the best politician money can buy." She ended up placing third in the democratic primary.

Darcelle with her cast. Photo courtesy Greg Pitts

Hansen was also the inspiration for Darcelle's comedic swagger—it certainly didn't emerge from his timid offstage personality. "Darcelle is completely different from Walter," he says. "Darcelle can do anything—and she gets away with it. Walter's hesitant. But when you're overpowering onstage, you can say just about anything you want."

In time, distinctions between Darcelle and the man beneath the makeup would blur. Nearly everyone in Portland soon came to know him simply as Darcelle, and over the years, he emerged as a key ambassador for Portland's LGBTQ community. From the same stage in the same club Walter has operated for over four decades, he's witnessed firsthand the story of queer America, from the Stonewall riots to the AIDS epidemic to marriage equality today.

The same year he first wore a dress, Walter purchased his then-rundown bar in Portland's dilapidated Old Town/Chinatown neighborhood. He'd operated several businesses previously, including Portland's first coffeehouse and a basement jazz club. But those ventures soon fell victim to urban renewal, and he was forced to move to what was then the city's skid row.

Before it became the Darcelle XV Showplace, as it's known today, the bar catered to lesbians. While 1960s Portland boasted several gay bars and bathhouses, lesbians had only the Old Town/Chinatown neighborhood to call their own. At first, it was a part of town Walter's friends were unwilling to hang out in.

Darcelle and friends. Photo courtesy Greg Pitts

Its stage was a four-by-seven-foot banquet table, and that's where Walter began hosting shows. He'd sew dresses and make hats by day while Roxy choreographed the night's entertainment. With homosexuality still widely considered a mental illness and LGBT harassment the status quo, Walter and the club's other performers knew the risks of openly performing drag.

"When we started, we didn't even walk outside in drag. This was our safe zone," he says. "That was about the time Stonewall was happening. We just didn't chance it."

Darcelle's personal brand of activism soon came in the form of sequins, makeup, and hair. She volunteered countless hours throughout the years for thousands of charitable events, using her status as the grand dame of Portland drag to support causes important to the community. And during the height of the epidemic, the club was available free of charge to any fundraiser for HIV/AIDS.

By celebrating all things glamorous and queer, she encouraged generations of misfits to love themselves with pride. And while Darcelle's wiseass quips haven't ceased, the audience has changed dramatically since the late 60s.

"It was almost more fun when it was, 'Oh, look, drag!' It was an intrigue," Walter says. "It's still exciting and people love it, but now it's no longer an intrigue."

A different kind of crowd now flocks to Darcelle's Showplace. "Some of these people come from different backgrounds," says Walter. "Perhaps they're religious, and they come in and think we jack off onstage—pardon me, masturbate onstage—and that we have two heads because we're queer. But we don't give that kind of show. Our show is geared toward everyone."

Darcelle on stage. Photo courtesy Greg Pitts

Drag stage performances have changed over the years as well. Drag queens no longer simply imitate women; today's characters are complex riffs on drag icons that have come before. In that sense, Darcelle has almost single-handedly paved the way for generations of Portland performers.

"Darcelle made drag as it stands possible to all who followed," says Kevin Cook, better known as his drag persona Poison Waters, who has performed at Darcelle's for more than 25 years. "There will always be new queens and new styles, but classic drag like Darcelle's has and always will stand the test of time."

Photo courtesy Greg Pitts

Even empresses get the jitters, and Walter still gets nervous before he performs. "I stand backstage before I go on with butterflies," he says. "Audiences are different; you just never know."

But there's one thing he's sure of: "There's no such thing as a bad night for Darcelle. There's only a bad night for the audience." After 85 years, chances are he's caught on to something.

Follow Jon Shadel on Twitter.

Images courtesy of Hello Games

This is it. Following three years of waiting and a last-minute delay, one of the most anticipated video games ever, No Man's Sky, is out in just a few days. It's no exaggeration to place it up there with gaming's most wanted of all time – just peruse the relevant Reddits and website message boards for all the necessary evidence.

But it's not just hardcore gamers who are slavering over the prospect of finally blasting off into the game's procedurally generated space, in search of discovery and adventure on a scale that this medium has rarely delivered. The scientific community has its fans, too, as I found out by speaking to former NASA consultant and aviation specialist, Justin Julian. (Disclosure, at this point, as Justin is someone I've known for a while, but that doesn't make him any the less Dude Who Worked at NASA.)

As Julian sees it, No Man's Sky could do more than simply entertain – if it proves as popular as its developers/publishers, Hello Games, are hoping for, it could be a crucial next step for progressing our very real reaching out towards the stars.

"It doesn't matter what the medium is, all it takes is one person seeing it and getting interested enough to ignite that spark, and then we've got our next big breakthrough," he tells me. "This game could push someone where we need them, to advance our species."

These days, Julian is an airport manager for Anderson County Airport in South Carolina, but his time with NASA taught him that the future is always in the hands of those we teach. "Every day I passed these words on the way to my desk, 'To Inspire The Next Generation'. I really think this game has the potential to do that."

NASA has been struggling over the last few decades with funding cuts and a public shift from seeing space travel as something exciting, if not absolutely necessary. But that hasn't killed the spirits of those who firmly believe in humankind having a future somewhere other than Earth. For Julian, a game like this could be both fun and just what school-level sciences need to educate and spread interest in a way that could be conducive to NASA's goals.

"As a gamer myself, investment values are high. It looks like you get out of No Man's Sky what you put into it. And as a specialist, we're teaching people how to problem solve and how to manage resources, so it's the best of both worlds."

No Man's Sky has touted its procedurally generated universe as the largest and most expansive in gaming history, beyond Elite Dangerous and other space sims. It's so large that they had to build in-game bots to explore the whole thing. This scaled representation of our unknown universe is key to what Julian believes is important for teaching players about the real thing.

"A great part of this game is sharing resources with other players. Getting things to other people that they don't have in their native systems is so important to understanding the vastness of the universe, the scale of it. When we start looking at other places in real life we may find new resources that can substitute and be better than our own, and that's essential for our survival and growth."

"Having the ability to think outside the box is the most important thing we can teach anyone."

He has praise for the game's willingness to be a different kind of fun, one that's not all guns and action. "It's not just all about storyline, or really a scripted game at all, from what's been shown. It's an experience, and it evolves just like the real thing. You have to use critical thinking and there are no obvious big bosses or documented strategies to guarantee 'winning'. And having the ability to think outside the box is the most important thing we can teach anyone."

In No Man's Sky the player assumes the role of an explorer, and embarks on a mission of discovery in their very own spaceship, initially alone in the bleakness of the vacuum. In the game, you may be safe as a solo pilot, but Julian has concerns when it comes to astronauts really heading beyond our atmosphere alone.

'No Man's Sky', "EXPLORE" trailer

"My biggest concern there is that people are human. People make mistakes. That could be the pilot, the mechanic, even the manufacturer of the aircraft. You like to think that there's control and foresight there to mitigate hazards, but sometimes things happen. In aviation, we see bird strikes, foreign objects interfering with planes, weather concerns, you name it." When asked how difficult it would be to coordinate with millions of ships in space, like the stations will do in No Man's Sky, Julian laughs and sarcastically replies: "Oh, fun."

"Space is a dangerous environment," he continues, "so you're going to be dealing with problems every second of every day. Keeping everything running is going to be tough, too. Go to Flightaware.com and type in Atlanta and you'll see all the aircraft going in and out of Georgia. What we're looking at in No Man's Sky is way more complex than that, and that's crazy to think about in handling terms. We'll have satellites, debris, and who knows what else floating around up there that could cause problems, too."

New, on Motherboard: How the World Falls Apart

He goes on to explain where our current technological capabilities are in comparison to what we're seeing in the game. "Y'know, we're actually so close to it. There are way too many variables to know fully what deep space travel will be like, but NASA currently plans to put people on Mars. That's the next step, and there is an honest strive for it, with the same passion that was there when we put a man on the Moon."

Like Julian, many players are captivated by the wonder and scope of No Man's Sky's possibilities, but ultimately its success will come down to its reception amongst an already substantial fanbase. "I hope it engages the players' imaginations and I hope it engages mine as well," says Julian. "I want people to play this game and then think about flight school or taking astronomy classes. Then maybe they'll go even further than we can think of going now. This game really could give us the next big innovator."

No Man's Sky is released for PC and PlayStation 4 on August the 9th in the US, and the next day in Europe. Find more information at the game's official website.

@rat_fox

Read more video game articles on VICE here, and follow VICE Gaming on Twitter at @VICEGaming.

This article originally appeared on VICE US

In a bombshell piece of investigative journalism by Associated Press reporter Jeff Donn, Americans learned on Tuesday that more than a century's worth of admonitions from dentists about how important it is to grind strands of filament into your gums a couple times a day until you bleed might just be bullshit.

Donn pressed the American Dental Association (ADA) to explain its conclusion that "Flossing is an essential part of taking care of your teeth and gums." He also tried to find the federal government's scientific basis for putting flossing in the list of dietary guidelines proffered by the Department of Health and Human Services every five years since 1979. It turned out there was practically no hard science involved in either one.

The ADA's representative, "acknowledged weak evidence, but he blamed research participants who didn't floss correctly," writes Donn. The federal government, meanwhile, removed the guideline after Donn inquired, and when he asked for an explanation, the Fed "acknowledged the effectiveness of flossing had never been researched, as required."

So is flossing a waste of time?

According to Los Angeles dentist Alessandra Raschkovsky, the Fed's removal of its flossing recommendation was dead wrong. "I can't understand why they did that," Raschkovsky told VICE. Raschkovsky said she'd observed cases in which flossing made no difference."Some people are lucky. They have good genes, so they don't floss. But the majority needs to."

But the AP isn't the only entity to question the flossing doctrine. A 2011 piece of meta-analysis published by The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews also investigated flossing's efficacy by compiling data from 12 different trials. In the end, that team found "weak, very unreliable evidence from 10 studies that flossing plus toothbrushing may be associated with a small reduction in plaque at 1 and 3 months."

When pressed for proof of flossing's efficacy, floss manufacturers Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson both made questionable scientific claims, according to the AP. Johnson & Johnson simply claimed flossing fights plaque without backing it up at all, and the study Procter & Gamble used to defend itself had already been debunked by Cochrane's 2011 report.

But if that leaves you ready to repurpose your dental floss into a popcorn necklace or a prison garrote, you may want to keep shoving it in between your teeth for a couple reasons.

The Cochrane study may have dismissed most claims about dental floss regarding tooth decay, but it also adds that, "the review showed that people who brush and floss regularly have less gum bleeding compared to toothbrushing alone." So if you don't like your gums to bleed, you might still want to make flossing a priority.

Raschkovsky told VICE she has personally observed a reduction in gum bleeding in patients who began a new flossing regimen. But the real difference, she said, came from the measurements of patients' unhealthily wide "gum pockets"—an indicator of gum disease.

"I've seen people with six millimeter pockets reduced to three—a big improvement," Raschkovsky said, adding, "and that was in people who had always brushed before, and then started flossing."

But Raschkovsky said that for the seriously floss-phobic, tools other than floss can produce a similar effect to classic flossing. "I have patients that refuse to floss," Rashkovsky said."They start using a Waterpik, and it's a tremendous difference."

And Water Pik, Inc.—the makers of Waterpik, a brand-name water-flossing tool—stands to benefit if Americans ditch their string. They've already been on the war path against regular floss since at least last September. In celebration of their product being added to ADA's page on healthy habits for people under 40, Water Pick, Inc. crowed that Americans should buy their device instead of floss. "here is no evidence to support recommending string floss, with the possible exception to those who have perfectly healthy gums and can master string flossing at a very high level (and that's a very small group)," their advertisement claimed.

Still, despite the change in the federal guidelines, Raschkovsky plans to keep giving patients that classic dentist's bargain: floss or face a reprimand at your next visit. "Some people lie," she said, claiming that she can spot the difference between a flosser and a non-flosser.

But, she joked, "the gums don't lie."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US

It's not hard to hate Donald Trump. He's loud, he lies all the time, he's casually bigoted and prone to attacking people of color—he's like that fictional "racist uncle" trope trotted out for articles about surviving Thanksgiving, only breathtakingly real in his angry orangeness. Dislike for Trump cuts across many lines, but one group of voters he's doing particularly bad with are young people—even young Republicans.

A survey by Public Policy Polling released last week shows the depth and breadth of Trump's millennial problem. That poll showed Hillary Clinton leading Trump by 5 points among respondents overall—but that gap grew to 15 points—45 percent to 30 percent—among voters under age 30, with 35 percent of that group still undecided or opting for a third-party candidate.

The results echo those of a poll on millennial attitudes released by Harvard's Institute of Politics this spring, in which just over half of young Republican respondents—57 percent—said they planned to vote for Trump, compared to a full 83 percent of young Democrats who said they planned to vote for Clinton. More damningly, for Trump, the survey found that the Republican nominee is so toxic among 20-somethings that more than one in ten of those who identify with his own party admit that they would cast a ballot for an Establishment Democrat than Trump.

You could blame this trend partly on the banner Trump is running under. For years, Republicans have catered to a base of older, conservative white voters, while mostly ignoring millennials; in 2012, Mitt Romney got just 30 percent of the under-30 vote. But that was against Barack Obama, whose powerful speeches about the American Dream and general with-it-ness were political aphrodisiacs for younger voters. In 2000, George W. Bush split the youth vote with Democratic candidate Al Gore, your dad's most boring friend, and Ronald Reagan was actually pretty beloved by younger voters. The GOP isn't inherently unhip; it's just refused to modify its positions as the younger generation—which tends to be racially diverse, tolerant of homosexuality, down to smoke some weed—has come of age.

Jack and David Cahn are a set of precocious millennial twins writing a book about their generation. They told VICE that some Republican policies, like gun rights and charter schools, are attractive to millennials, but that Trump has gotten in the way of the party's ability to attract younger voters.

"On the one hand, the GOP continues to brands itself as the party of climate deniers, immigrant haters, and gay bashers. That's not helping them win millennial votes," David said. "On the other hand, Donald Trump is the ultimate anathema, not only to centrist millennials, but also to Republicans. The three core millennial values are optimism, tolerance, and authenticity. Trump's attacks on Mexicans and Muslims, mocking of disabled people, and refusal to denounce the KKK violate these values to the extreme."

Clinton doesn't have Obama's gift for uplifting rhetoric, and many young people aren't particularly drawn to her: The same Harvard study found that Bernie Sanders was the only candidate from either party to earn a positive net rating among under-30s. The leadership of the Democratic Party is old and getting older. So 2016 seems like it could have been a chance for the GOP to bring millennials into the fold. Instead, it nominated a man that two-thirds of voters under 30 believe he's a racist.

A Time magazine article about young people at the Republican National Convention claimed that most millennials in attendance weren't Trump voters; in fact, many were, like other Republicans, openly wondering if they could support a man who says such noxious things publicly. That lines up with exit polling from the GOP primaries, which found that on Super Tuesday at least, millennials were the least likely Republican cohort to vote for Trump.

"Younger conservatives are libertarian-leaning," Cliff Maloney, the executive director of the conservative group Young Americans for Liberty, told VICE. These young Republicans "not only want the government's hands out of their wallets, they want the government out of their bedrooms as well."

Maloney said that "pro-liberty" young people who backed Ron Paul in 2012 tend to support politicians like Ron's son Rand, a Kentucky senator, and other Paul acolytes like Reps. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, and Justin Amash, of Michigan, both of whom have adopted libertarian-leaning stances during their terms in Congress.

"When Republicans embrace technology and innovation, support free speech, advocate for a sober foreign policy, and real criminal justice reform—they win," Maloney said. "Those topics are important to young people, and when Republicans abandon them, they lose any shot at youth support."

Trump, who is now running as the "law and order" candidate, has said he wants to make it easier to sue newspaper for libel, talks openly about torturing suspected terrorists, and has feuded with some of the tech sector's most prominent leaders. In other words, the problem isn't that Trump has lost young undecided voters and young people of color—it's that he risks losing even young Republicans.

In May, after it became clear Trump would be the Republican nominee, Katrina Elaine Jorgensen, the communications chair for the Young Republicans National Federation, resigned her post in protest. "I cannot live with being seen as supporting a candidate I truly feels tramples on all of our values," she wrote on Facebook.

She might be one of the most vocal young Republican #NeverTrump-ers, but she's not alone.

"Unfortunately, a Trump loss in 2016 is unlikely to push the GOP to adopt more millennial-friendly platforms on issues from weed to immigration and the environment," said David Cahn. "Republicans will use Trump as an excuse for the party's loss, instead of recognizing that Trump is only part of the greater problem, which is that GOP is out of touch with the beliefs of the next generation."

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

Here we are, friends. The end. The final curtain. We stand on the edge of history's canyon and we gaze forward into the sparkling night's sky of the future, marvelling at its limitless possibilities. But to build new things, to make room for progression, we must say goodbye to the old, that which has gathered dust, so it can be sold from the car boot of life to a strange man in a strange coat.

Yes, it's time to bid farewell to YouTube Channel of the Week, my regular opportunity to let you, the readers, in on the secrets of the world's greatest website. Well, some were secret, others had millions of followers, but a lot of them were secret, I swear!

What has this 30-week adventure into the deep belly of the internet's most precious cultural lightning rod taught us? Where have we gone? What have we learned? Who have we met over the course of this phantasmagorical 720p HD journey? Let's have a cute little retrospective before we kill this thing for good.

A week later saw us visit Ted Barrus, who has seemingly let his chilli eating fall by the wayside in favour of a new channel in which he just smokes a lot of weed and puts a lot of effects on his videos. Though it isn't quite the content progression I was personally hoping for, he seems a lot happier now that he has the herb in his life and isn't regularly attacking his own person with spicy meat, which can only be a good thing.

Young Brittany Venti is also a glutton for punishment. The reverse troll character would pretend to cry on Twitch streams to provoke the ire of women-hating mouth-breathers, but all that abuse ran off her like water from a duck's back. Twitch re-uploads have been important to YouTube's gaming community, from the speedrunning crew accruing millions in donations to their events, to editor extraordinaire CrowbCat who exposes the strangeness of an industry built to sell to adults who act like children.

On the calmer, yet still irritating, end of the bloke-rage spectrum sat Pat Condell, a decidedly creepy orator who espouses hatred for the "progressives" in this world, demanding his right to be upset at Islam as the sound of his dry, old man mouth acts as a horrifyingly potent dog whistle to your unsuspecting ears.

We've had food, we've had food challenges, we've had other types of challenges, we've had angry vegans, we've had rollercoasters and compilations, violence and death, sadness and death, nerds, zits, cigars, the whole shebang. We've even had a couple of reaction videos, which really makes it all worth it. Mostly, though, it's just been nice to find new ways in which people manage to be really fucking weird. The bizarre things they do exposed wholly of their own volition, their oddities and interests laid bare for the world to see.

Vloggers are the the least interesting part about YouTube culture by a long shot – they're a shit byproduct of a system that rewards endless content production without a great deal of quality control. But the rest of the people on there, the ones who aren't as photogenic or don't want to talk about their hauls from various normal shops, are able to be the small celebrities they never dreamed of being, to a curated audience of people who actually care. What a beautiful thing that is.

@joe_bish

To see the entire complete back catalogue box set of YouTube Channel of the Week, click here.

People withdrawing money in the centre of Athens, while a homeless man is sleeping right next to them – the photo was taken in the early hours of the 27th of June, 2015, just after Alexis Tsipras announced a referendum on new bailout conditions. Photo by Panagiotis Maidis.

This article originally appeared on VICE Greece

Last week a report was published showing that thanks to the economic crisis, British wages have plummeted harder than in any other developed country. Apart from Greece, of course – when it comes to bad financial news, the Southern European country is usually first in line. According to the new report, salaries of British people have dropped more than 10 percent, since 2007.

In Greece, which is located at the bottom of that wage list, things are a bit more grim in terms of our standard of living: 65 percent of Greek citizens have made cuts in their basic food needs, 74 percent are late in paying basic bills, 27 percent have had to abandon the home they lived in, two-thirds can't buy the medication they need and 40 percent of the population doesn't have direct access to telephone and internet lines. In a country facing such problems, thinking about what to do for fun is not a priority – which is why 90 percent of Greeks cut recreational activities.

But whatever the financial troubles you're in, the world will keep turning. People will always want to see their friends, fall in love and go on dates – no matter how bleak the measures politicians keep taking are. I went to Syntagma Square in the centre of Athens to ask a few locals for tips on what to do for fun on a shoestring budget. As it turns out a lot of it involves being outside, so you'd better invest in a decent raincoat, Britain.

Μaria, 20, architecture student

"I have no money to go out, so what I like to do when it starts to get dark is take walks through the streets of Athens. I look at the architecture and I pay attention to the people strolling around. Before, no one went for walks in Athens. People only went to bars.

When I go out with friends we go to a bar for a beer. It's the cheapest option, but I won't spend very much. When we get together at a friend's house, we watch movies, play a game or buy alcohol to drink in our balcony.

We used to go on dates to bars or cafes. When you have no money for that, you can still meet someone at home and walk to a nice place. When I go to a bar or restaurant on a date, I don't expect my date to pay for it. The point is to get out of the house – not having any money is no excuse for not going out. You can try to find free concerts, for example. There's always something going out in the city. And there must be more to do in London than in Athens."

Lefteris with his girlfriend. We spotted them in the city centre playing Pokemon Go.

Lefteris, 26, owns an online business

"Like everyone, I've made a lot less money in recent years. Before, we would go out three times a week but now it's just once. Usually, we look for the cheapest way to have fun – we wander around in the city centre, for example. We've found all these beautiful places where we like to sit when we don't want to stay inside. A lot of online games don't cost any money either, and they're a lot of fun."

Iris, 24, fitness instructor

"With a crisis like this, it's not just your own income that drops but the same goes for all of your friends. Still, there are many ways to have fun if you have no money – as long as you have the right company, you can find cheap solutions. You can look for online offers for things you want to buy or do, and always use your student pass if you're a student. That can get you into the cinema for free here, for example.

Often, my friends and I meet at someone's place – one friend cooks, the others bring the booze. We do the same with summer holidays. A friend of mine has a house on an island so we'll go there for the summer to save money. We lend each other money, too. If one of my friends has five euros left, we'll chip in so we can all go out together. In a week we might go out one or two times and spend 20 euros (£17) as a group.

If you are looking to go on a cheap date you could take some beers to the beach, or somewhere else with a nice view. You don't need to spend a lot of money to have a good time with a person you like."

Gregory, 21, painter and 3D Animator

"If I had more money, of course I'd like to go out more. These days, I might spend 20 euros on going out the entire month, and go for coffee three or four times. You just have to cut back on doing fun things that cost money. Before the crisis I might have taken a girl bowling but I can't do that anymore. You just have to be creative, imaginative and spontaneous – and keep an eye out for free parties.

There are a lot of places in Greece that are great to hang out on a budget. Like the Acropolis – you just take your drinks, take your girl and go. I bet there are cultural places you can get in for free in the UK. Or you can hang out at home. There might be some girls who think that's not good enough for them, but it's better not to get involved with those types anyway."

Petros, 22, engineering Student

"You can get together to play board games at a friend's place and hardly spend any money at all. You can really start exploring the city – since the crisis, we've found all these shops that are much cheaper, and bars where a cocktail doesn't cost 10 euros (£8.40), but much less. My friends and I love hanging out in the parks, too.

That's really the only way we can go out – we wouldn't have the option otherwise. I think the girls I date have stopped expecting me to pay. The most I'll spend on personal expenses is 150 euros (£126) a month. Really, the only thing that can save you in a financial and political crisis like this are friends. If you're penniless and don't have good company, you're screwed."

More on VICE:

We Asked People from Unstable European Countries For Advice on How to Deal with Our Political Mess

We Asked an Expert if Britain Could Ever Collapse Economically Like Greece

Social Instability Is Driving Greeks Insane

All photos courtesy of CJ Clarke, taken from his book Magic Party Place, which you can buy here.

Though not as new as the archetypal New City, Milton Keynes, Basildon was also created to cope with the capital's overspill. In recent times the Essex town has become something of a lightning rod for the UK's political leanings. The "Basildon man" – a tabloid creation from the Thatcher era – is a supposed embodiment of the average Brit, the opinions they hold and the way they feel about culture, politics and identity.

Photojournalist CJ Clarke's new book Magic Party Place is a decade-long exploration of Basildon, his hometown. I sat down with him to discuss insularity, British – or, rather, English – identity, and the gulf between the reality and fiction of a romanticised past.

VICE: So why Basildon, of all places?
CJ Clarke: Basildon is where I grew up, so it was obviously something that I knew very well. I was kind of aware of the media stereotype about the "Basildon man", as a kind of middle ground, middle Englander, and to win the heart and mind of the Basildon man is to win the elections. There was an awareness of this averageness and how Basildon was a symbol of averageness, or the average English mentality. When I was 22 and I was studying photography and I needed to find a story, I was thinking about doing a story in the Middle East, and like many people I was by the war in Iraq and things like that.

You become a photojournalist and try to find out about that region and Britain's role in that region. Then I had a chance meeting with a great photojournalist who'd done a lot of work in that region – a guy called Judah Passow. We were just generally chatting and I raised Basildon, and he said it was a great story. That gave me the impetus to do it. The point was to try and provide a document of contemporary England through intimately documenting one place, which happened to be one of the most average in the country.

Throughout the book there are news story headlines from quite violent crimes next to the photographs. What are the significance of these?
All of the headlines are about Basildon. All but one of them is taken from the Daily Mail, and the other comes from the local newspaper. There's a few different ideas that interplay, but the idea was that Basildon was supposed to be this district that tells us what England is like, which presupposes there's this idea of normality – and, you know, what is normality? Which feeds into the fact itself that Basildon is a new town, a manufactured community. The question of what is normal and what is harmonious kept coming up. And the lurid, slightly bizarre headlines maybe serve as, on one level, a questioning of this normality. What happens in supposedly average places? Plus, they come from a tabloid newspaper, and the whole idea of the Basildon man is a tabloid construct, so it's trying to play with a few different things really.

Some of the quotes from residents dotted around the book nod to a sense of community that is perhaps now being lost, as it is in many places in the UK. Is that something you've noticed in Basildon over the years?
Basildon means different things to different generations. To those pioneer generations who moved there from the East End, from Dagenham, to come to Basildon – they have essentially come to achieve something under their own steam. They were the ones who upped sticks to improve their quality of life, almost exclusively through their own efforts. They have an attachment to an idea and the ideal of what a new town was. For younger generations, I think the attachment is less, and the sense of community is less. Basildon, like many other places, has been going through a "regeneration" – whatever that means – which hasn't done anything to foster a sense of being, a sense of place; all it's done is build more houses. Houses are needed, but to create a real sense of the place you have to do much more, and that "much more" has really been lacking from the councillors, the politicians, and it's part of this disconnect between the elite – the political class – and the people, in many ways, which Brexit is an expression of.

One thing missing from the photos is diversity. Is Basildon as mono-ethnic as it appears?
Basildon is remarkably white given how close it is to London. When you live in London, or a metropolitan city, or a diverse community, you forget that this is the reality for a lot of places. Some of the places around England that voted highest for Brexit are some of the least diverse places in the country. There's a weird relationship between the fear of something and the actual experience of something. Basildon is a white, working class town, and the statistics – which I've included in the book – reinforce just how much. The UK has an eight percent Muslim population total, whereas in Basildon it's only 0.9 percent. It just goes to show how white the town is. That's not to say it's a town of racists or anything like that – far from it – but there's a correlation between the Brexit vote and the lacking of a sense of identity, and it was on its way to reassert a sense of English identity and Englishness, and has kind of manifested itself in an extremism of supposed Englishness.

What do you think the significance of the English flag is to the people of Basildon? I find it a little obtuse to just denounce it as a racist emblem, which it's quite popular to do now.
I remember we had a neighbour who lived down the road from us, and one day he erected a giant flagpole and flew the George flag in his back garden. I think it invokes this conflated bag of oddities that we call Englishness – you know, the Battle of Britain, Dunkirk, always losing on penalties at football, stiff upper lip... all of these things that get invoked every time we play Germany, or during the Falklands War, that are the edited versions of our own history and our own identity. It's all to do with harking back to try and find a sense of who you are, and people take comfort in the past. The past as filtered through the present kind of loses its complications. The Blitz loses its complexity when you view it through time and various films or constant documentaries, or whatever. It's a searching or a yearning for something that never really existed in the first place.

A lot of the quotes conjure up images of the elderly. Is that intentional?
Yes, indeed, they come from older people – two people who arrived in Basildon as the town was being built. That was deliberate, to kind of create layers of narrative, to have this voice that was kind of talking about the idea of the community and how that's not reflected in the present. Sense of place is always dependent on the person themselves and what their connection to that location is, how they invoke the place and what emotion that is tied up with. But certainly that was deliberate to try and get across the point that the new town and what it was meant to be – and what it has the potential to be – does not necessarily match with reality viewed or understood by some of the younger people in the pictures.

What do you think drives the Englishman?
Good question... I'm not sure I have a pithy answer to that. What does anyone want? They just want to work hard, to be well paid for their efforts in work that's meaningful.

What is the Magic Party Place?
Specifically or metaphorically?

A bit of both.
Specifically it was a neon sign that was shining in the town centre one evening, but I suppose, metaphorically, it's about how as a society a new town is able to facilitate the breakdown in society that Thatcher wanted. "You have to think for yourself first" is what she said in that interview in '87, and it certainly counts without a history or sense of identity or bedrock that went on for hundreds of years. It's there to facilitate things like the buy your own house scheme – the kind of individualism that that creates, where you're consumers first and citizens second. All of these things manifest themselves quite plainly and quite starkly in new towns, I think. It takes a generation for the seismic shifts in society to really come to roost. What we're living in now is very much Thatcher's Britain, I think, so you have this world where we have retreated inwards. There's no attempts to foster a sense of community in Basildon, so we've retreated inwards into our houses, into our family life, and almost nothing more. In a way it's this strange magic party of house parties or family engagements, of this kind of insularity where you're just going house to house or different social functions, and that represents your world, your small selection of people that you meet in all of these different places – but they're enclosed spaces or private spaces.

Thanks CJ.

@joe_bish

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany

I now realise that running into the house was a huge mistake. I put my back against the wall, to somehow get out of the line of fire and concentrate on the sounds inside the building. Its defenders are being massacred. I can hear their desperate pleas for backup, and then, one after the other, them going down in a hail of bullets. It is only a matter of minutes before the attackers work their way to my room – and there's absolutely no way to get out. Just as another volley of bullets starts shaking the wall behind me, my companion turns to me and whispers: "It was just like this 70 years ago. The Soviet troops back then had to fight with German soldiers for each building, from room to room. Can you imagine that?" In that moment I could – maybe more clearly than ever before in my life.

When VICE Germany photo editor Grey and I set off from Berlin to Mahlwinkel bei Magdeburg one morning back in May 2016, neither of us had any idea what to expect. The Euro Big Game was already underway on the former Soviet military base. According to their website, it's the "biggest paintball event in Europe", with well over 1,000 participants coming every year from mostly Northern European countries.

The first thing we saw once we reached the base, was a giant, dusty camp; the tents were covered in dozens of colourful flags, while hundreds of men in camouflage ran around them. We found the information tent and asked for the event organisers, as we had been instructed. A little while later, we were approached by a man dressed in head-to-toe black, who looked like a cross between Tom Cruise and John Lennon. He opened his arms and, smiling, he said, "What an insane pleasure it is to see you here!"

David "Reaper" Justin

Our new friend was David "Reaper" Justin – apparently a huge celebrity in the world of paintball. "I travel around the world promoting the sport," the 54-year-old beamed. He also promotes his 200 paintball sponsors – the leading one being Tippmann, allegedly the greatest paintball gun manufacturer in the world. (Note: Paintball players don't call their weapons "guns", they call them "markers".)

And so we spent the next few hours with David, who led us prancing through the whole camp, while providing us with a never-ending stream of paintball-related information. For example, we learned that markers at these tournaments are all set to the same muzzle velocity; that people sometimes cheat; that Tippmann makes the best markers; that there are different types of ammo, which have various ranges and accuracies (the most accurate being obviously Tippmann's); that the paintball community is huge (and that Tippmann provides this community with first-class gear); and, most interestingly, that there was a Dutch Michelin chef among us, and that he would be grilling steaks later.

Throughout the day, it was hard not to notice the almost complete absence of women. Later, someone confirmed that only 40 women were participating in the entire tournament – topped off by a handful of hostesses who were running around the camp in crop tops shooting at each other with water guns.

After having been shown basically every stand and introduced to each of the salesmen, we started to get restless – we really wanted to see some action. So we were given two masks and two vests, but no guns. Apparently we weren't allowed to take part in the fighting, just to tag along with the Blue Team as "embedded journalists".

By that time, everyone had been split into two big teams – the Blue Team and the Red Team. Over the four days of the tournament, the Blues and Reds compete against each other in a number of individual missions to collect points – for example, they win points if they capture the enemy's flag or if they place their own in enemy territory. To achieve these goals, some of the better sub-teams develop pretty sophisticated strategies, making it all resemble real combat. If you get hit anywhere on your body or your weapon, you're out and need to run to a "spawn area" to wash yourself off and be reborn.

When we finally reached the battlefield, it was already 3PM and the sun was blazing down on the sandy ground with full intensity. Soldiers wearing blue armbands were scurrying about at a large intersection. They were firing into the forest where you could see red armbands flashing through the trees, again and again. It all felt incredibly intense but not really dangerous, since our vests meant that nobody was shooting directly at us and all we had to do was make sure we did not get caught in the crossfire.

But that all changed when I followed the Reaper into a building. Shortly after we entered, the Reds decisively attacked the building and suddenly David and I were stuck in a room while a firefight broke out. People were firing and screaming all around us and I realised that my vest wasn't really going to protect me any more – if someone stormed the room, they would shoot first and apologise after. And these fucking paintballs really hurt when you get shot from a two metre distance. I felt like the stupidest war reporter of all time.

The author and the Reaper

I really was a little afraid. David the Reaper, on the other hand, was amused to say the least: "Do you know what Napoleon always used to say?" he whispered to me through his black, skull mask. "Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake!" His plan, he said, was to sit tight, let ourselves be overrun by the Reds, and then take them by surprise. Unfortunately, the plan didn't work out. After what felt like an eternity sweating in that room in silence, one of the Reds stuck their head through the door. The Reaper "executed" him, only to go down by the victim's friends in a hail of bullets. Miraculously, I wasn't hit and was very happy to get back outside.

A while later, it was time for the big finale, which consisted of ground fireworks that exploded on the playing field to make the battle even more realistic. Stupidly, the sun had warmed up the ground so much that the whole middle of the playing field burst into flames. The game was discontinued hectically and everyone had to return to their starting positions.

Despite everything, a boisterous mood never stopped dominating the camp. All these men seemed strangely relaxed and satisfied throughout our time there. People were hugging and patting each other on the back all over the place. A lot of them knew each other from previous tournaments and had formed true friendships throughout the years.

Two Swiss guys we met said they had driven for more than 900 kilometres to take part in the Euro Big Game. "I just think it's so much fun," one of them said. "Being outside, running around, throwing yourself into muddy trenches in your uniform – it's just amazing!"

"We spent all year preparing for this tournament," Willie, a happy Scott and leader of the Scottish Warriors, explained to me. "This is a family here, you know? We'll do anything for each other, we look after each other." A drunk Swede with viking war paint on his face, leaned on his shoulder and slurred something about wiping him out. Willie called him a "fucking arsehole" and the Swede laughed happily.

"People come here for the first time, and then something clicks inside them," David the Reaper told me. "They get this stupid grin on their face and they get it. They think, "This is what's been missing from my life. And then they just keep coming and coming, year after year."

It was time for the winner to be announced on the main stage – that winner was Team Blue. The announcement was followed by a very long charity auction and then a very short performance by a few girls in their underwear.

Later that night, when we decided to leave, we drove past abandoned Soviet barracks and decommissioned tanks. And I thought to myself: "If you can let off enough steam with paintballs and markers, that you no longer want to invade a neighbouring country, then maybe paintball is all right."

Scroll down for more photos:

This could very well be a couple making up after an IKEA fight, but that's unconfirmed. Photo by Flickr user Noodles and Beef via

IKEA: come for the Swedish meatballs and the reasonably priced Scandinavian furniture, stay for the fight with bae about how many KALLAX shelves for your vinyl collection a sane household really needs. But it's not just you two: IKEA stores are basically designed to make you scrutinise every aspect of your relationship – in whatever state it may have been before you two headed in.

According to Dr. Gorkan Ahmetoglu, lecturer in Business Psychology at UCL, shopping at IKEA is such a trigger for couples because it's disorienting: "IKEA makes you visualise what it would be like to consume their products by presenting ready-made kitchens, model bedrooms and bathrooms. The easier it is to imagine using a product, the more likely you are to want to buy it – it's called availability bias," he explained to me.

Shoppers also don't realise how deeply the store's perfect setup can affect them – it makes them feel literally at home: "A lot of these influences are subconscious, and even if people realise they're being manipulated they're unable to resist it because the brain doesn't have the capacity to process these things properly," Dr. Ahmetoglu continued.

So, fights erupt. But what exactly are couples in IKEA fighting about? I headed to my nearest IKEA and walked around to overhear tidbits of couples' arguments. Since no fight is ever really about mattress toppers, I took four tidbits to Dr. Suky Macpherson, Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society specialised in working with couples. I wanted to hear her thoughts on what those squabbles could tell us about the state of the respective relationships – and how to avoid falling into the black hole of coupledom during your own next trip to IKEA with an SO.

1. In the Kitchen Department

The Couple: A woman and a man near a selection of spatulas.

Man: "Are you sure this is the right place to get a cheese grater? Because I don't see any."
Woman: "Yes! Why do you always have to question everything I do?"

Dr. Macpherson: "This woman takes one remark and generalises it to all communication in their relationship. 'Always' is never a useful word where relationships are concerned. There is a struggle for power within this couple – each person probably feeling like the other one is more in control. She seems to feel that the man hasgenerally more power in their relationship, and this could very well be true."

2. In the Lighting Department

The Couple: A man and a woman, the latter eyeing a rose gold lamp.

Man: "We have so much copper shit in the flat already and I fucking hate it. Why do you always pick out the things you know I don't like? It's like you don't even care that we have to live in the same place."
Woman: "If you had good taste, I wouldn't have to choose everything for the both of us."
Man: "Just because we don't have the same taste it doesn't mean mine is bad."

Dr. Macpherson: "Shared living spaces are a problem – negotiating different tastes involves compromise, which some individuals are better at than others. There is a way around the fights this leads to: the good old give-and-take. Unfortunately, very self-oriented or narcissistic people are bad at this."

A mildly frustrated looking couple at IKEA – not one the author overheard. Photo by Leo Hildago via

3. In the Bathroom Department

The Couple: A woman and a man standing by a basket.

Man: "I don't care what this is at this point, but you need to realise it isn't big enough to hold our washing. Can't I just go wait in the car?"
Woman: "No you can't, I need your opinion. Honestly, whatever it is, it is big enough. I don't know what dreamland you live in."

Dr. Macpherson: " wanted a shared experience, while the man wanted the experience to be over as soon as possible. I'm guessing that he doesn't understand the point of practical things needing to be attractive – he is happy to let her decide. I would hazard another guess and say the argument this couple were having points to a lack of shared vision, which is making her feel alone and unloved."

4. Deep in the Impulse Buying Death Trap

The Couple: Two men near the stationary section.

Man 1: "Right, so now you want the wrapping paper too. Which would make perfect sense if you ever bought anyone gifts. And I get the feeling I'm going to end up paying for it at the till."
Man 2: "You know I get paid on Friday and I'll transfer you the money then. Can't you just do this one nice thing for me?"

Dr. Macpherson: "It is a low blow to say the other never buys gifts, so the other hits back with the idea that the first never does anything nice for him. I think they both feel undervalued and perhaps exploited by each other. This spat reflects some deep tensions, because money can be a huge problem within a relationship. From the mention of 'gifts' and 'doing a nice thing', you could also see that other aspects of the relationship are a problem – like time and attention."

I asked Dr. Ahmetoglu if there's any way couples can avoid getting into arguments in IKEA. "Couples need to make sure they have a shopping list they're both happy with in advance, and stick to it religiously," he replied.

If that fails and the shopping spree still ends in tears and frustration, Dr. Macpherson says couples shouldn't be too hard on themselves: Background stress worsens existing tensions in relationships, and if there's one thing IKEA does, it's deliver a shitload of background stress to your relationship.

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Once again, a drug gang has been foiled by the fact that trafficking and selling drugs remains very illegal. After monitoring a group of traffickers based in the north east of England for six months as part of an investigation dubbed "Operation Valiant", officials orchestrated an £8 million drugs bust, uncovering 19kg of cannabis, 2kg of heroin, 1kg of cocaine and over £100,000 in cash in one raid alone.

The "large-scale and widespread" operation resulted in the arrests of eight gang members, who all entered guilty pleas to drugs offences. Two years on, seven are now behind bars for a collective total of 40 years. The longest sentence was handed to ringleader Richard French, 27, who got nine years and four months for conspiracy to supply narcotics.

French, who ran sandwich and rare dog breeding businesses on the side before he was caught, headed up the Tyneside leg of the operation. He enlisted the help of some of his friends and fellow dog breeders to act as couriers and distributers, even using his mother's Gateshead home to stash some of the gang's haul and money, because what's family for if not to help you maintain a covert drug ring?

Sentencing the group at Newcastle Crown Court, Judge Robert Adams said: "There were huge and high profits for some people involved, if not all involved. All drugs bring misery to their users and everyone else in the neighbourhoods where those users live as they find means to fund their habit, often by means of thefts, robberies etcetera."

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(Photo by Bruno Bayley)

Young British millennials are all skint with bleak financial prospects so you'd think this was the time to find enjoyment in the only pleasure in life which doesn't involve money: fucking. Given our access to Tinder and high unemployment rates, we should be sowing our seeds across the country, living the dream that the 1960s promised. Women have sexual freedom like blokes, so there's essentially nothing stopping us in 2016, right?

Except a new study shows that our pathetic sex lives are disappointing and stressful. The latest National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles of sexual health in Britain shows that large numbers of young people experience sexual problems such as pain or anxiety during sex, the inability to climax and finding intercourse difficult.

Just over a third (33.8 percent) of sexually active men aged 16-21 and 44.4 percent of sexually active young women of the same age experienced at least one problem, which lasted for at least three months, with their ability to enjoy sex in the past year.

For women, the most common problem was difficulty in reaching climax (for 21.3 percent). Other issues included lacking enjoyment in sex, feeling anxious during sex and no excitement or arousal.

Among men the biggest difficulty was having an orgasm too quickly (13.2 percent). Other problems ranged from feeling anxious to difficulty getting or keeping an erection.

"Our findings show that distressing sexual problems are not only experienced by older people in Britain," Dr Kirstin Mitchell, the lead author of the study, told the Guardian.

The gender differences in the study were significant too. One in five (22 percent) of women said they lacked interest in sex, while far fewer men – 10.5 percent – said the same. More women (9.8 percent) than men (5.4 percent) lacked enjoyment in sex, felt anxious during sex (8 percent compared with 4.8 percent of men) and experienced no excitement or arousal during sex (8 percent compared with 3.2 percent of men).

Much of this is down to terrible sex ed in schools, which is about as useful as putting a condom on a banana. Oh, wait.

If you're wallowing in misery at your three-thrust sessions, know that you're not alone. We're all fucking unsatisfactorily with you.

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"Matthew Westley from North Devon is the manager of a petrol station who's hoping for a four star performance. Nicola Gill is from Newcastle and she loves shopping, but today to open the chequebook she'll just need answers. And David Gallacher lives in Paisley, he enjoys driving, but can he accelerate towards a victory today?"

Many people rely on ambient music. They are pulled into deep pools, submerged in floating auras for hours on end. For others it's reading, sewing or solitaire, and for my parents – during a strange patch just after we moved house – it was entering competitions on the back of postcards. These vaguely sensory, non-demanding experiences offer a basic function: engaging the brain to the tipping point between distraction and concentration. Offering just enough in the way of interest to keep the mind occupied, without ever pushing it into the realms of effort. For me, it is watching British gameshows dated anywhere between 1985 and 2005. For me, it is watching Challenge TV.

If you're not familiar with Challenge, it's a television channel that's existed for nearly 20 years, dedicated almost entirely to running repeats of gameshows. In their prime-time evening slots they show relatively dull re-runs of recent acquisitions like Pointless or The Chase, but catch the channel on an early Saturday morning, or during a Tuesday afternoon away from work, and it's a different picture entirely. In these graveyard slots, the channel replays the deep cuts. Wheel of Fortune, Nick Weir-era Catchphrase, The Price is Right – the gameshows that dominated living rooms until Simon Cowell's empire rose and the people demanded more than a Blankety Blank chequebook and pen.

I'm not sure exactly why, but there's something about old episodes of Blockbusters or Strike It Rich that I find hugely comforting. The soft crackle of a synthesised saxophone, the purple velvet scenery studded with bright blonde bulbs, the shiny suits of presenters who are no longer allowed on television following sexual assault charges. The gameshows of the 1990s and early 2000s were a strange blend of the sleek and the schlocky – old formats in new studios – and Challenge TV is a unending reel of this recent past, a time capsule buried deep on the digital television schedule, cataloguing an era when watching people running around around a mock-supermarket in a sweatshirt constituted entertainment.

You can deduce the state of our nation from its game shows. What we desire, what we understand as glamorous, what we wear, what we find funny, what we find sad. They are a strange barometer; a flashing, neon sign of the time. The shows of the late 20th century speak of an era where £2,000 was considered a "huge cash prize", when men wore clip-on ties and women wore blouses, when Carol Smilie was considered "eye-candy". The pre-millennial British gameshow is a relic of a time when the future had arrived but the past was still rotting around it.

They were programmes presented by men from another age, too. Men like Nick Weir, Les Dennis, John Leslie, Michael Barrymore and Dale Winton. Men who – in a couple of instances due to court cases – unceremoniously disappeared from television only to be replaced by Keith Lemon, Tess Daly and ex-soap stars eating kangaroo dicks. They were a strange breed of host. Almost exclusively thin, wiry males, lost under over-sized suits and garish neckties. They cut largely tragic figures, desperately pandering for applause under hot studio lights. Watching them now feels a bit like watching videos of your divorced dad performing manic, drunken karaoke at your older sister's wedding, a last ditch attempt at approval failing in motion. A species of entertainer totally dependent on adulation, now lost to a world that's forgotten about them completely. Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think: Matthew Kelly, where are you now?

Then there were the contestants.

When you watch television that involves members of the public today, it almost feels as though they've had media training. Perhaps we're all just more used to being in front of cameras all the time, but these days average Joes are polished: they have great hair and even better comebacks, and are often so entertaining they have rendered the presenter totally redundant. Challenge is there to remind us of a time before, a time gone by.

There is no accounting for just how strange the contestants of old British game shows were. The erratic, the elderly, the unfortunate looking, collected under bright studio lights, forced to chatter with Roy Walker.

Just consider the following exhibits:

a) Every grandad who's ever existed in the same place at the same time.

b) Noshed off a pasta penis at a hen-do in Skegness.

c) Never the bridesmaid, never the bride.

d) Tells people he left university with a 1st in improv comedy

I'm not being funny, but they don't make people like this any more. Obviously fashion changes, hairstyles go in and out of trend, but faces are more normal now. The shapes of people's heads and bodies are more conventional. See a married couple on television today and they look like they've been cast for a mortgage advert. Contestants on the gameshows of old were plucked from a time when everybody looked like a weirdo. A time of colossal glasses and even more colossal teeth, of husbands and wives who look eerily identical, of women called Pam and men called Lance, and of woolly jumpers so garish no amount of vintage re-appropriation could ever bring them full circle.

The gameshows of our youth weren't populated by everyday people desperate to get on TV. No, for better or worse, they were populated by people who were desperate to win a fishing holiday to Anglesey.

Nostalgia is a less than productive sentiment, but there is something to be said for the version of the past Challenge's old gameshows present. Typically when we look back on our shared history it's with a selective memory. We recall the 80s as Rubix cubes and Thatcher, the 90s as Blur and Blair, the 2000s as 9/11 and Facebook. We remember the good, the bad and the ugly, but tend to forget the bits in between. What the tacky displays repeated by Challenge offer are visions of the past we all too often forget. Yes, the production values are terrible, the rudimentary-CGI opening credits are clunky and the jokes are shit, but they are a window into the normal hum of suburban weekends. Fish fingers and peas spilt into laps. Life in the slow-lane; extra-large shoulder-pads and medium-sized aspirations.

Watching these shows doesn't make me long for any specific memory in my own life. Rather, they are the ghosts of a million TV dinners forgotten even by those who ate them. The voice of Les Dennis echoing deep into the night.

"This is Greg Saunders from West Bromwich, he loves brass bands and is hoping to blow his own trumpet tonight."

Follow Angus on Twitter

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The creation of beauty vlogging content is exhausting. The wells of creativity must quickly run dry. How can you do a review of Kylie Jenner's Lipkit and make it stand out from the 200 other bloggers out there who got sent it? What's so special about your Lush haul of bath bombs and bubble bars? Through it all, there's only one question to ask yourself as a content creator: what haven't people seen?

About a month ago, YouTubers found the answer: what if they started putting make-up on, as per the norm, and didn't stop? Just carried on while the layers stacked and the tube got emptier? What if? No one would ever be bored enough or wasteful enough to think of doing it in their own time. YouTubers, however, get sent make-up by the parcel-full, half of it probably rubbish, to stick on eBay for extra income.

The 100 layers trend was born.

The videos involve YouTubers sitting in front of their laptop putting on 100 coats of liquid lipstick or mascara or fake tan. Some have made hideously impressive "polish mountains" from nail varnish. Jeely, a YouTuber who describes herself as "weird af" with just short of 63,000 followers, an underdog in the big beauty business, has pioneered this. A video of her putting on 100 layers of foundation from two weeks ago has 7.5 million views. Famous YouTuber comedian Jenna Marbles did one last weekend and it already has over 8 million views.

The response has been one of two things. Firstly, "white people are crazy" – a reasonable observation, given the circumstances. Secondly, "WHY DO I KEEP WATCHING THESE". A question probably every viewer has asked themselves. Why do beauty bloggers embark on this extensive mission – the nail polish towers take a whole day and night to create – and why are people so interested?

It seemed like a great way to waste an afternoon, so I went to Boots and bought the cheapest make-up possible and a pack of wipes, because as Jeely says in her video, "this is messy af".

I had a naked face to start off and just started layering up. Beauty bloggers have those little sponges that would have made my life a lot easier but that's why they're the professionals. I just used my fingers. Very quickly I realised that this was going to mess up my already terrible skin. I could do without aggravating my acne, but already five layers in, I was committed. My skin had quickly rejected the tinted moisturiser– no more cheap toxins are getting in here, it would've said if it could. Instead the liquid sat on top of the skin, drying and cracking.

I got a little rhythm going, splodging the tinted moisturiser on, wiping my hands on a facewipe, drawing on the eyebrows, lips, stabbing away with the mascara wand and writing another mark on the tally. Time started to acquire a fluid quality, expanding and contracting. The repetitive movements became meditative and the activity levels of my mind came to rest. A calm pleasure washed over me like I was close to completing an hour of guided relaxation.

My lips were so heavy by layer 24 that they were drooping. A few layers later, they began to stick together extremely tightly and I had to keep it open and breathe through my mouth because I was worried they'd get stuck and never open again. By 35, I'd lost a big clump of eyelashes. Periodically, a male colleague would come in and say, "Eurgh... you look butters". I suspected this was the opportunity he'd been waiting for to make similar comments.

Halfway through and it felt like rubbing lotion over severe sunburn that's peeling. Congealed lumps were gathering and if I was too heavy handed, they would fall off or I'd swallow them. But it felt amazing. My forehead was so smooth and thick with liquid, my fingers would glide through, like Ghost, except instead of clay, it was cheap make-up, and instead of Patrick Swayze, it was only me, indulging in the ultimate act of self-love.

By 70, I could hardly breathe. My nose was filling with foundation. My face got really hot and I started to feel a bit nauseous. Was I suffocating slowly? Or pumping my body full of toxins, which were poisoning me? More comments from passing colleagues – "christmas goblin" or "ugly waxwork". I was enjoying my new face for all its efforts. This is what you've done, capitalism. Take a good hard look at the results of your work too, patriarchy. Is this what you wanted?

It seemed as if my face had stopped getting progressively worse but then I realised my eyelashes had molded into 3 or 4 lashes on each side. Soon it could be a monolash. My whole fingers were wrinkly from the wetness of the foundation and the four hours spent doing this exercise in stupidity.

After layer 100, I looked magnificent. I'd wasted an afternoon doing this. I was winning. The YouTubers getting the #numbers were winning. Together we had created something. I looked like a living Picasso, one of his not-very-good ones. Was this performance art? Probably.

My main takeaway is: Why wouldn't you do this? If you can think of something, why not make it a reality or follow it to its final conclusion? Imagine if people had stopped at thinking, "I wonder what happens if I make these square wheels round?" or "I wonder what happens if we keep building floors of houses on top of each other?" Revolutionary ideas started from ridiculous 'what if's by dreamers who dared to dream. And we need dreamers in content.

Cynics might see this trend and think YouTubers are ridiculing their craft beyond recognition. But they've realised that by the fourth free bath bomb, no one cares. The harsh, overcrowded world of beauty content was reaching its demise, and beauty vloggers have done the most asinine thing possible, and they've won.

@hannahrosewens

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(Photo by Nicholas Pomeroy)

Following the vote for Brexit, Nigel Farage, swiftly stood down as leader of Ukip because he "wanted his life back". Farage crashed the country and walked away. It was a sort of political hit and run, live-streamed on the BBC News at six.

Ukip were long-dismissed as a protest party. And yet, they succeeded in their single aim. So what happens when your life's work is complete? When your sole campaign is won? When your leader, a man who embodies your party's politics so much that he's basically turned purple, steps down?

With Brexit negotiations in full swing, Ukippers aren't going to pipe down any time soon. They're going to want their voices heard louder than before. This is their magic moment and they must fill the Farage-shaped hole in the party's heart.

Thing is, they're currently a little rudderless. Their leadership contest, so far, has been somewhat shambolic; Nigel Farage himself described it as a "farce" being overseen by "total amateurs".

Today, Steven Woolfe, the favourite to win, was expelled from the race. According to Ukip, this is because he missed the deadline to submit his application (he was 17 minutes late) so was not eligible. Ukip supporters aren't happy about this: Woolfe was one of Farage's guys. He's been the MEP for the North of England since 2014. However, this isn't the first time Woolfe has come a cropper. In 2012, in a possible breach of election law, he "forgot" about a drink-driving conviction he had from 2002, when he was handed a nine-month ban and a £350 fine for being caught "drunk in charge of a scooter".

With Woolfe out of the way, here's a look at the Ukip candidates trying to fill Farage's loafers:

(Picture via @BillDudleyNorth)

BILL ETHERIDGE MEP

Age: 46
Where are they from? Wolverhampton. The area is a real Labour and Tory mix. Enoch Powell was the MP for Wolverhampton South West from 1950-1974.
Who is he? A very right-wing Eurosceptic who used to be a Tory and wants to bring back the death penalty.
Highest office held: MEP.
What are his politics like? Worrying. He wants to charge prisoners £40,000 a year during their jail sentences. He also wants to lock those in prison in their cells for the first six months of their sentence and deny them any visitors in that period.
Any embarrassing Ukip-y moments that they will struggle to live down? He was forced to step down when running to be a Conservative councillor because he posed with a golliwog doll on Facebook as part of a campaign against political correctness.
Key quote: "Look back to the most magnetic and forceful public speaker possibly in history. When Hitler gave speeches, and many of the famous ones were at rallies, at the start he walks, back and forth, looked at people – there was a silence, he waited minutes just looking out at people, fixing them with his gaze." – Speech to Ukip youth wing in 2014.
Will he win? Let's hope not.
Summary in a few words: Look, let's not take that Hitler quotes out of context, alright?

DIANE JAMES MEP

Age: 56
Where are they from? Rochester. She bucks the trend here by not being a northerner.
Who are they? She's an MEP who, with Woolfe out of the picture, is the favourite to win. On Tuesday night she jumped to the top of the bookies' odds.
Highest office held: She's been MEP for the South East of England since 2014, came pretty close to becoming an MP in the 2013 Eastleigh by-election and took over as Ukip's Deputy Chairman earlier this year.
What are their politics like? Pure, unadulterated purple. Diane is Ukip's spokesperson on Justice and Home Affairs. She wants to make Ukip legit once and for all by winning more seats in Westminster. It's difficult to find her personal views; she seems to toe the party line, being "tough on crime" and "immigration", as well as advocating proportional representation. She too is critical of "Muslim only free schools" and blames Theresa May for pretty much everything.
Any embarrassing Ukip-y moments that they will struggle to live down?: That time she praised Vladimir Putin for his nationalism and leadership skills.
Notable quote: " I admire him from the point of view that he's standing up for his country... He's very nationalist.."
Will they win? Very likely.
Summary in a few words: Ukip's Theresa May; a very safe right-wing bet.

(Photo via Euro Realist Newsletter)

JONATHAN ARNOTT MEP

Age: 35; born in 1981, he's narrowly a member of Generation X.
Where are they from? He grew up in Sheffield.
Who are they? It seems he's something of a prodigy who took his GCSEs and A-Levels three years early, aged 15, before graduating from the University of Sheffield with a Masters' degree in Maths before most of us had emerged from the primordial ooze of our parents' houses.
Highest office held: He's been the MEP for the North East of England since 2014.
What are their politics like? Moderate mauve. Reading his blog posts doesn't shed much light on his thinking. It seems he's centre-right in a fairly moderate way. Talks a lot about being " tough on crime" but doesn't specify how. Also seems to really, really love the free market.
Any embarrassing Ukip-y moments that they will struggle to live down? Not really. Closest is perhaps when he called Nigel Farage the "greatest orator of our time".
Quote of note: "On a really personal level I'm sick of the number of people committing horrific crimes against animals and escaping jail. Those who torture defenceless animals to death (just how depraved do you have to be to video yourself doing something like that?) should be jailed."
Will they win? A bit of an outsider, but if his school days are anything to go by he's a stalking horse.
Summary in a few words: Animal loving maths genius seeks high profile political job. Enjoys playing chess, will definitely beat you.

(Picture by: Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP)

LISA DUFFY

Age: 48.
Where are they from? Ramsey, a very Tory area of Cambridgeshire.
Who are they? A Ukip councillor who describes herself as "passionate", "respected" and "driven" on her Twitter bio.
Highest office held: Local councillor or Chair of Ramsey Christmas Lights?
What are her politics like? Plum. Ukip to her core. She doesn't seem to have any clear policies, other than the closure of "British Islamic faith schools" and the usual Ukip stuff about scaling back immigration.
Any embarrassing Ukip-y moments that they will struggle to live down? Not yet.
Will they win? Unlike Woolfe, she's the anti-Farage candidate with support from MEP Patrick O-Flynn and the controversial Suzanne Evans. She has been labelled a "Trojan horse" candidate for Evans who can't run herself.
Summary in a few words: Who needs policies?

Elizabeth Jones talks about social media

ELIZABETH JONES

Age: 50.
Where are they from? London – Lambeth, to be precise. One of the places in the country which voted most overwhelmingly to remain in the EU.
Who are they? She stood to be an MEP back in 2014 but did not succeed. Jones describes herself as an "avid feminist". She says she became galvanised to support Ukip because of Labour's intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Highest office held: Ukip Lambeth Deputy Chairperson.
What are their politics like? Is that dark red or purple? She says Ukip but talks about Labour a lot. Other than that, it's hard to tell. She seems to love referendums and thinks we should have more.
Any embarrassing Ukip-y moments that they will struggle to live down? When she was an MEP candidate she shouted "will you just shut up" at her opponent during a live radio debate.
Something they've said which is actually of interest: In 2014, when trying to get elected as an MEP, she said, "Eschew misogyny! Embrace modernity! 35 percent of UK MEPs are female and for whatever reason not one is Ukip."
Will she win? Unlikely.
Summary in a few words: "Will you just shut up!"

PHILIP BROUGHTON

Age: 32.
Where are they from? He stood as a candidate for MEP for the North East of England. Another Ukiper from a traditionally Labour area.
Who are they? He describes himself as "a young, passionate, northern, working class guy".
Highest office held: Councillor. He came fourth in last year's general election when he ran for MP of Hartlepool.
What are their politics like? Royal Purple. The Tory right's worst nightmare. He used to be a Conservative, serving as Conservative councillor in Stockton between 2007 and 2011, before defecting to Ukip. A quick peruse of his WordPress reveals that his policies are a bit thin on the ground, though.
Any embarrassing Ukip-y moments that they will struggle to live down? He's made some pretty weird videos that might be an attempt at humour, including one in which he describes himself as being "cleverer", "better looking" and "more charismatic" than anyone else.
Key quote: "Wrestling is a passion of mine, as is politics. It is a shame you get attacked for your passions."
Will he win? Britain voted to leave the EU. Anything is possible.
Summary in a few words: Needs to work on his personal brand.

The winner of Ukip's leadership contest will be announced on the 15th of September.

@Victoria_Spratt

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Empty deckchairs at a Tunisian hotel (All photos by the author)

More than a year has passed since Seifeddine Rezgui, a student and wannabe break-dancer, smuggled a Kalashnikov onto Sousse's Boujaafar Beach and started firing. But the massacre he perpetrated in the name of the Islamic State, which left 38 tourists dead, has cut visitor numbers in half and left Tunisia's reputation as the Mediterranean's most affordable package destination in tatters.

The British market has made the most impact so far. Home to 30 of the Sousse victims, the UK accounted for over 420,000 visitors to Tunisia in 2014. But last year's atrocity prompted the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to issue an advisory warning its nationals against travel to the country. No longer able to insure their customers, the major tour companies immediately pulled the plug on their Tunisian operations. Charter flights from the UK abruptly ceased.

I've come here against the advice of my government to see firsthand how one man with a gun can bring an entire industry to its knees.

Police on Boujaafar Beach

Step onto Boujaafar Beach today, down the lane where a policeman's bullet finally put an end to Rezgui's rampage on the 25th of June, 2015, and you might not immediately appreciate the extent of Sousse's troubles.

There are a few tourists here, mostly Russians lured by cut-price deals. But walk a hundred yards further and you'll encounter a no-man's land – a stretch of empty sand where the only presence is a pair of police patrolling on a quad-bike, the one riding pillion holding a shotgun across his knees.

At the rear, behind a bank strewn with thatched parasols, the tan walls of a sprawling resort complex have been cut off from the beach by a chain-link fence and coils of barbed wire. This is the Imperial Merhaba Hotel, where Rezgui continued the spree he'd started on the beach. Now it sits abandoned, one of almost 200 major Tunisian hotels to have shuttered in the last year.

Jihed and Mo'jgow

Off to one side, I find Mo'jgow Sahbi and Jihed Hassen sitting under a timber awning. Down at the shoreline, the tools of their 20-year-old watersports company are lined up in the hope of custom: a folded parasail and two jet-skis sit beside a banana boat with killer-whale markings. But their speed-boats are beached, the foot-wells accumulating sand. They tell me business is non-existent.

"We are all suffering, my friend," says Hassen, the younger of the two. "The shops, the hotels, the taxis, you can't imagine."

Both claim to have saved lives last June, corralling 100 terrified tourists into the neighbouring hotel compound, imploring the shooter to stop his rampage.

"It's not fair – we did what we could," says Hassen when I ask about the UK's travel ban. "Since the revolution most of our guests have been British. Now we just come to sit."

Theirs is a grudge shared by many in Tunisia. Speaking to the people here, in the medinas and the cafes, on the beaches and the promenades, some common opinions emerge. The abrupt decline of Tunisia's tourist industry, many say, feels like a betrayal of the optimism that accompanied the Arab Spring in 2011, which saw the overthrow of the autocratic President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and a democratic government rise in his stead.

A new constitution was adopted in 2014, and free elections took place peacefully at the end of the year. But Tunisia's new-found pluralism has also turned it into a target for extremists, hell-bent on creating an Islamic world under the boot-heel of Sharia law.

Despite the brutal terror attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis last March, which left 24 dead, 2015 was set to be a bumper year for Tunisian tourism. Then came Sousse, and foreign arrivals – whose spending accounts for 15 percent of Tunisia's GDP – slowed to a trickle. Now there is frustration that the tourists' abandonment of Tunisia, as symbolised by Britain's travel ban, has exacted a cruel and disproportionate economic penalty on a whole country for the crimes of a few extremists. Look at Brussels, they say. Look at Paris, where brutal attacks have been carried out more recently, and with greater casualties. Why has the international community turned its back on Tunisia? One conclusion – that Tunisia has been harshly treated because it is a Muslim country – is a common topic of conjecture.

But this sense of grievance is tempered, too, by a recognition that Sousse was different, that the image the reports painted – of sunbathers murdered where they lay, of families pursued through hotel corridors, of Rezgui laughing as he pulled the trigger – will take time to expunge.

In the meantime, people are left to pray that there is no repeat. For IS, whose propagandists have described Sousse and the Bardo Museum as "dens of vice", tourists are a vulnerable embodiment of western decadence – legitimate targets for righteous extirpation. With neighbouring Libya in turmoil, and the border notoriously porous, only the most blinkered optimist would guarantee that there may not be more to come.

If Sousse still moulders under the memories of last June, Hammamet, an hour's drive up-coast, at the northern tip of its eponymous bay, feels like a place in the aftermath of apocalypse. In this former fishing village, the place where the Tunisian tourist industry began in the early 1960s, tourism is the only game in town, and the sense of ennui – of thwarted hospitality – is hard to bear.

The main road is so devoid of traffic that I can walk up the middle of the carriageway, and inside the sprawling whitewashed resort hotels that line it my footsteps echo across empty marbled lobbies. Down at the harbour, huge mock-galleons, capable of carrying over 100 tourists on day-cruises, are moored in a row, looking all the more preposterous for their pointlessness.

Down on Hammamet's beach, a young man selling camel rides responds to my question about how his business is faring by opening his arms towards an empty beach. He tells me that the only people coming here now are Russian (though Russians were among the victims of Sousse, I'd find out later that numbers are up 650 percent on last year). But where the absent British paid £6 for a ride down the sand on Fatima, Abdul's undernourished camel, the Russians offer 30p. He has no choice but to accept.

By now, any residual anxiety I might have felt about visiting Tunisia has long since evaporated. Looking left and right down Hammamet's vacant coastline, there's perverse reassurance in the reality that there is hardly anyone here to target.

How do you get rid of a black mark like Sousse? This is the question currently faced by Tarek Aiouadi, Tunisia's UK Director of Tourism, who I meet in another cavernous hotel atrium in Gammarth, just outside of Tunis.

On the knee-high table in front of him is a stack of paper detailing the latest quantification of the challenge he faces. Latest UK tourism numbers, he says, are down 93.2 percent. Like everyone I speak to in Tunisia, Aiouadi is anxious not to downplay the horror of Sousse. But he too believes the FCO response has been disproportionate.

"Indirectly you are telling that they are winning," he says. "You can see their victory in what has happened in this country."

He points to the increased security I've seen during my trip up the coast as evidence of the country's efforts to reassure and recover: the metal detectors and under-car mirrors that now punctuate the hotel entrances. Only this morning, at Carthage, a ring of armed sentries stood at 50-metre intervals around the crumbling walls and columns of long-dead Empire, there to safeguard the tourists who, for the hour I was there, numbered half a dozen.

Out of the ruins, Aiouadi clings to hope. For too long, he says, Tunisia has focused on the mass-market. But the country has more to offer. He enthuses about the interior, an area the size of England, a place of mountains, oases and desert where tourists rarely venture. Perhaps the events of last year will catapult Tunisia towards a long overdue diversification, from the unreconstructed beach-side tourism of the past to something more sustainable.

"We are going to bounce back," says Aiouadi. "But it's going to take time."

@HenryWismayer

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Screenshots captured in-game by the author

I've been playing Rainbow Six Siege nearly every day since its release in December 2015. I've seen overpowered operators rise and fall, a series of usability fixes and map tweaks to keep the community happy, and countless free additions to the game.

So, I can tell you with all the authority I need that it's the best multiplayer shooter of this generation. Perhaps of all time. And you need to be okay with this.

The core concept of Rainbow Six Siege is simple, immediately familiar to anyone who's ever held a digital gun. A team of five attackers tries to penetrate a fortified location where an evenly matched team of five defenders holds and protects an objective. This objective could be a bomb you defuse, a hostage you rescue, or a biohazard container you'll need to stand near to "secure". You get one life per round, a single headshot from most weapons instantly kills, and each player has a unique character with their own weapons and gadgets to help get the job done.

What makes Siege so satisfying though is the wealth of systems laid over the top. Its four-minute rounds have a complexity similar to a fully featured multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game, like DotA 2 or League of Legends. And just like a MOBA, the game is at its most fascinating when these systems start to smash into each other.

Lots of noise was made about its destruction system when the game launched, but few people talk about how complex the procedural destruction really is. It's not a matter of tossing a grenade to blow a hole in any random wall, although that's a valid approach. It's what the ability to blast through the terrain in a map does to your strategies. You're no longer thinking of open sight lines and doorways, but of the ever-so-delicate walls and ceilings surrounding you. Reinforcements and bulletproof barricades can help defenders create chokepoints, but they're in short supply. If the attackers want to find a way in, they'll eventually find one.

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Each round starts with one of the best-designed parts of a video game I've seen in years, too: the drone stage. How do you get past the design problem that defenders need a 45-second head start to build their castle before the attackers try to kick it over? The answer is these drones. In the time before the round begins, the defenders are grabbing armour, putting cameras in place and setting up traps; while on the other side, the attackers have drone parkour. These little machines are piloted around the map in an attempt to find the objective and to scout out the opposition, and its strengths and weaknesses, in advance.

From there it's carnage, and despite the ever-dwindling supply of both allies and ammunition, the most important resource is time. As a defender you're mostly just trying to buy yourself as much of it as possible, and attackers are pressed into moving quickly and efficiently, to reach the objective before the time runs out. Given long enough, any defence can be unpicked – but the ceiling on how long a round can last means that players aren't often able to find the perfect way to mount an assault, and instead have to make a snap decision between one of two shitty options, based solely on what they might have seen during the drone stage.

Having the reflexes of a 15 year old will help you to get ahead here, but winning at Rainbow Six Siege requires not just player skill – communication, intuition and straight up being smarter than your opponents are essential factors. Take my favourite defender, Pulse. Pulse has a handheld heartbeat scanner that can see people's hearts thumping in their chest through walls. If an enemy gets within 12 metres while you've got the scanner out, you'll see a circle. You could kill them with a shotgun blast through the wall, or letting off an explosive, but you need to be proficient in how the scanner works to really make the most of it. Despite how it might sound, it's not a win condition – especially when you consider that the attacking operator called IQ can detect electronics through walls, electronics just like the scanner you're holding in your hands.

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If all this sounds like a lot to take in, it is. Six is a first person shooter for the MOBA generation – highly complex, super adaptable and incredibly fast. In return for my investment over the course of eight months, I've rarely played a round that was anywhere similar to one that's come before. I've seen strategies reworked to account for every new trick we've found, and each week a handful of new ideas are spread on the subreddit that functions as the game's official community, plans that most people haven't thought of before.

With voice comms active and four friends ready to fill in as eager teammates, Rainbow Six Siege is the finest multiplayer game I've ever played. Almost everyone I have encouraged to get into it has, and continues to love it. It's not the newest shooter on the market, or the prettiest, or the most popular, but it's the one that I can't quit going back to. It's just that good. You should probably get it, too.

@_JakeTucker

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This article originally appeared on VICE US

In 2014, UPenn freshman Madison Holleran leapt to her death from a parking structure on her college campus. Her suicide made national news, and The New York Times decried the "pressure for perfection" causing college students to take their own lives. The article joined a chorus warning of a mental health crisis at US colleges, pointing to everything from trigger warnings in lectures to long wait times at counseling centers as proof that today's undergrads are vulnerable and easily broken.

But a large body of evidence, including a study published last month in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, casts doubt on this narrative. Historical data suggests that college students might actually be better off than ever before—and that those who don't go to college are at a higher risk of suicide.

The study, led by researchers from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA), found that people aged 18-25 who don't go to college are more likely to attempt suicide with a plan than their college-attending peers. (Attempting suicide with a plan is usually considered more dangerous than attempting it without one, as planned suicides are more likely to end in death or serious injury.)

"We don't want to ignore the problems of college students," study co-author Richard McKeon, Branch Chief for Suicide Prevention at SAMHSA, told VICE. "The important thing is that people don't think that college students are actually at greater risk when the opposite is true."

The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry paper follows decades of research showing that full-time college attendance is associated with lower rates of suicide—specifically, deaths, rather than just attempts or ideation. The Big Ten Student Suicide Study, published in 1997 and based on data collected in 1980-1990, found that suicide rates for current college students were about one-half those of non-college students of the same age range. That same finding has been corroborated by multiple studies since, most notably in those led by University of Rochester psychiatry professor Allan Schwartz.

Researchers aren't sure why college students are less likely to die by suicide or attempt suicide with a plan. Schwartz has argued that a lack of access to firearms is key; others point to the protective nature of the campus community. Another possibility that remains unconfirmed by research is that the kids who end up going to college have lower rates of mental health problems to begin with. One thing is certain: suicides like Madison Holleran's are the exception, not the rule.

Psychiatrist Victor Schwartz (no relation to Allan) is the medical director of the Jed Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing suicide on college campuses. He argues that college students' mental health issues might get more media attention simply because it makes for a good story. "It feels like such a high-stakes issue, because college is associated with the path to success," he said. "When kids this age have issues, it feels like a very big deal."

Victor Schwartz is skeptical of the narrative of a mental health crisis on campus, pointing out that much of the data is more positive than it seems at first glance. For instance, the 2015 American College Health Association National College Health Assessment (ACHA-NCHA) found that 9.6 percent of students had seriously considered suicide in the past year, and 1.6 percent had actually attempted it. Those numbers may be upsettingly high, but they've also barely changed since the survey's first edition in 2000. "You'd think that if, in some generic way, college students were sicker than they were 20 years ago, these numbers would reflect that," Schwartz said. In other words, there is no current crisis.

The ACHA-NCHA survey also said that more than 30 percent of college students have felt so depressed in the past year they found it difficult to function. Not an encouraging statistic—but previous results suggest that it's down from 40 percent in the year 2000.

What is different is more students are getting help for their depression. A lot of articles about the "college health crisis" refer to long wait times for counseling centers as a sign that more students have mental health issues—but it might simply be a sign that more students are seeking treatment.

The uptick in college students seeking on-campus counseling can be explained, Schwartz said, by the drastic cuts in community mental health care in the past few decades. Students who would've been referred to outside providers for care are now flooding college counseling centers because those outside providers are no longer there. "We work with schools out in the Southwest where there just isn't anyone in the community to refer students to," he added.

Both McKeon and co-author Beth Han emphasized that their research shouldn't be taken as downplaying the importance of suicide prevention on campuses. But they also pointed out that non-college-attending 18 to 25-year-olds may be comparatively underserved, even though they represent 59 percent of their peer group.

Much of the problem is access. Campus suicide prevention efforts can loop in counselors, faculty members, administrators, and resident assistants to ensure multiple touchpoints for every at-risk student. "The challenge for the other groups is: how do you reach them?" McKeon pointed out. "It's not as straightforward."

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) at any time of day or night to talk to a trained counselor in your area.

A woman weighing her options at a marriage expo in Shanghai. Photo via Getty

On a windy midweek afternoon, Jingyi Cheng and her new boyfriend, Liu Ziyu, lazily pushed a shopping cart around a supermarket in Xinjiang, China. They had been dating for two months. So far, so good.

Like many new couples, there was an air of awkwardness between the two, as giggles gave way to terse silences and my probing questions on marriage initiated a jolt of panic.

"I mean, it's pretty easy to find a man," Cheng told me, nonchalantly.

Her boyfriend interrupted her to offer his view. "It feels like there are 20 boys trying to chase one girl," Ziyu told me. "The girls are going to run out like a resource."

Statistically, he's right. China's one-child policy coupled with a traditional preference for sons has led to a widespread imbalance in the number of men and women of marrying age. By 2020, the Chinese government predicts there will be approximately 30 million unmarried men in China. By 2050, some demographers have calculated that could be up to 186 single men for every 100 single women.

Historically, women in China who were unmarried by the age of 30 faced the stigma of being labeled "left over" or Shengnu—the Chinese equivalent of a spinster. The term was popularized by the government, which also funds enormous matchmaking events for singles, further cementing the belief that anyone who can't find a spouse by their late 20s must have some kind of defect.

And yet, some women are pushing back. In a beauty advertisement that went viral earlier this year, Chinese women described the enormous pressure they face to get married—and all the reasons they're refusing. "I'm happy being alone," one woman explains in the ad. "I feel free and I enjoy the single status." Last month, a Shanghai-based production company started casting for a new reality-television show where "leftover women"—those who are over the age of 27 and still single—will be the protagonists.

With the number of unmarried men in China soon to reach the population size of Australia, fewer women are feeling the threat of the feared title hovering over them. Instead, for Chinese women, the scarcity means they increasingly hold the cards in the marriage market and can afford to wait longer before settling down.

"Before people thought women should marry early, otherwise they are left over," Alexia Ping, a college student in Shanghai, told me. "But now, people think it's OK if women put their career in first place, marriage in second or third place."

Ping, 21, was recently proposed to by her boyfriend (who is significantly older), but she told me she hasn't made up her mind yet about whether she wants to marry him. She's educated, lives in the city, and she's a woman—she feels her future relationship status is very much in her own hands.

Wang Yu, who runs the Chinese Tinder equivalent TanTan, said that doesn't surprise him. TanTan's daily active users have doubled since December 2015, he told me, and most of its female users, he believes, are in no hurry to marry. "On average, male users 'like' 60 percent of female users, and female users 'like' 6 percent of male users," Yu explained. He attributes the discrepancy to a mix of Chinese women being too picky and globalization, since he says exposure to American television shows like Sex & the City and Friends "make you more modern."

Watch: Unmarried at 27, China's 'Leftover Women'

Globally, there's been a trend toward women staying single or marrying later, if at all. According to the Pew Research Center, barely half of all adults in the United States are currently married—a record low—and the average age that women are marrying at has never been higher, currently 26.5 years. Worldwide, that age is now 24.7, up from 21.8 years in the 1970s according to the United Nations.

But in China, the looming gender imbalance makes the contrast particularly stark. In just two decades, the number of married women between the ages of 25 and 29 has plummeted from 95 percent to 77 percent.

Meanwhile, in America: There Literally Aren't Enough Men

It's not just young women who are feeling liberated from the shackles of Shengnu status. Divorced women, traditionally viewed as "tainted" by their separation, are experiencing a renewed social standing. According to data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, 2012 marked the first year that China's divorce rate surpassed its marriage rate, and it's kept climbing since. The shift could signal that women have greater agency and freedom to leave bad marriages; other reports have suggested it's the rise of social media and availability of dating apps that's led to the change.

Yu Li, a 50-year-old divorcée in Shenzhen, told me she met her ex-husband while they were both college students in Hunan. But their marriage was a wreck. "He cheated on me. He went to Beijing often and claimed it's for his job, he had an apartment there, with her," she told me, on discovering her husband was keeping a pregnant mistress in the capital. "I felt sad and pathetic about it."

For a woman of her mother's generation, leaving the marriage would've been unthinkable. But Li knew several women who had either divorced or dated multiple men contemporaneously. So she divorced her husband and registered on Jiayuan.com, a popular Chinese dating website similar to Match.com, where she soon found a new, younger boyfriend.

Li said attitudes among women are definitely changing. "We are becoming open as well, just like men," she told me.

Of course, not all women feel liberated by the gender imbalance and many, particularly those in rural areas, still subscribe to the traditional ways of thinking. In Zhejiang, a farming region in Eastern China, Zeron Don—who is still single at 33 years old—feels enormous familial pressure to marry and bear a child. "The most important reason for me to not give up on marriage is I want to have my own kid," she told me. "I have planned so many ways to teach and love my kid, but I just can't get married because it's too hard for a girl at my age to find a proper husband."

And although the gender imbalance has changed the dating landscape, sociologist Yong Cai argues it is merely "a bargaining chip to get into the marriage "and that the dynamic within marriages actually hasn't changed much." Cai, who researches the effects of China's one-child policy at the University of North Carolina's Population Center, told me most Chinese women—as with many women in other parts of the world—still bear the responsibility for cooking, cleaning, and raising children. Even if Chinese women have greater agency in choosing a spouse, women still make the most compromises during the marriage, illustrating that gender equality remains premature in China.

But that, too, may change. The heightened awareness among young women of their growing leverage reflects a popular Chinese saying: yin sheng, yang shuai, meaning the female force is on the up, while the male is on the down.

Additional reporting by Qiushi Li and Pavni Mittal.

Follow Adela Suliman on Twitter.

Comedian Leslie Jones was forced off Twitter by trolls. Photo via Associated Press

This article originally appeared on VICE Canada

About a month ago, comedic rock star Leslie Jones left Twitter after being bombarded with incredibly racist, and misogynistic tweets from users offended by her role in the new Ghostbusters reboot. Her mentions were a minefield of racist memes and statements thrown her way by trolling egg shaped profiles. She was likened to various gorillas who have starred in Hollywood movies, including Harambe (the gorilla that was shot in a Cincinnati zoo). She was called a n***a, a slave, an uncle Tom, a big-lipped coon, sent pictures of penises and all other levels of racist depravity. It's fucked and gives a whole new definition to cyber bullying.

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