To get past the paywall, sign up for VICE membership. A Digital Only subscription is just $2 a month (or $20 a year, if you prefer. $70 a year also gets you 4 issues of VICE magazine, delivered straight to your door. (All three kill all the ads on this site.)No one likes it when I say this, but you get the algorithm you deserve. Generally speaking, what you get served on social media is a reflection of the things you’ve engaged with the most combined with predictions of what you would engage with based on your age, gender, location, and so on. Hence, my Instagram Explore page is a shameful buffet of women in those shorts Shane Gillis is afraid of providing “glute activation” gym tutorials, clips of Florence Pugh talking about food in a vaguely erotic manner, and drunk Americans belting Alice In Chains in the back of a pick-up; my legitimate interests merged and warped by the digital marketplace of sly OnlyFans promotion and adverts for perimenopausal supplements. Others, however, might find their timelines filled with other things. Bloodshed, for instance.In an essay for the latest issue of VICE magazine, The Self-Destruction Issue, Mattha Busby looks into the rise of so-called “fight porn” on social media. That is, the constant barrage of videos of bar fights, dog fights, schoolyard brawls, dashcam road rage, etc, that roll non-stop across our timelines like hot, cortisol-spiking dispatches from the frontlines of the War On The Societal Contract, delivered to us casually between celebrity gossip and photos of our friends’ babies. It begs the question: Are Western societies more violent than they were in the past, or is the algorithm pushing us all, gently, towards insanity?Mattha writes:“Perhaps the question isn’t whether we’re more barbarous than our grandparents but what the effect of being constantly exposed to barbarism is on our brains and societies as a whole. To be clear, there is little evidence that street violence itself has exploded in the West, but what has exploded is its visibility—and the way that visibility shapes what feels socially plausible.”Read the full story in The Self-Destruction Issue or behind the paywall below:Read NextIs Fight Porn Destroying Us?Also behind the paywall this week, you’ll find what is perhaps the spiritual inverse of CCTV footage of Americans punching each other: artistic interpretations of sex in China.Lao Xie Xie has been photographing Shanghai youth since 2019, following Gen Z through a pandemic and tightening moral codes. Capturing people in their homes, in public spaces, at underground shibari parties and more, his series Shanghai No Why offers a glimpse into the lives of young microcommunities thriving beyond censorship and cultural stereotypes. Speaking to VICE writer Tom Veréb Czibolya, Lao says:“To me, these photos are about freedom, freedom to present your body differently […] What I can say is that many of the people I photograph belong to a generation obsessed with images. It’s social media and its hyper-aggressive push toward self-representation, and clearly, this influences how they approach relationships and sexuality too.”Check out a selection of Lao’s work and read our full interview with him behind the paywall:Read NextGen Z Are Leading a Sexual Revolution in Shanghai, ApparentlyEmma GarlandDeputy Editor, VICE MagazineTo get past the paywall, sign up for VICE membership. A Digital Only subscription is just $2 a month (or $20 a year, if you prefer), while $70 a year also gets you 4 issues of VICE magazine, delivered straight to your door. (All three kill all the ads on this site.)The post A Generation Obsessed With Images—This Week On VICE: Members Only appeared first on VICE.