A Comprehensive Guide To VBS.TV Documentaries
THE UNDERGROUND NEWS station VBS.tv produces some of the most incredible ground-level content I’ve ever seen. They’ve bribed their way into North Korea, met with black market dirty bomb dealers in Bulgaria, and interviewed a Scandinavian who claims he’s the ruler of the Andromeda galaxy, and captured everything on film.
But I hate their slow, clunky, and poorly organized website. Despite an abundance of great and groundbreaking investigative journalism, it’s extremely frustrating to wade through dozens of ads and bandwidth-gorging media plastered all over the site. Not to mention big chunks of skater/indie music coverage that’s cool but not as relevant to my interests. Mostly, when I tell people to check the site out, they later say “I went there, but didn’t really know what to do.”
So, I decided to lay out in clean, plain text the VBS documentaries* that I’d recommend to anyone with 10 minutes or more of free time, giving you a resource to come return to once you’re cursing the site’s cumbersomeness. Each is amazing, but I’ve rated them with the latest scientific approval metrics, the Matadorian Index, based on degree of mind-blowing-ness.
– One of the most well-known pieces of the VBS library, and for good reason. Vice co-founder Shane Smith travels to Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, one of the world’s most perpetually war-torn countries. Along the way he busts an imprisoned warlord out of jail, meets some heroin-smoking pre-teens, and talks to a former General-turned-preacher whose war name was General Butt Naked. But there’s far more to the video than the surface shock value. – This was my first encounter with both VBS and Vice, and man, what an impression it made. “Basically the most dangerous drug known to man,” is how they describe scopolamine, a derivative drug from a plant found all over Colombia, which VBS goes to investigate. In short, the drug is more of a weapon, capable of turning victims into the enslaved zombies of the person that gave it to them. The fact that it exists is mind-blowing enough–and VBS takes it head-on at every level, interviewing both victims and perpetrators, and even buying some off the street from a cracked out Colombiano named Demencia Black. – If you’re going to watch just one video, make it this one. The immense insanity occurring beyond the North Korean border must be seen to be believed, and even then it becomes all the more unbelievable. Prepare for fake dinner banquets, a shrine of gifts to Kim Jong Il from adoring world leaders, and the biggest, weirdest acrobatic spectacle of all time.Far Out: Heimo’s Arctic Refuge –
Nzambi –
Shulgins I Have Known and Loved –
Icelandic Skin Disease Mushroom Fashion Fiasco –
Ralph Ludsten’s Andromeda Galaxy –
Vice Guide to Norwegian Prisons –
The Last Dinosaur of the Congo –
The Radioactive Beasts of Chernobyl –
*Note: These are the best of the ones I’ve been able to find–as I’m just now publishing, I’m still discovering new videos (that are years old) through the site. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.