Shane Smith, Vice's CEO and co-founder. Credit: Evan Kafka/FORBES
A cheerful willingness to offend absolutely anyone is a big part of the formula that propelled Vice from ratty indie style magazine to billion-dollar global media colossus. Talking to Shane Smith, the company’s co-founder and CEO, it’s not hard to see where that attitude comes from.
I interviewed Smith at length for my feature on Vice’s remarkable rise and came away with far more quotable material than we could fit in the magazine. The hard-partying hipster icon was particularly voluble on the subject of Occupy Wall Street. He’s not a fan. In fact, at the time of our interview, Smith had just dispatched undercover models and photographers down to Zucotti Park to satirize the protests for a fashion story.
Here’s what he had to say about the occupation:
When you get down to it the politics of it is juvenile. There’s no real cohesive manifesto or even cohesive ask. They’re saying, well, we should tax the rich and give it to more people. And I say, well, I get it, but you understand that government tax redistribution has another name, and that’s communism. You want to take from rich people and give to each according to his need. I mean, you don’t want to say it, but that’s what you’re saying.
The economic system here is f***ed. But if you’re going to try to fix it or change it, you have to have something a little more cohesive than “redistribution of wealth” and then not even know what communism or socialism is. Have you not read a book?
I like the fact that they’re protesting. It’s just really sad when you go down there. It’s like talking to kindergarten children. What are you doing? Why are you even here? If there was a real revolution, man, I’d be there just for the fun of it.
Smith’s politics are a little hard to characterize; “the absurdity of the modern condition” is the phrase he uses. One thing he’s definitely not is a European-style socialist. That’s a function of experience.
I grew up being a socialist and I have problems with it because I grew up in Canada [and] I’ve spent a lot of time in Scandinavia, where I believe countries legislate out creativity. They cut off the tall trees. Everyone’s a C-minus. I cam to America from Canada because Canada is stultifyingly boring and incredibly hypocritical. Thanks, Canada.
Smith is a hard-core statist, however, when it comes to his philosophy of building great companies. He repeatedly described himself as “the Stalin of Vice,” by which he meant that he has personal oversight of every last detail. In his view, companies that achieve greatness are those that have their own Stalins, like Apple under Steve Jobs and Facebook under Mark Zuckerberg. But Zuckerberg is something of a liability as well, he said:
I’m gonna get myself in a lot of sh** here…Obviously Facebook is great. The problem is Zuckerberg, who’s the Stalin of Facebook, is his own worst enemy. If he was a different guy, everyone would like him. There’s so much pent-up animosity against Facebook because of him and his culture. When Google Plus came out, everyone wanted it to work even though it was a piece of sh**. I think it would have a much better public perception if he was a different dude or if he wasn’t, like, the face.
I was at Facebook, and if you go there the f***ing campus is great, and it’s super good vibes, the people are great. But the perception people have in their heads is these entitled, socially awkward nerds. But as a company you have to respect the hell out of what they’ve done. It started as this little thing and now it’s the thing.
