The Sadness Meter

VICE that month ran an interview with Issei Sagawa—the Japanese man who murdered and cannibalized a Dutch student in Paris in 1981, walked free on a legal technicality, and spent the decades after as a minor celebrity in Japan rather than serving any time. Richard Kern shot a woman named Ana Lucia nude for the same issue. All content was rated using something called a Sadness Meter, which is insane as an editorial device and also the most honest rating system any magazine has ever used.

PRINZ Berlin had five city-dwellers writing about love, drugs, and longing—Hadnet Tesfai among them, plus TV presenter Lars Dietrich—and David Fischer photographed women in Triumph and Stella McCartney lingerie a few pages later. NEON went deep on animal sex and the psychology of the color purple, then pivoted to a guide on what to do and absolutely not do after a breakup. NYLON gave Franz Ferdinand the title of best-dressed band in the world and ran a cover reading "Pretty Cool—Hot Pink Lips, Dangerous Dresses & Killer Heels." cooler interviewed snowboarder Kjersti Buaas and offered ten eco-tips for the slopes, which I read once and immediately forgot.

I was buying all of these regularly back then. The newsstand smell, the specific weight of a magazine in your hands, the way VICE always felt slightly grimy even fresh off the rack. Blogs were already eating their lunch—this journal included—but the glossies still had money for photographers who could actually fly somewhere interesting, and sometimes that showed.