When Every Company Wanted to Be Vice

There was a moment when every tech company thought becoming cool meant hiring VICE and building a platform with indie musicians. Vodafone 360 was theirs. They found their heroes: Lily Allen, La Roux, Peaches. In times of economic crisis and environmental collapse, obviously these were the figures who mattered. Not firefighters. Not nurses.

You could watch Santigold try something completely new. Simian Mobile Disco let you see their creative process. Club Zonder Filter documented Amsterdam with narration about the wittiest language in the world—I remember thinking it was absurd. Every artist the platform needed, all carefully designed in that semi-red UI.

This blog ended up on there somewhere. I could never find where exactly. That felt right for a platform so perfectly designed that it disappeared its own content into the interface. Vodafone 360 shut down a few years later like you knew it would.

What I remember now isn’t the platform or the artists or the absurd heroes framing. It’s that moment when every tech company thought becoming cool worked the same way: hire VICE, hire musicians, design something beautiful, and the coolness follows. For a while it actually did feel true. That’s what that era believed. That’s what stayed with me when the platform itself was gone.