Whenever VICE co-founder Suroosh would say the word paki, white people would be up in arms criticizing him (huh?). It became irresistible to goad people and corner them into conversations about controversial politics because they were so hysterical and easy to anger. Plus, incendiary political statements garnered endless publicity for us and playing with mainstream media became a fun game.

We convinced journalists we were gay lovers, we told them MTV was starting a new series with us, said we were banned from stores we weren’t banned from, I told America I though Jesus was gay on Bill Maher’s idiot show Politically Incorrect — last week we even convinced a journalist we are 40 year-old drug dealers. After leaving Vice Magazine a couple of years ago and working only part time on boring administration stuff, I made antagonizing the press almost my full time job.

And yes, I wrote an article for The American Conservative about a new trend of conservative hipsters. I did it for a laugh. I did it because I wanted to see what it would be like to flirt with Pat Buchanan (and I agree with some of what the AmCon says, just like I agree with some of what The Nation says). In the AmCon piece I made totally bullshit claims like “Terry Richardson was publicly trashing Clinton” and “Our website was filled with people saying the gay media was making women diet too much.” I even invented an “art collective” called Sofia. Any of these things could have been easily disproven, but everyone from The New York Post to Newsweek ran with them. Shocking really.