Hence 50 years for zines
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2026
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Are the kids these days still doing zines? Like actual physical ones, not online? I used to love contributing to those, and reading them, back in the 90s.
Yeah, one of the protestors got like 50 years in prison for transporting them a couple months back :(
Zines have just kind of become printed memes, but Food Not Bombs still keeps them at their distro tables. One group I read about was actually printing them on napkin paper and wrapping homebaked bread in them. Which is just genius, imho.
Zine culture is about as active as it's ever been in the subcultures it has always been a part of (punk, diy, activism, etc).
That's good to hear. Zines are a part of my youth I look back on fondly. I'm glad they're still around, and surprised, I would have thought being online all the time with all the self publishing options available would have killed them.
Honestly, if you consider why you were likely attracted to them, it'll probably beceome clear why they'll never die. For me it's DIY culture, something that while available online through personal websites,^[aka the indie web or small web. Which is similar to zines in both aesthetics and community, actually] within zine culture also comes with the possibility of both arts & crafts as well as meet-space level community events.
I make zines. Usually I just reprint (literally with a printer. Yea it’s super fucking annoying to use even when it works right) stuff that the PSL sends me, that stuff is all really solid, usually just history told in short, concise paragraphs.
I am working on my own comics and my own lil character guys that I plan on making real zines with. I found an anti flock paper that had One of my work friends’ art on it credited to her and I told her I found it and she was like “???? That’s cool tho”. So yeah we’re out here making shit you just gotta find it. Free little libraries are perfect, but nothing beats handing them out to people directly.
The perpetual paradox of political education. Books transmit information. The knowledge they confer will simultaneously make you better informed about how to design a better society, but less and less certain about whether revolution will encourage or even allow that kind of society. Memes transmit emotions, instilling the passion to enact revolution, but leaving you with no knowledge of how to revolt, or how to rebuild afterward.
Reading theory and history has only made me more certain that revolution is necessary and good.
the dialectic at work :)
So, memes first to get passion. Then books to get info. Then memes again to get back the passion?
Or Books then Memes if they are already interested?
The passion drives one to act, not read. The informed are resistant to the emotional manipulation of memes.
Not really.
After reading about some issues, some memes become more effective.
Like this one:
The truth never needs long explanations
The medium is the message.
Gen Z version: the message is mid
-- and cringe. lol
when all you have is a string to pull on
you pull on it to keep caring
Reminds me of something Alok said about playbooks: we focus on the books but forget to play.
that's the internet era's way. rock on.
I didn't know that quote by Voltaire.