Overheard a kid at the library say zines were 'just old internet'

I was grabbing some paper at the downtown branch and heard this high schooler tell their friend that making a zine was like building a website... but with scissors and a copy machine. It made me laugh, but then I thought about how the physical cut-and-paste, the smell of the toner, that's the whole point. Anyone else run into a totally wrong but kind of funny take on what we do?

3 comments

3 Comments

lucas_moore2mo ago

My cousin once called my zine collection a "paper blog" and I had to sit him down. He's a smart kid, but he just didn't get that the mistakes are part of it, the ink smudges and the weird photocopy texture. I told him it's like the difference between a playlist and a mixtape you made with a cassette. The work you put into the physical thing is what makes it special. His take was so wrong it kind of broke my brain for a second.

the_lily2mo ago

That mixtape comparison is spot on. Lucas_moore gets it, the whole point is the object itself has a history. A blog post just lives on a server somewhere, but a zine got folded, stapled, and handed to someone. It's proof that a person cared enough to make a thing you can hold. Your cousin will probably look back in ten years and finally understand what he was holding.

troykim1mo ago

Man, remember when a bad photocopy job could ruin your whole day? I spent like an hour once trying to line up pages just right and still stapled it upside down, lol. That's the stuff you can't get back, @lucas_moore, your cousin will miss out on that special kind of frustration. A blog just looks perfect forever, but a zine has all your dumb little human errors baked right in.