A backlash is brewing against digital life. Everywhere you look online, ironically, it seems people are talking about “digital detoxing” and “going analogue”.
Tired of doomscrolling and AI slop, Gen-Z are turning back towards physical media, including books, magazines and the humble zine.
Originally known as fanzines, zines have their origins in early sci-fi fan publications made in the 1930s. They exploded during the punk movement of the 1970s, with handmade, stapled and photocopied zines chronicling the scene distributed at gigs or dropped into local cafes and community centres.
Intended as a way to share ideas in a creative way outside of the mainstream media, in a cheap and accessible format, they are different from magazines in that they are typically self-published, have a small circulation, and are not profit driven.
When my friend YeeWen Wong and I had the idea to open up submissions for our own DIY, self-published print publication last year, we couldn’t have anticipated the level of interest.
What started out as a once-off creative project geared towards the lesbian community in Ireland and France (where we are both based) has now turned into two 48-page publications called Dyke Affair, stocked in 15 bookshops across Europe and North America, with a third in the works.
We’ve had hundreds of submissions ranging from essays and poems to photography and illustration.
Though the format ended up somewhat closer to a magazine than a zine, it was rooted in the DIY culture of zines.
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