old-timer or newbie?

[Jerianne]

What are some of the ways you can tell if someone is new to the zine scene, or if they are a long-time zinester? (I ask in the spirit of good humor and silliness, not mean-spiritedness.)

My example: Old-timers put anti-alien stickers (like below) on their envelopes, because they've had dozens of them hanging around since the mid-90s and they want to be rid of them.

[Derek Neuland]

old timer:
-you remember Book Your Own Fucking Life. bonus points if you were listed in it.
-you miss using Book Your Own Fucking Life

[Eunice]

I'm old and new. I'm old in the science fiction fanzine world, as I'd been making fanzines since, oh, 1980. But I'm new in the zine world.

[Alex Wrekk]

I was jsut thinking about BYOFL! My zine was listed and my house, The Dustbin, was listed for shows.

Derek Neuland said:

old timer:
-you remember Book Your Own Fucking Life. bonus points if you were listed in it.
-you miss using Book Your Own Fucking Life

[Derek Neuland]

i know :) your tweet yesterday inspired me to add it to the thread. My zine was in last 2 print editions i believe.

Alex Wrekk said:

I was jsut thinking about BYOFL! My zine was listed and my house, The Dustbin, was listed for shows.

Derek Neuland said:

old timer:
-you remember Book Your Own Fucking Life. bonus points if you were listed in it.
-you miss using Book Your Own Fucking Life

[Gordon Gordon]

Newbies use their home/street address.

Oldies have a P.O. Box.

[Jerianne]

I went to the Kill Zinesters tour in Memphis. I'm pretty sure that it was the first zine-related event I ever went to, and I didn't know anybody there. I was too shy to talk to anyone; I think I brought a couple of my zines but I was too chicken to give them to anyone.

I'd love to see a copy of the Socially Fucking Retarded zine. I bet it would be a lot like looking at an old yearbook.

Dan 10things said:

Oldsters:
*Helped out with or tabled at their local leg of 1996's Kill Zinester Tour if they lived in a major US city

[Dan 10things]

Zacery said:

It's a bit shitty of a zine to publish a list of "least favorite zines", it's completely objective. Plus, who are you to say my zine sucks? I've enjoyed some zines that I know other people have really disliked.

I think the least favorite zine list was supposed to be a joke, I don't remember it being on the surveys you could fill out. There was a time in the zine community when people joked around a lot, gave each other shit, and generally didn't take things near as seriously as people do now. I think it made things more inviting to newbies, they didn't feel so much like someone was going to bite their head off with their new zine idea or if they said something kinda dumb.

But yes, all the zine lists were kinda silly. They'd send out surveys to indie record labels, promotion companies, other zinesters, bands and other people from the indie/DIY scene and come up with a bunch of lists of zines, like the top 100, and then add in quotes from people like Fat Mike from NOFX about a zine they like. I think they had top 10 zines lists from a bunch of band members too... I should pull one out again and look. It was just a section at the beginning of the Zine Guide before 500 pages of small text zine listings to add some fun content, but it inevitably got people whining about it being a popularity contest, rather than lists of really the best zines (which I thought was stating the obvious, but really couldn't take too seriously). Cometbus was pretty much always the favorite zine and it was a great zine, so I couldn't get worked up about it.

[Alex Wrekk]

I swear we had a copy of the Socially Fucking Retarded Zine in the zine library at the IPRC but I checked on my shift at the IPRC last night and couldn't find it.

Jerianne said:

I went to the Kill Zinesters tour in Memphis. I'm pretty sure that it was the first zine-related event I ever went to, and I didn't know anybody there. I was too shy to talk to anyone; I think I brought a couple of my zines but I was too chicken to give them to anyone.

I'd love to see a copy of the Socially Fucking Retarded zine. I bet it would be a lot like looking at an old yearbook.

Dan 10things said:

Oldsters:
*Helped out with or tabled at their local leg of 1996's Kill Zinester Tour if they lived in a major US city

[Dan 10things]

Jerianne said:

I went to the Kill Zinesters tour in Memphis. I'm pretty sure that it was the first zine-related event I ever went to, and I didn't know anybody there. I was too shy to talk to anyone; I think I brought a couple of my zines but I was too chicken to give them to anyone.
I'd love to see a copy of the Socially Fucking Retarded zine. I bet it would be a lot like looking at an old yearbook.Dan 10things said:

Oldsters:
*Helped out with or tabled at their local leg of 1996's Kill Zinester Tour if they lived in a major US city

Oh man, that's too funny. For the Seattle leg of the Kill Zinester Tour I sent out postcards to every zine in the state I could find listed in BYOFL, MRR, Flipside, etc. inviting them to come trade and sell zines or table. We had an art gallery for the daytime part and a club at night, so we had a lot of space for people and filled the gallery completely with tables, zinesters and people. I hope no one felt too scared to talk to people, it was pretty open and inviting, and the touring zinesters were all really nice. Maybe I'll scan in Socially Fucking Retarded and make a PDF of it, but it's less cool than you think. There are pages that are print outs of arguments on alt.zines that now seem silly and probably wouldn't mean as much if you didn't know the players or what was going on at the time.

[Erin H]

"the Socially Fucking Retarded Zine"

really? and people read this zine?

[Dan 10things]

bibliophile83 said:

"the Socially Fucking Retarded Zine"

really? and people read this zine?

Sure they did, it discussed a lot of what was going on in the zine community and featured a bunch of big name zinesters at the time, think of it like the We Make Zines forum, but in zine form. More info:
http://zinewiki.com/Socially_Fucking_Retarded

Yeah, the title wasn't very PC. Here's Darby's intro to the zine:
"We think the title is self-explanatory, especially if you work in the 'zine industry' yourself. If you don't, or are the defensive type, it's just meant to express that on average, these obsessive compulsive zine producers are often so because they are too socially retarded to do anything else. Or do you just become that way once you work on a zine? So the double blind test results have not quite come back from the lab..."

[Erin H]

It's impossible for me to ignore that title.

Dan 10things said:

bibliophile83 said:

"the Socially Fucking Retarded Zine"

really? and people read this zine?

Ignore the un-PCness of the title, it discussed a lot of what was going on in the zine community and featured a bunch of big name zinesters at the time, think of it like the We Make Zines forum, but in zine form. More info:
http://zinewiki.com/Socially_Fucking_Retarded