commentary for Zines Chapter 3

There are mainly two issues in this chapter that have struck me as odd yet familiar.  The first is this seemingly ubiquitous preoccupation with bohemia and authenticity within the underground.  It seems like a waste of time to get so caught up in what is punk and what is not, because, like the last section says, it isolates a person from people who aren’t “punk” and even those that claim the punk ideals but are of a different faction.  Putting a label on yourself quite possibly could lead to close mindedness, and, essentially, a conservative attitude. Duncombe says that the ideal zine community is one that encompasses millions of facets. Maybe this means that the ideal zine world can’t really be anti anything, except big business and the capitalist meritocracy, but who isn’t anti that, anyway besides the .000000002 percent benefitting from it? It seems as if anyone who is creating a zine somehow wants to communicate without using the system’s means. So, everyone already has that in common, regardless of whether they frequent the hottest underground bars, live in a shitty apartment in the central district, wear studs, are 80 years old, or whatever.  I understand that people want to belong to a certain niche, but I think, speaking not just to zinesters who argue about what is punk all day but to everyone especially in my generation, that niches are kind of difficult to define.  No philosophy can be prepackaged to fit like a glove.  That is why zines are so appealing in the first place; individuals speak out, someone agrees with a thread, and contributes their own take on the subject at hand.  This is loosely connected with my second issue- Riot Grrrl’s strange evolution from a medium which demands and encourages raw self expression into a predictable and confining Zine, mind you, not by the owners/publishers, but by the thousands of individual contributors.  The zine was supposed to be an escape from  insane debates, which didn’t even include women, that argued the definitive nature of categories that are supposed to garnish individual expression.  It was a forum that stressed the absense of a dogmatic philosophical code with which to abide so that anyone could contribute anything on their minds.  Its gradual transition into a group of zines quite the opposite of nebulous gestures toward a tendency in people to follow the "herd", so to speak.  In fact, it is as though people actually look for a pattern or system under which to abide even if that system doesn’t intentionally exist. This might sound a little crazy, but when I read this I figured out why people join cults.  Some people need a place to belong and they need people to tell them what to do.  Although I know that the individual does exist and that everyone is special and equipped with their own good and bad ideas, it is apparent that awakening that self awareness takes more effort for some than for others.