|   'Zine but not Heard? The Faithful at Webzine '98 Say 'No Way' Josh Wilson, SF Gate Assistant Editor  Thursday, November 20, 1998 Billed a tad vaingloriously as "the debut event for independent content online," Webzine '98 almost lived up to its hyperbolic promise of rescuing the Internet from dumbed-down commodification. The event staged at the Transmission Theater in San Francisco's SOMA district on Saturday, Nov. 14 was an evening full of exhortations to self-publish, declamations of the Web's accessibility and ease-of-use, and impressive displays of genuinely democratic sentiment. Hallelujah! Justin Hall evangelizes. (photo by Derek M. Powazek) Unfortunately, Webzine '98 was grievously underattended. This is in sharp contrast to Geekapalooza 1.0, an industry mixer thrown by the Association of Internet Professionals this past September. That party, also held at the Transmission, was thoroughly lacking in substantive content and dialogue, but nevertheless packed the house. If only the twain could meet. The average Internet pro could do with a dose of the zinesters' enthusiastic idealism. Once and Future Kingdom For Betty Ray, one of the conference organizers and author of the highly irreverent Fucker, the great tragedy of the Web is the notion that "making money is the only thing that matters. The point of Webzine '98 was to remind people that this is not just a commercial arena. It connects people. The same things that make it a marketer's wet dream are what make it such a great publishing medium. It's intimate." Ray is quick to differentiate making a profit from selling out. "I certainly don't mean to suggest that it's got to be either one way or another. It's just that there are, in my opinion, way too many brilliant minds and creative geniuses out there expending energy on turning this thing into the Mall of the Planet." It wasn't always like that. Back in the Good Old Days say, '94 and '95 before what Ray describes as "the mass colonization by commercial interests," the sites that really stood out were webzines. From the indulgently personal and artily obscure to the biting and bitterly sarcastic, 'zines defined the early era of Internet publishing and later became bridges to career opportunity. A prime example is Suck, originally founded as an off-hours outlet for HotWired employees fed up with industry hype, now a corporate product with replete Gap, Bugle Boy and Oracle ads. And that step from homegrown labor of love to fully-owned subsidiary is exactly what the Webzine '98 folks are afraid of. Conference organizers made clear, however, that the cash reward isn't the problem most (if not all) of them earn a tidy living working online. Rather, it's the compromise. Personal Control In one of the evening's highlights, Justin Hall formerly of HotWired and Howard Rheingold's Electronic Minds venture, champion of online-navel gazing and all-purpose Internet evangelist delivered an entertaining rant in favor of self-publishing, and against the emasculating qualities of investment dollars. Responding to comments that Webzine '98 could be "the way to get Madison Avenue to pay attention to webzines," Hall asserted that venture capital is "the dirty word when it comes to personal control over the Web." So, one would imagine, is "advertising," which in today's media-market causes much accomodation on the part of publishers. HotWired, for example, has been running its front page in black and white as part of a Hewlett-Packard color printer promotional. "Imagine if the New Yorker did that. Readers would scream for blood," said Derek Powazek, a conference participant and former employee of the website. "HotWired is bent over backwards and taking it in every orifice for advertisers, because if they didn't they'd be dead." And has this affected their content? "I think it's hurt it, I honestly do," he said. There aren't any easy answers to this problem, except to self-publish although you'll most likely be doing it in your spare time. And that's what Webzine '98 is all about: Taking charge of your media, and getting free from the culture of polls and demographics that gave us a Fourth Estate obsessed with beanie babies and President Clinton's zipper. That attitude rang true with audience member Brian Zisk. "Webzines are important because a person with a dream and some skill can put up something that a committee of 60 people could never do," he said. "As soon as you have to get it past a committee, forget about it. But one really talented person can do as much as a whole media company." Zisk, who publishes a local events 'zine, SanFranZiskGo, as well as Transaction Net, a well-trafficked site dedicated to establishing currency alternatives, is a walking testament to the strength of the Web's original D.I.Y. impulse. A successful self-promoter with a potent idealistic streak, he's exactly the kind of person Webzine '98 was reaching out to. Where's Waldo? It's too damn bad more folks like him didn't show up. Various participants and attendees blamed lousy promotions for the event's slack ticket sales. Daphne Blumenthal, an attendee and webtech with the local production company Diesel Design, even suspected that folks may have been scared off by the event press release's bold declaration of rebel-credibility, "We are all on drugs, we are all fucked up." Another factor may be a certain degree of narcissism and pretension associated with the event. One woman web programmer, who did not attend and spoke on condition of anonymity, expressed dismay over "the hype surrounding webzines, created and celebrated by and for a relatively undiverse group of self-congratulatory SOMA web workers. Maybe they talk about their own sex lives, [their] existential angst, [post] pictures of their naked lovers, admissions of recreational drug use ... big fucking deal. I'm all for self-expression, but the euphoric trumpeting of people privileged to have computers and know how to use them, and claim this as a independent publishing revolution ... please." Cynicism, anyone? Sure. Will self-focused scrapbook 'zines ever make a real difference? And what about the digital divide the gap between Internet haves and have-nots? Is this really all about vanity and privilege? Show Me/Share Me "It used to be cool just to be on the web, no matter what it was. I think we're over that. The bar has been raised a little bit," said Powazek, whose popular webzine Fray is founded upon sharing epiphanies. He feels the fundamental conceit is sound. "There's this built-in human need to hear stories, and get involved with other people's lives. People respond to genuine storytelling. I think we're so innundanted with very slick, very polished media, that when you see something genuine, it's amazing, it touches you in a way no movie could." Public revelations of the personal are, in fact, only one small aspect of the webzine phenomenon. One real strength of Webzine '98 was the diversity of the sites represented from the wry and sometimes merciless satire of Ditherati and Fucker, to the women's gripe-lounge Maxi and the agitprop of "Anarchism's Ad Agency," Unamerican Activites. Just Do It "If you're the kind of person who just wants to absorb media," said Powazek, "it's a lot easier to do so on the Web than it used to be. But if you're the kind of person who that looks at media and says, 'I can fucking do that,' then all the tools are still there. In fact it's easier to do than before. Any $20 dialup account comes with five megabytes of space for you, there's still Geocities, even though they slap an ad on your page. You can still do it. It really does take a day to learn HTML, and everyone has a story to tell." "The Web is so damn easy," Hall told the audience, reiterating the popular theme of the evening. "If you have an idea, please just do it because the Web is so easy. All you gotta do is something you care about and everybody will come to you and give you all sorts of mad love." If you build it, they will pageview, is the sentiment, and you may be hearing more of it. Organizers intend Webzine '98 to be just the first of an annual series, a webmedia counterpart to the independent film and music festivals that have sprung up around the country. It's a good idea, although one might note that many of the more established indie fests like Sundance and South by Southwest have themselves become proving-grounds for mega-media corporations in search of the Next Marketable Trend. Balanced between the problems and rewards of profit, between marginalized self-indulgence and liberating free expression, the webzine and the Internet itself is still very much up for grabs. ©2001 SF Gate | |
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