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Over on the Internet newsgroup alt.zines there's been some talk about the ‘zine ghetto' recently, a debate on whether it exists, and if it does, whether it was good, bad, self-imposed, or what. The zine ghetto is a term used to describe the way zine content gets completely ignored by mass media and large retail stores, to the point where the only people who really know about zines are people who publish them. Personally, I like this. Among the small number of zine-geeks, I can be as a god, lording it over the slower and dimmer among them. In the big ole world I'm just a chump, aren't I? Don't answer that. Still, the argument that zinesters maybe perpetuate their ‘ghetto' status because we like it is compelling, especially when you read a lot of zines, like I do. Sometimes I come home from my PO Box ready to swallow a shotgun barrel and end it all, because the people writing zines out there are just the whiniest motherfuckers in the world, dig? I know this because the second biggest zine-cliche (right behind Interviewing Yourself Sarcastically) is Writing Savage Essays About How Your Job Sucks. You know you've all seen them: snarky, depressing articles about the leeching of humanity in today's grey-cube corporate hells. It's hard not to nod your head in sympathy when you read them, because you very likely either a) work in a similar situation, or b) used to. We've all had shitty, dignity-lite jobs at some point in our lives, even if for most of us it was when were nineteen. Now, here's where I start getting towards my point, approaching it carefully, nudging my way towards it, hands in pockets, whistling, hoping no one notices: When you're nineteen, it's perfectly normal and acceptable to have a shitty job and be pissed off about it. Being nineteen is a fairly powerless time in everybody's life, and slopping burgers or eating shit from bosses who are clearly dumber than you is ripe grist for a zine. But while I see this as totally acceptable from nineteen year-old's, I completely lose my sympathy for people when they're thirty and they're still writing this savage essays about their crappy temp/part-time jobs. When you're thirty, man, especially if you've got a college degree, I do not want to read about how undignified working as a part-time telemarketer is, because you don't fucking have to. I have a job. On the one hand, I work for a large corporation in a cube-farm hell, getting paid not enough and doing boring shit. Yahoo for me. You don't hear me complaining about it, though, because I get a lot out of my job that has nothing to do with the salary or conditions: I basically run my own personal publishing empire from my desk at work. This makes everything worth it, of course, but I also have some advantages that stem directly from having a degree and some level of flexibility in my job. If I don't like this job, I can leave it and get another one. If you remove the requirement that I get some huge raise when I do that, suddenly my job choices soar, so if the job becomes unbearable, I leave. A lot of zine people (people in general, I'm sure, but I'm focusing on zinesters) eschew the corporate job in favor of temp jobs or pert-time jobs, thinking that by doing so they will sacrifice money in exchange for free time and peace of mind. I think they're wrong. What they get instead is shitty jobs, a lack of respect because they end up doing work that anybody–or a monkey–can do, leaving them disrespected and underpaid, and, of course, that ever-present simmering rage against a world that mocks them. I think the concept of working when you need cash and quitting when you don't is appealing–but it doesn't work, because as we all discover as we age, everyfuckingthing in the world costs money. When I graduated college with my mysterious English degree, I hung around the old college town for a year and got a part-time job at a print shop, doing deliveries. I had the same thoughts everyone has: I'll have half my days free, I'll just live cheaply, I'll be free! FREE I TELL YOU! Instead, what I quickly was was broke, and I began considering taking on a second job. When the print shop offered me a $1 an hour raise to go full time, I took it, and found myself working 45 hours a week (not counting lunch) for shitty pay in a shitty environment. I was miserable. That's the problem: it just doesn't work. Instead of accepting this and just getting some full-time job with a modicum of acceptable-level dignity and freedom, a lot of zine publishers seem to keep doing the part-time, temp thing, and bitching about it. Temp jobs suck. Part-time work can often suck. This isn't news. Yet they write about it in these outraged, amazed tones, because they drank the Kool-Aid on the anti-corporate' stance a long time ago, and think that somehow working part-time for a corporation (and these days how many of us don't work for a corporation of some sort?) Is better than working full-time. At least I get to steal office supplies. I'm not suggesting that my surrender to wage-slavism is a triumph of the will or anything, but at least I have a degree of control over my life that stops me from penning simpering rants against crappy jobs. Not everyone has a choice, of course. But the people who write and publish zines tend to be smart, somewhat educated people, and for most of these types of articles I've read it's pretty obvious they could have a decent full-time job if they wanted, but they cling to the ‘cred' of temping or occasional unemployment. Fuck, man, I'd rather publish my zine without having to sell blood, and that's what a little compromise will get you, not to mention health insurance, free copies, free long distance phone-calls. All a life of temp jobs and slacker purity gets you, it seems, is a bad attitude and a lot of venting about sucky job experiences. Then again, all I ever write about is how stupid people are and how wonderful I am, so maybe I'm not really onto anything, after all. Fuck you. Go ahead and send your thoughts on the matter to the usual place. Jeff |
October 22, 2002