Three Anti-Capitalist Zines
Here are three little zines made using Alienmelon's Electric Zine Maker, made for the 2024 Fuck Capitalism Jam. Instead of offering my thoughts about why capitalism sucks (which many others have done better than I could), I've tried to offer some alternative ways of doing things.
One zine is about using plaintext instead of proprietary formats for digital work.
The second is about gardening without money, or for very little money.
The third is filled with ways to spend your time that don't involve shopping, a "pastime" that has become alarmingly common these days.
Not all of these ideas may speak to you, so I invite you to take the things that work for you, and leave the rest. Questions and suggestions are welcome in the comments below.
Note: I had a bit of a burst in inspiration the other day, so I've added an additional 2 zines that are hand-drawn and also close to the anti-capitalist theme. The first is about building things out of cheap materials, while the second is about appreciating the tools we already have. Enjoy!
Development log
- Two bonus zines27 days ago
Comments
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Read the zines, and liked especially the gardening one. Had Mort Garsons Plantasia running while going through it :).
When I was young and went to school, I prefered .txt files over Word/PDF; I even got points reduced for doing it. I still use them for many things, including my own programming at many points (if you want modability, there is nothing better than an ini-like plaintext file for storage - easy for machines and humans alike to read, process, and edit); for other things file that allow formatting are clearly preferable, though - I usually use odt files for this (and convert them to pdf if they are intended to go "out".
Oh I highly agree on the modability point! I've been working on some simple JS apps in my spare time, and adding support for exporting everything to txt/csv format is easy-peasy and always gives folks a way to recover and save their data. I wonder why more people don't do it!
I really enjoyed reading through all these zines. The two bonus zines are my favorite, but I also really enjoyed the plaintext one a lot. The gardening for free one made gardening seem so approachable, too, which I appreciated a lot. Thanks so much for sharing these!
Thank you! I'm glad the gardening one seems helpful-I would never describe myself as having a green thumb, so I think if I can do it, anyone can :)
these are great! it reminded me to make a .txt version of my project!
Thank you so much!
I caught a typo in the Plaintext zine. It says ‘afternthough’, rather than ‘afterthought’.
Love plaintext and often find it a shame that the more progressive lefties in my life aren’t particularly technologically-minded (and so go for the convenient thing which isn’t always the best thing!).
Thank you! I've fixed it in the files, though it seems that Itch.io may be caching some of them, so it may be a little while before the change shows up.
I love the plaintext one. It is a very bold rejection of the thought of we need more specialized cloud crossplatform AI powered shit funded by VC
Thank you; I'm so glad that came across, because the whole VC vibe really grates on me.
totally understandable and the message was very clear!
I read through all three zines. They're all quite thought-provoking, and now I'm considering gardening in my small studio using old jars and plastic bottles instead of trying to be fancy. lol
Awesome, and thank you for reading them! Gardening can bring so much joy and I hope it does to you as well!