Real Life: A Magical Guide to Getting Off the Internet
by Maranda Elizabeth and Dave Cave
26pg. at 1/4 letter size
$3 from Maranda’s Etsy
This is gonna be a quick review—not because I find it too ironic to review, on the internet, a zine about getting off the internet, but because I have either carpal tunnel or tendinitis (the walk-in clinic was agnostic), but in any case, I am typing in a wrist brace and in pain.
This zine is a collaboration between two pals (Maranda and Dave) who helped one another spend less time online, and grapple with the question of why, since everyone purports to wish they spent less time on the internet, do we all keep spending so much time on the damn internet? In general, why do we do things that don’t in themselves make us happy, and that aren’t a means to further happiness either? This zine is full of rhetorical questions, prompts to think on, and pragmatic suggestions.
This zine is a really thoughtful, practical, and interesting look at its topic, and the writers do a great job drawing out the underlying question, which is The Big One— What is a good life, and how do I get one? I feel like this is a topic that zines tend to do really well, and I’m not totally sure why. A lot of people who make zines seem to be people who are pretty devoted to finding their own way, not as a reflexive fuck-you to The Man, but from hard-won and deeply felt beliefs about how life should be lived. I’m not saying that’s a quality of all zines and everyone who writes them, but it’s definitely a thing my favourite zines have in common.
Anyways, I’m gonna stop pontificating and get off the friggin’ internet, not least because it is totally hurting to type this. No review next week, I will, in fact, be on an anti-civ vacation, far from the computer and out of range of the telephone, even the wily smartphone.
- Lily Pepper
