Hacker zine culture developed independently from punk DIY culture

Evidence

Hackers also enthusiastically embraced zines, but from within the burgeoning personal computer culture rather than punk rock. “Textfiles,” plain text documents spread through dial-up bulletin boards, emerged as an indigenous online literature during the 1980s. Jason Scott, an internet historian, manages an online archive of textfiles. He writes that a textfile, or t-file, is an ASCII file “written to explain in detail an important new computer discovery, a great new concept, or an old piece of knowledge that needed to be passed on. It included stories, poems, songs, ramblings, and long treatises on theories that the writer couldn’t possibly have known.” Since longer files were more likely to be downloaded, textfile creators who wanted to increase their readership compiled multiple t-files into a single newsletter-like format, known as an “e-zine.” — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 86

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘textfiles’ and ‘e-zines’ as distinct early online literature forms.
• XREF: connects to: Zines trace their origin to science fiction fandom and grow into autobiographical self-expression — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 81; Print zines spawned the feminist Riot Grrrl punk scene — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 93