The genre of the zine also allows for a type of “scrappy messiness” (Piepmeier 221) to exist that promotes connection with the reader that authors online struggle to develop. This sort of informal style is demonstrated in the zine “For Girls Who Cry Often.”
On this page from the zine, the drawings are scattered and have an almost doodle, low effort quality. The text is messily handwritten and cluttered on the pages. The handwriting is often slanted and varies in size. This type of messiness is often lacking online where pristine, organized blogs with clear tabs are presented. This messiness, which reminds the reader of a diary entry or a notebook page, allows the viewer to feel more connected to the creator. This style brings down the formality of the conversation with the reader and makes discussing personal topics, such as mental health, more comfortable.
Also common aspects of zines, such as ripped pages and collaging, further promote intimacy in a way that digital formats are unable. In this zine, titled “V,” details, such as the ripped pages glued onto cardboard, cut and pasted images, and visible tape, display this messiness in form that can bring the reader and the creator closer together. This messiness in presentation is a result of the zine’s paper construction that cannot be recreated as effectively online. Also, errors in zines are often evident. For example, in the zine series “East Village Inky,” the creator often adds notes that they forgot what they were going to draw in an empty space on the page and crosses out miswritten words (Blake 41). The presence of errors reminds the reader that the author is human and imperfect. Jenna Wortham points out that the internet is often effective in “compressing humanity and making it easy to forget there are people behind tweets, posts, and memes” (3). Neat, streamlined blog templates almost look too perfect to be made by humans. Zines, on the other hand, constantly remind the reader of the humanity of their creators. Zines provide a greater sense of intimacy than digital self-publishing platforms through their characteristic messiness and imperfections.