The in-print, private and small distribution nature of zines provides the reader with safety that may not exist in online spaces. The internet and platforms like Facebook have allowed anyone to potentially reach a global audience. Is this broad reach always needed or beneficial? For many groups of people, the internet can be a hostile place, for example, one study has demonstrated that women in online chatrooms are more than 25 times more likely to get threatening and sexually inappropriate messages (Blake 33). When one posts online, they often have very little control over where it goes. An Instagram post can be screenshotted and reposted infinitely. People who hide behind the anonymity of the internet can provide hostile comments with little fear of consequence or concern for morality. “Doxxing” has become an increasingly prevalent problem in online spaces, as well, with well-known celebrities, such as Cardi B having her address found and posted online after she expressed support for Presidential Nominee Joe Biden (Noll 1). The topics often discussed in zines, such as feminism, queer issues, political discourse, and minority struggles, have been seen to be the prime target of attacks by the intolerant. Publishing highly personal or potentially controversial topics online can be extremely stressful for individuals. Zines provide an avenue for distribution that can feeler safe through the limited reproducibility, increased knowledge of who sees the content, lack of opportunity for hostility, and increased creator privacy. Zine distribution through places, such as Etsy and zine sharing events, allow the creator to know where their zine is headed. There are also no comment sections in a zine. Feedback from the reader occurs in more controlled ways that encourage civility. Through hand or mail distribution, aggression towards an author is less common due to practical barriers to harassment. Possession of a physical zine cannot lead to the author’s IP address being traced. (Blake 33)
Zines encourage pure self-expression and uncompromising sharing of opinions. As Blake states in her paper titled “Analysis of Twenty-First Century Zines,” “when makers don’t have to fear retaliation, they do not need to compromise the radical nature of their media” (59). Zines allow one to talk about personal topics and radical ideas in a space where they have more control and safety than in digital platforms.