Though I've run across many of the early 'underground press' instances, e.g.[0][1] I've not seen much of the mimeo'd stuff (esp. from NYC) which predated it - so thanks for pointing it out! Def. an immediate forerunner.
For the record, I posted this without the full expletive* in the title. It looks like dang edited it back in.
* I dashed the two middle letters, but in retrospect, a wittier work-safe title would be "Gutter Expletive: A Magazine of the Arts (1962-1965)" which echoes Ed Sanders' choice of words https://youtu.be/BYgv7ur8ipg
The magazine was created to shock the public, but I posted it because I think it is interesting as a historical artifact. In 2022, nobody is likely to call the police over the four letter words, but some people still find naughty language obnoxious.
There's a line I love in a book review by George Orwell:
"When I first opened Tropic of Cancer and saw that it was full of unprintable words, my immediate reaction was a refusal to be impressed."
My self-censorship of the title was also an attempt, and maybe a misguided one, to signal that my posting the link is not some feckless attempt at being edgy.
> my immediate reaction was a refusal to be impressed
Do not get confused: of course in front of the sensational you will oppose "a refusal to be impressed". But you are supposed, as an adequately mature individual, to have well developed filters¹ - exercised since day one of the spark of insight.
We cannot assume that you use language sensationally, childishly. It cannot be the default.
¹Edit: I replaced with 'filters' the formerly used 'control', which may sound too active (there is of course no need for active contrast, against common agents, in the mature individual).
It’s not that, it’s an attempt to appear genteel or not appear crude. No one is seriously offended by curse words but making an attempt to not throw those out exhibits control. That is desirable.
Never stop doing what you think is good when it's not hurting anyone. Don't take these downvotes as a sign that you need to change. It's okay to be kind, even if people don't want it.
There's no worries around my taking criticism in this thread overly personally. It's natural for people to have strong opinions about censorship in general, and I don't think anyone here means to imply that the title of this one post is a matter of dire importance in the grand scheme of things :)
If I'm not mistaken this magazine is nearly solely responsible for Ezra Pound finishing his famous Cantos[^1]. They circulated some bootleg copies of the final Cantos before Pound finished them, and I believe his publisher encouraged him just to submit his work in more of a draft state. Admittedly, I haven't made time to study the Cantos, and the history is full of additional people into which I haven't looked too deeply. But might be of interest to any poetry fans on this forum.
Would be really curious to hear your thoughts on the censorship of underground zines. :o I find that a lot of kink art creatives run into similar problems with being deplatformed on social media, but there's a growing segment that's thriving on personal sites and webrings, ditto with similar topics to the old hacker zines.
Don’t forget the constant cycle of “payment service starts up to service horny creators, payment service prospers, payment service gets big enough for Visa/MC to notice that it’s doing porn, payment service suddenly starts kicking off large swathes of the creators it helped”. OnlyFans is the latest in a long line of this.
> Would be really curious to hear your thoughts on the censorship of
underground zines.
The really interesting ones were before my time, in the 60s.
I first heard of electronic zines through university Unix systems in
the 1980s. AFAIK they were around in BBS before that. We discovered
things through the Newsgroups (nntp) back then, which was kinda like
Twitter, but more mental. There was almost no censorship, but
sysadmins would not copy news feeds they disliked.
In meatspace, underground zines wouldn't be in Barnes & Nobel, they'd be in the independent book store or record shop. Mainstream shops never let just any material be sold (especially when they were leading the market compared to Amazon).
So, is content really "underground" if it's on a social media site like Tumbler, FB/IG, etc.? "Underground" implies distribution via alternative channels, and in 2022, webrings are alternative (compared to mainstream social media sites).
