It's grad season, we've been publishing the magazine for a year, we've been posting daily blogs for months now, views are up and responses are good. As soon as we opened chapbook submissions there was an explosion of chapbook submissions. We've been getting a huge number of great submissions to the magazine, our contributors are really starting to grow into a tidy little community with us, our poetry readings continue to be a big success and we the editors are reaping tremendous emotional and personal (though not yet financial) benefits from deciding to run down this path together.
And as odd as it all is, I'm pretty sure that we can lay most of the blame and the gratitude for all of this at the feet of the internet.
If it weren't for the web we couldn't make the magazine we've been making. We could probably put out a little zine, hand-selling copies to family and people at coffee shops, but we couldn't ensure that people around the world have a chance to see it. We wouldn't have submissions from India and photography from England and readers in Russia if we only had open mic nights as our platform. For that, we can thank the web.
I've been coming across this sort of thing a lot recently. I joined Kickstarter and was able to contribute to a print book from a group of my favorite web-artists. I was reading Cracked.com the other day and came across an article about comic books; I was interested in reading one of the story arcs that was mentioned and by the end of the day I was able to purchase all of the related issues in a compilation from Amazon - why? because I found a website devoted to posting summaries of each issue of the series: this wasn't from Marvel or DC or anything like that - it was a fan-based site that ensures people are able to find what they want. I found a New York Times series about the basics of drawing that taught more about technique and inspiration in eleven articles than my freshman art class did in a year. I love ballet but don't have the time or money to sign up for a serious class; I can, however, spare an hour or so a night to dance along to tutorials on YouTube (if you're interested search for the Ballet 101 playlist and don't hurt yourself) to keep myself in shape and try to maintain my lines. I can use the web to keep up with what's going on in Roller Derby locally and see if there are teams looking for players, I can do a Google search for local life drawing groups, I can Skype with cartoonists in Minnesota who give me technique pointers and I can download a ton of free programs that will allow me to lay out e-books for sale to specialized markets of people who are interested in the e-books I'm selling. Hell, I found a forum that gave me step-by-step directions for replacing the water pump on my Saturn that was better than the mechanic's manual for my vehicle.
What I'm trying to get at here is that the web is full of awesome people who are actively engaged in helping other people become more awesome. You can learn anything from scratch if you just run a search for it, and become proficient at it more quickly than ever before thanks to the petabytes of information that take up all of the space on the internet that isn't devoted to porn.
And I'm happy to be a part of this. I'm happy that our magazine is open to newcomers, that we offer criticism and instruction to writers, that anybody can stand up and test drive their work at our poetry readings. And I want to know what you're doing. What are we putting into the world and what is coming back from it?
I really think that we're at a turning point in human intellectual/emotional evolution: we have this wonderful, just absolutely fantastic tool that allows us to communicate and share with a kind of purity that has never before been imagined - we often don't need to know anything more about an artist or a dancer or a singer than that we love their work for them to improve our lives. But for all of that, the people you hear the most about when it comes to the internet are the trolls and bullies who shit on the people who are sharing and creating. I believe the Troll's hour in the sun is drawing to a close - there's too much good stuff out there for them to shit on all of it, and too many people are discovering that the internet is a vast ocean of wonder to be bullied for much longer.
So ignore the trolls in the world, and go find something awesome. Learn to fold origami, learn to speak Arabic, learn interior decorating or calculus or fire eating or juggling or any of the myriad things there are to learn that people on the web are trying to teach you. And if there's nothing you want to learn, then go online and try to teach something - somebody out there will be happy to learn it and you will have contributed to making the world a better, more educated, more talented place.
And if none of that inspires you, watch this video of awesome people doing awesome stuff and tell me that you don't want to see more of this kind of thing in the world:
Now go make something cool.
Cheers,
- Alli
What a lovely blog, Alli. It's true--all of it. People are cool, and the internet is just a new way to track and create connections between them. :)
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