A great many people think geekdom itself was spawned directly from science fiction films and comic books, but believe it or not, the true roots of geekdom go deeper and further than that. There were often indie ‘zines’ put out by local writers and artists to try and get their work featured and exposed to more people. A man named Lenny Kaye (who played guitar in Patti Smith’s band) put together a book collecting some of these zines called  The Tattooed Dragon Meets the Wolfman. Wired had him share some thoughts on the movement and his book:

Despite being produced with a limited tool set, and existing in a vastly different milieu, these hacked-together pamphlets laid the groundwork for modern day fandoms. “The most surprising thing I noticed about the zines was how closely the format—editorials, letters, essays, reviews—paralleled the format of blogs,” says co-author Jack Womack. “All this stuff is proto-blog, proto-Instagram, proto-snark, proto-troll, and naturally, also an active exchange of ideas that motivated some very weird people to do great things in their life,” adds co-author Johan Kugelberg

So essentially, blogs (like the one you are reading this instant) probably would not exist (and modern geekdom as we know it) were it not for these indie zines being thrown together by passionate artist and writers and editors so many years ago.

And to think, some of us didn’t even know these things existed.

[Image, story Via Wired]

Tags: art, artists, authors, blogs, geekdom, geeks, indie, indie zines, science fiction, zines