Friendly Stray · 3mo
Why do we need to have a social media account active with posts “within two weeks”? This is a weird stipulation for a zine, ngl. I have a social media account I check basically every day, but I rarely post anything on it because I prefer to lurk and just quietly like things. Am I disallowed from applying because I don’t like attention online…? You’re scaring off a lot of potential applicants with this arbitrary requirement, tbh.
We know this is a bit stringent, but given the atmosphere of online spaces these days, we felt accountability for one's online behavior was a necessary precaution. Unfortunately, the anonymity of the internet has been taken as a carte blanche for some extremely harmful behavior in a lot of fandom circles, and we want to do our best to keep participants safe from harassment or abuse. There is no failsafe method to prevent exposure to this sort of behavior, sadly, but a social media feed is about as good a litmus for someone's ideologies, interests, and interactions with others as we get in this day and age.
We want to assure you that follower count is not taken into consideration in any way when jurying applications, and if some circumstances have prevented you or anyone else from being active on any platform, you are welcome to get in touch with us privately to discuss the situation. We are definitely willing to be flexible, we are just trying to make sure everyone involved in the zine feels comfortable and safe in the space we will be working in.
