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Special Announcement: Get us in print!
Celebrating five years of Zee Feed with a print issue
Crystal Andrews
December 14, 2025
This year was Zee Feed’s fifth birthday. Can you believe it? I wanted to mark the occasion by doing something special, something I’ve wanted to do since the very beginning: put Zee Feed’s feminist journalism in print.
Introducing… the Zee Feed Summer 25/26 issue, produced as a very limited edition newspaper.
The summer issue includes essays about political myths on the left, the AI bro to alt-right pipeline, TikTok’s obsession with age and 2026 predictions for pop culture, the media, internet culture and activism. It’s a very cool, clever read if I do say so myself!
We’ve got 50 copies to give away to subscribers – just reply with your name and postal address, and I’ll send you a copy to read over the summer holidays. First come, best dressed!
It’s free. All I ask is that you spread the love: using it as a talking point with your people, lend it to a friend, post about it online and tag us.
If you miss out on a print copy, don’t worry. The full issue will be published on the Zee Feed website, and over the next five weeks each feature article will be sent directly to your inbox in this newsletter. It will allow me to take a good break and get started on some big plans for the year ahead.
Reflecting on five years of Zee Feed is a little bit conflicting. I’m incredibly proud of this community. In 2020 I decided to pour a COVID-19 redundancy payment into the clear vision I had for what an impactful publication for sharp young women could be. I do not regret that for a moment.
We’ve not only stayed true to the initial vision, but led the Australian media industry in publishing stories that reflect the growing political awareness of young women and catering to their left-wing beliefs — a reality that mainstream media, and even some independents, are still too afraid to embrace.
Pretending to be ‘neutral’ is bullshit, and it’s not transparent. Zee Feed has lived five bright years as a proudly feminist publication, and we’re not stopping now.
But things have changed drastically in the past five years. We’re operating in an entirely different media landscape now, and if I’m being honest with myself I’ve been too slow in responding to some of the shifts.
In 2020 TikTok was an emergent platform, now it’s the go-to social app largely responsible for Making Everything Video™. The terrifying acceleration of generative AI over the past 18 months is threatening to gobble up the entire Internet at the whims of a few billionaires and corporate entities. And just this week, everyone under the age of 16 got booted off social media platforms in Australia — yes, algorithms are harming us all, but the cynic me understands this policy is less about youth mental health and more about… well, see the recommended articles by Cam Wilson below.
Being a journalist who swims in all this stuff every day takes a toll. It’s a known hazard of the job. But this year the tone of the discourse and the shamelessness of those in power has felt bad for my brain in a different way. I can feel it changing the way my mind works.
So the first print edition of Zee Feed is an excuse for you and I to log off for a little bit, while still using summer break to grapple with big, important ideas. If you manage to snag a copy, I hope you’ll enjoy touching and turning the pages, connecting with great journalism in a different way than we’re used to.
Whether you’re new to the world of Zee Feed or you’ve been here since day one, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Together we’ve done so much good.
I know you’ll love the feature articles we have coming over the next five weeks. Here’s to more great work to come.
Smart stuff on the Internet 💭
All the stuff I found on the web that made me think, smile, or have an ‘aha!’ moment. Spend your Sunday reading them – you'll be better off for it:
Teen social media ban lobby group 36 Months funded and co-staffed by firm making gambling ads on Crikey
My friend and colleague Cam Wilson is the #1 journalist on the teen social media ban. This week he published a series of stories that cracked open a very, very sus aspect of this policy. 36 Months – the group started by Nova radio host Wippa and worked with the government on the ban – was using its political access to sell $150,000 sponsorships to brands, and taking money from a company that helps promote gambling. I want to be so clear: regulation of tech giants and their algorithms is something we should do, but banning teens from the apps achieves nothing and helps no one (it actually gives the tech giants a get out of jail free card to say “well, there are no kids here anymore so we can remove the moderation and safety features”). Highly recommend reading Cam’s reporting in order (if you can’t access these, email me):
Hot girls MUST write on i-D substack
Short but made me giggle! “Every now and again the overwrought brodernist idea makes its way from the manosphere into my own little life, to which I say finally: Whatever!!!! The hot girl who writes occasionally is the backbone of the internet! Remove her and all you have left are gooners, sex bots, ASMRtists, and movies broken into 30-minute long TikToks that have robot voiceovers. Besides, if you feel a throb at the temples forcing you to read Charli xcx’s new substack entry, consider that the gun is attached to your own hand.”
Bots Framed Taylor Swift As A Nazi, But That Doesn’t Mean Critiques Weren’t Justified on Pedestrian TV
Our girl Simran Pasricha hitting the nail on the head with this piece. “Reading all of this as a fan — I literally had Swift sitting at the top of my Spotify Wrapped — it didn’t feel like, “Okay, pack it up, racism conversation over”. In fact, as someone who was lucky enough to have listened to the album before its official release, the racial and political weirdness in the album jumped out before the bots named it mainstream, and that’s important to name.”
Vince Staples on the Ziwe Show
Ziwe’s interview with rapper and comedian Vince Staples had me absolutely howling. The whole exchange on January 6th, “the problem with the revolution is that it will be photographed” — if you need a self-aware laugh over the holidays, this is a watch.