For those who love putting on a show yet lack self-promotional acumen, MoJoe’s Café Lounge, nestled in Roscoe Village, is a splendid venue. If ten people show up, it looks like a packed house. But this night, it borders on ridiculous; the room can barely hold this many people. As Diatribe Media’s cast of lo-fi literary rebels performs, friends and supporters shift their feet to make room. Stragglers weave through the crowd to buy coffee, pausing to laugh as a reader hits her punch line.

On the second Saturday of each month, the Diatribe Media publication collective's showcase at MoJoe’s brings us together. Admission is always free. The organizers pick a theme and a host, and a few of the city’s gutsy writers share their thoughts. There’s little promotion—we post a few flyers, alert our online networks, and hope word of mouth will do the rest. Each reader invites a friend or two. Sometimes, people drop in to buy coffee and stay to listen.

Every month, the event seems to be a bigger draw than the one before. We see mysterious new faces and make new friends. Self-expression is infectious. After watching a reader shock and amuse a crowd, people want to do it themselves. These unpretentious literary potlatches welcome anyone with something to say—anybody with the nerve to sign up gets an eventual turn on the mic.

Almost everyone inhales the fumes of mass media from time to time. It clouds our brains, but at least gives us something to discuss with strangers. By contrast, creating our own avenues of expression can be a lonesome endeavor. We sit alone, scratching our passions onto loose leaf. We stay up late, ignoring phone calls, banging on laptops until our words flow “just so”. We spend quiet evenings in copy shops, collating and stapling. We cast our humble publications to the wind, not knowing who’ll read them or how they’ll respond.

Our loose group of regulars represents all ages and backgrounds. Most of us publish zines. Some maintain weblogs. Most of us are self-taught; none are particularly famous. Some of us rant, others share personal anecdotes, and still others make use of their backgrounds in comedy and theatre. Our series is now in its second year. The longer it runs, the less predictable it gets. We’ve hosted musicians, magicians…as of yet, no mathematicians, but anything is possible.

Some nights, our pieces overlap in ways we couldn’t have planned. Shared interests are brought to light and bonds are forged. Our companionship reinvigorates our individuality.

The host signs off and invites everyone back next month. A few people filter out to bars and parties, but most hang out for a while. We intermingle, ask questions, swap zines and make connections.

There is no officially-ordained approach to self-publishing. We all learn as we go. When we get together in the same place at the same time, we see different paths up the mountain.

When Diatribe vets converge in remote locations, impromptu readings can break out with little notice. It’s happened at house parties, and even in other cities. We circulate Sanitary and Ship, a sampler of work from some of those who’ve been with us the longest. But nothing generates publicity like action. We entertain, in part, by showing strangers that they can be entertaining.

As we break bread with our contemporaries, we realize that building small-scale alternatives is more important than building our own careers. We can get away with anything at MoJoe’s. Unmediated expression is one of life’s greatest joys, so long as someone’s there to hear it. We offer performers an audience and give them creative carte blanche.

There’s never been a better time to have something to say, yet the mushrooming technology of expression offers little to draw us into the same rooms, where we can drop our masks and share ideas in real time. This is what Diatribe does, within our small radius. We challenge folks in other cities to nurture similar networks of writers and performers, to organize their own events and get acquainted with their fellows.

No matter how fragmented independent media becomes, the consolidated industry of the spectacle will vacuum up what it can. It will attempt to co-opt anything that speaks to a previously unnoticed niche (Look at the way advertisers and mainstream publishers have gobbled up successful blogs).

Make no mistake; corporations will fight over every second of your free time. Fight back. Be interesting.

-Diatribe Media Collective, www.diatribemedia.com