THE rEAL wORLD

From The Secret History of the Cedar Valley

History

tHE rEAL wORLD was a photocopied zine started by Matt Wilson while a student at Cedar Falls High School during the 1986-87 school year. It contained music reviews, political rants, comics, poetry, scene reports, and art.

The zine attempted to provide an alternative medium for the expression of student opinions, interests and views. Early on, the convention of capitalizing every letter of a word except for the first was used by editor mATT wILSON both to graphically "invert" the status quo of language and visually demarcate editor's comments.

Contributions to the zine were slipped into Matt Wilson's locker or given to him by hand. Every contributor had a pseudonym to protect their identity from CFHS administrators.

Origin of the Name

The name of the zine came from the Hüsker Dü song "Real World". It had nothing to do with the popular MTV show of the same name, which did not air until 1992.

Lore

• The zine was banned from the school for unknown reasons. Administrators stopped students carrying copies of it from entering the school. Despite this, the CFHS librarians still allowed its publishers to use the school photocopier to produce it and allowed it to be distributed inside the library.
• It was reported by a UNI student doing an internship that the Cedar Falls Police Department has a folder containing issues of this zine.