[citation needed] It was founded at UC Berkeley in September 1992 as a collection of leftist critiques of identity politics and popular culture written by college students[1] and published as a Gopher service.

[3] The cultural magazine Bad Subjects was started at University of California, Berkeley in September 1992 by founding editors Joe Sartelle, Annalee Newitz,[4] and Charlie Bertsch.

By 1996, after founding contributor Steven Rubio built a Gopher site, Bad Subjects was both an online and hard copy academic publication.

[7] Also in the same year, Bad Subjects founded a small educational nonprofit corporation, to promote the progressive use of new media and print publications.

Bad Subjects had a large number of contributors, contributing editors and production team members, including Ana Marie Cox, Arturo Aldama, Joe Lockard, Jonathan Sterne, Matt Wray, Megan Shaw Prelinger, Tamara Watkins, Joseph Natoli, Mike Mosher, Molly Hankwitz, Adam Cornford, and Thomas Powell.