Teen Gothic

this is one of my first DIY projects and i'm still proud of it. please ignore that lady gaga's pin, I got it as a gift from a friend and that's why is there :')

Over all I was too lazy to remove it.

No one really cared no one looked at me funny.

The major critic of what I did was my family, "What would the people say" literally.

A 23 year old getting lectured by his mother and brother for not looking normal because of the people.

Did I look weird? Absolutely.

Do I care? not really.

Was it fun? No one really said anything.

Over all my biggest haters is my family telling me how the police will beat me up and lock me up.

Or how I will get myself killed looking like that, because our drug addict relative had problems with the police.

I neither drink smoke or do drugs.

Over all a fun experiment I understand how if you are a kid people can hurt you verbally.

As a teen I dressed way worse and did way dumber things but I guess that looking like a hobo is socially acceptable, rather then dressing ok with goth makeup.

Interesting experiment. Said a lot about the people close to me.

Nothing I said was a lie. It's freedom of speech. It's not defamation of character if you believe is what you are saying is the truth. I thought they were supposed to be "against canceling" looks to me like they love it

So I wanna start this off by saying I’m a big history nerd, I especially love the history of the goth/punk subcultures. Most goths will agree that goth is anti-bigot. However recently whenever I talk about this outside of goth spaces, I’ve gotten odd comments about certain groups actually being bigoted.

A real message that was sent to me “A true goth is a closed group of people who listen to goth music or industrial while keeping traditional almost archaic beliefs the modern goth is just a punk relabeled or a chick in black listening to pop music.” “Goth was subverted by preppie girls who discovered tattoos actual goths hate them all and would've been a much more exclusive group than inclusive. The south park goth kids are actually more accurate to the real goths. Alt and punk was called goth by preps and then appropriated by them.”

Which is just insanity. Firstly “South Park goths” were literally a joke, kids that didn’t know what goth meant and copied the aesthetic with a line of theirs being “all you have to do to be nonconformist is dress exactly like us!” (Paraphrasing) secondly this isn’t what the modern gothic subculture ever stood for, since the 70s-80s their stance was against conservatism and conforming to popular norms.

Has anyone else had this experience where people will literally spout nonsense about what “true goths” are in order to co-opt it into a conservative thing? This feels like utter garbage by random (mainly guys) to gatekeep a subculture they know nothing about..

So as stated before, I prefer to take a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach to subcultures and their boundaries. I'm not saying what goth should be, but rather attempting to describe a cultural milieu I spend time in. I have no interest in telling any person whether or not they can call themselves goth, and I'm not here for "is X band actually goth or actually goth-inflected darkwave?" debates (at least here, they can be a lot of fun between friends when attempting to organize a record collection).

But I've been thinking about the term "music-based subculture" and why that's important, and frankly, a more open and welcoming approach to creating a basis for a subculture than other options we might consider.

Goth is undoubtedly a subculture, and a subculture is something that is communal. Subcultures are first and foremost communities, and the other thing about subcultures is typically, they have to have something they do because you have to have some reason to get large groups of people to hang out. You can't just be like "Let's have an event where everyone who does velvet paintings of Elvis stands in a room together".

Music as a basis for a subculture is a popular choice because playing/listening to/dancing to music is possibly one of the oldest large-group social activities there is. Music is a fantastic way to create an ambience and to get a large group of people feeling in tune with one another.

Music is a draw for events and has a relatively low barrier of entry. As opposed to, say, modifying trucks, which requires a large material investment to buy a truck to modify before you can participate, or even a fashion-based subculture, which also again is generally more expensive to enter.

That's what's cool about a music-based subculture: the events are open to anyone who likes the sound of the music, and the cost of entry is generally low.

You don't have to have your look sorted out to become a member. If there is a look, generally the friends you make through the music help you figure out how to do it (should you want to) which is far less intimidating than showing up to a fashion-based event when you're not really sure how to do it yet.

Music is the basis of goth because without the music, you don't have gigs and DJ nights, and basically all the places and spaces you go to make friends as a goth who wants to hang out with other goths.

There are subcultures based around many things, like fondness for anime, an interest in fly fishing, or a passion for Medieval Persian poetry, but every subculture has to have something to *do (*whether it's cosplay contests, fly fishing, or attending lectures on Medeival Persian poetry). If gothness were merely a vibe, well, there wouldn't be that central activity that allows for goth-as-subculture to be a thing. You can't have a community based around a vibe; there has to be some activity to go with the vibe, and with goth, thankfully, it's music.

And in a world as isolating and atomized as ours presently is, I think that remembering that the music is what creates the environments that allow birds of a feather (black or otherwise) to flock together is important, because subcultures are milieus that create lasting and meaningful relationships.

Music and dance are really magical in the way they create a common bond between people experiencing them together. That's why music-based subcultures tend to be so rich and generate so much culture around the music.

In reminding people that fundamentally the music is the basis for the whole thing, we keep the doors far more open than we would if we were to define it through adoption of a specific style of dress, and by defining it as something we create a point clear enough for people to actually gather around, and that's a good thing.

Copied this from their thread, with the ok from u/themoonvampire

Had to text it, cause nobody did. I'm an artist from Astana, who's been making music since 2019 (under the names sleepy dex, джинкс, psychodex, and the last one is moonvampire). I been doing a lot of genres, such as rap, trap, edm and darkwave. I seen a lot of rumors about my music. And I'm kinda offended of that. I've never used A.I in my enitre life in music. No, obvusly I do use it in my life (such as GPT) to ask some questions, but never in my music lmao. I don't think it's a good idea to proof it to someone who can't actually think. But if you are gentle mind and want to check it. You can always DM me and I can show you ALL of my projects, with my records, with my mixing, with my beats and everything you need. And fruthermore I been making music when A.I WASN"T even exists though. And yeah, some people reallyy just deleted my bandcamp profile, that's so disrespectful and shameless. I hope my fans not offended as I am, and understood that some people are just haters. I'll add here some images of my projects and records, but for my fans P.S My biggest hits were made on type beats, that avaliavle still on Beatstars and YouTube, you can just ask them beatmakers (such as DutchRevz and Navjaxx) about my music, you'll be shocked that I am the only one who makes it. Such a disrespect. And the funny thing is, I don't even know why them people be thinking like that? My voice is my voice lol, my beats is my beats. Them not even sound like A.I, them sounds like a typical song lol. Okay if I was like a Darkways who been sound like a.i, but I did it myself and makin on some cheep ahh mic. Let's the justice begin.