Teen Gothic

So I was thinking about how people online are always trying to use the "goth culture is actually an appreciation of a genre of literature, art, architecture, etc. so really it's 🌈✨whatever you want it to be✨🌈" argument and I think I finally thought of a good way to explain to them how badly that logic is flawed.

I tend to use metalheads as a parallel for goths since it's pretty widely accepted to the mainstream that metalheads are simply people who like metal music. But you wouldn't go up to a metalhead saying that you're the REAL metalhead because you're obsessed with steel and aluminium, right? "Ummmmm actually, metal is an opaque, lustrous element which acts as a good conductor of heat and electricity, so really YOU'RE the idiot here and if you don't have a degree in metallurgy and a tattoo of the chemical symbol of at least one rare earth metal you're not REALLY a metalhead." Like you know damn well that's not what we're talking about here, you're just being intentionally dense and using the wrong context of the word to justify taking it for yourself and strongarming the people who started the subculture out for your own gain.

Feel free to copy paste if you spot someone pulling that trash argument out in the wild😂