Teen Gothic

Hey, y'all who are feeling insecure about loving music and not dressing up, cheer up my friend! Most people here love you and excepts you! I LOVE the music but I don't really feel like dresses stereotypical or anything. I love this because I can wear professional business type pink colored clothes and pull out shit like "Sex and Drugs and Jesus Christ" by Christian Death. I love being able to give people a bit of surprise! Am I strange for this? I don't really care.

I’ve read a lot of experiences over the past couple of years and have come across this issue many times. This place I guess has a reputation for gatekeeping (most notably by the mods).

An example of many is this: https://www.reddit.com/r/industrialmusic/s/3zckgFbgrB

I know it can be a frustrating thing to not feel accepted which is what the goth community in general has experienced in society itself. Do you think it’s justified to believe that this “gatekeeping” goes on here?

Okay so I live in a urban area so I have always been the "emo girl" in my neighborhood. My family is hispanic/black so I grew up with a lot of them telling me "you just want to be into that white people s***"

So when I went to college and finally met another goth girl I was ecstatic. She came up to me and we hit it off and actually didn't talk about music taste deeply till a few days later.

So the mitski concert happened and I went to it because I like her. My friend had saw that post and texted me that she thought I was goth. I told her I was, but I like other music artist to.

Then she started asking if I've gone to a goth concert or a goth club and I said no. I'm like 19 my mom would never let me go to a club. Also I thought you couldn't go to a club under the age of 21. I'm so confused. Plus apparently since I've gone to other concerts for my other music taste that I'm not serious about being goth.

Anyway she told me that I should stick to calling myself alternative and not lying to people about me being goth.

So I'll be honest goth music is not my top genre atm. It's in my top 5 though. I listen to punk,metal,rock, indie AND goth music.

Can I not listen to other music and go to non-goth concerts?

Like I would go to a goth concert, but twin tribes isn't coming to my state nor city. Which is most likely the only goth artist who I like who can come over to my city.

Idk I guess I'm just looking for some advice and maybe some validation.

I really wanted to make a friend who didn't listen to rap/hip-hop/pop. I have nothing against those genres but I just wanted a friend who could listen to some similar music to me and go to concerts. Maybe even show me some more music.

Also I guess I kind of understand where she is coming from because now we have things like "clean goth" (idek) and people just marketing off the goth style now without listening to the music.

Though I'm not one of them. I'm just feeling like a poser right now, also kind of sad.

i tried to look into it, but there's not much information on how relevant buck-tick's music is to being goth, so i was a little confused.

i'm someone who isn't great at technicalities when it comes to music genres – i listen to sounds and vibes and have a good general idea, but i'd fail a test of specifics. i love buck-tick a lot, and if i was to put their songs into some of my goth playlists, they would fit right in, in terms of sound. i like buck-tick and i like goth music so essentially i'm confused on if they would be considered part of that goth music

also i looked it up and their music is listed as gothic rock, but i only hear of them when discussing visual kei, and i myself never thought they were goth before seeing this, and also seeing them posted in this sub. is it right to consider their music goth/goth-adjacent? sorry if it's a dumb question lol

For goths that are 40 or above, have you ever been dissed by someone, whether they were a goth or a non-goth, about you still being in the scene at your age?

I ask this as a 20 something babybat with bad skin, who is already self-conscious about whether or not I'm pulling it off or not.

Do you ever get self-conscious about it?

I'll start this this off as this is a bit of a rant, I was just scrolling through instagram reels and that tiktok artist TX2 came up where he's fetishizing goth women. Naturally like the other people in the comments I also comment about not wanting to be fetishized for being goth and liking goth music. You wouldn't fetishize a woman for liking pop music.

Naturally this did upset people who fetishize goth women and during the argument I kept saying "I just don't wanna be fetishized for liking a genre of music." One of the men who was very defensive told me "You know it has nothing to do with the music." Along with "There is a fashion aspect to goth culture." Now I'm a firm believer that you don't have to dress gothic to be goth. This can be due to environment reasons, stimulation reasons, truly whatever reasons people have for just nothing being able to or wanting to dress gothic. I think as long as you listen to the music and respect the community and it's history then you yourself are goth. I think the fashion aspect is the least important to being goth. It's one of the fun parts for me as I feel good whenever I dress up even though I'm one of the people who gets over stimulated quickly I do love the look, but I only dress that way like 10% of the time.

It feels very frustrating when a non goth person who simply finds goths attractive and fetishizes them tries to tell me what is and isn't goth and then say that I'm disrespecting goths by….not wanting them to be fetishized and recognized as people who deserve to be respected?? I just wanted to kinda get that off my chest about how sometimes it just feels frustrating being goth in a world that treats goth women as an accessory. But I personally feel those same people would 100% call trad goths unattractive cause I've seen that happen online before where it's I want a goth girl but not to goth. Sorry if this rant was long and pointless just frustrating from the lack of people that actually care or know about the goth culture but try to speak on it.

Or anything similar or interpretable as that really. Just something to feel miserable to! I don’t think it’s easy to find songs about kind of specific situations so I’d hope anyone here could perhaps help me out. I don’t have other wishes for subgenre or anything else. Just has to be about title. Thank you to anyone that can help out here.

I've been goth for about a year and a half now, is there like a certain point in time when you stop being one, or a certain age? I've just been wondering because I'm kinda new to the goth community, and I only have like two other goth friends, and they don't know either 😭

edit- I should add, I'm not well aware of what exactly a "baby bat" is so… 💀

I'm sure a few of you will relate but I need to vent bc being goth where a scene is not very present sucks so bad. Also I apologize if this is all over the place. First off dating here is horrible, it already is in your 20s (24f) but being goth and in a state like this is worse. It's so fucking hard to find guys that have the same interests, I literally have not found any. Then giving a more normal presenting guy that's not into goth culture always ends up bad for me, they just fetishize me or end up thinking I'm weird, this has happened to me way to many times unfortunately. Secondly there is not much of a goth music scene here, there are hard-core shows n stuff but that's it which I'm not into rlly, not really any goth music or clubs. Also most of the goths I come across are a lot younger than me like in their late teens, which is cool I'm glad it's a lot more popular than when I was a teen but it's so hard to make friends my age. I know I'm only 24 but I got all my partying urges out as a teenager so I'm not trying to hang with the party type either. The combination of all these things has 100% made me an introvert now and I just need to get out of this state.