Teen Gothic

Please correct me if I am wrong about this and I am fully open to criticism:

For a while now I have seen a rise in berating others, especially baby bats, for interpreting a band or song as goth that another person disagrees with it/makes fun of them for thinking it is goth. I have seen legitimate harassment level messages such as death threats due to someone interpreting something as goth that another person deems incorrect. Music genres, especially this one with so many genres and subgenres, get incredibly blurry in some areas with other music (such as new wave and non-goth postpunk) and it feels wrong to say that there is an exact hard line everyone has to agree on between what is and isn’t be considered goth. Obviously not saying that BTS or Arianna Grande are goth due to interpretation as that would be straight up wrong, but for example the debates on Molchat Doma and similar seem to go wayyyy further than should. Why can’t we just “I interpret this song/band as goth” “I interpret this song differently and not as goth” “that is okay”?. The subculture is very important to me so I know that keeping the genres meanings are important, but the recent rise has kind of concerned me and a lot of the “protecting the meaning” has gone way off the rail. Has anyone noticed a similar trend? Is this a common sentiment and I’m just late to the party? How can we better approach this issue and help prevent toxicity?

Thank you!

I know this community should mainly be music posts but I don't know where else to post and feel safe. I'm lost on what to do in my current situation I unintentionally go to a Christian based college, nothing wrong with that, but alot of people here are judgemental and rude. They keep telling me to turn to God, they think I worship Satan( I'm a Taoist. ) and continously throws out Bible versus. My makeup has been compared to a damn juggalo and the people including some teachers don't even want to be around me and all for what? Because I just happen to stick out? I've never done anything to any of these people :/

I've been doing a lot of research on the Sophie Lancaster case, and I've only now started to notice the amount of harassment I, and many other alternative people, have endured even since this happened. I've only been into the scene for 4 years, I'm in 8th grade now. I actually look a lot like Sophie, I can relate to her a lot, and her case definitely made me realize how ignorant people can be. I already knew that in the first place, but her case truly did blow my mind on how the actual fuck someone could attack, and later kill, someone because of how they look.

Last year, when I was In the 7th grade, school had just got out and I was walking out to my dad's car who parked out in the grass. I hear a group of boys behind me start barking at me and making jokes about me. I ignored them just as usual, i would've sped up if I could but I had chunky shoes on.

The school required people to take thier sports equipment home for the weekend, and these boys were on the lacrosse team. I kept ignoring them until I heard "Give me your lacrosse stick, I'm gonna hit him" and I turned around to see what they were talking about. Next thing I knew a boy who I didn't know hit me full on in the stomach with the lacrosse stick, I didn't say anything and just kept walking. I told the school, but they apparently "couldn't do anything about it" despite me having their names, I atleast expected them to get some form of detention, but they didn't. Never got any consequences.

I continued to be harassed by these boys who were never confronted once by onlookers or by staff at the school. Not even my own "friend" stood up for me. After learning about Sophie, I also found I could go to almost all my other goth friends and they would all have a similar story where they have been hit, spat on, or verbally harassed. People's ignorance, It really does boggle my mind.