Teen Gothic

https://youtu.be/Y_lpKcjS3Yo?si=HUwj8CfORjDHvKp0

I recently stumbled across Dollwave and liked the vibe before quickly realising it was likely AI. Do you have any band recs with similar vibes but that are actually human artists?

Take this down if it doesn’t fit.

But what I found the most interesting was how many people with this Facebook group, utterly detest goth music to such a degree. They hate it. Hate its founders. And can’t understand why anyone would listen or form a community around it.

However, they are the type of people who will say that to be goth is not to listen to the music. They all say that it is a mindset, a style, an aesthetic, a historical group, spooky, scary, all of that, but refuse to ever say that the music means anything, and that’s why rhetoric which dismisses goth music as the key to the goth subculture is so harmful.

Goth music is quite literally the one thing which keeps these assholes out on the sidelines because they hate it, aesthetics and fashion does not! Nazi’s and conservatives are like those parasites which infect weak insects, control their bodies and lead them to their colony to continue the infection. The swatskia, totenkoph, skinheads, are just a few examples of Nazi’s co-opting and taking ahold of aesthetics to force their ideology.

They will use aesthetics to draw in the masses under a guise of the dark innocence and the they use it as a way to promote their ideology. Regardless of how you feel about goth and it’s relation to music, I think it’s quite obvious how decentralizing the music to replace it with a “mindset” or those who “feel goth”, just leaves more room for those who “feel goth”, but are also bigots. That’s what I gathered.

I read someone’s comment, and please take credit for it, but they said it isn’t gatekeeping we need, it’s standards and I must agree. That community hates goth and all it stands for, no room for them at all!

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.

hey all! so this is my first battle jacket, idk if it countd as a battle or punk jacket but Idk if its good or not, I made some myself and I wanna get more but I am trying to do one side as goth and such and the other as metal or heavier bands I like, is it any good?

imma add more spikes and thinking of sewing webs on but unsure. I dont remember where I got the jacket but the wear and tesr on it was already there, I was thinking of moving thr paw patch to the centre back and adding a anti nazi patch I made and an anarchy one but I've seen a lot of baddle jacket stuff so I'm overthinking my jacket a bit.

Anders Manga v. Stability AI

Just sharing this new find

Looking for more music similar to this. Recommendations welcome

looking for good darkwave bands and UNDERGROUND gothic rock bands? i really like the eden house so farl

i'd really love to get into the scene in person! what are some good places around here to check out a goth show or event?