Teen Gothic

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!

I just got invited to a "goth baddies assemble" group on Instagram and the contents sickened me. What I didn't show here that was also in the chat was clip art of sexual acts. All from the people you see in the screenshots. It was disgusting to see, and infuriating. The constant fetishization of the subculture pisses me off on a daily damn occurrence. I reported the chat itself and the people, but I of course doubt that IG will even do a damn thing. I felt the need, amidst my agitation lmao, to come to reddit to vent about it and use it as an opportunity for discussion on how you as individuals feel about this constant issue and what you do to prevail over this and any experiences you've had related to being sexualized and objectified without your consent, when just trying to exist and mind your business.

(And if any of yall feel the desire to seek out that scum and mass report them, that would just be sweet, sweet justice 🤭 but that's just a bonus lol)

Most subs have questions you have to answer when you apply to join but this is just ridiculous. Is the name of his cat supposed to be something any goth would know?

A little background, me and my friendgroup live in a small city compared to other ones in my country. There lives a few other alternative people around here, but when i go shopping, I usually don’t see any alt people at all. My friends and I have experienced very few bad encounters for our looks, usually people just screaming ”fucking emo” or something like that. Also people obviously stare, but it’s usually not in a bad way. So nothing severe. There has been more good encounters than bad, almost always when I go to the town someone compliments my makeup and/or my outfit.

We went to visit a much bigger city, there’s a LOT of people there, so I assumed that people wouldn’t pay that much attention to my looks, and I did my makeup pretty heavily. My friends are different subcultures than me, I hung out with two people there and one of us is pretty much opposite of our looks, wore like lolita style clothes. I didn’t even think anyone would say anything to us surrounding our looks, and especially not stare.

When we were shopping, at least 4 people complimented us during the 4 hours we spent there, which was very nice and sweet. 🙂 also a bunch of people stared at us, almost everyone who walked past us which I didn’t expect since I assumed that there would be a bunch of other goths/alts there, and there was a few emo-styled and punks there.

But then, we went to go eat and when we were almost done, the most evil group from our perspective walked over to us; very young teenagers. There was like six or seven kids, ages maybe 12-14. They IMMEDIATELY stared at us and started screaming ”ew fuck no” and stuff. They obviously commented on my makeup, called my friend emo and my other friend a child or something. I was their main target since I was wearing the heaviest makeup, white foundation, strong contour, big eyeliner.. They were ’bullying’ us, and threw salad on my friend’s backpack. They were full on harassing us, and when we left the restraunt they WAITED for us outside. When we got out, the harassing continued and one of them SPAT ON ME. The spit was on my jacket and cheek, and then they just ran out of the mall, with the only two girls staying for a bit to tell us to kill ourselves and stuff like that before running away.

We went to report them to the security, and someone else was there too because they spat on her also. Not saying what happend to us was ok bc of our looks, but she looked absolutely normal and i’m extremily confused why they would spit on her. I really hope the security found them and that their parents found out and gave them a long talk.

I’m just so confused, I assumed that bc it’s such a big city that there would be people with even more ”extreme” looks, and that the people there would be used to it. Also a bunch of people stared at us, especially older people which i think is fine/understandable. I’m just very disgusted with the behaviour that we encountered. I just wish people would leave us alone and not say anything if there’s nothing nice to say.

I hope I don’t sound like i’m trying to be the only victim here, I just wanted to tell it from my POV since my other two friends are from different subcultures. They were victims too.

Feel free to share your experiences based on the sizes/population of the places that you’ve visited and how you got treated there. Thank you 🙂

I'm a Trans Goth and I'm looking for folks like me in New england to play my synths with.