Teen Gothic

It seems like a lot of these discussions, specifically on tiktok resort to trying to see whose "more valid" than the other person rather than actually coming to a fair conclusion. I've had accusations thrown at me about not being "Goth/alternative" enough with no real justification besides ad hominem, strawmanning, or maybe even projection at best from the other person.

My reaction to it has more or less been doing my own personal research, withdrawing from the online community on and off, flip-flopping from label to label, and further tuning my musical tastes.

The Reddit and YouTube community are a lot more bearable. Even then, there are a few people who still get argumentative for no real reason other than to prove very common information in a really defensive and pretentious manner. Already under the impression that they're speaking to poseurs with no real evidence. The term "e-girl" has become the new word for poseur to a lot of these people.

If I were to put my concerns into words. It'd be this: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/750764200380474363/. This "virgin bad, chad good" dichotomy which obviously takes on a comically exaggerated version of real life people.

A lot of these gatekeepers my age fall under the impression that every other alternative person they come across is an e-girl and over-correct for the sake of "protecting the community" perhaps. Though the over-correcting does more harm than good, and reads as virtue signalling in my opinion. Even if they don't intend to do harm, it comes off as offensive to people like myself who put in the effort only to be shut down by know-it-alls who don't know me at all.

All and all, I don't run into these issues in real life or with eldergoths online, only on sites and apps with a large concentration of people my age and younger were misinformation and circle-jerking is rampant, which is most of the internet.

Has anyone else dealt with this? I've only been in the online community for about 3-4 years and this has been my general takeaway as a young person into the Goth subculture and over-lapping subcultures.

Idk if anyone else has seen these posts but theres a big rise in people asking 'how to be goth' and if they are goth enough to call themselves goth and all this anxiety around simply the word goth.

I find it somewhat odd, how rather than first discover the bands, fashion, people, culture ect, they discover the label. With how social media works today there is so much disconnect between who we are and how we present ourselves online.

Thus all the anxiety, imposter syndrome, panic and focus on labels. Kids today hearing about wanting a "BtGGF" before hearing their first sisters of mercy song, or meeting their first goth.

Rather than come at this problem with hate which i feel many on the internet do, I think empathy with these identity confused teenagers will always help. Please don't feel like you are or aren't goth enough, its not a measurement. That's not how passions and interests work. You look for music, what you think you might like and if you love a song you love it. If you don't like a song you don't like it. Please don't feel like goth is a membership with a test you have to pass to be in the goth club. Goths are simply people with similar music based interests. If you listened to that a lot of that music and enjoyed it, then you're pretty goth.

Please don't feel like you have to be 1 thing, listen to what you love and have no shame. Get out there and explore as much interesting music you can find. And think to yourself do you actually like this song or is it just cool or goth enough to ease your anxiety around weather your a real goth

Your aim shouldn't be to become a goth, your aim should be to find music you genuinely love and enjoy.

Anyways just love yourself and love what you love

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