Teen Gothic

Feel free to skip straight to the questions at the end of this post. The questions are the heart of this post. I'm not going to be offended if you skip past my own answers. I practically wrote an essay.

For me, it was discussion groups and message boards in the early and mid-2000s. I'm the kind of person who's always appreciated horror and the darker side of life, because sometimes"dark" really was "deep and thoughtful". I fell in love with the allure of goth. A subculture known for embracing misfits like me.

I was lucky enough to know people who loved actual goth music, many of whom were first-wave, involved in the music scene back in the 80s. I was never into Marilyn Manson or VampireFreaks and the other popular silliness that the mainstream has wrongly associated with goth. No black trenchcoats or baggy pants with wallet chains or shocking white face paint.

I'll admit that I was a little bit edgy and had to bite back my attitude. (Gothic Miss Manners was a delight! Jillian Venters. These days she's blogging as Gothic Charm School. She's published an excellent book on etiquette for goths.)

So here's me in my early to mid-teens devouring all the music I could find through mixtapes, forums, blogs, piracy, and MySpace. I did buy CDs, but only for friends—a Dif Juz CD for a friend who ran the Faith & the Muse mailing list, several mixtapes for other babybats and for the angsty mall goths in my online social milieu.

Anyone remember LJ? LiveJournal's "gothmusicshare" community was a godsend. Lakini Malich and Polina of the Drop Dead Festival spearheaded it. (I've hear that Lakini/Dan was a creep and an opportunist who would take credit for "discovering" lesser-known bands that his mutuals had posted about first. Such a disappointment.)

Or music blogs? I was thrilled when a certain blogger who I held in high esteem reached out to me over SoulSeek to compliment my music collection. Ahhh, so many happy memories.

I followed Mick Mercer online. Went to clubs, promoted club nights, and experimented with DIY. Went to see goth bands and musicians at concerts. Decked myself out in full trad goth outfits. A rat's nest of black and purple backcombed hair. (I couldn't find Aquanet, sadly.)

Visited Camden Town in London with my goth fiancé and purposefully, shamelessly indulged in glorious clichés: Snakebite and black at a goth pub called The Dev. CDs and Alchemy Gothic jewellery, including that massive silver bat necklace you see everywhere. Ankhs! Absinthe! An Eye of Horus pendant! Photos in gorgeous old cemeteries covered in vines! Horror movie marathons! Halloween everything!

Life was fun, sometimes, despite that I battled clinical depression for several years.

My fiancé had band posters above his bed. Andrew Eldritch and Wayne Hussy watched us make love.

We went to every club night and every concert.

I rolled my eyes at the ridiculous amount of Nightmare Before Christmas swag in the shops and malls. (But I liked the Jack and Sally Kleenex box covers.)

I was beginning to realize that I didn't feel comfortable in corsets or fancy dresses. Years later, I learned that I'm agender.

Anyhow, around 2010, I was in university. My active participation in the subculture ended. I stopped dressing "goth". I stopped listening to the music. My fiancé and I had long since broken up. My online social circle had dissipated.

As of 2018, I'm back, finding new music through Bandcamp, this particular sub, r/releasethebats, and Twitter. I'm looking forward to catching up.

That's my story. Forgive the length; I enjoy talking about all of this. What about you? You don't have to give your entire life history like I did. My questions:

1) How and when did you first get involved in the subculture? Was it online or IRL, or both? Were you a misfit, aside from your friend group, or were you popular?

2) Related to the above: how did you locate goth music?

3) Were you a regular at clubs, or not so much?

4) Were you able to attend concerts?

5) Were your friends goth?

6) Did you take leaves of absence from the music?

6) Anything else/any fun or nostalgic anecdotes to share?

Thanks for reading. 🖤

Hello, I am 15 years old and want to become a goth and want advice. This is because I've listened to some of the music and liked it, I like the aesthetic, and found myself agreeing with some of the ideologies. Also, the history behind it, of what I've seen, is pretty interesting. Any advice for me?

As the title says, I've recently gotten super into gothic fashion after admiring it for most of my life, and I finally built up the confidence to start buying and creating outfits from a local alternative fashion store in the past few months. I absolutely love how it looks on me and already have amassed quite a wardrobe of goth wear, from dresses to corsets to pentagram skirts, and have even started learning new makeup skills to match.

Through this I've ended up reconnecting with an old friend from back in school who has been wearing goth fashion for years and whose fashion sense really inspired me back in the day. Today I sent her a text with pics of some of my new outfits and was excited to want to talk with her again; however the response she had confused me.

She essentially told me while goth fashion is fun, "just don't forget to educate yourself on all the goth subculture too." I feel this is phrased weirdly as if it was more of a warning rather than an invitation to learn more about what being goth meant as I assumed at first.

This has left me a bit confused, and I can't tell if she's supportive of my new style or slightly gatekeep-y. Is she saying I can't wear gothic fashion if I don't understand the intricacies of goth subculture? Is this a suggestion that how I've gone about wearing goth fashion is wrong and that I need to educate myself on how to wear it properly? Or is it simply a friendly suggestion to look into the subculture that could help me improve wearing gothic attire?

Would anyone have some idea of what this could mean and how important educating yourself on the goth subculture is? Thank you in advance!

Hi. I'm 17 years old and for a few years I have been strongly admiring goth fashion. When it comes to goth music, I grew up listening to Marilyn Manson. But, strangely, the same people who took me to a Marilyn Manson concert when I was 13 really don't want me to have anything to do with goth or emo (in their minds goth and emo are close to the same) anything. Naturally, this has just made my fascination stronger. I'm a pretty good kid. Only thing I've done that seriously pissed my parents off was being trans. Maybe it's because in less than a year I'll be an adult, but I kinda feel like my teenage years would be a bit wasted if I didn't at least be a bit rebellious. So, exposition aside, give me some recommendations. Goth music, goth youtubers, some places to get goth fashion besides Hot Topic. And before anyone says anything, this isn't just an act of rebellion that I'm doing just to piss off my parents. It's something I've been thinking about for a few years but I'd be lying if I said that annoying my parents isn't a bonus.