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.

I ordered my three favorite Faith and the Muse records from her, finally, and she not only signed each one with a beautiful personalized note she also threw in their greatest hits CD for free. Beautiful music from a beautiful soul.

So I was thinking about how people online are always trying to use the "goth culture is actually an appreciation of a genre of literature, art, architecture, etc. so really it's 🌈✨whatever you want it to be✨🌈" argument and I think I finally thought of a good way to explain to them how badly that logic is flawed.

I tend to use metalheads as a parallel for goths since it's pretty widely accepted to the mainstream that metalheads are simply people who like metal music. But you wouldn't go up to a metalhead saying that you're the REAL metalhead because you're obsessed with steel and aluminium, right? "Ummmmm actually, metal is an opaque, lustrous element which acts as a good conductor of heat and electricity, so really YOU'RE the idiot here and if you don't have a degree in metallurgy and a tattoo of the chemical symbol of at least one rare earth metal you're not REALLY a metalhead." Like you know damn well that's not what we're talking about here, you're just being intentionally dense and using the wrong context of the word to justify taking it for yourself and strongarming the people who started the subculture out for your own gain.

Feel free to copy paste if you spot someone pulling that trash argument out in the wild😂

I’m about to move up there and I’m wondering if there are any goth nights or places to catch a good show. I’m leaving the NYC area so I guess I’ve been spoiled because there’s always something to do here. Also, I know zero people in HV so it would be nice to make a friend with similar interests.