Teen Gothic

From what I've seen and experienced in the subculture, there is a massive fear of making a mistake or not being "the perfect goth" as that happens in most communities and it especially intimidating to newer people. In truth pretty much all of us have made some sort of mistake or mess up at some point in our time here. So why not share some mistakes we've all made to make things seem less intimidating and to also help out others from making the same! No mistake being too dumb, and please be kind to others who share theirs!

I'll go first:

When I was twelve and first starting out, one of my friend's older sisters' was goth and recommended Sex Gang Children. She told me about how they were one of the first and how important they were to the subculture. I wanted to look into them more so I read an article stating that they were the ones who came up with the word "goth" as well as skimmed through their wiki page and majorly misread it. Culture Club was originally going to be named Sex Gang Children but renamed it and then the now actual band then got it officially. However, in my twelve year old short attention span mind I misread it as Culture Club was the same as Sex Gang Children and for a full year I thought that Karma Chameleon himself, Boy George, was the one who came up with name for the subculture. For some reason tween me just went on thinking this without double checking until I saw something about the actual band and it always gives me a good laugh looking back!

We all made them. Hopefully you can laugh about them now. We have all had times where we honestly thought a band was goth due to inaccurate information. But I'm talking completely getting your wires crossed and drawing a false conclusion due to being new, ill-informed and a little naïve.

I'll go first. At one point when I was new I thought Robert Smith's band was The Smiths. Mr Smith and The Smiths it just makes sense, right? Lucky for me it was something I kept to myself and I learned better eventually. It may seem silly now but in 1996/97 if you didn't find the information and no one told you then you were on your own.

I also remember as a child (1988 or 89) mistaking Robert Smith for the singer from Simply Red (Mick Hucknall) as at one point they had a similar hairstyle. At least in the music magazine my sister had that I saw a photo of Mick in.

Any big newbie mistakes you remember?