Teen Gothic

It’s like they only care about how you two would look as a couple, which really doesn’t matter. I’ve been running into this with both men and women. I’m a trans guy, but a lot of girls only want to be with me because they dress in pink and are very girly, and they’re like “we’d look so different and cute omg!” and the men are honestly the same.

None of these people are even into the music, they just like the aesthetic of having a partner who’s goth because it makes them look “cooler”, or something? I think it falls into the same vein of those guys who only want goth girls for fetish purposes.

I personally turn these people down, some of them are way more persistent than i like them to be though. I’m gay, but the women who like me are always SUPER persistent about it, even after i make it clear i’m not interested. I feel like many of us would like partners who are into the same music and have the same interests, (which many non-goth people would also like as well). People still tend to forget we’re real people and not like a lion in a cage for everyone to gawk at.

I do think this is pretty common, i just wanted to have a discussion about it, see if this is common with everyone else from different places.

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.

There's several things wrong with this, and from the horrible face merging to the unnecessary tacky 'sketch' filter over them, im not even sure which part burns my eyes most. It does no justice to them whatsoever and my question is WHY THIS? Who was in charge of, not JUST putting this together, but putting this as THE BANNER on spotify?

Mine would be Mask – Bauhaus, Goo – Sonic Youth, and Heaven or Las Vegas – Cocteau Twins <3

Usually good indicators for a good album, imo, is having un-skippable songs and being timeless (you can listen over and over without getting tired).

Interested to see everyone’s opinions here and low-key hoping for some good suggestions 🙂