Teen Gothic

I'm sharing it here because it seems related even though the sub is talking about the music.

There is something about self-expression that is super hard if you have social anxiety or if you grew up in a conservative home.

Even years before I got into the goth scene as a young girl I was very anxious to stand out or look strange especially from where I come from.

The thing is that I wanted to stand out but my social anxiety together with the conservative and primitive home I come from I couldn't.

I still look at goths and say "one day I can look like that without caring what everyone or my family says".

I'm also not a social person so it's much harder to find "people like you".

So how many of you had this problem and overcame it ?

It's a point of common knowledge among goths that the label wasn't really universally accepted or even liked by many of the seminal artists we come to consider forerunners of the genre, the most popular and well-known goth artists never took themselves under that label and often were very resentful of the term being applied. I don't think i need to belabor this point further or to list out who they were, we all know.

Which leads me to ask, who was the first musicians or band who actually openly declared themselves to be goth and proudly took it upon themselves as a moniker? I'm sorry if this is a stupid question but it's being asked sincerely. I hear so much about how this artist or that rejected the label despite being either pioneers of the genre or important to it's further development, and never about any musician who proudly claimed to be part of a nascent musical culture. Even today i feel like many musicians, wanting to be taken seriously, do not label themselves as goth because they feel it limits them creatively.

I personally love writing my own stories, I also play a little acoustic guitar and sing a little in my spare time.

I hope this doesn’t count as inflammatory, I just genuinely need advice. I have a small friend group that I’ve developed this year. We kind of connected because we all dress edgy. My issues started at the beginning of the year when one of said friends would constantly refer to the both of us as “big tiddy goth girls”. At first I thought she was a goth and just wasn’t icked out by that phrase like me. I gently asked her about her music taste and it is pretty much exclusively like house rave wave and rap. I have no problem with either of those genres, and I’ll enjoy a song or two from time to time, but it did bug me her using the label without knowing the history or meaning of it. Especially because you could just google “Goth” and it would tell you it was a music based subculture. She is my friend so I didn’t bring it up but it erred me. The rest of the group(except one girl who listens to goth music but doesn’t dress the part or consider it her scene) says similar things, about us being “bad goth bitches” and when they’ll dress up they’ll be like, “I look so goth right now”. We were at a bar and I outright said, “sometimes the way you use the word goth confuses me” after some other “goth baddy” comment, and they got very mad at me. They said that, “the normies are going to call us goth so that is what we are! It’s basically just an umbrella term for edgy” to which I said, “it’s a music based subculture. Someone in jeans and a polo listening to goth music, is more goth than someone dressed in a trad goth uniform who doesn’t listen to the music.” One of them said, “well I’m going to call myself goth”. That was the end of the conversation but it keeps bugging me. It’s not that I care about keeping them out of the subculture, the more the merrier because more goth music enjoyers means more albums, shows, and bands for our community. It’s just that I feel like just using goth to mean “edgy” waters down the actual meaning and misses the point of the subculture

When did the word appear for the first time? (Referring to the subculture). Was it already around during the 80's?

People ask me why I am always alone and try to socialize with the other goths? Because others have BETRAYED me that's why. They did things to me that I would never do to them.

That's why I, unlike most goths, am a loner. I don't socialize with other goths, due to too many easily upset and moody people. I am not having any more shenanigans and I cannot take it anymore, due to being on the autistic spectrum. If I don't like you, I will not socialize with you.

What should I do? Why am I the only one who keeps to himself and doesn't socialize? People, even those who are in the gothic subculture, see me as the weird one. And I feel like I am the world's most different man of all time.

Hello r/goth!

Long time lurker, not much of a speaker, decided to finally make a newer account and talk. I'm deaf and goth, and I have a very confusing and oddly specific issue. I love goth music (Switchblade Symphony, Clan of Xymox, The Merry Thoughts, Horror Vacui, to name a few), but sometimes I see bands name themselves goth and I don't actually know if that's true, since I can't hear. My enjoyment of music is purely physical, so my ability to understand whether or not a band is goth is limited. However, the bands that I'm drawn to as well as the community tends to be goth. I hope that makes sense, but I can elaborate more if there's questions.

So I suppose I'm wondering, how do you know a band is goth or not? Is there some sort of specific rhythm/feel that identifies them that I could tell apart?

Example: Ludovico Technique. I enjoy his music a lot and he calls himself goth, but I've seen people say that he isn't, though I'm not sure what the genre is.