Teen Gothic

Take this down if it doesn’t fit.

But what I found the most interesting was how many people with this Facebook group, utterly detest goth music to such a degree. They hate it. Hate its founders. And can’t understand why anyone would listen or form a community around it.

However, they are the type of people who will say that to be goth is not to listen to the music. They all say that it is a mindset, a style, an aesthetic, a historical group, spooky, scary, all of that, but refuse to ever say that the music means anything, and that’s why rhetoric which dismisses goth music as the key to the goth subculture is so harmful.

Goth music is quite literally the one thing which keeps these assholes out on the sidelines because they hate it, aesthetics and fashion does not! Nazi’s and conservatives are like those parasites which infect weak insects, control their bodies and lead them to their colony to continue the infection. The swatskia, totenkoph, skinheads, are just a few examples of Nazi’s co-opting and taking ahold of aesthetics to force their ideology.

They will use aesthetics to draw in the masses under a guise of the dark innocence and the they use it as a way to promote their ideology. Regardless of how you feel about goth and it’s relation to music, I think it’s quite obvious how decentralizing the music to replace it with a “mindset” or those who “feel goth”, just leaves more room for those who “feel goth”, but are also bigots. That’s what I gathered.

I read someone’s comment, and please take credit for it, but they said it isn’t gatekeeping we need, it’s standards and I must agree. That community hates goth and all it stands for, no room for them at all!

I know goth music extends to a lot of different sounds/sub genres and it doesn't all sound the same, but it's not too different than any other genre/sub-genre.

When trying to explain what is/what is NOT goth music, a lot of people get either offended, extremely confused or start arguing against this, as if goth music isn't a real genre of music and/or that it incorrectly extends to other bands/sounds/genres, or that a band/song isn't really goth music, but just a higher genre realm like post-punk or alternative and that the sub-genre goth never actually applies.

Why is this? What is it about goth music that people have such a hard time understanding as a genre?

It's not like if someone was listening to a Mozart symphony and you were like "oh wow, I love classical music so much", the average person would say "what are you talking about, that's not classical, there's no such thing as classical", or that they would say "Mozart is punk."

It also confuses me why so many people insist on calling other genres goth music. The classic examples being stuff like Depeche Mode, etc…

So many people get so defensive about this. They either haven't really listened to what the full spectrum of goth music sounds like, or they have and are confused and just feel the need to argue that certain bands/songs still are goth music when they clearly aren't. It's not like the average person would call Mozart, Jazz music. Why does this misnomer happen so often with goth music?

I get that there are some similarities within other genres that share similar sounds/instruments as goth music, such as synth-pop, industrial, ebm, etc… But anyone who has even the smallest amount of music theory knowledge would/can be able to make the deduction that, if one song/band doesn't have the vital elements/factors of a certain sound/genre, then that song/band won't be considered that certain sound/genre.

I suppose this happens within other genres too, but it seems like this is very big especially with goth music and I can't figure out why this is.

Any thoughts?

I've been interested in the goth subculture for a while, a few days ago, I decided to listen to the music and, omg, I've feel in love with it, I've easliy spend several hours just listening to goth music, it's one of my favorite genres now and I'm even planning on watching some goth movies. I'm also planning on dressing in goth style, but here's the problem, I'm mostly an indoors person, so I've very few friends and the only people I talk with frequency is my family. I decided to reveal my interests and my plan for my goth outfit today, expecting support and unfortunaley, as you've guessed, all I was meet with is mockery, harsh judgement and them claiming them won't help me with anything, they even said that I'll look "horrifiying" or a "freak" or even saying stuff like "imagine you going out like this in public, looking like a vampire, if you want it, fine, but let's agree that's weird and I don't want any part of that", this has made me very sad and also very lonely, it's makes me think that I'll never meet someone that respects or have the same interests as me and that people are only going to see me as a "weirdo" (not helping that I've only meet like, 2 alt ppl besides me in my entire life), I can't put in words how this has broken my heart. I'm planning on revealing my goth interests to my very few friends, I hope they understand me and don't judge or mock me. Sorry in case my english is broken (I'm brazilian) and sorry for the long post, I just wanted to vent

like… no? gothic rock has existed a long time, and is pretty clearly definied with a relatively destinct sound. i could see some arguments being made for lumping in some adjacent genres, but saying any music goths like is goth music is a dumb argument since not only, like i said, does goth have a pretty clear musical definition, but also goths can like non goth music. i like hyperpop, that doesn't suddenly make 100 gecs a goth band.

plus, if you get rid of a definition for what goth music is other than stuff that goths like, then you also end up getting rid of a definition for goth

sorry for posting a lot of discussion posts, i'm a bit high and by extension wired/chatty lol. i didn't see anything in rules about repeat posts other than posting music, but i can take down some discussion posts if need be

I was laughing at this Tiktok that was talking about how goths destroyed the temple of Artemis and the comments were like “my bad” and there was one comment that was like “destroyed by people who listen to MCR” and my smile never dropped so fast 😭 like not the MCR 😭😭(no shade to them ofc, love those guys)