Trench coat still hangs in the wardrobe - these were often fond memories, of days past as I have reflected upon before. We were kids, sure we were wild, we drank, we smoked and occasionally yes we got into trouble, but generally good kids (least I like to think so). We were the only two Goth kids in the village, we modelled ourselves on our heros and would happily while the hours away listening to music we had recorded off Radio Luxembourg.
As we grew and sadly lost touch for a while we still hung onto the subculture that we loved. I would personally attend Whitby and other Goth gatherings and I’d meet some wonderful people, some whom I grew to love and respect like family. That is what it was, a family of misfits and social outcasts finding solace and a place amongst others. We had fun, sure some took it all very seriously almost to the point where Peter Murphy replaced God and Ian Curtis was transformed into “the son of man- Jesus himself”. The rest of us just drank explored and would end up in photographs with curious normie locals. It was all good though . . . but like all good things eventually it has to end.
I noticed the beginning of the end some time ago. Popular YouTubers began pushing marketed items. See you might think “well what’s wrong with that?” And you’d be right, in itself making money through sponsorship deals etc is fine. But with these mass produced products suddenly your individuality was stolen. Gone was the time you’d create your look and make it yours. Now you had soulless corporations creating it for you. Creativity was gone, suddenly we had goth clones, all dressed the same, all running around with satanic symbols hanging from their necks and looking mean angry and dangerous. I encountered a few, then many, suddenly the Killstar or Spiral Direct manufactured goth look was everywhere. Goth wasn’t ours anymore it had become yet another bitch of capitalism, screwed into submission and now standing on the metaphorical street corner like some cheap lady of the night.
I noticed the beginning of the end some time ago. Popular YouTubers began pushing marketed items. See you might think “well what’s wrong with that?” And you’d be right, in itself making money through sponsorship deals etc is fine. But with these mass produced products suddenly your individuality was stolen. Gone was the time you’d create your look and make it yours. Now you had soulless corporations creating it for you. Creativity was gone, suddenly we had goth clones, all dressed the same, all running around with satanic symbols hanging from their necks and looking mean angry and dangerous. I encountered a few, then many, suddenly the Killstar or Spiral Direct manufactured goth look was everywhere. Goth wasn’t ours anymore it had become yet another bitch of capitalism, screwed into submission and now standing on the metaphorical street corner like some cheap lady of the night.
Sure we had people like Angela Benedict in particular who spoke out against what was happening to our subculture but our voices went unheard instead the “new breed” of goth had taken over. With their pastel colours their love of Taylor Swift telling the rest of us that “Goth is anything you want it to be” or the classic “you don’t need to like goth music to be goth” (yep a subculture born of music with its roots in a particular style of morose dark depressing yet infectious sound no longer needed its roots).
“Goth has evolved” was the argument. To me however this simply wasn’t true. Goth is and always will be a music based subculture and yes that’s a hill I’d die on,. You can’t be punk without liking punk music, you can’t be a skateboarder without a board and you certainly can’t be a gamer without a console but you can be goth without liking the very thing that made it in the first place? I found this all ridiculous.
The final straw for me however was the sexualisation and fetishism that started to appear. TikTok videos of so called “goth girls” shaking their backsides whilst trying to encourage lonely old men and women to part with their money on some OnlyFans page. 99% of these girls had goth down as a sexy dress up game. I won’t lie - I spoke to a few and they all came back with similar answers: “Guys like big titty goth girls”.
Everywhere you turned there were adverts selling goth, selling so called goth gear and selling girls dressed in black (occasionally) as some sort of kinky fetish scene. Goth itself had become a product, and a product that sold. To me this was the end. To see something I loved deeply become nothing more than a few sleazy photos and an outfit you could buy online, that was enough. So I hung my trench coat up, put my boots away, nail polish and eyeliner chucked in the bin. What Goth was is not what it has become, and I mourn. I long for the days when we could be recognised by our music, when we spent ages in charity shops buying shirts jackets trousers etc and then taking them home or to a friend's mother and making them look how you wanted them to look, creating our own style, expressing our individuality, these days are gone and they’re never coming back.
A few years back I stepped off a train in Glasgow Central and happened to notice a young lad with a Joy Division T-shirt, I approached him and said “great band, such a shame and loss of talent when Ian Curtis died.” He looked at me for a minute puzzled “who the f**k is Ian Curtis?” - I rest my case. Goth is dead.
⏩ Gary Robertson is a Glasgow Celtic fan.
Sadly Gary so much of popular culture has gone the same way; colonised by later consumer capitalism and all its hollow soullessnes.
ReplyDeleteGary - great story tinged with sadness. I remember writing about the sameness of Goths about twenty years ago. I think I called it I see Dead People. Keep writing - you have a knack for implanting a strong image in the mind of the reader.
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