an email and a response Date Thursday, April 25, 2024 - 08:56 AM PST Topic Drama I recently got an email from someone that wanted to tell me what goth really was and why I am not goth. Let's call her "duh". Duh told me that goth is a state of mind, the most over used phrase ever. Duh told me that it is only a style. Thank you Joan Rivers jr. She also told me that it was a way of seeing the world. Then she told me I was as ungoth as you can get and that she was a "true gothic". She also told me that she was 15 (I think) and raised in a suburb of some city that I have never heard of in some state in the middle of the country. I tried to be nice and give her food for thought. I may have over done it. You tell me… It is just a style to some people; that is their emotion/mental depth and they think that wearing this or that will give them friends. This is as deep as they get and it can be argued that since they have a limited mind, they also have a limited "state of mind." Every sub-culture has its hanger-ons and wanna-be-as-cool-as-yous. They look "goth" to some non-goths, but most people aren't fooled and tease them terribly, and I am not talking about being teased by goths alone here since most people tease them. But the truth in their hearts is that it is a fashion. That is their state of mind. Does that make them goth or make goth a "just" a fashion? Yes to them and no to other people. I agree that there is more to goth than just buying the symbols associated with goth. But you need the symbols too. It is a matter of WHY you buy the clothes, read the books, etc. An unexpressed state of mind is more of a mood than a lifestyle or belief system. For example, if your gut feeling is to be nice to people, you tend to act on that feeling. It becomes a behavior, not just an idea. If your state of mind says that the ocean is the best place on earth, you tend to read about it, watch movies about it, think about it, move to be near it, decorate you house with it, wear clothes that express that love etc. If you buy "goth" things because you like them, feel more comfortable around or in them, and truly prefer them to other things, then is it "just a style" or just an expression of your style? You are right that "goth" is a way of seeing the world, but what you see affects what you do; the abused child grows up to be an abuser, English speaking parents tend to raise children that speak English and so on. When it comes to teens in very sheltered and abusive homes, they may not dress what they feel, or listen to the music that matches their minds but this is due to external influences not internal desires. If they are strong enough, they tend to show it regardless of the abuse. If they are not quite that strong, they still show it, but in subtler ways. If they are overwhelmed by it, they tend to kill themselves. The ones that live tend to the black clothes as soon as they can and you find them littering the coffee shops at two in the morning arguing about Nietzsche and Juno. Yes, and often smoking cloves. What I am saying here is that what you think effects what you do. If you think you are goth, then you tend to do goth things, whatever those may be. That holds true whether or not you are really "goth." The fashion victims think they are goth, so they tend to do things that they think of as being "goth". The rest of us giggle at them, sleep with them, or borrow money of them, and sometimes even make friends with them. Goths tend not to care what other people wear, since clothes don't make the man, they just make you street legal and keep your nipples from freezing off. A goth may tease you about what you wear, but they would tease you about what you eat, drink, say, think, the people you know or don't know, watch, dream about, drive, work for, etc. We tend towards teasing. Less ego formed goths may even be mean about it. But keep in mind that they are still making the boundaries around their lives. They are working to make themselves and other people are the mirrors that they have to use to see what they are making. More ego formed goths tend to tease you about your actions instead of the symbols that you own. They tease you for being late, early, still going to x-place, or doing x thing, your job, or something like that. Think about what you emailed me. You attacked my way of life, my friends' way of life, and total strangers that share my way of life. You put bizarre labels on people based on how they are dressed. And then you made the ever-popular Uber goth statement. Glitter goth? Glam goth? And real gothic? (this was in response to her assessment of my "gothness". she decided that glitter goths are the only "real goths" and that they are properly called "gothic" not "glitter goth". I dont think she was trying to be funny.) There are people who refuse the label goth, because they refuse to have people try to treat them as mopey, like the stereotype. There are people who refuse to be labeled goth because they have waaaaaay to much fun with the art of self-expression and are walking performance art. And no self-respecting goth would be called gothic. The only people I know that call themselves "gothic" are fashion victims and the poor goths that get stuck hanging out with a crowd of them. Ok also the very young and unlearned goths sometimes self-label that way, but it is rare. All your labels are immaterial to the people that live that way. You are trying to assign a fashion label to a set of actions, mixing metaphors as it were. Yes, those labels exist, but that does not make them anymore real than any other label. Duh never wrote back to me. I wonder why. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=335