I have been wanting to write a post entitled ‘Friends Don’t Let Friends Wear White-Face’ for a while now, and by golly Last Grasp have taken that ship and sailed away in it! EDIT: Literally just found out the song itself was released about a month ago, but the video is indeed new.
For those of you who don’t know, there is an endless amount of people new to the goth subculture right now wearing white foundation (white-face) and claiming themselves to be ‘trad goth’. Of course nothing could be further from the truth since the majority of us back in the 80’s and 90’s didn’t look like members of Kiss. They will openly tell those who do goth make-up without ‘white-face’ that they aren’t ‘true goths’, that to be a ‘true goth’ you have to look just like them. They are also the same type of people who make endless posts to online goth groups asking if they look goth enough, and what they can do to look more goth. They want a bunch of boxes ticked rather than discover their style on their own, which is actually quite sad when you stop to think about it.
This song and video makes fun of all of this crap and encapsulates what is really going on in the goth subculture right now; it being taken over by trend whores who are just in it for the aesthetics. The lyrics are pretty genius:
“Are my patches on straight?
When you see me online i bet you masturbate
It’s so hard to be this great
I’ll hold up the line to the pearly gates
Why can’t you see?
Everyone’s a poser except for me
My most impeccable taste
On you is something that i would not like to waste”
Will this song and video upset those self described ‘trad goths’? I sure hope so because at this point they really, really need to be put in their place.
This is the perfect representation of Killstar right now; muck circling the drain.
Welcome back to yet another article detailing the bad happenings going on at Killstar right now. I have received an email from an employee who wishes to remain anonymous and what they have told me is quite interesting to say the least. Bertram Capital seems to be running the financial side of the company while Tequila-Rose is in charge of the design team, and guess what? They are both doing very badly at their assigned tasks.
Tequila-Rose runs the design team in a very controlling manner; everything has to be run by her and approved by her. Those who lick her boots get spanking brand new titles, while those who try to bring forth new ideas are quite frequently bullied so they end up leaving. Good on them, because nobody should be treated like that. Instead of being innovative with their designs they are just copying the same silhouettes over and over again: just like what I predicted they wouldlast year. Take for instance their black bell sleeved shirt; the only thing they change are the graphics. It’s just the same thing over and over again.
From what I understand Bertram Capital, and Tequila-Rose, refuse to listen to new ideas that would actually help the company. Ideas such as lowering the prices. Instead of that they keep raising the prices. Not just that though; they are using cheaper materials now, which has become very noticeable. This all started when Tequila-Rose went to Bertram Capital, a private equity firm, a few years ago for a cash injection to help steer the company in the right direction. It’s probably the worst financial decision that she could have made because private equity firms exist for just one reason; to make their investors a huge pile of cash. They don’t give a crap about innovation.
Talking about innovation. When Kreeptures, their plushie collection of misshapen creatures, came out people were excited to buy them because they were deemed as collectables; they were done in smaller batches to make them more scarce. Bertram Capital thought that was a perfect money making idea so instead of coming out once in a blue moon they started releasing them weekly, and sometimes even twice a week. Usually just different colours of the same Kreeptures. This annihilated the reason why people were buying them in the first place and in response sales of them went down, way down.
You would think that maybe Killstar would have learned their lesson, but they haven’t. Instead they came out with another line of smaller plushies called Kuties. However, that also isn’t working for them because sales of them have been poor. If you’ve noticed they have also introduced a different line of clothes called Kihilist but I don’t think they know what the hell to do with it. They advertise that this line are easy looks that can be worn during the day into night. Which makes no damn sense because all of their clothes can be worn like that.
Do you remember when all of their remote workers were laid off? What they got offered to move to Brighton was so low that nobody took the deal. However, Tequila-Rose offered her ‘essential’ bootlicker workers a far better deal which they all took. My source has told me that the company will hire a diverse group of people to pad their diversity numbers, but they put a lot of said people into roles that they are not qualified to do; setting them up for failure. The company in general is so toxic that 75% of people in the company have worked there for less than two years which is a huge turnover. I don’t think I have ever worked at a company with that high of a number.
Trust me when I say that this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. They frequently lay off groups of people, which doesn’t always go the way they want it to. Those who were laid off because they weren’t willing to relocate to Brighton had to sign an NDA so that other staff wouldn’t find out the paltry sum they were offered to move. This became such a mess that they had to hire an outside HR company to deal with the fallout. They want to cut expenses so they plan on outsourcing their customer service. That’s right, in the near future when you call Killstar to try to solve an issue you will probably be talking to somebody from a poorer country who doesn’t make that much money. The mantra of the upper management is to do jobs as quickly and cheaply as possible, and it is backfiring on them spectacularly.
How is Killstar doing financially? They are making less money than last year which tells me that their customers no longer trust them to make a good quality product. People are broke as hell right now and don’t want to spend a ton of money on clothes that are as badly made as those from Shein. When you go onto Shein or Temu you will find direct copies of some of their items, such as the striped sweaters and the skull handbags. Why spend £70 on a skull handbag when you can get the exact same thing for less than half that price. This is what frequently happens to companies who source their manufacturing in China. It is a common practice for manufacturers there to copy the designs and sell it themselves.
Basically, Killstar wants everybody in Brighton so that they can be kept on a tight leash and micromanaged. When somebody chooses to leave, or is laid off, another person is given their duties on top of the ones they are already doing. This causes burnout and makes more people leave. On top of that they are now making pickers in their warehouses wear devices that track how fast they are performing; warehouses which are very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. They are acting like a mini version of Amazon; treating their workers like crap and making them work in poor conditions.
The last thing I want to touch on is that they will hire managerial staff and promise them really nice performance bonuses. These managers will come up with good ideas that the company really likes and then they are laid off by Killstar before they can be qualified for said bonuses; throw away the employee and keep the idea. This is a very horrid business practice that private equity firms frequently do and one of the many reasons why they should never be brought into a company and trusted.
Killstar is coming up with a Monster High ‘collection’ in a few days and I bet a whole lot of the silhouettes are going to look very similar to older ones; yet more bell sleeves among other Killstar fashion tropes. How exciting and edgy of them. With yet more and more of their shady business practices coming to light I quite honestly have no idea how much longer this brand is going to last. They have been having constant sales and sending out daily emails. If they do really badly during the Christmas season later this year I can see them going under but only time will tell.
I will continue to write posts covering Killstar as information is relayed to me. If you are a Killstar employee, past or present, please feel free to contact me at [email protected]. I will keep your identity a secret and treat you fairly.
I have decided to start doing this so that people can learn about the actual songs that were played at alternative and goth clubs during that time. These will all be songs I personally heard and danced to from the late 80’s to throughout the 90’s. The date will be when the song was released.
The minute this song was played the dancefloor would get filled with rivetheads, uber goths, deathrockers and just about everybody else. It’s one of those kind of songs that just about everybody could appreciate and dance to. Dancing to the entire thing may seem impossible but the slow bits let you do the infamous ubergoth back arch while waving your arms about so that you can more aggressively dance to the fast bits. I was actually rather good at the back arch move so I would always show it off when this song was played. It is the perfect song to master the clearing cobwebs dance move so get to it!
The ‘too goth’ are her words not mine. She publicly posted this photo of herself so I am sharing.
Most of you know that I still doom-scroll goth subreddits, because the drama always gives me ideas for articles. This is no different; a girl has claimed that a mall in her home area of Virginia kicked her out for looking ‘too goth’. I have been wanting to write a screed about how friends don’t let friends wear white-face make-up and this pops up out of the blue!
She was told by the mall security guard that she had to leave the mall because her make-up obscured her features. I used to go to malls all of the time in the late 80’s/early 90’s with friends to hang out because there was literally nowhere to congregate out of the sun and we were never kicked out. However, we didn’t wear white-face. In fact never in my life have I worn it. Back ‘in the day’ it was considered a very theatrical look and even in the clubs of that time I can count on one hand the number of people that I saw wearing it. I guarantee that there are more people wandering about wearing white-face right now than there was 30 years ago.
There are ways to look pale without resorting to white-face. All you need is a foundation shade that is a few levels lighter than the colour of your skin. That way you can easily blend it into you neck without it looking like a white mask. Honestly, that is what the vast majority of us did back then. When I could afford to buy MAC I started using their lightest shade. These days I very rarely use foundation. If I am feeling extra fancy I will wear lipstick and eyeliner and that is it.
The thing with looking over the top and theatrical while out in public is that you will get shit for it in one way or another. It sucks that people are assholes but you have to have a thick skin. Remember when the influencer Black Friday wasn’t allowed to enter the Louvre because of her very theatrical look? There is a time and place for it. In the end you can wear whatever make-up you want, but sometimes there are going to be consquences for that choice. The world that exists online is not the same world that exists outside your front door.
EDIT: Here is an exchange the chick and another person had on her Reddit thread. She is underlined in green. This got a little juicy…and racist. Fucking hell!
They say this image isn’t AI, all while the chick’s skin looks manipulated as hell. She has no skin texture.
Before I start I would like to tell Gothic Booty, I mean Beauty, that I own the domain and website of this blog and that I answer to nobody as to how it is run. So take-down threats aren’t going to work on me. Hiya!!!!!
So, for the last few weeks a bunch of people have been calling out Gothic Beauty for the AI images that they are using in their social media posts. How have Gothic Beauty responded? By getting the posts of people sharing the AI images taken down for copyright claims. Does that sound like an innocent company to you? It sure as hell doesn’t to me and it is the major reason as to why I am sharing this information. Shit like this needs to be called out.
One of the AI images in question.
The thing that is really pissing people off, myself included, is the fact that the AI images are of thin white young women; a stereotype that needs to just die already. It really just shows exactly who they are trying to cater to; thin white young women and the men who have a fetish for them. Do they give a shit about those of us who are over fifty and have been into the music for literally decades? Nope. I am very used to not being represented in goth online spaces because of my age, but each time it happens it still pisses me off.
I am known for questioning Killstar and not once have they ever tried to copyright claim me. Not a single time. It is a sad state of affairs that a so called ‘goth’ magazine, that is supposedly catering to the ‘alternative’ community, can’t take criticism and choose to perpetuate a stereotype rather than listening to their readers. They aren’t using AI in their actual magazine right now, but judging by their response it sure seems like they want to go into that direction. Not to mention the fact that the images they use in the magazine are manipulated to hell and back. They are making their real models look like AI images by their overuse of blurring tools. You can’t be goth apparently if you have pores or wrinkles in your skin.
I think more and more ‘alternative’ companies are going to try to pull this and each time they do they need to be called out for it. Make your disapproval of this kind of thing known to them, because if you don’t it is going to get far worse than it is already.
Notice something a bit strange about Killstar’s LinkedIn page? They no longer have photos of the people running the show; no Director Head Of Global Operations or Operation Professional MBA photos. Proof that they are really trying to hide the fact that the private equity firm Bertram Capital has a major stake in the company. The funny thing about this is that the way I found out about Bertram Capital was from the photo of Tom Beerle whose profile said he was a partner with the firm on Killstar’s old LinkedIn page. One of them is probably Beerle and the other Tequila-Rose Hanses, who is the original owner. Too late Killstar, too late. Here is a linkof the article I wrote explaining Beerle and his role in the company in case you are catching up with the saga.
Since Killstar is laying off their remote workers who refuse to move to Brighton they have listed some job openings. I found something quite telling about the role Product Technologist. They have to report their findings not to a manager but to ‘stakeholders’. Oh, it gets better.
Working with a team and then having to report to multiple stakeholders? What I get from this is that Bertram Capital wants a say in every single product or idea that crosses their desk, even though they don’t really know anything about alternative subcultures. This has been proven with their Avril Lavigne collection disaster. I can’t imagine that it would be a healthy work environment at all. You know quite a bit about alternative subcultures and you design something that you know ‘alternative’ type people would like, and then being told by the ‘stakeholder’ from Bertram Capital that the design doesn’t work. On top of that you would more than likely also have to run the design past Tequila-Rose since she is also still a ‘stakeholder’. What happens if the two sides don’t agree, does she get the last word or does Bertram Capital?
I suspect that Bertram Capital are the ones who insisted that the company be moved from Glasgow to Brighton. They probably think the area is more ‘hip’ than Glasgow. Plus, it is closer to London. However, what they didn’t manage to fit into the equation is that it is very expensive to live in Brighton. Personally, I think all of this is going to backfire spectacularly.
Bertram Capital and Tequila-Rose have done fucked up and are in the stage of finding out.
Well it looks like things are coming to a head because they have decided to make their remote workers redundantif they don’t agree to work in their office located in Brighton. I find this interesting because their office used to be in Glasgow. I’m guessing that they let people work remotely instead of having to be in Glasgow, so something major must be happening to move the office to Brighton and to make people physically come into work.
My guess as to what is going on? They are making people come into the office because they want to consolidate positions and make people do more than just one role, which means that the company is more than likely in financial trouble. Since Bertram Capital bought a stake in the company the quality of the clothes has gone south and they have pumped out new clothes every single week, and sometimes several times in a week. Many of the designs look familiar because they keep copying the same silhouettes over and over again.
Killstar really suck for doing this to their workers and are behaving the same as any regular corporate entity. They stopped having any kind of alternative clothing credibility when they let the private equity firm Bertram Capital into the fold. As of right now they are just a corporate entity trying to make a buck off of alternative subcultures. That is it. When you buy clothes from them you are just filling the pockets of the venture capitalists that are running the company into the ground.
Personally, I will not shed a tear for Killstar and they deserve all of the hate they are going to get for doing this to their employees in this economic climate.
Full disclosure on this, I actually knew Vision online over twenty years ago during the deathrock revival. I stopped paying attention to him and the band when they started to look like rejects from a Motley Crue video. It was just a really bizarre shift and I lost track of the band.
I still go over to r/goth, even though I am banned from there, because the drama in that group gives me a lot of ideas for articles. Hi guys!!! Well, somebody over there made a long post questioning as to why Vision from Tragic Black was now a right winger. As proof they showed a few screenshots from Vision’s follow list and a list of all of his follows in a paste bin. I felt like the proof had to be a little more solid so I went over to Instagram and took screenshots of every one of his obvious right wing follows. I will post every screenshot and a brief commentary underneath each one. I know it sucks finding this shit out but if you are a fan of Tragic Black you deserve to be told the truth as to what kind of person Vision really is; a far right wing supporter.
Awwww…….look, he likes Charlie Kirk who is a very well known right wing grifter. How cute!
He even likes the rejected GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. What a nice lad!
Michale Graves is an admitted Proud Boy and Vision thinks that he is peachy-keen enough to follow. Right wing chuds supporting one another? Who knew?
Our boy is following Russel Brand AND Donald Trump. I guess the young lad really loves conspiracy theories. That’s so tragic! See what I did there?
Eric Trump? He is so enamored of the Cheeto that he also follows one of his grifter sons……and he also follows Matt Gaetz, a congressman who had been accused of sex trafficking minors.
He loves his fascist women blonde and extremely dumb; Marjorie Taylor Greene. So if you are a dumb blonde fascist bitch you may get a follow from him! How exciting!
I guess he also likes his fascist women with dark hair because here is Lauren Boebert! Or maybe he likes her because he wants her to jerk him off in a theatre? We will probably never know. Steven Crowder is a right wing grifter podcast idiot. I wonder if listening to his show helps Vision take a shit. Regular bowel movements are important!
Say hi to Josh Hawley, a GOP member of congress who thinks that women who are raped, either by a relative or somebody else, should be forced to have the child. So our little Vision is against a woman’s right to choose. What a peach!
He loves Lauren Boebert so very much that he has followed a second account of hers? Lovely!! Oh, and he follows the very problematic industrial band Nachtmahr, Not a shocker since Vision seems to be okay with racism and woman being exploited.
He follows yet another Donald Trump account and Kanye West. Just when you thought this crap couldn’t get any more stupid he throws us a bone! Thanks dude!
Ted Cruz is sooooo lucky to have a follower like Vision! Like OMG, right?
Awwwww…..I was wondering where his follow of Tucker Carlson was at. Vision doesn’t disappoint does he?
Both Tim Pool AND Ben Shapiro? Wow, Vision sure has his listening to far right wing grifters covered doesn’t he?
He follows Joe Rogan, because of course he does!
He also loves Andy Deane, a ‘goth’ musician who has been accused of rape among other really disgusting things. Bad birds of a feather hanging together. No shock.
We are now at the end of our saga, in which Vision forgot to remove his support of somebody that wasn’t a right wing grifter; President Obama. Vision fell down the far right rabbit hole and I can’t ever see him coming back from this. The end.
Owen Jones’ new video about those who have public platforms who are doing nothing to help end the genocide of the Palestinian people by Israel. It is also my opinion, especially towards ‘influencers’ in the goth and punk subcultures. You cannot be in an alternative type subculture and support a literal genocide. End of. Too chicken shit, that you will lose followers? Oh noes, people supporting a genocide might not follow you. Fuck off with that nonsense.
Geordie Walker, one of the founders and guitarist for Killing Joke, has died of a stroke at the age of 64. Killing Joke is a band that is impossible to fit into just one music style box, and that is the reason why they have always been such a highly influential band to so many different musicians. My thoughts go out to his friends and family. May his memory always be a blessing.
