I put a link to my last blog post about this whole Cruel World fiasco on multiple band pages and so far London After Midnight has been the only one to respond. It was such a cringe filled response that I made sure to take screen shots of everything, Good thing I did because Sean Brennan, the singer, deleted my post and his responses to it. Does that sound like somebody who is scared that their shit attitude is going to be seen by a whole bunch of people in the goth community? It sure does!
So Phillip Anschutz is an insane bigot but you’ll play the show anyway? Yes, the homophobic prick owns AEG who in turn owns Goldenvoice. Guess what that means? The guy is at the top of a pyramid and all of the money made from festivals such as Cochella and Cruel World is filtered up to him. In the end he is responsible for what happens, so by agreeing to do such a festival you are saying that it’s okay for the top dog to be a homophobe. As long as you gain some fans and some money it’s all good! Right? By golly, don’t you have a set of priorities!
Awwwww………look at all of the whatabouts and gaslighting! I feel like I should give the first part of this response a dog biscuit and a pat on the head for being such a predictable little deflection! No hon, this isn’t about me or Facebook. Rather, it’s all about your shit priorities and your inability to say no to playing a festival that is put on by a known homophobe. That’s it. You are around fifty years old, right? I just turned fifty and through the years I have learned that supporting homophobic creeps is something that a person shouldn’t do, because right wing people will think that being anti-LGBTQ is perfectly fine in the goth/alternative community. Plus, supporting such a person is just plain wrong. It’s only impossible for you to avoid right-wing bigots when you agree to play shows that they promote.
Bullshit. I’ve had people tell me that you used to be very active on Myspace. So, trying to gain credibility by saying that you hate social media is flaccid at best. Here you go again with the whatabouts pointed towards Facebook. What are you going to do once you hit that stage? Complain about how the promoter is a homophobic piece of shit? I really doubt that, because you will be too scared of being banned from playing Goldenvoice shows and venues. How do I know that? By the very fact that your responses are riddled with deflections. Oh, let’s all get together and try to figure out how to fight this? Do you know what would be the first step towards a solution? You not playing the damn show! If you really gave a shit about the LGBTQ community you would refuse to play it. Full stop.
Well, that all folks! I am not going to tell you to like or dislike this band. Judge for yourself how this band has responded to this situation and come to your own conclusions.
Since very bright hair has become very mainstream it seems like more and more brands of bright hair dye are coming out of the woodwork. This itself isn’t a bad thing because what works on one person may not work on another person. What I personally take issue with is the fact that a lot of companies are charging a ton of money for these dyes, and a lot of people who have no experience with these type of dyes are being gouged in more ways than one.
Before I get stuck in I would like to let it be known that I am not a licensed hair stylist. However, I have been dyeing my own hair for about 35 years so I have a lot of experience. I have dark brown hair that is very coarse and consists of three different types of curls. Bleaching my type of hair is very difficult and time consuming. I would bleach it once and then in a day or two bleach it a second time. This would get it light enough to take in a magenta colour and that’s it. These days I would say that 80% of my new hair growth is white, which means that I no longer have to bleach it and I can dye it purple. My hair has been damaged many times in the past but it has never broken off, so my experiences may not be the same as others who have a different hair type.
With all of that being said there is no reason why people should be shelling £20.00 or more for one container of dye when they can get two, three, and in some cases even four containers of bright dyes for the same price. A lot of people wasting their money this way are doing almost no research on the subject. They are taking the word of beauty ‘influencers’ that are making a ton of money off of them by claiming that their bright hair dye is more ‘special’ than others. I’m looking at you Brad Mondo. I don’t care that you are an internet famous hair dresser, I am not going to pay over £20.00 for your bright coloured hair dye.
Certain brands work on my hair while others don’t, and that is a pretty common issue. The first main brand I ever tried was Manic Panic and it literally washed right out of my hair. These days it goes for about £10.00 a tub. The brand that I had the most success with when I lived in the US was Punky Colour. It was a little cheaper than Manic Panic and would actually stay in my hair for a few weeks. I would always mix one of their reds with one of their pinks to make my own magenta type colour. It is very pricey if you are living in Europe so I now use Directions, which is probably the most affordable brand out there. I have gotten pots of it for as low as £3.20. Their plum shade has the most cool fade that I have ever seen. Some of my hair will turn pink while other strands will turn a bright blue. When I recently went to get my hair cut my hairdresser was shocked that I had only used one shade to get that kind of multi colour fade.
In the end you can spend your money on whatever bright hair colour brand that you want, but just know that you do not need to spend an outrageous amount of cash. Do some research as to how your hair type reacts to bleach, because if you have dark hair you are not going to get a very bright hair shade unless you lighten it first. Some ads will claim that you don’t have to bleach your hair first. Quite frankly that is a load of shit. Also, ask others with your hair type what brand of dye that they use. If you do these things first before buying a bright coloured hair dye you will not only save money, you will also not be giving liars and grifters your hard earned cash.
Where do I even begin with this? I am on their mailing list and today they sent me an email that contained the above photo along with a link to an article on their site that describes what a ‘Romantic Goth’ is all about. Get ready to be schooled by Killstar!
Do I long for extravagant clothing? Sure! Personally I have always wanted to be dressed in corsets and black velvet and lace while wandering the halls of a spooky castle holding a candelabra that lights my way. All the while suffering from consumption, my deathly coughs echoing through the empty chambers, my bloody spittle blending into by black clothes. Since it was a simpler time there were no antibiotics so I would slowly die. Neat!
Yearn for arts, music and literature from the 1800’s? By golly gee you know I do! Nothing stirs me more than the Pre-Raphaelites, Mozart and Dracula! Wait, I’m not doing this right because Mozart was from the 1700’s. Shit. Oh, but I really love the hell out of Dracula! The Christopher Lee portrayal because he was a better actor and Hammer made the best Gothic type of horror film. I know I’m supposed to say Bela Lugosi but I cannot betray my heart!
So, a Romantic Goth is a classic type of goth fashion? Way back when, through the mists of time, wearing velvet and lace was just considered goth. In the 90’s different ‘types’ of goths were thought up to poke fun at the goth community, it was an inside joke that nobody took seriously. Am I supposed to be taking this seriously, because I have some velvet and lace items! Should I stop shaving part of my head and learn how to make elaborate buns out of my hair? I don’t know what to do! Bauhaus, Type O Negative and The Cure are to blame for the surge of the Romantic Goth style? Oh dear, somebody should tell them because I think some of the musicians in those bands will be very embarrassed. Break the news to them slowly because some of them aren’t in the best of health. Romantic Goths are some of the most commonly betrayed goth types in the media? How tragic!
Velvet and lace are a match made in hell? What’s hell got to do…got to do with it?
You mean I should be wearing baphomet necklaces, belts, and rings? I was wearing all of my lace and velvet clothing the wrong way? I now feel like I haven’t lived up to the required Romantic Goth angst level. All of those Hammer films lied to me! LIED!!! Damn you Christopher Lee and Ingrid Pitt…damn you! *cries dramatically and flings her cross laden jewellery across the room*
My heart is only semi dark, will that do? If I start spelling words with exxxtra x’s will that make my heart grow darker? So, there are more boxes to tick besides the Romantic Goth ones? If they involve the objectification of goth women I want to be all up in that. There is nothing like being a big tiddy goth girlfriend. Nothing.
First you call it Romantic Goth, now you call it new wave romantic fashion. Funny, I spent the last thirty years daring to think that New Wavers, New Romantics and Goths were all slightly different because those music genres weren’t exactly the same. Wait a second, are you trying to tell me that Goth has nothing to do with music and is just a fashion choice? Thank you for schooling me Killstar and for leading me into the light. Wait, am I supposed to say darkness because that would be more spooky and evil, right?
Do you want to learn more about Romantic Goths? You know you do! Click the link and you will be transformed into the Romantic Goth you knew you could always be.
Within the last few years there has been a resurgence of interest in anything having to do with the 80’s. Everything from endless posts about mediocre 80’s ‘post-punk’ bands to people asking questions as to how to directly copy the look of ‘trad’ goths litter the internet. Then there are the truly special individuals who constantly talk about how cool the decade was and how they wish they could have lived back then. They should never wish that. You want to know why? Because for the most part the 80’s was a hellish landscape of conservative neo-liberal politics mixed in with a highly conformist society that punished those who were in any way different.
I was a teen in the 80’s and graduated high school in 1989, so I spent pretty much the entirety of my teen years in that decade. I was very politically aware during that time and paid attention to the world events going on around me. For example, I went on a trip with some classmates to Washington DC in late 87 that was called Close Up. Teens from all over the US go every year to learn about politics. You get to meet your representatives and talk about important issues with others. We got enough free time to wander about the area exploring and one day two friends and I were walking near the Capital Building when a motorcade appeared. During that week Soviet officials were there to draw up the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty along with officials from Reagan’s cabinet which included the Secretary Of State George Shultz. I hated, and still hate, Reagan with the burning heat of a thousand suns so I was obviously not a fan of anybody serving under him. The first limos going past us had Soviet flags attached to the front, rolled down windows and Soviet guys waving at us with smiles on their faces. Seriously, it was as cool as it sounds. We smiled and waved back of course. Then the limos infested with the lice off of Reagan’s head rolled by and not one of them rolled down their windows. However, it was easy to see through the tint that one of them contained Shultz. I started yelling to him that he sucked and gave him the finger with both hands. Yes, I told a high ranking US official to basically go fuck himself. My friends were panicking telling me to stop but I wouldn’t. To this day I am still proud that at the age of 16 I had the balls to do something like that.
Now that you have learned a little bit about me I will now tell you a little bit about what it was really like to live in the 80’s.
THE COLD WAR AND THE CONSTANT FEAR OF NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION
I don’t think that younger people right now quite realize just how close we came to all being killed in a nuclear war. This fear was largely due to the constant posturing of Reagan. He would call the USSR the evil empire and threaten them on a very regular basis. Frankly I was way more afraid of Reagan back then than I was of the USSR. To the credit of the USSR back then they didn’t give in to Reagan and start a war. I honestly think the professional war mongerers who stood behind Reagan wanted an all out war with the USSR because they would have made billions from that. Both empires fought a proxy war in Afghanistan when the USSR invaded the country while the US backed and trained the rebels. By the way one of those rebels was Osama Bin Laden.
Scene from the UK film Threads.
Nuclear war was such a possibility at the time that two powerful tv films were made about it happening. Threads in the UK and The Day After in the US. Since I was living in the US at the time I saw The Day After when it was first aired in 1983 when I was in the 7th grade. It freaked my friends and I out so much that we went to our vice principal and asked about whether the school had a nuclear fallout shelter. Think about that for a second. Imagine being a young teen and having that kind of fear hanging over your head on a constant basis. It sucked. A few years ago I finally saw Threads and it shows the reality of a nuclear war; people being burned alive and the unsanitized reality of what would happen after a nuclear conflagration. If I had seen it back in the 80’s I would have had full blown nightmares.
IF YOU WERE IN ANY WAY ‘DIFFERENT’ YOU GOT CONSTANTLY SHIT ON AND CONFORMITY WAS A WAY OF LIFE
I always see younger people in online goth communities say that they wished that they could have experienced an ‘alternative’ subculture back in the 80’s. With confidence I can say that the vast majority of them wouldn’t have been emotionally equipped to have handled all of the shit that they would have gotten from others. It wasn’t just the ‘normal’ people that you had to deal with back then, you also had to deal with intense pressure within the alternative community to fit in by liking the same bands and behaving the same way. Woe onto you if you actually acted happy or liked a band that wasn’t considered cool. People think that ‘gatekeeping’ is bad now? They have no idea.
Jello even wrote a song about the pervasive conformity.
There was a huge amount of pressure back then by society to fit in. Reagan constantly preached about how America was better in the good old days, which were actually not good for anybody who wasn’t wealthy and white. If you didn’t go along with his not so hidden racist agenda you were seen as unpatriotic and a traitor. I am not exaggerating. You had to hate the USSR, be scared of black people, and look just like everybody else. If you didn’t have a perm, didn’t dress in the trendiest clothes and didn’t listen to the latest pop bands you didn’t fit in so you were considered fair game to tease and even physically attack. Luckily I was never physically attacked but I know that lots of people were. Far more violence happened back then than now. However, I had things yelled at me on a constant basis, for doing such things as simply walking down a street. In high school I was even told by a teacher that I wouldn’t have as many problems if I just dressed like everybody else.
IT WAS DIFFICULT AS HELL FINDING OUT ABOUT BANDSAND SHOWS
There was no functioning internet back in the 80’s. There were some bulletin board type communities but computers were expensive as hell so most people did not have them. There were thee ways of finding out about bands back then. You could be one of those lucky people that lived near a radio station that actually played alternative and punk music. These were usually college radio stations, but sometimes pop stations would play less popular music in the the middle of the night. There was a pop station in my area that did this. So much so that by the very late 80’s they became an ‘alternative’ station. However, by that time they played more radio friendly bands than experimental ones. However, I did learn about some bands by listening to them. Another way to learn about bands was by getting mix tapes from your friends. In early 86 I got one from a guy, who then ghosted me. There was no track listing written down so it took me literally years to figure some of them out. However, I had another person introduce me to Joy Division by handing me a tape with Unknown Pleasures on one side and Closer on the other. The last way to find out about music was by cold buying it. You would see somebody cool wearing a mysterious band shirt and you kept a log of those band names in the back of your head. I actually cold bought November Coming Fire by Samhain using this method, and more times than not I had really good luck.
You probably wouldn’t know who this band was back then if you had been around.
On top of all of this there was a code of silence that the uber goober type people would pull when you would ask them about what bands they liked. Seriously. There was some sort of strange code that some weirdos lived by that made it very uncool to share musical knowledge with anybody. It was as if they were going to be killed by an evil cabal if they dared to utter the sacred names of bands. These were the same types who would try to dictate how you behaved in clubs.
Wanted to see your favourite band play a show? Good luck! Most of the time the only way you would find out about shows was at club nights, but if you were under 18, and sometimes 21, you weren’t allowed in them. I actually went to one that let you in of you were 17 or older and another that was all ages so I was lucky when it came to that. However, that didn’t mean you would find out about all of the shows because venues were usually total shit at advertising shows unless they were some of the better known ones that also hosted metal shows. There were some ‘alternative’ weekly papers where I lived so I would find out about some of them that way, but there were two times that I accidentally saw bands because I thought it was going to be a regular club night. I saw Meat Beat Manifesto and The Call that way which looking back on it was pretty darn cool.
Well, that’s it for today. I realise that I have probably broken some hearts and crushed some dreams but the amount of misinformation about the 80’s really needs to be balanced out with a reality check. I don’t look back at that decade with rose coloured glasses, even though I lived through those years. It could be fun, but it was also really difficult. If I had the ability to go back in time to those years I wouldn’t.
Originally I wanted to make bowls out of the two Sonsombre records that I own, but our oven is too small to do it safely. This morning I tried to break them with my hands but the vinyl is too thick to snap. So, I scratched the hell out of both of the records and I tore up the record sleeves and the notes that came with them.
I must say that it felt quite satisfying. Especially scratching up the gold coloured one because there were only 33 ever made. Now there are only 32, or maybe even less than that because I’m sure that I’m not the only one who did this. I waited a week to do this because I didn’t want to get very emotionally upset again . Taking a week to wait meant that I had enough time to cool off.
Why have I done this? It has been proven without a shadow of a doubt that Brandon Pybus, the singer and songwriter of Sonsombre, is a current member of the racist neo-confederate group Sons Of Confederate Veterans. He has been since 2015. He lied to me, and many others, months ago when asked if he belonged to any racist organizations. He said no, when in fact he actually was a member of one.
This is going to be the last mention of the band that I will be making in this blog, unless he does something else incredibly stupid or Cleopatra Records drops the band. To those of you who think that I don’t have the right to be pissed off…..FUCK YOU.
The above photo has been making the rounds on the internet for the past few days. Somebody took the photo in a store called Box Lunch in a mall. Said store is owned by Hot Topic, which really shouldn’t come as a surprise since that company has had a reputation for profiting off of subcultures for about 30 years now. The thing that bothers me the most about this is that people are going to buy these atrocities without listening or even knowing about the bands painted upon them.
The first thing you notice about this jacket is that Agent Orange is shorted to Agent Ora and Dr. Know is changed to RX Know. Oh, and they messed up the name of Chaos UK. I don’t know if it was done out of pure laziness or that they didn’t want to be sued by said bands, but they got the names of the other bands correct so I’m guessing that they don’t really care about the whole getting sued thing. Somebody, in some factory in China or elsewhere, was told what to stencil so they probably had no clue that they were real bands. They have been exploited by whomever came up with this crap. Yes, I see the irony of using the word ‘exploited’.
I guarantee that people who buy this thing are going to get shit for wearing it when somebody goes up to them and wants to talk about the bands on it. It’s exciting to see somebody wear the merch of a band that you really like, and more exciting to have a discussion about them. However when these people are innocently asked about what their favourite band is on the jacket their eyes will glaze over in a panic because they didn’t realize that the names were of real punk bands. They bought the jacket because they thought it looked edgy.
I am all for people buying whatever they want to wear, and I’m realistic about the fact that not everybody can easily DIY clothing. I have multiple sclerosis and quite frequently I don’t have the energy to sew or paint. However, I feel that jackets are the one thing that should be personalized by the person who wears it. It’s a tradition that has been around since the early days of punk in the 1970’s, and something that means a lot to people in the punk, metal and goth subcultures. It shows other people in the subcultures what bands, films, or other things that you are heavily into. It even becomes a focal point of interest that will sometimes turn into a conversation with another person that is into similar things. Yes, sometimes ‘gatekeepers’ will be creeps and try to test you on your knowledge to make themselves feel superior. I’ve had it happen to me and it sucks. Not everybody is a creep though, and friendships can be started over a love of the same bands which is neat!
These days it’s really easy to learn how to paint on a leather or pleather jacket. There are tons of tutorials on YouTube showing you exactly how to do it and it really isn’t that difficult of a project to accomplish. You’re not good at painting? You can make a stencil out of cardboard, or any kind of thicker type paper, and do it that way. If what you create isn’t 100% perfect that is okay. You actually don’t even have to put band names on a jacket if you don’t want to. The latest one that I painted, shown below, doesn’t have a single band name on it. I am heavily into post-apocalyptic and dystopian films so I went with that kind of theme. There are also tutorials online that teach you how to stud a jacket and the studs are very cheap to buy on sites such as Etsy.
This is the best looking jacket I have ever painted and I used a combo of stencils and freehand.
When it comes down to it when you buy a premade ‘punk’ jacket you are being exploited by a company wanting to make money off of a subculture that they don’t give a crap about. They don’t care about the long history of the DIY ethos that runs through it. Instead they see you as a rube willing to spend your hard earned cash on their manufactured product in order to look ‘edgy’. Don’t be a victim of their avarice and greed. When you put your mind to it you can accomplish anything you want, including painting bands that you love on your own jacket.
Here is a quick rundown on what has happened. Last year there were some screen shots of some very old problematic Facebook likes that Brandon Pybus made years ago that were passed around the internet as proof that he was racist. Then Brandon appeared on a show explaining his side of things, and what he said made sense to me so I believed him. My thought process at the time was that if he was currently actively racist why would he agree to speak about being against racism. Some people have been telling me that there was more evidence, but I personally never saw any. I based my opinion on those old likes that I saw and what Brandon said and that was it.
This all changed yesterday when definitive proof was produced. It has been shown that Brandon has been an active member of the Sons Of Confederate Veterans since 2015. This is considered to be a hate group because they want Confederate statues to be kept in place, Confederate flags to be flown freely and they spread lies about why the Civil War was fought.
To say I am pissed off at Brandon is a huge understatement. In the past we had actually spoken about the Civil War because I have several ancestors who fought for the Union and who were from West Virginia, an area that he lives near. Never once did he say anything about the Confederacy or about being a member of that group. Of course he didn’t, because he knew that it would instantly piss me off and that I would tell other people. If he thought it wasn’t a racist group then why would he hide being a member of it? He had also told me in other discussions that he was in no way racist and that he wasn’t that kind of person.
I am not the only person that he has majorly lied to. He has worked with many other musicians as either a producer, a guitar player or as a vocalist. I feel for these musicians more than anybody else because they were closer to him and knew him as a personal friend, as somebody that they would help if he needed it. He really put himself out there, helping people and being friendly with everybody. It felt like he was doing something that the goth subculture really needed; a musician that was willing to work with everybody instead of against everybody.
There isn’t very much money to be made in the subculture so I don’t think he did all of this for that reason. I witnessed the WAR (white aryan resistance) skins, in the late 80’s/early 90’s, try to heavily infiltrate the goth and punk club scenes on the US West Coast and there is something about this whole situation that reminds me of that ordeal. They had more success in the goth subculture because back then the people within it were generally more passive and not as political as now. I’m not saying that everybody ignored politics but a certain percentage of people really couldn’t be bothered. That is one of the reasons why I have always kept a foot in the punk scene because people tend to be more reactive when bad shit happens. The punks and SHARP skins did all of the heavy lifting back then and drove the WAR skins out. Maybe Brandon thought that the goth subculture would be an easy place for him to infiltrate because he thinks that a lot of the people within the subculture are still very passive? That in the end people would support him no matter what he believed or said?
I would like to state for the record that I’m sorry that I hurt the feelings of the people who shared those Facebook likes last year. I supported the wrong person in this whole situation. I tend to defend friends to the death if I think they have been wronged, so that is why I reacted the way that I did. I fully support BLM, stand against racism and want everybody to be treated equally no matter who they are or who they love.
My heart feels crushed right now. However, I am not going to let Brandon’s lying racist ass get to me. I have scrubbed all mention of him and Sonsombre from this blog and I have deleted all of Sonsombre’s music from my computer. I plan on making the Sonsombre vinyl records that I own into bowls, because I don’t want to make money off of them and throwing them away isn’t exactly environmentally friendly.
EDIT: Apparently Brandon has made a non apology and is blocking people from actually asking questions about the racist organization that he belongs to. He blocked me even before I could comment, go figure. I’m not linking it because I don’t want to give him any views. It’s easy to find on Sonsombre’s Facebook page. I dedicate Gwar’s song Sick Of You to him. It’s very apt at the moment.
Dollskill, for those of you who don’t know, is an ‘alternative’ clothing brand that has a very problemic past involving stealing designs, racism, ableism and all sorts of nefarious type things. These events are very well known and several videos on the subject have been made by illuminaughtii, Emily Boo, Ready To Glare and many other YouTube content creators. If you type in ‘Dollskill sucks’ you will be greeted by a ton of videos on the subject.
Their clothes for the most part are very cringe worthy, made for young women who are graduating from the school of Hot Topic. They are definitely not aimed towards older people such as myself. They have different looks listed under the profiles of different young women:
Mercy – Represents the ‘goth’ look, that according to them includes the wearing of pentagrams, crosses and lots of lace and see through clothing. In other words the exact same kind of crap being sold by a ton of other ‘alternative’ sites. The name is a play on the most basic goth band The Sisters Of Mercy, how droll of them.
Darby – Represents the ‘punk’ look, that according to them includes the wearing of plaid, short skirts and graphic printed shirts. Just like the Mercy section many of the clothes have lace and are see through. Do you sense a pattern going on? This name is based on the singer for the Germs Darby Crash. How rebellious!
Willow – Represents the ‘festival’ look, that according to them includes a bunch of fringe, bell bottoms and clothing that looks like Rainbow Brite threw up on them. There are three more profiles but I seriously don’t feel like punishing my eyes any longer.
With all of this being said why the hell are ‘influencers’ still promoting them? My guess is because free cheaply made overpriced clothing is more important than anything else. The dumb bitches are outing themselves as being casual supporters of racism, among other things, which makes it really easy to avoid and ignore them. Yes, I called them dumb bitches, because you have got to be a really shallow and dense individual if your ‘look’ is more important than not supporting a company run by yet another dumb bitch.
What makes these people any different than the ‘normies’ that they often complain about? Nothing, because they are in fact ‘normies’. In the famous words of Jello Biafra: ‘You ain’t hardcore cos you spike your hair when a jock still lives in your head’. In other words, wearing black clothing doesn’t automatically make you ‘goth’, no matter how hard you try. This is especially true when you show off the free merch that you are receiving from a shit brand like Dollskill.
Don’t want to be considered a dumb bitch? Then don’t support brands such as Dollskill. Instead of showing off outfits that you receive free from questionable companies maybe actually spend your own money on the clothes that you wear. Too broke to buy the clothes yourself? Welcome to reality, a place in which most people cannot throw down a couple of thousand pounds for a whole new wardrobe. Instead, they steadily buy pieces through the years and wear them for so long that they will only toss them when they can no longer be fixed. Normally the only people who care about the newest trends in clothing are the trendies who will buy a whole new season of clothing by a designer several times a year. So if you run across a goth ‘influencer’ online that always jumps on ‘alternative’ trends, such as wearing clothes with crescent moons all over them, then you are witnessing behaviour that is no different from that acted out by the rest of society. The only difference is that the ‘influencer’ is wearing mostly black.
He must feel powerful, but he should be wearing black lipstick in order to become a goth superhero.
Why the hell are there ‘influencers’ in the goth subculture to begin with? Why do people need to be told exactly what to wear? These fashion victims think that looking dark and edgy automatically makes them goth. These are the same people who will take a selfie of themselves wearing black lipstick and post said photo all over the internet claiming they feel powerful and goth wearing such lipstick. Goth ‘influencers’ perpetuate all of this crap. Most actual people in the subculture do not put on a full face of make-up every single day and don’t dress to the nines just to go grocery shopping, unless they especially feel like it. Hell, there have been times I’ve done it because I was bored out of mind and wanted to look extra pretty that day. I take no issue with that at all. It becomes a problem when others in the subculture expect you to do it every single day or you’re not considered a ‘real’ goth.
These goth ‘influencers’ are considered to be ‘real’ goths by their followers which is at the heart of this problem. When they promote companies such as Dollskill they are basically saying to their fans that wearing Dollskill clothing is a very goth thing to do. They don’t mention all of the issues the company has had because they don’t want to lose that free swag they keep getting. The majority of these influencers, as you can expect, are young thin white women. Since they don’t really experience racism why should they have to worry their pretty little heads about it? If you buy the same clothes and wear your make-up exactly like them then you too could perhaps become an influencer! I call it the Kardashianization of the goth subculture. People becoming famous even though they aren’t talented in any way, shape or form.
So, what have we learned today? That aspiring to become a stupid bitch isn’t something that people should be wanting to do. Dollskill is trash and doesn’t deserve your hard earned money, especially during a world wide economic meltdown.
A pandemic is sweeping the globe, unemployment numbers are at sky high levels and people have been unable to pay rent for months. This winter there are going to be throngs of people needing to use foodbanks and new places to sleep because they will be evicted from their homes. Do you know what will cheer these people up more than anything else right now? Watching an endless parade of goth ‘influencers’ unboxing all of the free swag that they are sent!
In normal times, meaning before the economic collapse and pandemic, I found such videos to be really, really boring. Why the heck should I find somebody opening a free box of merchandise exciting? Oh wow….you sold your soul to promote the same exact clothes as everybody else. How brave, how daring of you! They will, of course, claim that everything that they are sent fits perfectly and give the impression that their followers will look just as cool and goth if they wear the same brand that they are promoting. These ‘influencers’ are grasping at the low fruit hanging off of the tree of the goth subculture: the fashion.
How self centred and oblivious do you have to be right now to think that sponsored unboxings are the way to go when it comes to content? Seriously, like what the ever living fuck?! If they really cared about the people watching their videos maybe they would do a tiny bit of research and share information about the local and national charities that are helping people right now. Securing food and shelter are way more important right now for a lot of people than buying the latest ‘goth’ fashion items. I have seen tons of people in Facebook groups selling their belongings because they need money to make rent or buy food.
I don’t take issue with the people who are spending their own money and talking about what they have bought, because people can spend their money how they wish. I only take issue with the over the top conspicuous consumption of free swag that is currently happening in the goth vlogging community. I think the best thing to do is not watch them, However, if you do happen upon them maybe give them a piece of your mind. Quite honestly they really need to be made aware of how crass their behaviour is right now.
EDIT: I did not permanently leave the r/goth community after this post, I just kind of held back for a few months before engaging with other people again. I didn’t get kicked out by the power tripping mods until more recently.
There seems to be a real tendency right now for younger people who identify themselves as goth to claim that alternative bands from the 80’s are goth. This is done partially through ignorance, and partially because they think that since they are goth that all of the music they like must also be goth. Echo & The Bunnymen being one of the more popular ones, with their song The Killing Moon being pointed out as a ‘goth’ song. What they fail to realise is that back in the 80’s they weren’t considered to be a goth band. In the strict sense they were considered to be ‘alternative’, a non mainstream band. They toured with Gene Loves Jezebel and New Order in 1987, a concert that I actually went to. There was one band out of the three that should be considered goth with a capital G, and it sure as hell wasn’t Echo And The Bunnymen. Oh, and it wasn’t New Order either in case you get that silly idea in your head.
You can tell some of these people until you are blue in the face, but do they listen? Of course not. It gets me kind of pissed off that the bands that I listened to as a teenager in the 80’s are being hijacked by a bunch of kids who think that they know more about the music of that time than I do. I’m not saying that my opinion is perfect or that I’m an expert when it comes to the music of the 80’s, but since I was a teenager during that time I definitely know quite a bit about the music from that decade.
Another thing that ticks me off is when people tell me that certain forms of music are not related to the goth genre at all, even though they were played at alternative clubs in the late 80’s alongside bands such as Christian Death and Specimen. I was there, I actually remember bands such as Desireless and Fake being played in sets. I associate those bands with the goth subculture because they definitely had a place in it during the late 80’s when the genre was starting to separate and have its own club nights. Anybody who says anything different wasn’t around during that time or is plain lying.
Another Brick by the band Fake. I love how he is carrying a guitar around during most of the video even though there isn’t any in the song
I actually left the Reddit goth group partially because of all of this. I just got sick and tired of people, who weren’t around in the 80’s, telling me I was wrong about what happened back then. Some genres such as synthpop definitely had a place in what was to become the goth subculture in the late 80’s and those songs were important to members of the burgeoning subculture. The synthpop that was created twenty years ago was a totally different animal. It took over goth club nights, along with EBM, and was very repetitive and stale. The current crop of wannabe 80’s synth/post-punk bands try to sound like ‘authentic’ 80’s music but a lot of the time they fall very flat. I like some of them a lot, but the bad really outweighs the good in that genre. A genre, that for some odd reason, is considered goth by the same people who dismiss 80’s synthpop as not being goth related.
What can we learn from all of this? There are people in the goth subculture that are so rigid in their definitions of the music that they can’t, or won’t, admit when they are wrong. When these people double down on their wrong assumptions just walk away, because they don’t want to listen to reason. Instead they only care about being right, much to the detriment of the subculture.
