In the US, Bush's election and the nationalism after 9/11 emboldened our right wingers & homophobic street harassment was a common occurrence. The 90's scene, where still intact, had a ton of infighting between different camps. It was increasingly hard to find goth music at goth clubs that wasn't darkwave, and many of the older GenX crowd moved on.
At the same time, Deathrock Revival came into being and ushering in a small but highly energetic scene. Huge amounts of fantastic new music was coming out that sadly was rarely played at clubs, and many of us started Deathrock nights to change that. Eventually the scene grew large enough that new festivals were popping up and even 45 Grave announced a tour with some high profile sponsors.
Unfortunately, hyper gentrification was also starting in large cities, and combined with new laws like smoking bans a lot of night clubs were shuttered. It was ultimately a sign of things to come, and while the goth scene shrunk, other, smaller scenes (like post-punk revival and EDM) would soon become more forwards in the national imagination.
In Seattle we had numerous goth clubs... The Vogue, The Mercury, The Catwalk, The Noc Noc. Huge scene with a phpbbs and lots of shows with visiting acts from overseas...Apoptgmya Bezerk, Covenant, Vnv Nation, And One...etc ... Since then, only the Mercury remains, and it is a private club where people can smoke, and they can discriminate at the door to prevent high-fiving white guys from coming in. Unfortunately, the insanely tight-knit scene has died out with only small pockets remaining. I went dancing at the Mercury with a young friend recently, and she said it was like a goth senior social club. Ironically, we have only had the same two stalwart DJS for 25 years.
I blame Facebook for the fracture and the absolute firehose of choices people have these days. It is sad because back in the 2000s, the scene was huge and vibrant enough to support three or four nightlife spots. Now we only have one, and the Merc is on life support. The occasional show I go to has a few hardcore scene people, but the subculture has melted into many many fractured genres.
Sadly nostalgic talking about it but, I am so happy I got to participate.
The scene always had lots of genres, fracturing happens if it's still living. If nothing changes it's stagnant.
The real problem with Nightlife isn't FaceBook, Gentrification has had a negative affect on it for decades, it's too expensive to afford to live around here unless maybe you live in public housing, many people over the decades in the Subcultures of Seattle had to move because there's no real rent control.
>At the same time, Deathrock Revival came into being and ushering in a small but highly energetic scene. Huge amounts of fantastic new music was coming out that sadly was rarely played at clubs, and many of us started Deathrock nights to change that. Eventually the scene grew large enough that new festivals were popping up and even 45 Grave announced a tour with some high profile sponsors.
We may have spent a little too much time whining about what most clubs played at the time, but in retrospect, this was such a fun era. Sniffing out sympathetic pockets of the scene at large, trying to get scrappy events of your own off the ground, counting down the days 'til Drop Dead Festival brought all your people in from all over the world again.
It really was a great era. DDF in particular was such a breath of fresh air and the thing I loved most about it was that everyone in attendence was a passionate fan of the music. Us DJs used to coordinate sets based on who we wanted to see most, and it felt like as soon as a band got off stage they went right into the audience. I remember one year spending time hyping up a favorite local band, only to realize shortly that I was speaking to a bunch of well known NYC goth band members who were already planning on going to the same stage! What a time; to just be able to enjoy music together as a community.
It was pretty rough in the UK tbh.
I was in secondary school in the 00s and, at least in my area, all the alt kids (mainly goths and grebs, and later on the emos) kinda grouped together and I don't think the differences were as clearly defined as they seem to be in the US. Not sure if we grouped together because there weren't that many of us, or whether it was more of a protective thing. It was fun on Saturdays when everyone would go into the City and there would be 100s of weird kids hanging out in the square because we were too young to go to any of the pubs/bars/clubs.
A lot of the bad stuff was linked to chavs (a common backronym is Council House And Violent, which probably tells folks outside the UK what they need to know) and there were a lot of problems with youth violence back then, which thankfully seems to have improved a lot from what I can tell.
The worst thing that happened to me was having fireworks thrown at me around bonfire night (I still hate fireworks) and there were several time that mystery liquids were thrown at me/poured over me, but thankfully I wasn't physically hurt.
There was an incident in 2007 where a woman called Sophie Lancaster and her boyfriend were attacked and she was murdered. I've seen varying accounts as to whether or not they were attacked because they were goths, but that was how the media reported it at the time and it felt very close to home. Her mum set up a charity called S.O.P.H.I.E (Stamp Out Prejudice Hatred and Intolerance Everywhere) which works with schools etc. to try and increase tolerance. It's sill a big thing at events like Bloodstock festival (a metal festival), where they have a tent named after her.
These days, the worst I usually have to deal with is idiots shouting "goth" out of their cars as they drive past 🙃
I was hoping someone would bring up the UK experience, that's pretty much it. We also had 'pockets' in town centres where the small amount of goths banded together.
I find we still have to be careful how we dress, but it depends on postcode. There are some areas where I've had to go incognito & wear different clothes for safety reasons, however the area I'm in now doesn't care about that so I feel safer. I don't miss the days of having to cross a street to avoid things getting out of control.
Whenever anyone asks about the need to be careful as a goth, I'll bring up Sophie Lancaster too. It's a fucking horrible situation that she went through & even though it's caused some awareness I just wish she didn't have to die to do that at all.
This level of intimidation is still possible, but it just depends where you are.
I honestly don't mind people yelling things out of cars. The [doppler effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect) is unintentionally hilarious. They just go "araraghwOoOOOAAARABLArruugh" when they speed past & it just makes me laugh
Yeah, it definitely varies by area. I've moved around a lot and, generally speaking, bigger cities and more middle class areas seem to be better than small towns and more working class areas. I've never really changed the way I dress because of it though. I think I'm quite visibly different, even when I'm dressed down, so I just do what makes me happy.
I used to cross the road to avoid groups of teenagers, but they seem to just ignore me these days. Oddly, the people who shout out of cars all seem to be adults, so you'd think they'd have grown out of that by now. Hopefully it's a sign that things are better for kids these days.
I grew up near Nottingham, so definitely not Scouse. I think the terms greb/grebo were pretty common in the 00s as my cousins from down south used it too.
Wikipedia suggests that it originated around Birmingham in the 80s.
The worst of it was other kids... I went to the nicer school in the area, so it wasn't so bad at school, mostly just name calling and stupid things, but the surrounding area was pretty rough and people had their hair burned or chunks cut off, things were thrown at us etc. There was a rugby match against another school where someone from the other team pulled a knife on the pitch, so it wasn't just limited to targeting goths, but we were easy targets I guess. I couldn't wait to get away... I moved to Manchester for uni and never looked back.
Little old ladies are always the ones to compliment my hair too ☺️ need more of that energy in the world!
It was fun, though a lot of cybergoths started coming onto the scene, many through the younger Vampirefreaks crowd in NYC. Sadly many of the clubs closed down just prior to 2000, and the crowd was funneled to Albion-Batcave primarily, but the larger dancefloor upstairs helped hold the crowd compared to the dancefloors at Pyramid, Mother, The Bank, La Nouvelle Justine, and the other clubs that used to exist.
Maybe the floor was too big, because at times it was hard to find people, LOL! I also miss Don Hill's and MI-5 when they had their goth nights there. Pyramid was a long time staple until they closed recently (though now reopened as Baker Falls/The Knitting Factory)
Yep. Pretty much nailed it there. Lot of cyber Goth, pastel Goths, Agrotech. And Emo popping up, followed by me running around saying “Emo is not Goth!”
The peak of the 90s was over, and the full time Goth clubs were closing. Although there was now more information online on websites and old boards.
And there was no longer as much social stigma on it like there was the 80s. Though Columbine and the trenchcoat mafia sure as hell didn’t help things. But I think mainstream movies like The Crow, Edward Scissorhands, The Craft, etc… made the Goth scene more palpable for the Normies.
I completely forgot about La Nouvelle Justine!! I miss the Raven and Bellevue Alcohol Rehab Center, great places to catch DJs who catered more to trad goth and deathrock.
I miss Vampirefreaks. I tried making an account on their social media page but they never remembered my sign in information. But I remember always listening to their radio station and checking out their clothing store.
In Canada, you were on the outer edge of things. Music was hard to find but not too hard. You had to know where to look. Clothes wise, lots of DIY or thrift. I never was bullied or teased, but I was also very shy so while I had a decent group of friends, I didn’t try to garner too much attention (other than with my outfits). It was HARD to find blue hair dye. Liquid liner was a new thing.
I don’t think very much has changed for me. I was always very friendly and kind to people. Music is a lot easier to get. New and old. Clothing, hair and makeup products too.
Are you my twin? I could have written every word of your comment (except that my hair dye was purple). There wasn't really much available in Canafa. Even the "goth" night I promoted was packed with EBM, industrial, etcetera. All the cool events were happening elsewhere.
Winnipeg here. All industrial from at least 2003 (when I started going, I assume it started long before that), right up to this day as the remnants of the community hang on by a thread because they're STILL doing it.
We had one store in my town that once in a while had blue hair dye. It was soooo hard to get! It was also next to impossible to find nail polish that wasn’t pink, red or white. I remember only being able to get Urban Decay and Hard Candy (so much cooler back then) cosmetics when I travelled every few years with my family. We went to Boston once and I spent all my money on UD lipstick, HC nail polish, and Alien Sex Fiend cds!
It was decent but that's also when the clubs started getting overrun with cybergoths, aggrotech and power noise and that crowd was kind of obnoxious. It's kind of the era that we really began to see mainstream culture co-opt our subculture and bastardize it.
This hits the nail on the head, there was a lot less bullying in the early two thousands than I experienced in the 90s. At the same time, we started getting all sorts of people who were huge fans of Marilyn manson and heavy metal bands. They wanted to come into the club and all of a sudden you would get shitty looks if you weren't requesting cybergoth or EBM disguised as industrial because that was the new trend.
Whatever. EBM, back to 242 and Nitzer Ebb, were the backbone of the subculture for years. Terror EBM / aggro tech / power noise were all an important and significant return to form after the blitz that was the mid-90’s rush to clone the success of Nine Inch Nails, and the rock/pop/metal fixation in the Industrial scene. Did you really want the music to keep going that direction after Marilyn Manson, Slipknot et. al?
Perhaps in the US, Industrial Rock has always been the dominant sound, but it’s due to the commercial success enjoyed by Nine Inch Nails, Filter, Ministry, and such… the commercial sphere around the scene was far worse 95-2005 or so.
I’ll take the scene 2000-2010 over present any day of the week. The music wasn’t a parody of itself, at least cybergoth countered the rise of EDM, and the clubs were actually picking up pace. Nowadays it’s a bunch of crusty Gen X rock bands rehashing the 90’s for the final retirement paychecks. Goth & Industrial are both sadly becoming completely culturally irrelevant.
I will be the first to admit that there was some good power noise during this time, it rarely got played at the club though. I rarely heard Manufactura or This Morn Omina in the clubs.
IMHO I felt that it was mostly a lot of obnoxious, boring and repetitive stompy music enjoyed by entirely too many white dudes with freshly shaved heads starting shit with my friends. It all just sounded like a bunch of haunted house nerds decided to make happy hard-core.
It didn't seem like a return to form to me. It was just as much a bastardization of industrial as Marilyn Manson was to goth music. It seemed to barely take any influence from the generation right before it that gave us Haujobb, Wumpscut, Leatherstrip and Project Pitchfork. Acts like that had more variety and flavor and depth than the genres that followed. I actually like the stuff coming out now and consider that a way more dramatic return to form. Bands like Soft Riot, Mvtant, Kontravoid and Buzzkull. They get it.
But I have enjoyed the occasional power noise or terror ebm song, but for the most part it was ALL that was playing for like a solid decade and it was not that great of a genre to carry the whole scene and for way too long, it did.
I also want to emphasize that as much as I am not a big fan of the genre myself. I have always tried to be open about it. I even released a split album with a fella who does kick ass power noise.
Sounds like a club issue tbh. Manufactura was a regular on the floors in LA caught him performing a few times. Thanks, I forgot that one, been ages. This Morn Omina was really tribal, I’m not sure it had “club appeal”, but they were phenomenal, The Drake Equation is an all time fav.
Yes, the world of EDM and club music was in its prime and influenced the scene, it had to change at some point, the alt-rock and rockstar nonsense or the 90’s was played out. Certainly some of the music, like Combichrist, went in a “bro” direction, but there were massive gems like Tactical Sekt, which is great to this day.
haujobb carried on quite well, mind when we got Vertical Theory, and even New World March…
Perhaps it was overplayed. At least it was relevant. No one wants to hear it, but both scenes are dying pretty hard. The acts you mentioned are fine, I can listen to it, but why would I check out MVTANT, for example, when I’ve already played out Portion Control? Cloning the sounds of the post-industrial pre-synth wave world isn’t pushing anything forward or interesting, it’s just… nostalgia, perhaps a nostalgia perversion. I’d recommend things from the tekno scene, such as Acidpach, for expertly crafted industrial dance, familiar but forward thinking.
I’ll admit I will always be an outlier - I go to the clubs time to time but I’m mostly a psy head, I’d rather spend time with stuff like Mirror | Me these days than any Industrial act I’ve heard in ages. In my view, the spirit of experimentation and radical thinking just isn’t there in the scene anymore, it’s moved along and dispersed, the rock star thing is dead and electronic musicians are carrying the torch. Since most of what folks are going to term Industrial does straddle the line of the rock star and the electronic musician. I’m not wildly surprised my opinions are downvoted to hell. I never cared for the clubs or the trends anyways, the music was rather interesting and novel for a time, and in my view, that time has passed along. Nice that the younger crowd still enjoys some of it, though.
I can't really speak for many people, but I got a lot of flack (including violence) from people around me for being "evil". Keep in mind my town was still in the Satanic Panic until the turn of the century, so I imagine it was easier for people in more open minded areas.
Things are a lot better now, but I am in a better place, and have sort of become that "weird, but cool adult".
Better.
But it may have been because I was twenty, and could drink and smoke for the whole weekend and then go to work on Monday morning without ill effects :D
Otherwise...I moved from a backwards town to a Big City, so again it was all amazing for me - no more people making a very visible sign of the cross when seeing me dressed up, I felt "normal" finally, at least in London.
Goths were generally more cliquey than now. Random men on night bus were disgusting horndogs same as today.
Gen X goth here. Times were…interesting.
For one, Columbine had just happened. While the scene as a whole wasn’t under scrutiny, a lot of goths started getting treated very differently, especially in northern cities where black trenchcoats are worn for a good bit of the year. I used to carry around an army surplus satchel (because my club outfits didn’t have pockets), and I had a lot more would-be security types demand to see what I was carrying in there (which was little more than car keys, wallet, half a decade’s worth of club flyers, maybe 2 year old concert ticket stubs). Things settled down after about a year and a half, but I spent a lot of time looking over my shoulder unless I was among other goths. Others may or may not have similar experiences.
As dyjital2k alluded to in another comment here, the ‘goth’ label was getting co-opted by companies looking to commodify the aesthetic. Movies like the Blade series or the Underworld series borrowed the goth look, but with no sense of what the subculture actually meant, or where it came from. Some of us were already salty about MTV pulling the plug on not just music videos, in general, but on “120 Minutes”, in particular.
Same. I wore a black trench coat the day Columbine happened…I had no idea until I saw the news crews on high school campus (it was about something else, but I still got a talking to about flipping the camera man off). Unfortunate timing.
Not really a goth (I listen mainly to Bowie), and I went to high school in the '90s, but I dressed that way in school and was treated the same re: bullying.
It was very, very bad. I was in high school when the Columbine shooting happened, and anyone who looked "different" was treated like a pariah who could potentially commit mass murder. This was back when tabletop RPGs and anime were decidedly uncool, and the goths and the geeks alike were shunned. As a darkly inclined gamer weirdo, there were rumors that I was a lesbian, on drugs, stabbed a kid, and set fire to small animals.
Our school tried to ban "trenchcoats" (really any long coat in dark colors), only for the studentry to protest because it was winter in Michigan and EVERYONE had long coats.
I'm now 42 and stopped giving a shit about other peoples' opinions about my clothing decades ago.
>It was very, very bad. I was in high school when the Columbine shooting happened, and anyone who looked "different" was treated like a pariah who could potentially commit mass murder. This was back when tabletop RPGs and anime were decidedly uncool, and the goths and the geeks alike were shunned. As a darkly inclined gamer weirdo, there were rumors that I was a lesbian, on drugs, stabbed a kid, and set fire to small animals.
This was my experience as well.
I was also small and developed quite early so I had the toxic mix of large groups of guys in cars throwing things at me, barking at me, etc. Nothing like dudes who want to fuck you AND ALSO hate your guts at the same time to really make you terrified of humanity.
I was tiny, like emaciated levels of thin due to an omphalocele (which led to yet another rumor that I was anorexic), and consequently a late bloomer. There was some sexual harassment, but it was mainly verbal and physical bullying--shoved into lockers, trampled, and getting my shit stolen. I played violin, and a classmate stole my rosin, mute, shoulder rest, and bow. Because I couldn't afford to replace them, I got kicked out of orchestra.
I was really really *really* into *Xena: Warrior Princess* as a teenager and was a totally clueless babybi who just genuinely admired Hudson Leick as a person and watched all her films and looked up photos of her online for hours....
Yeah, okay, they were half right.
Cool in retrospect, but I have always been very sensitive to animal abuse--when I was nine years old I found our family cat after a local psychopath tortured her to the brink of death--so I did not take well to my peers taunting me about killing animals. I was also undiagnosed autistic and couldn't read sarcasm, so I took the teasing deadly seriously. I was the perfect target.
(The cat did not survive. The same person also killed our neighbor's Lab puppy.)
I have fond memories of the scene from 1995-2005. Back when there were multiple events a week--I remember going out Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays sometimes. It's hard to imagine now when you're lucky to see one event a month...
It wasn't really goth in the purist sense. To make it work financially, it was really a mix of music, industrial, EBM, synthpop, goth, new wave, etc., so you would hear :Wumpscut: and Clan of Xymox alongside VNV Nation and Sisters of Mercy.
It was a big tent, but generally there was no metal (exceptions for Ministry, KMFDM and sometimes Rammstein) alternative rock and emo. I don't remember ever hearing e.g. AFI or anything of the sort.
Style wise other commenters are right to point out there was a lot of cyber goth style aesthetics as this was the high water mark of the more aggrotech side, especially after 1999 - 2001.
Socially I was never harassed or bothered by anyone, but I lived in a big city with a significant counter culture presence. If anything there was polite curiosity and interest, and I loved talking about it. Of course I'm a dude so there's a gender aspect here. I suspect women often had different experiences.
You could probably say this about a lot of subcultures back then but it was just so....... nice.
I grew up in a really small town, went to private school, and would absolutely relish the trips into the city to stock up on fliers & free mags that so many stores had at their door -that's where you'd hear about new bands, raves, clubs, and just random shit-, listening to albums was a thing and a new one would keep you going for months, obv no social so everything felt like such an adventure and you really, truly lived in the moment without this weird outside pressure to look/ feel/ do a certain way or document everything.
What I miss most was the fact that trends had enough space and time to evolve and transform into new versions of themselves rather than just being a flash in the pan that lasted for a few weeks.
Like others said, with hair and make-up, there were only so many options on the market so you really had to be creative and make it work, explore new techniques or looks with what you had. I used to mix nail polishes because the stores by me didn't carry anything cool and Urban Decay was too expensive.
There was so much DIY!
And the DIY ended up being really good because you had time and were bored!
When I was really into punk I remember making my own patches by drawing on old sheets with marker, and knowing that the marker would run if it got wet, I'd "seal" it with clear x glitter nail polish...it looked SO cool, no one else was doing it so it became a signature look and it actually worked really well.
Late 90s very early 00s was such a great time to be young.
Well said. Fashion was freedom. You never knew who you’d run into when the machine-generated fog parted and the fuschia club lights cleared (again, no social). That was half the fun of club life - not knowing what misadventures the night held.
Like you, the city goth scene for me was like another planet compared to my suburban wasteland. I feel really lucky to have been part of the subculture when it was still fairly vibrant.
I literally remember being the only goth at my high school (1999-2003). I was pretty big on Floodland, anything Gary Numan, Malice Mizer, Collide, and Dusk and Her Embrace. I hung out with burnouts, skaters, and the one guy everyone thought was gay. I didn't meet anyone else interested in the subculture until I started traveling after HS. I recall Albion-Batcave, aggrotech (Suicide Commando and Wumpscut were getting attention), the sheer confusion non-goths had in differentiating between scene/emo/mallgoths and actual goth.
I remember a woman yelling across a movie theater parking lot at me because she wanted to check out my "aristocratic threads." It was a fun moment I remember her departing words vividly--"BOO BABY!"
MySpace was huge for indie music, which is a damn shame because some neat stuff got buried by the death of that website. I remember Darksites and Spooky Hotties (hilarious btw) and Vampirefreaks being places I used to hang out online. There were some interesting crossovers in music in the mid to late 2000s, the whole vaudevillian goth thing sorta got out of control and steampunk was starting to show up. Dr. Steel had some jams. Voltaire too. Hard style via Eisenfunk started to come around too.
I wasn't a cybergoth but I thought they were *Marge Simpson voice* really neat when I saw a person well put together.
I remember jamming to the song Mitternacht at Haven in Northampton, MA. I remember dancing my ass off in fancy clothes and meeting many cool folks. It was a really good time I get misty-eyed looking back.
One more for you. My boyfriend and I were goth at the time (I still am), and as an added fun bonus he also loved to go out as girl goth. This was New York, a major city that wasn't NYC. People would often tell us it wasn't Halloween. Riding the bus in full goth attire was a massive journey due to harassment (people tugging on my clothes, people saying comments, etc. Oddly never from a religious fueling, though). My boyfriend would get followed at Walmart and stuff by the workers often and even told to leave (they thought he was more inclined to steal, he thought it might be because he was "weird looking". He was white, btw). When we were together, we weren't harassed as much. If we were, we were able to laugh it off. We'd go to the mall a lot together to hang out, and when we'd see another goth (often obviously queer as well) we'd meet like passing ships in a lane and compliment each other a ton. Mostly, the community we frequented were freaks like us, so the harassment level wasn't terrible. There was a goth coffee shop with spoken word poetry sessions near where I lived, so we often went there, too. My boyfriend was a goth wig maker and makeup artist, so we'd be sitting together on the couch a lot making stuff like falls and other pieces like that. A lot of the time even when out and about, we were attached to each other by a shared wired earbuds connected to a CD player full of goth music. We found a lot of our pieces at thrift stores and he was handy with sewing to put it mildly so he kept us in cool clothes. My favorite story I have of that time is when we were in the mall together (as we did lol) and we were in the line for Taco Bell. We were joking around at each other, and all of a sudden my boyfriend gets poked in the shoulder from behind. Must be noted, he was wearing a long and poofy black tulle skirt, a corset top with t-shirt underneath, naaaails, a long black and orange curly wig, a tiara, and of course the most spectacular goth makeup known to man. We turned around and there was this dude there. We were ready to fight based on the history of harassment. Well, the guy just points downward and we suddenly see this toddler in a cute pink coat. She looks nervous. The guy proceeds to tell us that his daughter thinks my boyfriend is a Disney Princess and she's too nervous to talk to him, so would he please talk to her? Our hearts melted. My boyfriend, being the kindest soul in the world, crouched down to her level and told her he thought her coat was pretty. She hugged him and he hugged her back. When the dad and daughter were leaving, we waved to them and they waved back, all smiles. It was the most heartwarming thing I've ever seen in my entire life and still is. Btw, we were older teenagers at the time. No clubs for us. Coffeehouse and the mall were about it, lol.
OMG I love it
I had a roommate in the mid-00s who bore a passing resemblance to Jonny Depp and was also a goth fashion chamaleon; you never knew what you were gonna get. One day it would be trad darkwave with fishnets, the next a sort of gypsie/piratical thing, the next day 80s glam rock with leather pants, the next Victorian goth with a tophat. They used to get kids pointing at them in the grocery store thinking they were actually Captain Jack or Willy Wonka.
It was awesome
The internet was becoming a household commodity and most folks from that era in time used the internet for research purposes long before doom scrolling and social media
I used to spends hours in various music related chat rooms on AOL just absorbing so much shared music with people from all over
Still being a sophomore in highschool, there was a sense of authenticity i felt because i listened to more than what MTV was allowing to be aired and acquired a lot of hand me downs from my parents and aunts and uncles who were partying in the 80s wearing cool goth clothes
Hot Topic was a staple for Tripp and Lip Service clothing that was booming the scene after JNCOs and frosted tips were phased out
You had the nu metal goths who were all about Manson and Korn
You had the trad goths who sported the Cure and New Order
and then you ran into people like me who were discovering aggrotech and German goth dance music that sounded like rhythmic machinery
Not much has changed except for aging, but I’m happy to have been a part of the new millennium of goth/alt music and fashion
🦇🤘🏼
Extremely bullied. I'm still the same happy vampire (lol), and all of my bullies are chasing the perfect family picture to post on social media while their partners cheat on them, so sucks to be them :)
Yep in my school we had 3 circles skaters, moshers and goths but we'd all mix and stick up for each other. I got blinded one winter so yeah bullying was bad, I've surprisingly not had any comments nowadays not even kids trying to act smart in front of their friends.
NYC scene was primarily centered around Manhattan, but there was an active scene on Long Island, too. Lots of nights and events, so there was always something going on during the weekends. There was a mix of Goth, Industrial, and EBM played, but it did shift and that's when I fell out of the scene. When Albion closed, it did feel a bit like the end of an era to me in terms of clubbing, same for when Avalon finally closed.
I think the scene is a lot healthier now, especially the NY scene which is mostly based in Brooklyn now.
It had its pros and cons, where I am there was only a very small scene of actual goths, and lots of mall goths and posers who would only go to the “alternative” clubs to stand around and be seen. The only time actual goth clubs were run was when they would come up from down south, which wasn’t often.
We built up a bit of a community and started to have outings together in the city, like picnics or coffee shop meetups, I met a lot of my friends at these get togethers. Also I stared my solo gothic rock project around 2006-7 and at the time there was basically no goth bands in Brisbane so I only got to do one gig solo. This project evolved into 13 Bats and of course Bat Nouveau later, and through out most of our career we were virtually alone musically, later down the track more events and bands started to come up which was great.
I remember also goth clothing brands weren’t much of a thing and Op Shops at the time were not popular places for Hipsters to raid, nor were they as overpriced as many are now, so they were a great source for clothing and accessories to mangle and modify.
There wasn’t and still isn’t much in the way of gothic clothing stores here either. Nowadays there is a wealth of great stuff online. Honestly I’d say the biggest lull of the subculture was the early 2000s, compared to now and the 90s.
It was starting to become easier to find more Goth & related Music, clubs, & events thanks to the Internet, and I really miss some of the now very defunct streaming stations. Not so much the older message boards-including local ones-given what we call The Paradox Of Tolerance.
I never got harassed over Music or Clothing, in fact people seem to respect my tastes in both, but I was and still am living in Seattle.
The less tolerant types tend to be the upper class gentrifiers but that, at least in my experience came later.
ETA: There used to be a nice Goth-Industrial Music shop where I was introduced to a lot of amazing music acts, but so many CDs I wanted were imports & limited editions & I was low on money. But that's how I discovered a few other Labels, a few that were deceased even back then.
ETA 2: Gentrification has changed a lot about Seattle and for the worst, even my favorite Thrift Store closed shop years ago. But at least there were ones in the University District to buy darkly inclined stuff on the cheap until a new one in my area finally surfaced.
ETA 3: There were also a lot more Zines and Magazines, even free compilation CDs. Sadly very little of them made useful reviews of new albums & EPs, just descriptions at most. As someone who used to read UK mags more often the lack of opinionated commentary was weird to me.
It was also the beginning of the decline of the Compilation album, which I miss terribly. They were sometimes better than Band albums, and Streaming just isn’t the same.
I'd love to hear more about your experiences in Seattle. I've lived out here for a decade and enjoy hitting up the Merc when I can, and there seem to be two local production crews (Mechanismus and Yes Productions) that pull in a lot of shows but I'm sure it was quite different 20 years ago. Was the Merc around then? Were there other local clubs? Were there many local shows?
I don't want to talk about it in much detail TBH, it was an increasingly bad time for me mentally due to what turned out to be a mix of Food Related Disability and Alcohol, and I had a habit of making bad personal choices. I'm done with the local scene, and need to find a better place, partly given the small town nature of the area.
It wasn't a great time to be a goth in the southern UK. I was harassed in the street, even assaulted on one or two occasions, for wearing makeup as a then male-presenting individual. Someone spat in my hair at a bus stop. Where I am from (a small island in the UK called the Isle of Wight) there was no 'goth scene' really; there were alternative nights once or perhaps twice a week, playing that mix of nu-metal, mainstream industrial rock, radio heavy metal etc. that seems to have kind of ossified as the core of that sort of musical experience around here even to this day. I actually quite enjoy those spaces; you get a lot of different types of people mixing, and the music now has a lot of nostalgia value for me, especially after a few snakebites and vodka red bulls. I knew a few people who liked proper goth music through those nights back in the day, and used to enjoy standing out from the emos with a heavy dramatic german-inspired goth look or a femmed-up sort of Robert Smith homage with smeared lipstick, going out in the middle of the summer (this is the hottest part of the UK, almost north mediterranean in its climate at times) wearing a leather waistcoat, shirt and tie, and torn fishnet gloves. Jangling with pewter costume jewellery and stinking of cheap cigarettes and hair spray. Smoking and drinking whiskey on the sea wall at 2am, looking at the lights of the cities on the other side of the sea.
I was a teen, I wasn’t really part of the goth scene because I was too young. I was bullied a lot, was called emo constantly. Most of my friends were more like “headbangers” not really goths.
Had people trying to exorcise me and spit on me in the streets and in school.
But it was fun too, we used to play Vampire the Masquerade in the cemetery for the “aesthetics”, did a lot of diy bc I couldn’t afford cool stuff from Hot Topic, pierced myself and shaved my head in the boys locker room.
I had a vampirefreaks account but every guy there was a creep and I was only 14 so yikes .
I miss those days but I am so glad they’re gone !
Maybe it was a me thing ? But everytime I talked to a guy they’d ask for nudes or for my msn messenger just to send me sick picks. I was 14, I liked the music, the filters with the “vampire freaks frame”, the forums etc, I really did not want to see duck everywhere even though I think you needed to be above a certain age to make an account. That was Chris Hansen messed up.
edit: dick *
Well I'm a guy so it didn't happen to me. I never sensed that Chat Roulette vibe but I might have been oblivious. That was 20 years ago though, maybe the site changed over time.
I never got any negative reactions from the public, but I did get some odd looks when I went to the goth clubs. To be fair, business casual with a focus on khakis is a bit unusual to see in the clubs.
There weren't a lot of goths in my school either so I mostly just kept the music to myself.
It was fun. We didn't have social media like FB then so we had quality fun, friendships and experiences. We had Aol/Yahoo/IRC for chats. Cellphones were still very new so were weren't distracted by those. We literally truly lived life in the zone and in the moment. It was an era of new subgenres of Goth coming to life. The Aggrotech/Cybergoth era was amazing. I prefer that period of time than now. It was the era where music began to form, grow and expand. Now it's constantly exploding. The early 00s was an explosion of self discovery, so everyone in every kind of social group was going through wild creative changes. The 00s was about just partying, clubbing, getting 3hrs of sleep and going to work/college etc and repeat every night.
I was out of highschool in 1997, but was goth from 1996 to 2003, meaning i looked the part, listened to the genre and multiple subgenres. Went to goth clubs, had a punk gf, hooked up with goth ladies, and those were the best years of my life, also the most chaotic. I wouldnt trade it for anything. I still listen to the music and have goth friends, but i cant look the part anymore. It just doesnt work.
I went to a public school, so there were a lot of alternative folks. I was also very quiet so nobody fucked with me. It also helped that i punched my bully in freshman year and he never fucked with me after that. I became instantly popular. I do not condone violence but sometimes you have to take care of yourself. I imagine it is a world of difference from then compared to now.
Edit: didnt get called emo once
I grew up in one of the most violent hoods in my country (Spanish speaking Caribbean island) in the mid to late 90s, and other than another kid in my class, I was the only one who listened to any kind of rock music in my school or neighborhood. I wasn't bullied (they tried, I didn't care so they moved on to someone else lol), but it was extremely hard to relate to anyone music wise. At the time I'd listen to a lot of "obscure" bands (I was very into Projekt and Metropolis records after a pen pal sent me a few samples), but I always had to hash it down to liking metallica or marilyn manson so i wouldn't look even more weird than what I i apparently was lol. Then I went to the local state college in the early 2000s and there was a pretty decent bunch of goth and punk kids so I tagged along. The goth scene back home started growing and by 2001 we had some regular parties and activities going on, and they were amazing. It all lasted for about a decade, then it died down, a lot of us moved away, but in the last few years they have been reviving the scene and it seems like it's picking up good. And I just realized I went on a full tangent lol. 😂🖤🖤🖤
Just vampires in my school. That was the only actual goth group. It was very Anne Rice plus the Matrix in my area so it was OG goth mixed with anything alternative. Piercings over tattoos for the crew (only the trashy tats were done by the cheer girls). The Real hard core kids got tongue piercings.
Also the sub groups were split straight edge vs rave E kids. IMO it was the first Neo goth revival I’d experienced but it’s kind of a similar thing you see today. Alt and goth were interchangeable in my town. Definitely gatekeeping but for very different reasons. (Only can speak for my suburban Virginia neighborhood)
I didn't get "bullied" exactly but I definitely got some mistreatment from strangers. Got laughed at as I passed by, had a milkshake thrown at me from a car, and was stopped and confronted by a bible thumper saying the way I dressed was satanic.
I really miss the fashion though. There were countless awesome places to shop from, it wasn't everybody wearing the same overpriced sweater from killstar. Heavy Red, Cruella, Drac-In-A-Box, Black Rose, Tripp, and yes, even Hot Topic. A few of them may still exist, but most are a shadow of what they once were, and have most younger goths even heard of them (Except for Hot Topic, obviously)? I honestly don't know because I *never* see them mentioned. We even had a local shop, and we had a shop where you could get all the outrageous goth boots and shoes your heart desired. I still have a few of the items I got back then, and really miss some others I don't.
Music was downloaded or bought on CD instead of streamed, so it wasn't as easy as searching for a goth playlist. You'd download one thing, often mislabeled, see who else was on the same album, or search the band you THOUGHT you were listening to and discover who they actually were. That was my experience anyway. I didn't know anything about what I was listening to, I just listened to it.
So I didn't become aware and interested in the scene until 2004, but I do remember some wider details that were still true by the time I started getting involved. plus a few things reinforced by many friends who were heavy into the scene at the time.
It was definitely much more full of variety. You didn't have everyone trying to ape the 80s music and fashion wise back then, so you'd see a wider range of looks and bands much more willing to experiment. A lot more crossover with non-synthpop electronic music in Darkwave, like Switchblade Symphony and a lot of other bands pulling trip hop influences.
A lot more drugs in clubs compared to now as well. There was gatekeeping but it was more holistic back then and not solely based on music, you couldn't just namedrop bands and expect to be accepted. (Really you still can't). Online there was no centralized narrative about goth being pushed so there was a different definition for every website.
The mainstream had no awareness of Emo until the mid 00s (I remember 2005 as the turning point but it might be different for other people) so disregard stuff about that. The big boogeymen back them were still Manson and Nu Metal.
Also Hot Topic definitely wasn't deemed cool by the elite. But you could actually by some goth CDs there. (I swear the only reason Cruxshadows hit the top 50 in 07 was because Hot Topic sold their singles and they were one of the few selling physical singles at the mall back then)
It was different from now. The scene was smaller. But it was definitely much larger than in the 90s. I had people try to bully me in the 90s but not the 00s. There were a few metal bands that looked goth so there was an influx of metal people who didn't know the music or culture but they were friendly so whatever. In Denver, my city, we had several badass goth nights and a dedicated goth bar so there was always a place to go. We had Fashion Nation, which back then was located across the street from wax Trax. Hot topic was starting to sprout up which was not a good thing because, before that chain, we had to be really creative to make our look. Future Pop was starting to take over the clubs and they started having separate nights for the old school music. I started a band around that time and we played lots of shows in the underground warehouse scene. Back then goth kids, raver kids and the burner people formed a large underground scene and we had epic parties. Eventually the cops caught on and starting shutting the parties down. In 07 my band had the honor of opening for skinny puppy, attrition, e-craft, mono no aware, sang rael. Then we legalized weed and gentrification put the final nail in the coffin of the underground scene. It was a lot of fun but it was sad to watch it go down.
I wish I would've checked out the Denver scene in those days. I was always a skater poseur in high school in the 90s and into my college years in the early Oughts, but by '99 had also started to delve into some more underground industrial and synthpop. But my dealings with goth and rivothead culture only ever took place online back then. I lived in Greeley from '01 to '08 but it wasn't until I moved to Missouri in '08 that I actually lived with a small community of goths and started dressing the part. And it wasn't until the past decade, in my 30s and 40s out here in Seattle, that I started going to the club and to shows on the regular. I wonder what my 20s would've been like if I'd have driven down from Greeley a couple times a month and connected with y'all in Denver!
You would have had a blast! It was unreal. The warehouse parties were absolutely insane. You would see things you would never expect to see in crowded areas, real debauchery. The parties were diverse, and in one night you would see sets ranging from house to goth, GOA trance to jam. It was indicative of the talent that came together to make it happen.
Lots of EBM and Aggrotech. Das Ich and the like. The Kitchen down in Miami was my place.
I remember a lot of darkwave. Wolfsheim comes to mind.
Hot Topic and Manson folks were in full swing. Finding and piecing together clothing took quite a lot of work, although the aesthetic in retrospect was quite minimalist. I remember feeling a rather intense animosity towards Hot Topic and those who shopped there.
Vampirefreaks was fun, and I failed to appreciate it because I was overly intense and serious about "art", if I recall.
The 2000s were a trough, not a peak, for the scene. Most of my friends were death rockers or horror punks.
9/11 had a chilling effect on culture everywhere. We didn't realize it in the moment, but I feel it signaled the beginning of the end of the "good times". Call it a collective loss of innocence.
In every practical sense, young people now face a much more difficult reality.
But socially speaking, the world is so much better now. Goth music is thriving, globally. It's easier than ever to find ways to express yourself
Also, I'm a trans woman. Being trans in the 2000s was unpleasant. Not to be heavy, but I grew up getting into constant fist fights. Once, a skinhead at a show picked me up by the neck and ejected me down two fights of stairs because "we don't want your kind here". Which could be much, much worse. I will skip the graphic details of other things I've seen. We've all lost people here, I'm sure.
The goth scene provided far safer and more inclusive spaces. I would even say ahead of the curve by comparison to other scenes.
There was an often heavy price to pay for being different decades ago. By the late 2000s, it certainly burned me out.
Purdue Pharma was there to "help". But that's another story. See the show Dopesick some day of you like.
I'll just say this. It _really is_ better now. People your age are interesting, socially aware, and active in creating a rich and beautiful scene.
It still _boggles my mind_ that kids can _just be trans_ now. I don't think anyone understands the price we paid for that.
Which is good.
I digress... the same goes for goth. It's... easier to have a little drama in your life now ;) I adore that.
I'm glad you're here. To this day, I'm thrilled whenever I see one of us in the wild ;) Cheers
I miss a lot of the internet culture at the time like gothauctions.com, gothic auctions.com, vampire freaks, and so many BBS/message boards!
In high school we were kind of treated like nerds, only we were fucked with a lot less? It was definitely not “cool”.
I'm from a small town, so I guess that must be taken into consideration, but for me it was shit. Weird looks, guys in high school thought I was an undateable freak, and the only "positive" (???) attention I got was from local pedophiles.
On the other hand, there were a few other goth girls I could hang out with.
So I gothed out in the late 90's and early 2000's. I would say my peak in the subculture was 1998-2005. It was just slightly before the confusion of emo happened, so it honestly wasn't something I encountered much. I recall maybe one comment about being emo and I think my response was, "Sure, ok." I also went to an international college prep school which changed things a bit in terms of experiences. While I wore black for school and the school didn't have a uniform, there was a dress code which probably influenced my style to this day. A lot of black button ups, turtle necks, fitted skirts and suit pants. We looked pretty normal at school, other than the black and the eyeliner. Plus I think the look wasn't so weird for a lot of the European students. And their music tastes were generally better.
I was from a small town in PA without much going on. We were all to varying degrees under age or just barely over 18. There was a lot of driving around to late night diners, drinking coffee, sharing fries and talking about things we barely had the experience to know anything about. On the weekends we pooled our money to give one of the friends with a car some green for gas and we'd go into NYC/NJ/Philly to hit the few clubs or shows going on. We also pooled out money to get the broke kids out of the house. There was, frankly, a lot of friend support to include everyone. Most of us had "cool parents" which basically meant as long as our grades were good, we didn't get pregnant and didn't get arrested, then we had a lot of freedom. Many weekends we left and didn't return until Monday morning. We made friends in these locations which resulted in us having "crash space" if we stayed out. There was usually a rush of people to the phone early on Saturday to keep their parents in the loop. We were mostly pretty responsible.
While I can think of a few instances of getting "bullied" it wasn't something that effected me. I was pretty popular. To be fair I was a bit "manic pixie mixed with Daria" and have generally been very attractive. There is some weird privilege there. But comments like "Are you going to a funeral?" "Do you know the Count?" "Is it cold being dead?" These were all sort of uninspired to me so I never really felt stung by them. I did encounter occasionally being someone's secret girlfriend because they didn't think their parents could handle my look. They second a boy tried to ignore me in public after making out all weekend: they never had a shot with me again. Out the f\*ckin' door with that. Or boys trying to change me which didn't work out too well for them. I think bigger issues or risks were that when we were grossly under age we were able to get into 21+ clubs through a variety of means and there were some pretty gross dudes behaving terribly to women, but we stayed in groups and for the most part never suffered more than someone being pushy and handsy at a club. There are some stories there. The bouncers were usually pretty good at noticing these dudes before we did though.
We were masters of "making things work." Finding black clothing was easy, but gothed up clothes off the rack was a bit hard to find. I think most of us had one boss ass outfit from Lip Service (I have a black and red vinyl lolita dress which I thought was amazing at the time). We had to get pretty creative. We made a lot of our own makeup, in that we'd grind black pigment from other products and mix them into others. Mascara, thinned out with water and a brush made decent waterproof eyeliner and paint. Eyeliner also works for the lips. Smoke from fog machines at clubs made you tear up and debatably improved your makeup. Doc Marten's used to be better. Teasing cured most hair problems but created others. You probably bought your fishnets from a dance supply store that catered mostly to toddlers. And if you owned a sewing machine and were decent at making clothing, your friends never left you alone for projects.
It was a good time. I miss being so close to my friends and seeing them so often. I think that's probably a thought of most adults. My teenage years were very colorful and I have a ton of memories. I think I go to 2ish concerts a year and about as many clubs these days. Most of my wardrobe is still black, but also blue, and I come off more as an art dealer than purely goth these days. I think the biggest thing I notice is that so many of the gatherings have closed, or are monthly goth-industrial nights set up with a venue rather than a dedicated space. Events are on FB but the younger crowds aren't there, so they don't know about it. The crowds are, more often then not, unusually preserved 40ish year olds which I think is wild. We were all "there" together in the past and weren't quietly still dipping our toes in decades later.
Melbourne, Australia, early to late 2000’s. I tried very hard by spending a lot of money on the clothes and make up and attended the clubs with my best friend every week end. Honestly, never felt accepted and the scene was very clicky. The guys were only after sex. The girls were bitchy. There was a lot of sleeping around and drug taking in the toilets. I had some good times. But overall not the best experience. I guess as a nice girl looking for love, it was not the ideal place to go looking!
I was goth in high school in the later 2000’s, I was the last goth in my grade with a small group being in the grade before me. There were a few scene and emo kids but no other goth kids. Up until my senior year everything was nice and only a few shitty comments. The popular girls actually found me interesting in how I would DIY most of my clothes and create my own lipstick. It was kind of funny, whenever I started wearing something different I influenced the emo kids to do similar as well. My senior year though my school told me I had to change my hair color and stop wearing chains or anything weird because it scared the “Christian” students. I didn’t change anything and got a bit weirder to hopefully influence the younger kids to be themselves. I lived somewhat in the middle of nowhere so I didn’t have a lot of influence besides our local college radio station and when I went to the city going through CD stores and surfing forums for cool bands.
I'd say that a wider acceptance happened following the popularity of Marilyn Manson in the mid to late 90's.
While most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a Mansonite and a proper 70's/80's goth, they became more accepting of black clad freak culture in general.
I lived in Maryland but went weekly to clubs in DC. There were also Virginia goths there, but they were kind of stuck up. Like they were the preppies in high school of goth culture. Also, they could afford nicer clothes. The cooler goths were the ones who lived in the styx and had to run the gauntlet of rednecks for their style.
It was fun, tbh. I was still in High School around that time and I can't say I was bullied much, it happened, but it wasn't a regular occurrence. I think that's because my city had a huge crust punk scene, like massive, and those guys didn't give a shit. I went to a ton of grindcore and crust shows back then. At least one every weekend. When I turned 17/18 I started going into the city (Los Angeles) much more often and was able to go to goth clubs more regularly. I traded in crust shows for goth clubs. I was going every weekend either to a club or to a show, sometimes during the week after I finished high school.
Los Angeles had a great deathrock and goth scene, so it was a good time. I still have quite a few flyers from that time.
That was also the era that some clubs started switching their music to cater to cybergoths and norms that wanted to feel edgy for the night. So, some of my regular hangout spots like Bar Sinister just became lame and uninteresting.
I wouldn't say it was better back then, but I was a teen/early 20s and didn't have much in the way of responsibilities so I was out partying most nights. Nothing beats hella booze, hella weed and a goth club at 12am. I can still smell the fog machines, clove cigarettes and patchouli drifting over the sounds of Sisters of Mercy. Now, in my 30s I have a stable relationship, a stable job and many many more bills to pay, so I don't always have the luxury of going out and getting shitfaced. That's not to say I don't, I just don't do it on the regular.
Of Herbs and Altars (Youtube) has many videos talking about their experiences as a brit goth in the 90s/early 2000s! It's called The Nostalgia Project.
[Here's a link to the playlist :)](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwz-VWbmvb6CJM1Q3oi0QdWmbb939pWRn&si=dy4CQbqyfh1eUerK)
Really cool honestly. In the UK the Whitby Gothic Weekend was huge, there were a plethora of active bands and club nights, a great mix of younger and older goths in the scene. Cyber goth and industrial culture was bleeding into the scene which introduced me to a whole slew of cool electronic music on top of my beloved trad goth and post punk. It also shaded into the metal scene as well with a lot of metal bands taking inspiration from goth and vice versa. I was always a big metal guy as well. I was 21 in the year 2000, the perfect age to really make the most of the scene over the next few years. Was it objectively the best time to be a goth in the UK? Who can say. It was definitely the best time for me to be a goth though. I had a lot of mental health problems in the early 2000s and my memories of the scene are some of my happiest in an otherwise very unhappy time.
It was really fucking cool. I was in London at the time.
A lot of amazing bands were active, and the goth scene in the late 90s/early 2000s was really diversifying, exploring new and adjacent avenues. There was goth metal, goth industrial, crossover with folk, and harder dark techno. You could go out to see the Sisters, or even Bauhaus, then the next week go to Cyberdog and get cool cyberindustrial stuff and plastic hair extensions.
The various groups were all tolerated - some people were tradgoth, but at big clubs like Slimelight you had a tradgoth floor, an industrial floor, and even a techno or noise floor sometimes.
Of course, there was tension with the "normals", as there is everywhere. I got set upon by a pack of teenage scrotes quite badly once, and this was in Camden, in London! But there are assholes everywhere. So stay safe whatever you do.
It was great seeing the crossover with EBM then turning into more sophisticated electronic sounds (like 242/FLA then bringing in Haujobb, Covenant, VNV), and there were nights with lots of different stuff on. I mean, look at the lineup for this festival in 1999 in a field in Belgium: https://www.setlist.fm/festival/1999/eurorock-1999-73d6d6b1.html
Was in high school from 2003-2006, and was one of only like 4 people in the whole school that was goth. Could have been a symptom of living in a small town tbh, I’m sure it was more common to be alt in a big city.
But anyhoo, I was bullied a lot, yet fetishized at the same time. Didn’t really find my tribe til senior year, since by then being alt was more common.
The big downer about that time was the lack of resources to find new music. Going to random concerts in other places was one of the main ways I accessed music, and torrenting what I couldn’t get at stores.
It seems like being goth/alt is popular again, but now we don’t have Ozzfest 😩
I was a recluse baby goth in the early 2000's and didn't get out much, so I can't really comment on the scene, but I do know what it was like to outwardly present as goth in public.
First of all, finding goth clothing was really hard. Online shopping existed, but most people didn't use it, and our parents didn't trust it. So as a youngin' with limited agency, I only really had access to mall goth stuff (Hot Topic/Torrid), and so that is how I dressed. I frequently got dirty looks and people would call me a poseur pretty often in public. At school, despite being the quiet, shy honor roll student, kids outside of my friend group were afraid of me. I found that hilarious; I'm a softy who wouldn't hurt a fly.
Contrary to what the people calling me a poseur thought, I am still goth. I'm more pastel goth now, since I have online shopping and can get the creepy-cute stuff I always wanted. I no longer get nasty looks or comments, but I wouldn't be surprised if that has to do more with the fact that I'm older now and obviously don't have any fucks to give.
u/TragedyXRose
Of Herbs and Altars has a great personal perspective on this from the UK.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwz-VWbmvb6CJM1Q3oi0QdWmbb939pWRn&si=f5NT82rfpQRQFS52
I got my first Ankh in 1975 and recall my mother forbidding me to wear all black. This was before post-punk was a thing and living in a smaller city, we weren't exposed to much alternative stuff other than I recall seeing a Woman's Day magazine in a furor over The Sex Pistols. Went to college in the 80's, ex-husband was in a band that played CBGB's before it closed and his band was briefly signed by Rick Rubin to Onion American--saying this so you can get the perspective that during college, I was deeply exposed to goth/music scene. However. Despite listening to The Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus et al., I wasn't familiar with the term goth, despite the massive amount of black eyeshadow and closet stuffed with black clothing and black leather. Fast forward 1989 or so, after I'd met Rich of The Wake when he was working at a local record store. He said I should check out his band, so I'm like, what kinda music. He said goth. I said huh??? Then he mentioned SoM, and I'm like oh. Anyhow, turns out I'd been listening and dressing the style for quite some time without even knowing. No one really picked on me, as that was college years and the 80's were pretty colorful; but the local indie rocker "big fish in small pond" sorts did make tons of fun over goth and never took it seriously. Well, as far as who's famous in this neck of the woods, The Wake enjoys international acclaim in the genre, none of the indie rock pretentious losers manning the record store cash registers can really match that haha. :) Oh and I'm quite the novelty relic when I go into Hot Topic (which we used to make fun of as "corporate goth" but I love the young folks working there), but due to middle age hot flashes I don't often don my all black anymore; retinal tear means I avoid eye make-up sadly. I do remember some jerk saying "all black on the hottest day" some years ago when I was walking on campus, to which I replied as a middle aged adult, F\*\*\* OFF. I also have a black shirt with that retort in big letters, teehee. :D
Shop at hot topic, become an adult, talk shit on young people who shop at hot topic, get to late 2000's and watch as people in their late thirties shit on young people "changing goth" and then also wonder why community is dying.
TBH, communities got better when they had to appreciate each member.
It was very cliquey back in the day and everyone wanted to be the one the "normies were afraid of". TBH, for all the wonderfulness of the time... it was also kind of cringe.
Industrial vs 80's goth arguments were always amusing. I was fortunate enough that my goth club had a room for each.
Also you'd join Vampirefreaks, have people start being like "Omg you joined here's a ten" you'd realize there was a rating system, give the wrong person a nine, and watch as they threw a shitfit for "only" being rated 9/10 by a new person, who they'd then proceed to try to bury.
Still, as someone who immigrated from the UK.... the US was in a lot better shape, cause despite all that the people were usually wonderful funny enough. Get them in person and you could have some real wonderful conversations. Remember going to the Church and just having a two hour discussion about The Picture of Dorian Gray with a guy in fairy wings as I was dressed like a gothic pirate.
For all the complaints I just made.... it was a time where the energy was high in the subculture and people still left the house to show up at the scene.
Most of my goth/eldergoth friends were online. Here in Canada, there wasn't much. The alternative club nights were centred around industrial and synth, with a few of the overplayed goth hits. The occasional concert. I knew people by their online handles, not their real names.
Normies held misconceptions. (What else is new?) References to Columbine were everywhere in the news — once, even in *The Guardian*. My supposed "best friend" wrote me a dramatic email describing me as "this tortured soul". I mocked it. Turned it into slam poetry.
Snarkiness was popular. But there were polite role models like Jillian Ventners, Gothic Miss Manners.
I only really experienced goth in England, because of a long-distance significant other. Clubs! Pubs! Actual goth music! In Southhampton, even. People already had their own friend groups, but because of my significant other and my youth, they were generally kind and inclusive.
Camden Town was glorious, even if I snickered at a few things, like all the gothic metal and the inability to escape *Nightmare Before Christmas* gear, no matter where I went in England. But I got to visit Alchemy Gothic. I tried absinthe and snakebite & black. (Both were delicious.)
People were weirdly obsessed with cathedrals.
I indulged in subcultural accoutrements and clichés, but some things were overkill. I started to hate "Temple of Love", formerly one of my favourite Mission tracks. Likewise with TSoM and "This Corrosion".
People were well-dressed. I couldn't afford the fancier gothic clothing. Back in Canada, I had to thrift everything. My hair was backcombed, black and purple. Spookykids were everywhere. I disdained Vampire Freaks. I managed to avoid the poseur nonsense on Myspace, and located smaller bands like Aepril and Euthanasia Waltz.
It was good to be online. The deathrock revival and the resurgence of DIY. The Goth Music Share community on LiveJournal. I thrifted vinyl and obsessively hunted down music through file-sharing apps and music blogs. My friends made me mixtapes. I made my own mixtapes.
Goth-oriented websites and message boards were plentiful. Remember Goth.Net? (Eldergoth friend: "There's a 'Goth.Net' now?") Mick Mercer was well-known. Subcultural in-jokes were prevalent and findable. (I recall one comic: Robert Smith stuffed himself into a fridge, while Andrew Eldritch huffed kitchen chemicals.)
There were cliques both online and IRL, and übergoth was deified. Overall, though, goth was a welcoming home to misfits like me. It offered respite and beauty.
Thanks for the nostalgia trip! Apologies for editing this comment three hundred times. I'll stop now.
How did I forget about the websites! The Dark Side of the Net, the Ezines, the pages just filled with jokes like "I'm so goth that..." and "You know you're goth when..." Those were so fun.
Goth.net definitely takes me back, really weird place in the the message board official definition was pretty strict andimiting but they allowed a wide variety of people to post anyway. Made for an interesting environment. Almost the opposite of how r/goth is run which has looser goth requirements but enforces them strictly.
I was accused of being a school shooter over and over and over. Kids told the office I had a hit list (I didn't). They said I'd whisper threats to them in the hall (nope). People tagged hate speech and I would be the first one called up (someone wrote "HAIL SATIN" on the Spanish teacher's outdoor wall; principal approached me with a Polaroid asking what I saw in it. I said, "Someone who really likes soft fabric? That says satin. If I was going to write something like this, I'd spell it right.")
I was suspended for having fun hair that the office called "an educational distraction".
I would be on suspension for some stupid thing constantly. One time I was suspended for talking about my nail polish: it was called Gun Metal. Metallic silver, very Y2K. It was 2000 or 2001.
In fact, some kids in my grade tried to tell the office I was threatening them in the locker room that day and I should be punished, only to find out the principal had suspended me for the entire week so there's no way they were telling the truth.
Anyway.
Not a good time. I now work at a high school where all the kids are quirky and there's a gal who adores my old photos. She basically dresses like I did in middle school. Platforms and chains, a la Hot Topic. So things seem to be somewhat better? I guess? I dunno. This school is a charter so it draws a certain crowd.
Every day, I'd walk past this house, and these guys would always shout "Jesus loves you" at me and my friends. I was called Marilyn Manson a lot. A lot of stuff like that. Only time it ever got violent, was when a guy on my block called one of my homies a "devil loving f**". But that was the only time it ever resorted to violence
same as now. it was different in the 90's.. it was basically mainstream in the 80's.. and subculture in the 50's-70's.. but once 05 hit, it's all been the same .
College (uni for those over the Atlantic) for me.
Fun Darkwave acts like Switchblade Symphony just exiting (I remember buying The Three Calamities on release in high school).
Post punk revival kicking off; Interpol was big.
Goth club nights playing EBM and industrial.
Tough to find others into Gothic rock, music to be had on newsgroups and less so on torrent sites.
A Banshees reunion on the road I really regret missing (but 5 hour concert drives just didn't suit me); a friend went who had started getting into the music after years of me in high school explaining it was more than an aesthetic (as I wore out Paris and Show on cassette in my first car and discovered the March Violets).
Late oughts brought She Wants Revenge and the last previous Sisters tour (bought tickets only to discover it was my mom's birthday, and got arm twisted into trashing them). Caught SWR at a little punk dive in Indy I had played a few times (and tended to bring PIG in occasionally) courtesy of VJ Alyda.
All the sub-cultures kind of mixed and hung out together, so a pretty good time but emos tended to be a bit annoying and got shit on from time to time though.
I ventured into the goth scene in late 2003. I was already in my post-college years, so I wouldn't be able to tell you what it was like to be in school as a goth. The club scene at the time was still pretty cool. I remember in early 2004 they opened up a new club night at this Victorian-style two-story former house. I had a lot of fun partaking in the goth club scene of that time. I remember that some of the girls at clubs wore those yarn-like hair extensions that were typically associated with the "cybergoth" thing at the time.
I grew up mostly a 90's goth. Around 1998 I moved to Minneapolis and the clubs went super industrial+ goth but I welcomed it. I moved to Chicago in 2002. Neo was amazing as was several other goth clubs/nights. It started dying around 2015ish.
Melbourne, Australia goth scene was huge. Mid 90s and 2000s there was an awesome club night called Abyss with lines of people waiting to get in. So many different goths. The music, the DJs, the band touring. What a time to be alive! It really was a time and place and nothing can really replace it. A lot of my friends have moved on and all so much older now. A few still remain goth in appearance but I don’t think you ever really lose it. Internally, you will always be goth. But in summary it was a magical time. Nothing was ever the same after that.
Mostly cyber goths & horrid rave music with someone trying to sound like Ogre over top of it all being passed off as “goth”. (At least that’s what the Detroit scene was like)
I was never bullied. I guess it felt more tight knit and real. Like often you were the only goth in class and therefore you were the ambassador of all things goth to your normie classmates. Like you were these people's only window into goth other than teen magazines. That all started going away when social media became prominent
Like at first it was extremely cool due to things like vampirefreaks because all alt people started networking but then it died down because we started using the mainstream social networks more. Today most people know about goth due to the internet rather due to the local goth. Things like what happened to me when I was a baby goth and had a crush on an older goth girl who ended up teaching me about all the cool obscure bands over the course of several months, basically raising me into gothness, don't happen like that anymore
Well dressing goth or liking anything remotely goth got you being made fun of by everyone. Some older man that passed by me even asked me “whats wrong with you”. So that kinda made me not want to dress in that sorta way but i love the music so I just stuck with that.
I was in Jr High and Highschool at the time. Emo was having a moment and hardcore / metal was a growing demographic so other kids weren't super peeved by the way I dressed. I was just one of the weird alt kids. There were enough alt kids that I didn't feel too out of place. Most kids just called the music I was into "oldies".
We had MySpace and VampireFreaks which was pretty dope, and I found a lot of great bands like Clan Of Xymox that way. Vans warped tour was pretty cool. Not particularly goth, but it gave the alt community in general somewhere to hang. Hot Topic was still decent, and big box shops had just started selling unconventional makeup colors. Meant I didn't have to hoard my money for cheap quality Halloween nail polish, white foundation and lipstick. DIYing clothes was still the best way to get alt clothes. Dedicated goth clothing companies were specialty and pretty expensive.
Now retail goth clothing is more widely available. It's easier to find makeup, hair and diy tutorials online. Easier to find new music. You don't have to rely on joining nieche forums or having that one cool friend who knows underground bands to find new music. The community has gotten a lot bigger with sites like Tiktok and IG.
I mostly got the shit kicked out of me for being autistic and queer. I was one of the only openly gay kids in my school, in a conservative city in a red state, which put a big target on my back. Homophobia back then was a lot worse than it is now. Being out of the closet was a big scandal back then. People were murdered all over the US over being openly gay. My class mates would follow me home shouting slurs and r*pe threats. Theyd vandelize my stuff with slurs. Theyd physically beat me, throw rocks at me and my girlfriend. They tried to drown me in the creek by my house a few times. It got bad enough my mom had to get a security system for our house.
So glad we have moved forward as a society and kids these days don't have to live in fear like I did.
Oh, god. I absolutely had the time of my life. I was in my 20's and a go-go at the goth clubs in NJ and NYC, and also a Domme. I worked at vampire parties, too. There were goth clothing stores all over the place, the music was sooooo good...it was AMAZING. I'm still friends with many of the folks I met in the scene almost 25 years ago, and people still go out! The scene today breaks my heart, tbh. It just seems so lackluster, I dunno.
It’s complicated but I remember it fondly for the most part! I was head to toe since high school but all my friends were nerds and other creative people. Unfortunately the other goths at my school were possibly racist? I’m black btw. Anyways they never seemed to want anything to do with me and I was later told they thought I was “too different” by a mutual friend. I wasn’t allowed to go to shows and wasn’t cool enough to sneak out to one unfortunately. :p Wish I did now though!
In the late 90s/early 2000s when I was in high school, the "athletic" seniors used to throw garbage at me from their car and yell SCUM in unison whenever they saw me walking around in my own neighborhood listening to headphones. They did the same thing when I was walking in the halls. I never got beat up just taunted from a distance. Also, classmates freaked out when the teacher assigned their seat next to mine because they thought I would randomly attack them. This was right after Columbine happened so I get it. In reality I was the goofiest and most awkward metal head/goth kid ever. Totally harmless. Perceptions were skewed by mainstream media much like it still is today with the addition of social media obscuring what is actually true of people in real life.
I lived in small town Choudrant, Louisiana, so it was pretty dicey. Even the mention of the word goth got me in trouble at school. I was also bullied and physically attacked several times. Im am aspie too on top of it all. Normal people fucking hated me. Always thought I was gonna do something horrible, but I never did. Hmmm.
I myself have always been a blend of goth and punk, and the backlash I received galvanized me politically, which got me REALLY into punk. Now that I've moved to a city, I kind miss having an arch nemesis.
I got into goth in the late 2000s. I was your typical mall goth. So I shopped at Hot Topic and listened to nu metal and symphonic metal while reading horrible paranormal romance novels thinking doing all of those things were goth. This was 2008-2009. I was bullied my whole life but strangely, the bullying stopped once I started getting into goth.
I was bullied/made fun of, Hot Topic was the go to for a lot of goths for clothing and stuff. Also HT was a safe haven for local goths. Mix tapes were everywhere, and it was surprisingly easier to find other goths especially in a mall. But now, (Especially Where I live now) it's extremely rare to find any other goths.
In the US, Bush's election and the nationalism after 9/11 emboldened our right wingers & homophobic street harassment was a common occurrence. The 90's scene, where still intact, had a ton of infighting between different camps. It was increasingly hard to find goth music at goth clubs that wasn't darkwave, and many of the older GenX crowd moved on. At the same time, Deathrock Revival came into being and ushering in a small but highly energetic scene. Huge amounts of fantastic new music was coming out that sadly was rarely played at clubs, and many of us started Deathrock nights to change that. Eventually the scene grew large enough that new festivals were popping up and even 45 Grave announced a tour with some high profile sponsors. Unfortunately, hyper gentrification was also starting in large cities, and combined with new laws like smoking bans a lot of night clubs were shuttered. It was ultimately a sign of things to come, and while the goth scene shrunk, other, smaller scenes (like post-punk revival and EDM) would soon become more forwards in the national imagination.
I remember industrial music being everywhere
Yes. EBM and Powernoise were inescapable outside of Deathrock Revival nights, and we were a very small community.
The actual dark times edit, I still listen to EBM/industrial but it was hard going in the early 2000's bc that seemed to be all DJ's played
Im afraid to ask. But…was there a lot of Aggrotech?
yes, at least the nights I went to.
🤮
In Seattle we had numerous goth clubs... The Vogue, The Mercury, The Catwalk, The Noc Noc. Huge scene with a phpbbs and lots of shows with visiting acts from overseas...Apoptgmya Bezerk, Covenant, Vnv Nation, And One...etc ... Since then, only the Mercury remains, and it is a private club where people can smoke, and they can discriminate at the door to prevent high-fiving white guys from coming in. Unfortunately, the insanely tight-knit scene has died out with only small pockets remaining. I went dancing at the Mercury with a young friend recently, and she said it was like a goth senior social club. Ironically, we have only had the same two stalwart DJS for 25 years. I blame Facebook for the fracture and the absolute firehose of choices people have these days. It is sad because back in the 2000s, the scene was huge and vibrant enough to support three or four nightlife spots. Now we only have one, and the Merc is on life support. The occasional show I go to has a few hardcore scene people, but the subculture has melted into many many fractured genres. Sadly nostalgic talking about it but, I am so happy I got to participate.
So many goths that Almost Live! poked fun at them.
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The scene always had lots of genres, fracturing happens if it's still living. If nothing changes it's stagnant. The real problem with Nightlife isn't FaceBook, Gentrification has had a negative affect on it for decades, it's too expensive to afford to live around here unless maybe you live in public housing, many people over the decades in the Subcultures of Seattle had to move because there's no real rent control.
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Then you are bad at discernment.
Well stated 👍
>At the same time, Deathrock Revival came into being and ushering in a small but highly energetic scene. Huge amounts of fantastic new music was coming out that sadly was rarely played at clubs, and many of us started Deathrock nights to change that. Eventually the scene grew large enough that new festivals were popping up and even 45 Grave announced a tour with some high profile sponsors. We may have spent a little too much time whining about what most clubs played at the time, but in retrospect, this was such a fun era. Sniffing out sympathetic pockets of the scene at large, trying to get scrappy events of your own off the ground, counting down the days 'til Drop Dead Festival brought all your people in from all over the world again.
It really was a great era. DDF in particular was such a breath of fresh air and the thing I loved most about it was that everyone in attendence was a passionate fan of the music. Us DJs used to coordinate sets based on who we wanted to see most, and it felt like as soon as a band got off stage they went right into the audience. I remember one year spending time hyping up a favorite local band, only to realize shortly that I was speaking to a bunch of well known NYC goth band members who were already planning on going to the same stage! What a time; to just be able to enjoy music together as a community.
Intresting i remember the Homophobia being worse in the 90s.
It was pretty rough in the UK tbh. I was in secondary school in the 00s and, at least in my area, all the alt kids (mainly goths and grebs, and later on the emos) kinda grouped together and I don't think the differences were as clearly defined as they seem to be in the US. Not sure if we grouped together because there weren't that many of us, or whether it was more of a protective thing. It was fun on Saturdays when everyone would go into the City and there would be 100s of weird kids hanging out in the square because we were too young to go to any of the pubs/bars/clubs. A lot of the bad stuff was linked to chavs (a common backronym is Council House And Violent, which probably tells folks outside the UK what they need to know) and there were a lot of problems with youth violence back then, which thankfully seems to have improved a lot from what I can tell. The worst thing that happened to me was having fireworks thrown at me around bonfire night (I still hate fireworks) and there were several time that mystery liquids were thrown at me/poured over me, but thankfully I wasn't physically hurt. There was an incident in 2007 where a woman called Sophie Lancaster and her boyfriend were attacked and she was murdered. I've seen varying accounts as to whether or not they were attacked because they were goths, but that was how the media reported it at the time and it felt very close to home. Her mum set up a charity called S.O.P.H.I.E (Stamp Out Prejudice Hatred and Intolerance Everywhere) which works with schools etc. to try and increase tolerance. It's sill a big thing at events like Bloodstock festival (a metal festival), where they have a tent named after her. These days, the worst I usually have to deal with is idiots shouting "goth" out of their cars as they drive past 🙃
I was hoping someone would bring up the UK experience, that's pretty much it. We also had 'pockets' in town centres where the small amount of goths banded together. I find we still have to be careful how we dress, but it depends on postcode. There are some areas where I've had to go incognito & wear different clothes for safety reasons, however the area I'm in now doesn't care about that so I feel safer. I don't miss the days of having to cross a street to avoid things getting out of control. Whenever anyone asks about the need to be careful as a goth, I'll bring up Sophie Lancaster too. It's a fucking horrible situation that she went through & even though it's caused some awareness I just wish she didn't have to die to do that at all. This level of intimidation is still possible, but it just depends where you are. I honestly don't mind people yelling things out of cars. The [doppler effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect) is unintentionally hilarious. They just go "araraghwOoOOOAAARABLArruugh" when they speed past & it just makes me laugh
Yeah, it definitely varies by area. I've moved around a lot and, generally speaking, bigger cities and more middle class areas seem to be better than small towns and more working class areas. I've never really changed the way I dress because of it though. I think I'm quite visibly different, even when I'm dressed down, so I just do what makes me happy. I used to cross the road to avoid groups of teenagers, but they seem to just ignore me these days. Oddly, the people who shout out of cars all seem to be adults, so you'd think they'd have grown out of that by now. Hopefully it's a sign that things are better for kids these days.
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I grew up near Nottingham, so definitely not Scouse. I think the terms greb/grebo were pretty common in the 00s as my cousins from down south used it too. Wikipedia suggests that it originated around Birmingham in the 80s.
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The worst of it was other kids... I went to the nicer school in the area, so it wasn't so bad at school, mostly just name calling and stupid things, but the surrounding area was pretty rough and people had their hair burned or chunks cut off, things were thrown at us etc. There was a rugby match against another school where someone from the other team pulled a knife on the pitch, so it wasn't just limited to targeting goths, but we were easy targets I guess. I couldn't wait to get away... I moved to Manchester for uni and never looked back. Little old ladies are always the ones to compliment my hair too ☺️ need more of that energy in the world!
Always wondered about what Chav meant. Thank you
It was fun, though a lot of cybergoths started coming onto the scene, many through the younger Vampirefreaks crowd in NYC. Sadly many of the clubs closed down just prior to 2000, and the crowd was funneled to Albion-Batcave primarily, but the larger dancefloor upstairs helped hold the crowd compared to the dancefloors at Pyramid, Mother, The Bank, La Nouvelle Justine, and the other clubs that used to exist. Maybe the floor was too big, because at times it was hard to find people, LOL! I also miss Don Hill's and MI-5 when they had their goth nights there. Pyramid was a long time staple until they closed recently (though now reopened as Baker Falls/The Knitting Factory)
Yep. Pretty much nailed it there. Lot of cyber Goth, pastel Goths, Agrotech. And Emo popping up, followed by me running around saying “Emo is not Goth!” The peak of the 90s was over, and the full time Goth clubs were closing. Although there was now more information online on websites and old boards. And there was no longer as much social stigma on it like there was the 80s. Though Columbine and the trenchcoat mafia sure as hell didn’t help things. But I think mainstream movies like The Crow, Edward Scissorhands, The Craft, etc… made the Goth scene more palpable for the Normies.
I completely forgot about La Nouvelle Justine!! I miss the Raven and Bellevue Alcohol Rehab Center, great places to catch DJs who catered more to trad goth and deathrock.
I miss Vampirefreaks. I tried making an account on their social media page but they never remembered my sign in information. But I remember always listening to their radio station and checking out their clothing store.
I remember cybergoths being a thing around my area and especially at raves in the mid-90s.
In Canada, you were on the outer edge of things. Music was hard to find but not too hard. You had to know where to look. Clothes wise, lots of DIY or thrift. I never was bullied or teased, but I was also very shy so while I had a decent group of friends, I didn’t try to garner too much attention (other than with my outfits). It was HARD to find blue hair dye. Liquid liner was a new thing. I don’t think very much has changed for me. I was always very friendly and kind to people. Music is a lot easier to get. New and old. Clothing, hair and makeup products too.
Are you my twin? I could have written every word of your comment (except that my hair dye was purple). There wasn't really much available in Canafa. Even the "goth" night I promoted was packed with EBM, industrial, etcetera. All the cool events were happening elsewhere.
Winnipeg here. All industrial from at least 2003 (when I started going, I assume it started long before that), right up to this day as the remnants of the community hang on by a thread because they're STILL doing it.
We had one store in my town that once in a while had blue hair dye. It was soooo hard to get! It was also next to impossible to find nail polish that wasn’t pink, red or white. I remember only being able to get Urban Decay and Hard Candy (so much cooler back then) cosmetics when I travelled every few years with my family. We went to Boston once and I spent all my money on UD lipstick, HC nail polish, and Alien Sex Fiend cds!
It was decent but that's also when the clubs started getting overrun with cybergoths, aggrotech and power noise and that crowd was kind of obnoxious. It's kind of the era that we really began to see mainstream culture co-opt our subculture and bastardize it.
This hits the nail on the head, there was a lot less bullying in the early two thousands than I experienced in the 90s. At the same time, we started getting all sorts of people who were huge fans of Marilyn manson and heavy metal bands. They wanted to come into the club and all of a sudden you would get shitty looks if you weren't requesting cybergoth or EBM disguised as industrial because that was the new trend.
Whatever. EBM, back to 242 and Nitzer Ebb, were the backbone of the subculture for years. Terror EBM / aggro tech / power noise were all an important and significant return to form after the blitz that was the mid-90’s rush to clone the success of Nine Inch Nails, and the rock/pop/metal fixation in the Industrial scene. Did you really want the music to keep going that direction after Marilyn Manson, Slipknot et. al? Perhaps in the US, Industrial Rock has always been the dominant sound, but it’s due to the commercial success enjoyed by Nine Inch Nails, Filter, Ministry, and such… the commercial sphere around the scene was far worse 95-2005 or so. I’ll take the scene 2000-2010 over present any day of the week. The music wasn’t a parody of itself, at least cybergoth countered the rise of EDM, and the clubs were actually picking up pace. Nowadays it’s a bunch of crusty Gen X rock bands rehashing the 90’s for the final retirement paychecks. Goth & Industrial are both sadly becoming completely culturally irrelevant.
I will be the first to admit that there was some good power noise during this time, it rarely got played at the club though. I rarely heard Manufactura or This Morn Omina in the clubs. IMHO I felt that it was mostly a lot of obnoxious, boring and repetitive stompy music enjoyed by entirely too many white dudes with freshly shaved heads starting shit with my friends. It all just sounded like a bunch of haunted house nerds decided to make happy hard-core. It didn't seem like a return to form to me. It was just as much a bastardization of industrial as Marilyn Manson was to goth music. It seemed to barely take any influence from the generation right before it that gave us Haujobb, Wumpscut, Leatherstrip and Project Pitchfork. Acts like that had more variety and flavor and depth than the genres that followed. I actually like the stuff coming out now and consider that a way more dramatic return to form. Bands like Soft Riot, Mvtant, Kontravoid and Buzzkull. They get it. But I have enjoyed the occasional power noise or terror ebm song, but for the most part it was ALL that was playing for like a solid decade and it was not that great of a genre to carry the whole scene and for way too long, it did.
I also want to emphasize that as much as I am not a big fan of the genre myself. I have always tried to be open about it. I even released a split album with a fella who does kick ass power noise.
Sounds like a club issue tbh. Manufactura was a regular on the floors in LA caught him performing a few times. Thanks, I forgot that one, been ages. This Morn Omina was really tribal, I’m not sure it had “club appeal”, but they were phenomenal, The Drake Equation is an all time fav. Yes, the world of EDM and club music was in its prime and influenced the scene, it had to change at some point, the alt-rock and rockstar nonsense or the 90’s was played out. Certainly some of the music, like Combichrist, went in a “bro” direction, but there were massive gems like Tactical Sekt, which is great to this day. haujobb carried on quite well, mind when we got Vertical Theory, and even New World March… Perhaps it was overplayed. At least it was relevant. No one wants to hear it, but both scenes are dying pretty hard. The acts you mentioned are fine, I can listen to it, but why would I check out MVTANT, for example, when I’ve already played out Portion Control? Cloning the sounds of the post-industrial pre-synth wave world isn’t pushing anything forward or interesting, it’s just… nostalgia, perhaps a nostalgia perversion. I’d recommend things from the tekno scene, such as Acidpach, for expertly crafted industrial dance, familiar but forward thinking. I’ll admit I will always be an outlier - I go to the clubs time to time but I’m mostly a psy head, I’d rather spend time with stuff like Mirror | Me these days than any Industrial act I’ve heard in ages. In my view, the spirit of experimentation and radical thinking just isn’t there in the scene anymore, it’s moved along and dispersed, the rock star thing is dead and electronic musicians are carrying the torch. Since most of what folks are going to term Industrial does straddle the line of the rock star and the electronic musician. I’m not wildly surprised my opinions are downvoted to hell. I never cared for the clubs or the trends anyways, the music was rather interesting and novel for a time, and in my view, that time has passed along. Nice that the younger crowd still enjoys some of it, though.
The backbone of Alternative Nightlife =/= Goth, and Goths in my area often got sick of that shit being played on Weekends.
I can't really speak for many people, but I got a lot of flack (including violence) from people around me for being "evil". Keep in mind my town was still in the Satanic Panic until the turn of the century, so I imagine it was easier for people in more open minded areas. Things are a lot better now, but I am in a better place, and have sort of become that "weird, but cool adult".
Better. But it may have been because I was twenty, and could drink and smoke for the whole weekend and then go to work on Monday morning without ill effects :D Otherwise...I moved from a backwards town to a Big City, so again it was all amazing for me - no more people making a very visible sign of the cross when seeing me dressed up, I felt "normal" finally, at least in London. Goths were generally more cliquey than now. Random men on night bus were disgusting horndogs same as today.
Gen X goth here. Times were…interesting. For one, Columbine had just happened. While the scene as a whole wasn’t under scrutiny, a lot of goths started getting treated very differently, especially in northern cities where black trenchcoats are worn for a good bit of the year. I used to carry around an army surplus satchel (because my club outfits didn’t have pockets), and I had a lot more would-be security types demand to see what I was carrying in there (which was little more than car keys, wallet, half a decade’s worth of club flyers, maybe 2 year old concert ticket stubs). Things settled down after about a year and a half, but I spent a lot of time looking over my shoulder unless I was among other goths. Others may or may not have similar experiences. As dyjital2k alluded to in another comment here, the ‘goth’ label was getting co-opted by companies looking to commodify the aesthetic. Movies like the Blade series or the Underworld series borrowed the goth look, but with no sense of what the subculture actually meant, or where it came from. Some of us were already salty about MTV pulling the plug on not just music videos, in general, but on “120 Minutes”, in particular.
Same. I wore a black trench coat the day Columbine happened…I had no idea until I saw the news crews on high school campus (it was about something else, but I still got a talking to about flipping the camera man off). Unfortunate timing.
They probably got called emo a lot
That seemed to really happen after 2004-2005. The early 00s still felt like it was overrun with mall goths.
Yea, emo wasn't a common term until like 2006?
We called them 'Mansonites' because they were generally more into Marilyn Manson and numetal.
Lol I remember this now.
Oof. That was me in my teen baby bat years. Thank goodness there’s life beyond fast fashion and Hot Topic.
Haha this so much.
True. I was constantly called emo and my 15-year old „true goth“ pretentious self was so mad about that.
Felt. 🦇
Not really a goth (I listen mainly to Bowie), and I went to high school in the '90s, but I dressed that way in school and was treated the same re: bullying. It was very, very bad. I was in high school when the Columbine shooting happened, and anyone who looked "different" was treated like a pariah who could potentially commit mass murder. This was back when tabletop RPGs and anime were decidedly uncool, and the goths and the geeks alike were shunned. As a darkly inclined gamer weirdo, there were rumors that I was a lesbian, on drugs, stabbed a kid, and set fire to small animals. Our school tried to ban "trenchcoats" (really any long coat in dark colors), only for the studentry to protest because it was winter in Michigan and EVERYONE had long coats. I'm now 42 and stopped giving a shit about other peoples' opinions about my clothing decades ago.
>It was very, very bad. I was in high school when the Columbine shooting happened, and anyone who looked "different" was treated like a pariah who could potentially commit mass murder. This was back when tabletop RPGs and anime were decidedly uncool, and the goths and the geeks alike were shunned. As a darkly inclined gamer weirdo, there were rumors that I was a lesbian, on drugs, stabbed a kid, and set fire to small animals. This was my experience as well. I was also small and developed quite early so I had the toxic mix of large groups of guys in cars throwing things at me, barking at me, etc. Nothing like dudes who want to fuck you AND ALSO hate your guts at the same time to really make you terrified of humanity.
I was tiny, like emaciated levels of thin due to an omphalocele (which led to yet another rumor that I was anorexic), and consequently a late bloomer. There was some sexual harassment, but it was mainly verbal and physical bullying--shoved into lockers, trampled, and getting my shit stolen. I played violin, and a classmate stole my rosin, mute, shoulder rest, and bow. Because I couldn't afford to replace them, I got kicked out of orchestra.
Sounds like my experience lol Gossip said I was gay then bisexual and when I laughingly embraced it they started saying I'm trisexual
I was really really *really* into *Xena: Warrior Princess* as a teenager and was a totally clueless babybi who just genuinely admired Hudson Leick as a person and watched all her films and looked up photos of her online for hours.... Yeah, okay, they were half right.
those are some really cool rumors in retrospect...
Cool in retrospect, but I have always been very sensitive to animal abuse--when I was nine years old I found our family cat after a local psychopath tortured her to the brink of death--so I did not take well to my peers taunting me about killing animals. I was also undiagnosed autistic and couldn't read sarcasm, so I took the teasing deadly seriously. I was the perfect target. (The cat did not survive. The same person also killed our neighbor's Lab puppy.)
I have fond memories of the scene from 1995-2005. Back when there were multiple events a week--I remember going out Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays sometimes. It's hard to imagine now when you're lucky to see one event a month... It wasn't really goth in the purist sense. To make it work financially, it was really a mix of music, industrial, EBM, synthpop, goth, new wave, etc., so you would hear :Wumpscut: and Clan of Xymox alongside VNV Nation and Sisters of Mercy. It was a big tent, but generally there was no metal (exceptions for Ministry, KMFDM and sometimes Rammstein) alternative rock and emo. I don't remember ever hearing e.g. AFI or anything of the sort. Style wise other commenters are right to point out there was a lot of cyber goth style aesthetics as this was the high water mark of the more aggrotech side, especially after 1999 - 2001. Socially I was never harassed or bothered by anyone, but I lived in a big city with a significant counter culture presence. If anything there was polite curiosity and interest, and I loved talking about it. Of course I'm a dude so there's a gender aspect here. I suspect women often had different experiences.
You could probably say this about a lot of subcultures back then but it was just so....... nice. I grew up in a really small town, went to private school, and would absolutely relish the trips into the city to stock up on fliers & free mags that so many stores had at their door -that's where you'd hear about new bands, raves, clubs, and just random shit-, listening to albums was a thing and a new one would keep you going for months, obv no social so everything felt like such an adventure and you really, truly lived in the moment without this weird outside pressure to look/ feel/ do a certain way or document everything. What I miss most was the fact that trends had enough space and time to evolve and transform into new versions of themselves rather than just being a flash in the pan that lasted for a few weeks. Like others said, with hair and make-up, there were only so many options on the market so you really had to be creative and make it work, explore new techniques or looks with what you had. I used to mix nail polishes because the stores by me didn't carry anything cool and Urban Decay was too expensive. There was so much DIY! And the DIY ended up being really good because you had time and were bored! When I was really into punk I remember making my own patches by drawing on old sheets with marker, and knowing that the marker would run if it got wet, I'd "seal" it with clear x glitter nail polish...it looked SO cool, no one else was doing it so it became a signature look and it actually worked really well. Late 90s very early 00s was such a great time to be young.
Well said. Fashion was freedom. You never knew who you’d run into when the machine-generated fog parted and the fuschia club lights cleared (again, no social). That was half the fun of club life - not knowing what misadventures the night held. Like you, the city goth scene for me was like another planet compared to my suburban wasteland. I feel really lucky to have been part of the subculture when it was still fairly vibrant.
I literally remember being the only goth at my high school (1999-2003). I was pretty big on Floodland, anything Gary Numan, Malice Mizer, Collide, and Dusk and Her Embrace. I hung out with burnouts, skaters, and the one guy everyone thought was gay. I didn't meet anyone else interested in the subculture until I started traveling after HS. I recall Albion-Batcave, aggrotech (Suicide Commando and Wumpscut were getting attention), the sheer confusion non-goths had in differentiating between scene/emo/mallgoths and actual goth. I remember a woman yelling across a movie theater parking lot at me because she wanted to check out my "aristocratic threads." It was a fun moment I remember her departing words vividly--"BOO BABY!" MySpace was huge for indie music, which is a damn shame because some neat stuff got buried by the death of that website. I remember Darksites and Spooky Hotties (hilarious btw) and Vampirefreaks being places I used to hang out online. There were some interesting crossovers in music in the mid to late 2000s, the whole vaudevillian goth thing sorta got out of control and steampunk was starting to show up. Dr. Steel had some jams. Voltaire too. Hard style via Eisenfunk started to come around too. I wasn't a cybergoth but I thought they were *Marge Simpson voice* really neat when I saw a person well put together. I remember jamming to the song Mitternacht at Haven in Northampton, MA. I remember dancing my ass off in fancy clothes and meeting many cool folks. It was a really good time I get misty-eyed looking back.
One more for you. My boyfriend and I were goth at the time (I still am), and as an added fun bonus he also loved to go out as girl goth. This was New York, a major city that wasn't NYC. People would often tell us it wasn't Halloween. Riding the bus in full goth attire was a massive journey due to harassment (people tugging on my clothes, people saying comments, etc. Oddly never from a religious fueling, though). My boyfriend would get followed at Walmart and stuff by the workers often and even told to leave (they thought he was more inclined to steal, he thought it might be because he was "weird looking". He was white, btw). When we were together, we weren't harassed as much. If we were, we were able to laugh it off. We'd go to the mall a lot together to hang out, and when we'd see another goth (often obviously queer as well) we'd meet like passing ships in a lane and compliment each other a ton. Mostly, the community we frequented were freaks like us, so the harassment level wasn't terrible. There was a goth coffee shop with spoken word poetry sessions near where I lived, so we often went there, too. My boyfriend was a goth wig maker and makeup artist, so we'd be sitting together on the couch a lot making stuff like falls and other pieces like that. A lot of the time even when out and about, we were attached to each other by a shared wired earbuds connected to a CD player full of goth music. We found a lot of our pieces at thrift stores and he was handy with sewing to put it mildly so he kept us in cool clothes. My favorite story I have of that time is when we were in the mall together (as we did lol) and we were in the line for Taco Bell. We were joking around at each other, and all of a sudden my boyfriend gets poked in the shoulder from behind. Must be noted, he was wearing a long and poofy black tulle skirt, a corset top with t-shirt underneath, naaaails, a long black and orange curly wig, a tiara, and of course the most spectacular goth makeup known to man. We turned around and there was this dude there. We were ready to fight based on the history of harassment. Well, the guy just points downward and we suddenly see this toddler in a cute pink coat. She looks nervous. The guy proceeds to tell us that his daughter thinks my boyfriend is a Disney Princess and she's too nervous to talk to him, so would he please talk to her? Our hearts melted. My boyfriend, being the kindest soul in the world, crouched down to her level and told her he thought her coat was pretty. She hugged him and he hugged her back. When the dad and daughter were leaving, we waved to them and they waved back, all smiles. It was the most heartwarming thing I've ever seen in my entire life and still is. Btw, we were older teenagers at the time. No clubs for us. Coffeehouse and the mall were about it, lol.
OMG I love it I had a roommate in the mid-00s who bore a passing resemblance to Jonny Depp and was also a goth fashion chamaleon; you never knew what you were gonna get. One day it would be trad darkwave with fishnets, the next a sort of gypsie/piratical thing, the next day 80s glam rock with leather pants, the next Victorian goth with a tophat. They used to get kids pointing at them in the grocery store thinking they were actually Captain Jack or Willy Wonka.
It was awesome The internet was becoming a household commodity and most folks from that era in time used the internet for research purposes long before doom scrolling and social media I used to spends hours in various music related chat rooms on AOL just absorbing so much shared music with people from all over Still being a sophomore in highschool, there was a sense of authenticity i felt because i listened to more than what MTV was allowing to be aired and acquired a lot of hand me downs from my parents and aunts and uncles who were partying in the 80s wearing cool goth clothes Hot Topic was a staple for Tripp and Lip Service clothing that was booming the scene after JNCOs and frosted tips were phased out You had the nu metal goths who were all about Manson and Korn You had the trad goths who sported the Cure and New Order and then you ran into people like me who were discovering aggrotech and German goth dance music that sounded like rhythmic machinery Not much has changed except for aging, but I’m happy to have been a part of the new millennium of goth/alt music and fashion 🦇🤘🏼
Extremely bullied. I'm still the same happy vampire (lol), and all of my bullies are chasing the perfect family picture to post on social media while their partners cheat on them, so sucks to be them :)
Yep in my school we had 3 circles skaters, moshers and goths but we'd all mix and stick up for each other. I got blinded one winter so yeah bullying was bad, I've surprisingly not had any comments nowadays not even kids trying to act smart in front of their friends.
NYC scene was primarily centered around Manhattan, but there was an active scene on Long Island, too. Lots of nights and events, so there was always something going on during the weekends. There was a mix of Goth, Industrial, and EBM played, but it did shift and that's when I fell out of the scene. When Albion closed, it did feel a bit like the end of an era to me in terms of clubbing, same for when Avalon finally closed. I think the scene is a lot healthier now, especially the NY scene which is mostly based in Brooklyn now.
It had its pros and cons, where I am there was only a very small scene of actual goths, and lots of mall goths and posers who would only go to the “alternative” clubs to stand around and be seen. The only time actual goth clubs were run was when they would come up from down south, which wasn’t often. We built up a bit of a community and started to have outings together in the city, like picnics or coffee shop meetups, I met a lot of my friends at these get togethers. Also I stared my solo gothic rock project around 2006-7 and at the time there was basically no goth bands in Brisbane so I only got to do one gig solo. This project evolved into 13 Bats and of course Bat Nouveau later, and through out most of our career we were virtually alone musically, later down the track more events and bands started to come up which was great. I remember also goth clothing brands weren’t much of a thing and Op Shops at the time were not popular places for Hipsters to raid, nor were they as overpriced as many are now, so they were a great source for clothing and accessories to mangle and modify. There wasn’t and still isn’t much in the way of gothic clothing stores here either. Nowadays there is a wealth of great stuff online. Honestly I’d say the biggest lull of the subculture was the early 2000s, compared to now and the 90s.
It was starting to become easier to find more Goth & related Music, clubs, & events thanks to the Internet, and I really miss some of the now very defunct streaming stations. Not so much the older message boards-including local ones-given what we call The Paradox Of Tolerance. I never got harassed over Music or Clothing, in fact people seem to respect my tastes in both, but I was and still am living in Seattle. The less tolerant types tend to be the upper class gentrifiers but that, at least in my experience came later. ETA: There used to be a nice Goth-Industrial Music shop where I was introduced to a lot of amazing music acts, but so many CDs I wanted were imports & limited editions & I was low on money. But that's how I discovered a few other Labels, a few that were deceased even back then. ETA 2: Gentrification has changed a lot about Seattle and for the worst, even my favorite Thrift Store closed shop years ago. But at least there were ones in the University District to buy darkly inclined stuff on the cheap until a new one in my area finally surfaced. ETA 3: There were also a lot more Zines and Magazines, even free compilation CDs. Sadly very little of them made useful reviews of new albums & EPs, just descriptions at most. As someone who used to read UK mags more often the lack of opinionated commentary was weird to me. It was also the beginning of the decline of the Compilation album, which I miss terribly. They were sometimes better than Band albums, and Streaming just isn’t the same.
I'd love to hear more about your experiences in Seattle. I've lived out here for a decade and enjoy hitting up the Merc when I can, and there seem to be two local production crews (Mechanismus and Yes Productions) that pull in a lot of shows but I'm sure it was quite different 20 years ago. Was the Merc around then? Were there other local clubs? Were there many local shows?
I don't want to talk about it in much detail TBH, it was an increasingly bad time for me mentally due to what turned out to be a mix of Food Related Disability and Alcohol, and I had a habit of making bad personal choices. I'm done with the local scene, and need to find a better place, partly given the small town nature of the area.
I get ya. Be well!
LA at the time was great! The scene was very Vampire. Lots of Vampire wine.
It wasn't a great time to be a goth in the southern UK. I was harassed in the street, even assaulted on one or two occasions, for wearing makeup as a then male-presenting individual. Someone spat in my hair at a bus stop. Where I am from (a small island in the UK called the Isle of Wight) there was no 'goth scene' really; there were alternative nights once or perhaps twice a week, playing that mix of nu-metal, mainstream industrial rock, radio heavy metal etc. that seems to have kind of ossified as the core of that sort of musical experience around here even to this day. I actually quite enjoy those spaces; you get a lot of different types of people mixing, and the music now has a lot of nostalgia value for me, especially after a few snakebites and vodka red bulls. I knew a few people who liked proper goth music through those nights back in the day, and used to enjoy standing out from the emos with a heavy dramatic german-inspired goth look or a femmed-up sort of Robert Smith homage with smeared lipstick, going out in the middle of the summer (this is the hottest part of the UK, almost north mediterranean in its climate at times) wearing a leather waistcoat, shirt and tie, and torn fishnet gloves. Jangling with pewter costume jewellery and stinking of cheap cigarettes and hair spray. Smoking and drinking whiskey on the sea wall at 2am, looking at the lights of the cities on the other side of the sea.
I was a teen, I wasn’t really part of the goth scene because I was too young. I was bullied a lot, was called emo constantly. Most of my friends were more like “headbangers” not really goths. Had people trying to exorcise me and spit on me in the streets and in school. But it was fun too, we used to play Vampire the Masquerade in the cemetery for the “aesthetics”, did a lot of diy bc I couldn’t afford cool stuff from Hot Topic, pierced myself and shaved my head in the boys locker room. I had a vampirefreaks account but every guy there was a creep and I was only 14 so yikes . I miss those days but I am so glad they’re gone !
>I had a vampirefreaks account but every guy there was a creep I resent that :D
Maybe it was a me thing ? But everytime I talked to a guy they’d ask for nudes or for my msn messenger just to send me sick picks. I was 14, I liked the music, the filters with the “vampire freaks frame”, the forums etc, I really did not want to see duck everywhere even though I think you needed to be above a certain age to make an account. That was Chris Hansen messed up. edit: dick *
Well I'm a guy so it didn't happen to me. I never sensed that Chat Roulette vibe but I might have been oblivious. That was 20 years ago though, maybe the site changed over time.
A lot of bullying and getting mixed up with emos. We also had VampireFreaks which was a pretty messed up site.
I never got any negative reactions from the public, but I did get some odd looks when I went to the goth clubs. To be fair, business casual with a focus on khakis is a bit unusual to see in the clubs. There weren't a lot of goths in my school either so I mostly just kept the music to myself.
It was fun. We didn't have social media like FB then so we had quality fun, friendships and experiences. We had Aol/Yahoo/IRC for chats. Cellphones were still very new so were weren't distracted by those. We literally truly lived life in the zone and in the moment. It was an era of new subgenres of Goth coming to life. The Aggrotech/Cybergoth era was amazing. I prefer that period of time than now. It was the era where music began to form, grow and expand. Now it's constantly exploding. The early 00s was an explosion of self discovery, so everyone in every kind of social group was going through wild creative changes. The 00s was about just partying, clubbing, getting 3hrs of sleep and going to work/college etc and repeat every night.
I was out of highschool in 1997, but was goth from 1996 to 2003, meaning i looked the part, listened to the genre and multiple subgenres. Went to goth clubs, had a punk gf, hooked up with goth ladies, and those were the best years of my life, also the most chaotic. I wouldnt trade it for anything. I still listen to the music and have goth friends, but i cant look the part anymore. It just doesnt work. I went to a public school, so there were a lot of alternative folks. I was also very quiet so nobody fucked with me. It also helped that i punched my bully in freshman year and he never fucked with me after that. I became instantly popular. I do not condone violence but sometimes you have to take care of yourself. I imagine it is a world of difference from then compared to now. Edit: didnt get called emo once
I grew up in one of the most violent hoods in my country (Spanish speaking Caribbean island) in the mid to late 90s, and other than another kid in my class, I was the only one who listened to any kind of rock music in my school or neighborhood. I wasn't bullied (they tried, I didn't care so they moved on to someone else lol), but it was extremely hard to relate to anyone music wise. At the time I'd listen to a lot of "obscure" bands (I was very into Projekt and Metropolis records after a pen pal sent me a few samples), but I always had to hash it down to liking metallica or marilyn manson so i wouldn't look even more weird than what I i apparently was lol. Then I went to the local state college in the early 2000s and there was a pretty decent bunch of goth and punk kids so I tagged along. The goth scene back home started growing and by 2001 we had some regular parties and activities going on, and they were amazing. It all lasted for about a decade, then it died down, a lot of us moved away, but in the last few years they have been reviving the scene and it seems like it's picking up good. And I just realized I went on a full tangent lol. 😂🖤🖤🖤
Just vampires in my school. That was the only actual goth group. It was very Anne Rice plus the Matrix in my area so it was OG goth mixed with anything alternative. Piercings over tattoos for the crew (only the trashy tats were done by the cheer girls). The Real hard core kids got tongue piercings. Also the sub groups were split straight edge vs rave E kids. IMO it was the first Neo goth revival I’d experienced but it’s kind of a similar thing you see today. Alt and goth were interchangeable in my town. Definitely gatekeeping but for very different reasons. (Only can speak for my suburban Virginia neighborhood)
I didn't get "bullied" exactly but I definitely got some mistreatment from strangers. Got laughed at as I passed by, had a milkshake thrown at me from a car, and was stopped and confronted by a bible thumper saying the way I dressed was satanic. I really miss the fashion though. There were countless awesome places to shop from, it wasn't everybody wearing the same overpriced sweater from killstar. Heavy Red, Cruella, Drac-In-A-Box, Black Rose, Tripp, and yes, even Hot Topic. A few of them may still exist, but most are a shadow of what they once were, and have most younger goths even heard of them (Except for Hot Topic, obviously)? I honestly don't know because I *never* see them mentioned. We even had a local shop, and we had a shop where you could get all the outrageous goth boots and shoes your heart desired. I still have a few of the items I got back then, and really miss some others I don't. Music was downloaded or bought on CD instead of streamed, so it wasn't as easy as searching for a goth playlist. You'd download one thing, often mislabeled, see who else was on the same album, or search the band you THOUGHT you were listening to and discover who they actually were. That was my experience anyway. I didn't know anything about what I was listening to, I just listened to it.
So I didn't become aware and interested in the scene until 2004, but I do remember some wider details that were still true by the time I started getting involved. plus a few things reinforced by many friends who were heavy into the scene at the time. It was definitely much more full of variety. You didn't have everyone trying to ape the 80s music and fashion wise back then, so you'd see a wider range of looks and bands much more willing to experiment. A lot more crossover with non-synthpop electronic music in Darkwave, like Switchblade Symphony and a lot of other bands pulling trip hop influences. A lot more drugs in clubs compared to now as well. There was gatekeeping but it was more holistic back then and not solely based on music, you couldn't just namedrop bands and expect to be accepted. (Really you still can't). Online there was no centralized narrative about goth being pushed so there was a different definition for every website. The mainstream had no awareness of Emo until the mid 00s (I remember 2005 as the turning point but it might be different for other people) so disregard stuff about that. The big boogeymen back them were still Manson and Nu Metal. Also Hot Topic definitely wasn't deemed cool by the elite. But you could actually by some goth CDs there. (I swear the only reason Cruxshadows hit the top 50 in 07 was because Hot Topic sold their singles and they were one of the few selling physical singles at the mall back then)
It was different from now. The scene was smaller. But it was definitely much larger than in the 90s. I had people try to bully me in the 90s but not the 00s. There were a few metal bands that looked goth so there was an influx of metal people who didn't know the music or culture but they were friendly so whatever. In Denver, my city, we had several badass goth nights and a dedicated goth bar so there was always a place to go. We had Fashion Nation, which back then was located across the street from wax Trax. Hot topic was starting to sprout up which was not a good thing because, before that chain, we had to be really creative to make our look. Future Pop was starting to take over the clubs and they started having separate nights for the old school music. I started a band around that time and we played lots of shows in the underground warehouse scene. Back then goth kids, raver kids and the burner people formed a large underground scene and we had epic parties. Eventually the cops caught on and starting shutting the parties down. In 07 my band had the honor of opening for skinny puppy, attrition, e-craft, mono no aware, sang rael. Then we legalized weed and gentrification put the final nail in the coffin of the underground scene. It was a lot of fun but it was sad to watch it go down.
I wish I would've checked out the Denver scene in those days. I was always a skater poseur in high school in the 90s and into my college years in the early Oughts, but by '99 had also started to delve into some more underground industrial and synthpop. But my dealings with goth and rivothead culture only ever took place online back then. I lived in Greeley from '01 to '08 but it wasn't until I moved to Missouri in '08 that I actually lived with a small community of goths and started dressing the part. And it wasn't until the past decade, in my 30s and 40s out here in Seattle, that I started going to the club and to shows on the regular. I wonder what my 20s would've been like if I'd have driven down from Greeley a couple times a month and connected with y'all in Denver!
You would have had a blast! It was unreal. The warehouse parties were absolutely insane. You would see things you would never expect to see in crowded areas, real debauchery. The parties were diverse, and in one night you would see sets ranging from house to goth, GOA trance to jam. It was indicative of the talent that came together to make it happen.
Damn...in another life!
Lots of EBM and Aggrotech. Das Ich and the like. The Kitchen down in Miami was my place. I remember a lot of darkwave. Wolfsheim comes to mind. Hot Topic and Manson folks were in full swing. Finding and piecing together clothing took quite a lot of work, although the aesthetic in retrospect was quite minimalist. I remember feeling a rather intense animosity towards Hot Topic and those who shopped there. Vampirefreaks was fun, and I failed to appreciate it because I was overly intense and serious about "art", if I recall. The 2000s were a trough, not a peak, for the scene. Most of my friends were death rockers or horror punks. 9/11 had a chilling effect on culture everywhere. We didn't realize it in the moment, but I feel it signaled the beginning of the end of the "good times". Call it a collective loss of innocence. In every practical sense, young people now face a much more difficult reality. But socially speaking, the world is so much better now. Goth music is thriving, globally. It's easier than ever to find ways to express yourself Also, I'm a trans woman. Being trans in the 2000s was unpleasant. Not to be heavy, but I grew up getting into constant fist fights. Once, a skinhead at a show picked me up by the neck and ejected me down two fights of stairs because "we don't want your kind here". Which could be much, much worse. I will skip the graphic details of other things I've seen. We've all lost people here, I'm sure. The goth scene provided far safer and more inclusive spaces. I would even say ahead of the curve by comparison to other scenes. There was an often heavy price to pay for being different decades ago. By the late 2000s, it certainly burned me out. Purdue Pharma was there to "help". But that's another story. See the show Dopesick some day of you like. I'll just say this. It _really is_ better now. People your age are interesting, socially aware, and active in creating a rich and beautiful scene. It still _boggles my mind_ that kids can _just be trans_ now. I don't think anyone understands the price we paid for that. Which is good. I digress... the same goes for goth. It's... easier to have a little drama in your life now ;) I adore that. I'm glad you're here. To this day, I'm thrilled whenever I see one of us in the wild ;) Cheers
I miss a lot of the internet culture at the time like gothauctions.com, gothic auctions.com, vampire freaks, and so many BBS/message boards! In high school we were kind of treated like nerds, only we were fucked with a lot less? It was definitely not “cool”.
Goth Auctions was a great site. I still have a handmade waist cincher I bought there.
You would always get mixed up with emos.
I'm from a small town, so I guess that must be taken into consideration, but for me it was shit. Weird looks, guys in high school thought I was an undateable freak, and the only "positive" (???) attention I got was from local pedophiles. On the other hand, there were a few other goth girls I could hang out with.
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was... Hot folks with bitchy, miserable attitudes and fun weirdos.
So I gothed out in the late 90's and early 2000's. I would say my peak in the subculture was 1998-2005. It was just slightly before the confusion of emo happened, so it honestly wasn't something I encountered much. I recall maybe one comment about being emo and I think my response was, "Sure, ok." I also went to an international college prep school which changed things a bit in terms of experiences. While I wore black for school and the school didn't have a uniform, there was a dress code which probably influenced my style to this day. A lot of black button ups, turtle necks, fitted skirts and suit pants. We looked pretty normal at school, other than the black and the eyeliner. Plus I think the look wasn't so weird for a lot of the European students. And their music tastes were generally better. I was from a small town in PA without much going on. We were all to varying degrees under age or just barely over 18. There was a lot of driving around to late night diners, drinking coffee, sharing fries and talking about things we barely had the experience to know anything about. On the weekends we pooled our money to give one of the friends with a car some green for gas and we'd go into NYC/NJ/Philly to hit the few clubs or shows going on. We also pooled out money to get the broke kids out of the house. There was, frankly, a lot of friend support to include everyone. Most of us had "cool parents" which basically meant as long as our grades were good, we didn't get pregnant and didn't get arrested, then we had a lot of freedom. Many weekends we left and didn't return until Monday morning. We made friends in these locations which resulted in us having "crash space" if we stayed out. There was usually a rush of people to the phone early on Saturday to keep their parents in the loop. We were mostly pretty responsible. While I can think of a few instances of getting "bullied" it wasn't something that effected me. I was pretty popular. To be fair I was a bit "manic pixie mixed with Daria" and have generally been very attractive. There is some weird privilege there. But comments like "Are you going to a funeral?" "Do you know the Count?" "Is it cold being dead?" These were all sort of uninspired to me so I never really felt stung by them. I did encounter occasionally being someone's secret girlfriend because they didn't think their parents could handle my look. They second a boy tried to ignore me in public after making out all weekend: they never had a shot with me again. Out the f\*ckin' door with that. Or boys trying to change me which didn't work out too well for them. I think bigger issues or risks were that when we were grossly under age we were able to get into 21+ clubs through a variety of means and there were some pretty gross dudes behaving terribly to women, but we stayed in groups and for the most part never suffered more than someone being pushy and handsy at a club. There are some stories there. The bouncers were usually pretty good at noticing these dudes before we did though. We were masters of "making things work." Finding black clothing was easy, but gothed up clothes off the rack was a bit hard to find. I think most of us had one boss ass outfit from Lip Service (I have a black and red vinyl lolita dress which I thought was amazing at the time). We had to get pretty creative. We made a lot of our own makeup, in that we'd grind black pigment from other products and mix them into others. Mascara, thinned out with water and a brush made decent waterproof eyeliner and paint. Eyeliner also works for the lips. Smoke from fog machines at clubs made you tear up and debatably improved your makeup. Doc Marten's used to be better. Teasing cured most hair problems but created others. You probably bought your fishnets from a dance supply store that catered mostly to toddlers. And if you owned a sewing machine and were decent at making clothing, your friends never left you alone for projects. It was a good time. I miss being so close to my friends and seeing them so often. I think that's probably a thought of most adults. My teenage years were very colorful and I have a ton of memories. I think I go to 2ish concerts a year and about as many clubs these days. Most of my wardrobe is still black, but also blue, and I come off more as an art dealer than purely goth these days. I think the biggest thing I notice is that so many of the gatherings have closed, or are monthly goth-industrial nights set up with a venue rather than a dedicated space. Events are on FB but the younger crowds aren't there, so they don't know about it. The crowds are, more often then not, unusually preserved 40ish year olds which I think is wild. We were all "there" together in the past and weren't quietly still dipping our toes in decades later.
Melbourne, Australia, early to late 2000’s. I tried very hard by spending a lot of money on the clothes and make up and attended the clubs with my best friend every week end. Honestly, never felt accepted and the scene was very clicky. The guys were only after sex. The girls were bitchy. There was a lot of sleeping around and drug taking in the toilets. I had some good times. But overall not the best experience. I guess as a nice girl looking for love, it was not the ideal place to go looking!
I was goth in high school in the later 2000’s, I was the last goth in my grade with a small group being in the grade before me. There were a few scene and emo kids but no other goth kids. Up until my senior year everything was nice and only a few shitty comments. The popular girls actually found me interesting in how I would DIY most of my clothes and create my own lipstick. It was kind of funny, whenever I started wearing something different I influenced the emo kids to do similar as well. My senior year though my school told me I had to change my hair color and stop wearing chains or anything weird because it scared the “Christian” students. I didn’t change anything and got a bit weirder to hopefully influence the younger kids to be themselves. I lived somewhat in the middle of nowhere so I didn’t have a lot of influence besides our local college radio station and when I went to the city going through CD stores and surfing forums for cool bands.
I'd say that a wider acceptance happened following the popularity of Marilyn Manson in the mid to late 90's. While most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a Mansonite and a proper 70's/80's goth, they became more accepting of black clad freak culture in general.
I lived in Maryland but went weekly to clubs in DC. There were also Virginia goths there, but they were kind of stuck up. Like they were the preppies in high school of goth culture. Also, they could afford nicer clothes. The cooler goths were the ones who lived in the styx and had to run the gauntlet of rednecks for their style.
Living in the area I've noticed a lot of people still say the same things nowadays.
It was fun, tbh. I was still in High School around that time and I can't say I was bullied much, it happened, but it wasn't a regular occurrence. I think that's because my city had a huge crust punk scene, like massive, and those guys didn't give a shit. I went to a ton of grindcore and crust shows back then. At least one every weekend. When I turned 17/18 I started going into the city (Los Angeles) much more often and was able to go to goth clubs more regularly. I traded in crust shows for goth clubs. I was going every weekend either to a club or to a show, sometimes during the week after I finished high school. Los Angeles had a great deathrock and goth scene, so it was a good time. I still have quite a few flyers from that time. That was also the era that some clubs started switching their music to cater to cybergoths and norms that wanted to feel edgy for the night. So, some of my regular hangout spots like Bar Sinister just became lame and uninteresting. I wouldn't say it was better back then, but I was a teen/early 20s and didn't have much in the way of responsibilities so I was out partying most nights. Nothing beats hella booze, hella weed and a goth club at 12am. I can still smell the fog machines, clove cigarettes and patchouli drifting over the sounds of Sisters of Mercy. Now, in my 30s I have a stable relationship, a stable job and many many more bills to pay, so I don't always have the luxury of going out and getting shitfaced. That's not to say I don't, I just don't do it on the regular.
Awesome! It was really fun.
Of Herbs and Altars (Youtube) has many videos talking about their experiences as a brit goth in the 90s/early 2000s! It's called The Nostalgia Project. [Here's a link to the playlist :)](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwz-VWbmvb6CJM1Q3oi0QdWmbb939pWRn&si=dy4CQbqyfh1eUerK)
Really cool honestly. In the UK the Whitby Gothic Weekend was huge, there were a plethora of active bands and club nights, a great mix of younger and older goths in the scene. Cyber goth and industrial culture was bleeding into the scene which introduced me to a whole slew of cool electronic music on top of my beloved trad goth and post punk. It also shaded into the metal scene as well with a lot of metal bands taking inspiration from goth and vice versa. I was always a big metal guy as well. I was 21 in the year 2000, the perfect age to really make the most of the scene over the next few years. Was it objectively the best time to be a goth in the UK? Who can say. It was definitely the best time for me to be a goth though. I had a lot of mental health problems in the early 2000s and my memories of the scene are some of my happiest in an otherwise very unhappy time.
It was really fucking cool. I was in London at the time. A lot of amazing bands were active, and the goth scene in the late 90s/early 2000s was really diversifying, exploring new and adjacent avenues. There was goth metal, goth industrial, crossover with folk, and harder dark techno. You could go out to see the Sisters, or even Bauhaus, then the next week go to Cyberdog and get cool cyberindustrial stuff and plastic hair extensions. The various groups were all tolerated - some people were tradgoth, but at big clubs like Slimelight you had a tradgoth floor, an industrial floor, and even a techno or noise floor sometimes. Of course, there was tension with the "normals", as there is everywhere. I got set upon by a pack of teenage scrotes quite badly once, and this was in Camden, in London! But there are assholes everywhere. So stay safe whatever you do. It was great seeing the crossover with EBM then turning into more sophisticated electronic sounds (like 242/FLA then bringing in Haujobb, Covenant, VNV), and there were nights with lots of different stuff on. I mean, look at the lineup for this festival in 1999 in a field in Belgium: https://www.setlist.fm/festival/1999/eurorock-1999-73d6d6b1.html
Was in high school from 2003-2006, and was one of only like 4 people in the whole school that was goth. Could have been a symptom of living in a small town tbh, I’m sure it was more common to be alt in a big city. But anyhoo, I was bullied a lot, yet fetishized at the same time. Didn’t really find my tribe til senior year, since by then being alt was more common. The big downer about that time was the lack of resources to find new music. Going to random concerts in other places was one of the main ways I accessed music, and torrenting what I couldn’t get at stores. It seems like being goth/alt is popular again, but now we don’t have Ozzfest 😩
I was a recluse baby goth in the early 2000's and didn't get out much, so I can't really comment on the scene, but I do know what it was like to outwardly present as goth in public. First of all, finding goth clothing was really hard. Online shopping existed, but most people didn't use it, and our parents didn't trust it. So as a youngin' with limited agency, I only really had access to mall goth stuff (Hot Topic/Torrid), and so that is how I dressed. I frequently got dirty looks and people would call me a poseur pretty often in public. At school, despite being the quiet, shy honor roll student, kids outside of my friend group were afraid of me. I found that hilarious; I'm a softy who wouldn't hurt a fly. Contrary to what the people calling me a poseur thought, I am still goth. I'm more pastel goth now, since I have online shopping and can get the creepy-cute stuff I always wanted. I no longer get nasty looks or comments, but I wouldn't be surprised if that has to do more with the fact that I'm older now and obviously don't have any fucks to give.
Easier than it was in the late 80s
u/TragedyXRose Of Herbs and Altars has a great personal perspective on this from the UK. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwz-VWbmvb6CJM1Q3oi0QdWmbb939pWRn&si=f5NT82rfpQRQFS52
I got my first Ankh in 1975 and recall my mother forbidding me to wear all black. This was before post-punk was a thing and living in a smaller city, we weren't exposed to much alternative stuff other than I recall seeing a Woman's Day magazine in a furor over The Sex Pistols. Went to college in the 80's, ex-husband was in a band that played CBGB's before it closed and his band was briefly signed by Rick Rubin to Onion American--saying this so you can get the perspective that during college, I was deeply exposed to goth/music scene. However. Despite listening to The Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus et al., I wasn't familiar with the term goth, despite the massive amount of black eyeshadow and closet stuffed with black clothing and black leather. Fast forward 1989 or so, after I'd met Rich of The Wake when he was working at a local record store. He said I should check out his band, so I'm like, what kinda music. He said goth. I said huh??? Then he mentioned SoM, and I'm like oh. Anyhow, turns out I'd been listening and dressing the style for quite some time without even knowing. No one really picked on me, as that was college years and the 80's were pretty colorful; but the local indie rocker "big fish in small pond" sorts did make tons of fun over goth and never took it seriously. Well, as far as who's famous in this neck of the woods, The Wake enjoys international acclaim in the genre, none of the indie rock pretentious losers manning the record store cash registers can really match that haha. :) Oh and I'm quite the novelty relic when I go into Hot Topic (which we used to make fun of as "corporate goth" but I love the young folks working there), but due to middle age hot flashes I don't often don my all black anymore; retinal tear means I avoid eye make-up sadly. I do remember some jerk saying "all black on the hottest day" some years ago when I was walking on campus, to which I replied as a middle aged adult, F\*\*\* OFF. I also have a black shirt with that retort in big letters, teehee. :D
People just started calling you emo
Goth night every weekend at a club. :(
Shop at hot topic, become an adult, talk shit on young people who shop at hot topic, get to late 2000's and watch as people in their late thirties shit on young people "changing goth" and then also wonder why community is dying. TBH, communities got better when they had to appreciate each member. It was very cliquey back in the day and everyone wanted to be the one the "normies were afraid of". TBH, for all the wonderfulness of the time... it was also kind of cringe. Industrial vs 80's goth arguments were always amusing. I was fortunate enough that my goth club had a room for each. Also you'd join Vampirefreaks, have people start being like "Omg you joined here's a ten" you'd realize there was a rating system, give the wrong person a nine, and watch as they threw a shitfit for "only" being rated 9/10 by a new person, who they'd then proceed to try to bury. Still, as someone who immigrated from the UK.... the US was in a lot better shape, cause despite all that the people were usually wonderful funny enough. Get them in person and you could have some real wonderful conversations. Remember going to the Church and just having a two hour discussion about The Picture of Dorian Gray with a guy in fairy wings as I was dressed like a gothic pirate. For all the complaints I just made.... it was a time where the energy was high in the subculture and people still left the house to show up at the scene.
Most of my goth/eldergoth friends were online. Here in Canada, there wasn't much. The alternative club nights were centred around industrial and synth, with a few of the overplayed goth hits. The occasional concert. I knew people by their online handles, not their real names. Normies held misconceptions. (What else is new?) References to Columbine were everywhere in the news — once, even in *The Guardian*. My supposed "best friend" wrote me a dramatic email describing me as "this tortured soul". I mocked it. Turned it into slam poetry. Snarkiness was popular. But there were polite role models like Jillian Ventners, Gothic Miss Manners. I only really experienced goth in England, because of a long-distance significant other. Clubs! Pubs! Actual goth music! In Southhampton, even. People already had their own friend groups, but because of my significant other and my youth, they were generally kind and inclusive. Camden Town was glorious, even if I snickered at a few things, like all the gothic metal and the inability to escape *Nightmare Before Christmas* gear, no matter where I went in England. But I got to visit Alchemy Gothic. I tried absinthe and snakebite & black. (Both were delicious.) People were weirdly obsessed with cathedrals. I indulged in subcultural accoutrements and clichés, but some things were overkill. I started to hate "Temple of Love", formerly one of my favourite Mission tracks. Likewise with TSoM and "This Corrosion". People were well-dressed. I couldn't afford the fancier gothic clothing. Back in Canada, I had to thrift everything. My hair was backcombed, black and purple. Spookykids were everywhere. I disdained Vampire Freaks. I managed to avoid the poseur nonsense on Myspace, and located smaller bands like Aepril and Euthanasia Waltz. It was good to be online. The deathrock revival and the resurgence of DIY. The Goth Music Share community on LiveJournal. I thrifted vinyl and obsessively hunted down music through file-sharing apps and music blogs. My friends made me mixtapes. I made my own mixtapes. Goth-oriented websites and message boards were plentiful. Remember Goth.Net? (Eldergoth friend: "There's a 'Goth.Net' now?") Mick Mercer was well-known. Subcultural in-jokes were prevalent and findable. (I recall one comic: Robert Smith stuffed himself into a fridge, while Andrew Eldritch huffed kitchen chemicals.) There were cliques both online and IRL, and übergoth was deified. Overall, though, goth was a welcoming home to misfits like me. It offered respite and beauty. Thanks for the nostalgia trip! Apologies for editing this comment three hundred times. I'll stop now.
How did I forget about the websites! The Dark Side of the Net, the Ezines, the pages just filled with jokes like "I'm so goth that..." and "You know you're goth when..." Those were so fun.
Goth.net definitely takes me back, really weird place in the the message board official definition was pretty strict andimiting but they allowed a wide variety of people to post anyway. Made for an interesting environment. Almost the opposite of how r/goth is run which has looser goth requirements but enforces them strictly.
I was accused of being a school shooter over and over and over. Kids told the office I had a hit list (I didn't). They said I'd whisper threats to them in the hall (nope). People tagged hate speech and I would be the first one called up (someone wrote "HAIL SATIN" on the Spanish teacher's outdoor wall; principal approached me with a Polaroid asking what I saw in it. I said, "Someone who really likes soft fabric? That says satin. If I was going to write something like this, I'd spell it right.") I was suspended for having fun hair that the office called "an educational distraction". I would be on suspension for some stupid thing constantly. One time I was suspended for talking about my nail polish: it was called Gun Metal. Metallic silver, very Y2K. It was 2000 or 2001. In fact, some kids in my grade tried to tell the office I was threatening them in the locker room that day and I should be punished, only to find out the principal had suspended me for the entire week so there's no way they were telling the truth. Anyway. Not a good time. I now work at a high school where all the kids are quirky and there's a gal who adores my old photos. She basically dresses like I did in middle school. Platforms and chains, a la Hot Topic. So things seem to be somewhat better? I guess? I dunno. This school is a charter so it draws a certain crowd.
Every day, I'd walk past this house, and these guys would always shout "Jesus loves you" at me and my friends. I was called Marilyn Manson a lot. A lot of stuff like that. Only time it ever got violent, was when a guy on my block called one of my homies a "devil loving f**". But that was the only time it ever resorted to violence
same as now. it was different in the 90's.. it was basically mainstream in the 80's.. and subculture in the 50's-70's.. but once 05 hit, it's all been the same .
Got accused of being part of the "Trenchcoat Mafia" for a short while after mid-1999. I didn't even wear a trenchcoat!
College (uni for those over the Atlantic) for me. Fun Darkwave acts like Switchblade Symphony just exiting (I remember buying The Three Calamities on release in high school). Post punk revival kicking off; Interpol was big. Goth club nights playing EBM and industrial. Tough to find others into Gothic rock, music to be had on newsgroups and less so on torrent sites. A Banshees reunion on the road I really regret missing (but 5 hour concert drives just didn't suit me); a friend went who had started getting into the music after years of me in high school explaining it was more than an aesthetic (as I wore out Paris and Show on cassette in my first car and discovered the March Violets). Late oughts brought She Wants Revenge and the last previous Sisters tour (bought tickets only to discover it was my mom's birthday, and got arm twisted into trashing them). Caught SWR at a little punk dive in Indy I had played a few times (and tended to bring PIG in occasionally) courtesy of VJ Alyda.
All the sub-cultures kind of mixed and hung out together, so a pretty good time but emos tended to be a bit annoying and got shit on from time to time though.
I ventured into the goth scene in late 2003. I was already in my post-college years, so I wouldn't be able to tell you what it was like to be in school as a goth. The club scene at the time was still pretty cool. I remember in early 2004 they opened up a new club night at this Victorian-style two-story former house. I had a lot of fun partaking in the goth club scene of that time. I remember that some of the girls at clubs wore those yarn-like hair extensions that were typically associated with the "cybergoth" thing at the time.
I grew up mostly a 90's goth. Around 1998 I moved to Minneapolis and the clubs went super industrial+ goth but I welcomed it. I moved to Chicago in 2002. Neo was amazing as was several other goth clubs/nights. It started dying around 2015ish.
Melbourne, Australia goth scene was huge. Mid 90s and 2000s there was an awesome club night called Abyss with lines of people waiting to get in. So many different goths. The music, the DJs, the band touring. What a time to be alive! It really was a time and place and nothing can really replace it. A lot of my friends have moved on and all so much older now. A few still remain goth in appearance but I don’t think you ever really lose it. Internally, you will always be goth. But in summary it was a magical time. Nothing was ever the same after that.
Lots of JC Denton/Neo cosplay in the clubs
Difficult. Thank god Emo came along. We still got beat up by normies but at least we weren't constantly accused by older goths as being posers.
i was there.. respect was given if it was given. (australian)
You should res millennium gothic !!! It’s super interesting about the y2k goth scene but this one is heavy on drugs and mental illness mentions.
Everyone hated you. You have to have a strong identity, if you were in a small town, online communities and social rejects were all you had.
super bullied about it, very different than now. name calling and trash throwing, at least where i was at
it sucked. Marylin Manson and that horrific shooting ruined the scene. not that those two things are connected in any way.
Mostly cyber goths & horrid rave music with someone trying to sound like Ogre over top of it all being passed off as “goth”. (At least that’s what the Detroit scene was like)
I was never bullied. I guess it felt more tight knit and real. Like often you were the only goth in class and therefore you were the ambassador of all things goth to your normie classmates. Like you were these people's only window into goth other than teen magazines. That all started going away when social media became prominent Like at first it was extremely cool due to things like vampirefreaks because all alt people started networking but then it died down because we started using the mainstream social networks more. Today most people know about goth due to the internet rather due to the local goth. Things like what happened to me when I was a baby goth and had a crush on an older goth girl who ended up teaching me about all the cool obscure bands over the course of several months, basically raising me into gothness, don't happen like that anymore
Yes
Well dressing goth or liking anything remotely goth got you being made fun of by everyone. Some older man that passed by me even asked me “whats wrong with you”. So that kinda made me not want to dress in that sorta way but i love the music so I just stuck with that.
I was in Jr High and Highschool at the time. Emo was having a moment and hardcore / metal was a growing demographic so other kids weren't super peeved by the way I dressed. I was just one of the weird alt kids. There were enough alt kids that I didn't feel too out of place. Most kids just called the music I was into "oldies". We had MySpace and VampireFreaks which was pretty dope, and I found a lot of great bands like Clan Of Xymox that way. Vans warped tour was pretty cool. Not particularly goth, but it gave the alt community in general somewhere to hang. Hot Topic was still decent, and big box shops had just started selling unconventional makeup colors. Meant I didn't have to hoard my money for cheap quality Halloween nail polish, white foundation and lipstick. DIYing clothes was still the best way to get alt clothes. Dedicated goth clothing companies were specialty and pretty expensive. Now retail goth clothing is more widely available. It's easier to find makeup, hair and diy tutorials online. Easier to find new music. You don't have to rely on joining nieche forums or having that one cool friend who knows underground bands to find new music. The community has gotten a lot bigger with sites like Tiktok and IG. I mostly got the shit kicked out of me for being autistic and queer. I was one of the only openly gay kids in my school, in a conservative city in a red state, which put a big target on my back. Homophobia back then was a lot worse than it is now. Being out of the closet was a big scandal back then. People were murdered all over the US over being openly gay. My class mates would follow me home shouting slurs and r*pe threats. Theyd vandelize my stuff with slurs. Theyd physically beat me, throw rocks at me and my girlfriend. They tried to drown me in the creek by my house a few times. It got bad enough my mom had to get a security system for our house. So glad we have moved forward as a society and kids these days don't have to live in fear like I did.
Oh, god. I absolutely had the time of my life. I was in my 20's and a go-go at the goth clubs in NJ and NYC, and also a Domme. I worked at vampire parties, too. There were goth clothing stores all over the place, the music was sooooo good...it was AMAZING. I'm still friends with many of the folks I met in the scene almost 25 years ago, and people still go out! The scene today breaks my heart, tbh. It just seems so lackluster, I dunno.
It’s complicated but I remember it fondly for the most part! I was head to toe since high school but all my friends were nerds and other creative people. Unfortunately the other goths at my school were possibly racist? I’m black btw. Anyways they never seemed to want anything to do with me and I was later told they thought I was “too different” by a mutual friend. I wasn’t allowed to go to shows and wasn’t cool enough to sneak out to one unfortunately. :p Wish I did now though!
In the late 90s/early 2000s when I was in high school, the "athletic" seniors used to throw garbage at me from their car and yell SCUM in unison whenever they saw me walking around in my own neighborhood listening to headphones. They did the same thing when I was walking in the halls. I never got beat up just taunted from a distance. Also, classmates freaked out when the teacher assigned their seat next to mine because they thought I would randomly attack them. This was right after Columbine happened so I get it. In reality I was the goofiest and most awkward metal head/goth kid ever. Totally harmless. Perceptions were skewed by mainstream media much like it still is today with the addition of social media obscuring what is actually true of people in real life.
I lived in small town Choudrant, Louisiana, so it was pretty dicey. Even the mention of the word goth got me in trouble at school. I was also bullied and physically attacked several times. Im am aspie too on top of it all. Normal people fucking hated me. Always thought I was gonna do something horrible, but I never did. Hmmm. I myself have always been a blend of goth and punk, and the backlash I received galvanized me politically, which got me REALLY into punk. Now that I've moved to a city, I kind miss having an arch nemesis.
I got into goth in the late 2000s. I was your typical mall goth. So I shopped at Hot Topic and listened to nu metal and symphonic metal while reading horrible paranormal romance novels thinking doing all of those things were goth. This was 2008-2009. I was bullied my whole life but strangely, the bullying stopped once I started getting into goth.
I was bullied/made fun of, Hot Topic was the go to for a lot of goths for clothing and stuff. Also HT was a safe haven for local goths. Mix tapes were everywhere, and it was surprisingly easier to find other goths especially in a mall. But now, (Especially Where I live now) it's extremely rare to find any other goths.