Way back when I was just a curious teenager, wondering what all this goth stuff was about, I stumbled across this webpage, called The Real Goth FAQ. There were quite a few goth FAQs floating around the internet back in the day, but this one was rather unique in how rude and nasty it was. From the tone of the FAQ, the authors seemed to be really annoyed at all the the other goths on the internet at the time, especially the newbies.

While some of the statements made in the FAQ were crossing the line, if you look behind the snark, the motivation behind seems a bit understandable. The authors seemed to be really fed up with some of the more overenthusiastic people on the internet. The FAQ may be almost entirely scrubbed from the internet, it’s not even on the wayback machine, but the phenomenon it is railing against still seems very present today. It’s fairly common for some people to just be a bit, overbearing, when it comes to goth.

Which bring us to this article, titled “being goth doesn’t make you cool”. It’s a bit of an attention grabbing title, one that might be misinterpreted. What it really means is not that goth is uncool, but instead that equating being goth with being cool, likable or interesting, is a bit misguided. If you overdo it, it can even be a bit of a turn off.

The first type of behavior that comes to mind when I think of overbearing behavior is people caring a bit too much about whether or not they are goth. Online it’s pretty common to come across posts of people asking if they are “goth enough”. Why ask a stranger on the internet to validate you? Not only does it seem a bit unhealthy, but honestly it’s a bit off putting to be on the other end of. I am not particularly interested in judging you and I am not licensed to give you your goth card.