kazlovesbats - "D.I.Y! Make your Cardigan Badass and Uniquely Yours."

One thing I like about kazlovesbats is that she does some gothically inclined arts and crafts. I'll post a couple of her vids today. This one is about her customization of a cardigan (largely on the cheap).

FranccescaDeStruct - "**** Goth Kids Say"

This is a little colorful on the language, so it may be NSFW. I found this hilarious though, because it this wasn't some outsider's view at making fun of goth. It was goths making fun of themselves, which needs to happen more. When we can make fun of ourselves, it proves we're secure in our own identities.

Here's a Ricki Lake clip from the 90s that will make you remember when things were worse.

Goths have it easy these days, in my opinion. People are way, way more comfortable with it than they used to be. Back in the nineties, this kind of programming was considered to be OK. It wouldn't be, anymore.

Kill Natalie - "How to get REALLY big Goth hair"

If you want to know how to get really big goth hair, I think this vid will work for you.

LigeiaResurrected - "Goth Talk - Dealing with Bullies"

Here's a less "positive" video in regard to bullying. One thing that I do like about this video though is that LigeiaResurrected is very blunt about how far bullies may go, and she doesn't sugar coat things.

Kill Natalie - "Goth Talk: dealing with bullies"

Here is some interesting and sound advice on how to deal with bullies.

LigeiaResurrected - "Goth Getting Ready"

I don't post enough stuff like this here, so here's a video of one goth lady and how she gets ready for her day. It's not a tutorial, just sped up raw footage, mostly.

kazlovesbats - "What's a Good Way to Handle Getting Insults?"

I kind of have mixed feelings about this video. On the one hand, I think kazlovesbats genuinely wants to be nice, and she has reasonable advice, particularly about using compliments to one's advantage. That being said, she also has natural features that are considered to be attractive by mainstream standards, and I think that might be a part of why her positive feedback is so lopsided in comparison to her negative feedback. I'd be interested in seeing if someone with less natural privilege would claim to have similar experiences, such as someone who is a person of color or has a body shape or facial features considered to be "bad" by mainstream standards. I think kazlovesbats has her heart in the right place here, but I do think this is one of those "your mileage may vary" kind of things.

Post-Punk New Wave Super Friends

To make up for my not giving you all a post yesterday afternoon, here's an extra one for today. This made the rounds on the Internet a couple weeks ago, but it's definitely relevant for the purposes of this blog. Also, I think the Ian Curtis and Siouxsie Sioux ones are awesome, in particular. I would have liked to have seen a Peter Murphy one, but we can't have everything.

(Property of Butcher Billy, used under Fair Use for direct, substantial commentary on product)

If you want to see all of them, click here.

SyntheticDollx - "Goth Insults/Comments and Problems"

If you want to laugh yourself silly, the first half of this video is for you. People can make some really idiotic insults when it comes to people who express themselves in regard to alternative subcultures. It's like people aren't even trying to be creative. The second half is interesting, too, but it's nothing that I haven't shown you in one or more videos I've shared before. The vlogger talks about job issues, and I've already mentioned my comments on that before. A lot of the thing about jobs is the who, what, where, when, why, and how of the matter. There are circumstances when you'll have no problem if you express yourself, and there are circumstances when you would be better off just conforming to a significant extent with the mainstream, because you'll suffer otherwise.

Questionable Goths - "Tuesday Discusses Gender Roles In The Goth Subculture"

If you want to get one person's opinion on gender and sexual orientation within the goth community, here's a good video. I wish someone could alert me to some videos about that subject within the rivethead community, because that's a topic that's discussed a whole lot less.

"Making-of Photoshooting Junksista" - japfotografie

This is the making of a Junksista photoshoot. The song is worth it, alone.

SyntheticDollx - "Rant Vlog - What makes you goth? Labels and Hate."

SyntheticDollx brings about some interesting points in regard to this subject that's really been done to death on YouTube. She seems exceptionally open and willing to eliminate subculture hierarchy.


I have a couple of comments I'd like to add:

1. In regard to her comments on labels, even beyond the feeling of being able to fit in, I think the best reason why we have labels is simply to give some level of definition to consistently occurring traits and to have vocabulary for it. Labels create a shorthand that make it so people can understand each other when discussing matters within the subculture. For example, it's easier to talk about a cyber goth than it is to talk about someone who has goggles, wears bright colors, listens to EBM, and so forth. Even if people don't agree on the exact subtle nuances of what a cyber goth is, when you mention the term, everyone around you will at least have a general idea of what you're talking about. Labels aren't necessarily a problem until you attempt to use them as leverage to create a sense of inequality with someone else.
2. The term "baby bat" kind of makes me cringe, too. I had never heard that term until just the past year or so, and I am still of the opinion that the general idea of the term is misguided. If it only applied to people who are very young, say tweens or young teenagers, I'd be a little more on board with it, because those people are young of age and generally lack the resources, knowledge, and maturity to have deep, seasoned notions about the subculture. But calling someone who is older than that who is starting to come into his or her own within the subculture a "baby bat" seems a little patronizing. Even if that person hasn't been able to express as a goth but for a short time, it's not like her or she necessarily has immature or uninformed opinions and ideas about the subculture. In my experience, some of the most interesting things I've heard in regard to goth have come from people who don't consider themselves goth at all, or they just dabble on the fringes.

kazlovesbats - "About Bickering Within the Gothic Subculture"

I probably talk about kazlovesbats's videos more than I should, but here is a good one to read when you feel inclined to start drama.

Funny goth videos

Here are a few videos to brighten up your Sunday afternoon:

First, here is some video advertising what appears to be a goth apparel store in Germany. It's -- different.


I like this advertisement for Irn-Bru, a Scottish soft drink. The goths are still goth, even when happy.
This is just weird.

SarahDarleen - "RE:What's it like to be a Goth?"

This may very well be the most "sit around a campfire and sing 'Kumbaya'" answer to that type of question I've ever seen. As such, I must share SarahDarleen's video.

kazlovesbats - "What Great Paying Jobs can an American Goth have?"

This video from kazlovesbats is an interesting watch, although I think there are a number of things in which she should expand upon for clarification in one or more future videos. She has general ideas that I agree with, but I think she really needs to really go a step further, because there are a number of things that have an effect on how well someone who is visibly "scene" is accepted, including, but not limited to: which state you're in, how urban or rural your area is, the size of your current or prospective company (and whether it's a corporation vs. a sole proprietorship or something else), whether or not you interact with the public, the subtle nuances of the company, exactly how you express yourself as a scenester, your professional and personal qualifications, your market demand as an employee, and the personal whims of your superiors.

Hindu Pez: Where is he now? + "Song of Protest and Hope"

This was an act from back in my early goth-industrial days. I remember when Gabe was just starting Hindu Pez and was a regular at the goth nights in the Hampton Roads area (like the ones at The Wave, Hartz, and I think he was at The Abyss, too). I'm happy to see that he has been able to achieve at least a little bit of success musically with not only the Hindu Pez project, but also with playing for Red This Ever during their live shows.

Pompous Cyber Cat

Who likes cat memes? Who likes (or at least has a strong opinion on) cyber goth? Well, you're in luck! For all your needs, we have the Pompous Cyber Cat meme! Here are some good ones I found. (Also, here is where I think the source is, but the site was down when I tried to go.)

The difference between having an opinion and being a horrible person

(Photo by Ivo Jansch, CC 2.0)

It's been a while since I've been on a good rant, but an interesting thing happened to some of my friends earlier today, and that's what prompted me to make this post. See, my other big social crowd besides the goth-industrial scene is the anime convention scene. I have a significant number of friends and associates who are active within the anime scene and are involved in a number of ways, including cosplay. As it so happened, some of my friends did group costuming at this year's Katsucon. For the most part, these people received praise for their costumes, but one incident that happened on Facebook today made for the entire spark for this entry.

There was this one person who was supposed to be a friend of one of my friends who did the cosplay. Apparently, this guy didn't like the cosplay and thought the majority of the cosplayers looked subpar. What was particularly tactless and odd was the fact the perpetrator told my friend that he looked fine, but all his friends who were part of the cosplay with him were awful to look at. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see where this is going, particularly after the person making tactless comments about the cosplay threatens to put the pic in question on 4chan.

With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Cosplay is one of those small-time community art scenes, a lot like the goth-industrial music scene. There are a few people high up on the food chain, like Jessica Nigri and Yaya Han, who really make a decent living out of what they do, but most of the people who "make it" within the scene are still people who are close enough to the realities of the world of the common people that they aren't above feeling the sting or elation of what others say about their craft. If you keep up with cosplay, you sometimes see the same people get featured all the time on the big and semi-big geek portal sites, and they're the people who are really popular cosplayers who people enjoy seeing. These people may have a considerable number of followers on their cosplay pages on Facebook. But when Monday morning after cons hit, these people who are not the Jessica Nigris and Yaya Hans put their pants on one leg at a time and go to mundane jobs or classes like the rest of us.

In the goth-industrial scene, it's no different. For instance, while Brittany Bindrim might be telling you about how things were "not [her] plan" and letting you know over and over again that "[she] did this" after work, her mad skills with Photoshop are what pay the bills. I can guarantee you that nobody in I:Scintilla gets treated like Hollywood royalty. Those people shop at the grocery store and pump their own gas like the rest of us. As such, they're more like us than you might think.

We're quick to detach ourselves from artists, particularly in the age of the Internet, and we have kind of thrown decorum out the window. As a result of this detachment, we forget that someone who is a lot like ourselves worked hard on the thing we're consuming. It's one thing when someone who is very famous has a product that has been exposed to the masses, because when someone is at that level, he or she isn't even going to notice what individuals other than people with comparable clout have to say. Someone with that level of success will only notice macro-level trends from the masses, so noticing one person's flippantly biting remark is like noticing a single particular drop of rain within the context of a thunderstorm. But when it comes to most people within the indie scene, up-and-comers, and other people who haven't made it to the big time yet, those people do notice criticism on a much more micro level. Regardless of whether or not they've learned to deal with the criticism, they still notice it.

Of course, none of this is to say that I believe you shouldn't ever criticize artists below a certain level of fame. As a matter of fact, I think that idea is completely absurd. Good, constructive criticism is necessary for artists to improve and gain fame over time. Artists gamble when they completely ignore the input of their fans. Angering your fanbase is a great way make your artwork no longer financially viable. It's better to get constructive criticism now and be able to make adjustments than to wonder why your fanbase simply dwindled over time. That's not to say artists should never take risk, not is it to say that the fans are always right or perfect seers of the future, but public opinion is very important to consider when trying to peddle one's work.

But the key term within the last paragraph was "constructive". If there is something you didn't like about a song, a video, an album, a show, or anything, you need to explain what you didn't like in as direct and non-confrontational as you can. "I didn't like this, because..." or "I would have preferred if you have done this, because..." works a lot better than "Your album sucks!" or "Don't quit your day job!" (An exception to this is if the artist actually did something you deem wrong or offensive. (e.g. took your money and didn't give you product in return, said racial slurs on stage, etc.) In those cases, being a bit more confrontational, without doing something that will get you arrested, mind you, may be more in order.) Artists who want to continue to be artists are remarkably receptive of feedback. You may think some of them are aloof, but they listen to what you have to say. As such, you need to not treat them like garbage. Talk to them like human beings, as if they were standing in front of you in a room.

In summary, I suppose the whole point of this rant is that you shouldn't treat artists within the scene poorly. They actually notice what you have to say. Even if they may not address you directly, they pay attention. Don't be a jerk, unless you just want the scene to dry up and die.