Hello and welcome to the third anniversary of The Blogging Goth! It started as a degree project but was always bound to occur when a proud Goth with a love of writing gets an internet connection. You can read the earliest article over here, back when the blog was on Tumblr.
More recently, the entire UK Goth scene has been reeling from – perhaps not unanticipated – collapse of Alt-Fest, the wildly ambitious live music festival that should have been kicking off on Friday 15th August.
I don’t believe that it’s the fault of Slenderman or horror writing in general that this happened. I remember reading scary stories and watching slasher movies when I was a child and young teenager and while they certainly gave me nightmares, they did not instill within me a desire to murder my friends. For someone to make the jump from reading a creepy story that is … being presented as 100% fiction into actually using it as a motive to plot and murder another human being – something else has to be going on there. — Creepypasta.com, Statement on the Wisconsin Stabbing.
I’ve chosen to lead with the quote that the Daily Mail – arch-conservative British newspaper and repeat offender on this blog – pushed, reluctantly, to the bottom of their article in order to grudgingly demonstrate balance and lack of bias. The declaration by the girls involved in the Waukesha stabbing that they were influenced by the internet’s fictional horror story creation Slenderman must have come as a blessing to the Mail’s hacks. The writers are reequired by the paper’s policies to find some external anomaly that caused a tragedy, rather than addressing deeper underlying issues like mental illness, or lack of internet access monitoring.
They struggled equally with the Elliot Rodgers killings in Santa Barbara, saying “A good looking boy, it is impossible to say what caused Rodgers’ problems with women, but apart from his parents’ divorce, there are no clues in his background as to the deeply troubled loner he would become.” The Mail cannot grasp the complexities and difficulties of mental illness, or the expression of counter-culture beliefs, and more worryingly this is one of the most popular media outlets in the world. Certainly Rodgers’ backwards, misogynist attitude towards women resonates uncomfortably with the Mail’s ‘sidebar of shame‘.
So it is a cause of additional concern to The Blogging Goth that they have now seized on the innocent interests of the Geyser family, raiding their social media presence to try and ‘explain’ the actions of their very confused, very ill daughter Morgan. It’s like a checklist of misunderstood fear:
Because of this one, anomalous, little-understood tragedy, again the Mail has ostracized and assigned blame to a culture they barely understand – lumping blame on an unrelated issue in a crude, quasi-journalistic attempt to be ‘first’ with the explanation. It’s almost grimly ironic that the Daily Mail would have such an issue with a creative writing website, considering the inventive nature of their reporting on cancer.
Acting on a hunch, I decided to search the Mail’s website for their coverage of notoriously-grisly – and massively popular – HBO television series Game of Thrones. Reporting on a show awash with dramatic murder is apparently not a problem, helpful considering how much traffic and revenue the Mail can make off the series. No doubt the editors are hoping no lone killer will rampage and blame Martin’s wildly popular series, because then the paper will be forced to revert to type and pin all the blame on this one, external, yet clearly causative influence. Assuming, of course, they have the conviction of their assumptions.
This paper’s irresponsible reporting threatens to whip up a moral panic based on inaccurate assumptions and blame culture that has been repeated too many times before. Time and again the media – the Daily Mail included – would like to blame subcultures for crimes committed, shirking their responsibility to find out the truth and inform, rather than scare people. I ask – I beg – the media to pause, take stock, to do your jobs and actually interview people somehow linked – not just cut-and-paste a parsimonious block quote as lip service to the concept of unbiased reporting.
Goth culture is not, has never been, and I trust will never be, some kind of crucible for such horrendous behaviour. There is nothing wrong with a fascination with the darker side of life, having an interest in skulls on Instagram and ‘Gothic-themed pictures’, or being a massive horror movie fan…
Well, Daily Mail. If it gets visitors, it isn’t really such a bad thing after all, is it?
Happy World Goth Day 2014, readers! It’s delightfully grey and cold here in Leeds, England – breaking a surprising and inconvenient sunny spell, and letting me dust off the leather and waistcoats of winter. Last year, we talked to WGD organiser Cruel Britannia, so today we’re watching the dark shenanigans unfold!
Twitter has been incredibly vibrant all day, just check out the #WorldGothDay discussion and tweet us too! We’ve all been discussing our plans, and you can find a great index on the main site here.
We also dipped into media coverage, which was the usual mixed bag of space-filling and trend-chasing journalists looking at each blankly, saying “Goth? Is that still going?” Some articles we visited included a great music compilation by a South-East Asian social media site called Rappler, and a wry piece in the Telegraph (we’re as surprised as you!) by Dr. Tim Stanley that also addresses concerning new data about self-harm amongst alternative teenagers.
The authors of this study are to be commended for the way it is written, with such statements as:
“The scientists were clear the research does not ‘prove’ that identifying with alternative culture ‘causes’ teens to self-harm. Rather it is equally likely that isolated teenagers struggling with emotional difficulties are naturally drawn to a musical (sub)culture that expresses these feelings and membership may even have positive social or cathartic effects.”
Uneasily straddling the divide between great reporting and, well… Dani Filth, is Kerrang! radio. Sadly, at 11pm the Cradle of Filth front-man will take over, but on the up side you can listen again to their discussions about Goth culture, including some great conversations with the dedicated people behind the S.O.P.H.I.E Charity.
Granted, arguing about ‘What is Goth’ is our equivalent of the chicken and the egg tale, but Dani Filth is reviled by a great many Goths, and has himself in the past scorned the subculture, preferring to market his band as making whatever music will propel them forwards – or failing that, just making offensive shirts. At least Eldritch hasn’t compromised on his vision!
Further down the spectrum of decent journalism were efforts by TIME magazine who seemed to show a lot of people on Twitter laughing about their ill-advised, badly-executed forays into Goth in the past. Another glossy magazine, Vogue, decided to frankly terrify readers with revisiting a Marilyn Manson style makeover, committing two Goth faux pas in one!
Also guilty of mixing up the shock-rocker, alternative-scene embarrassment originally known as Brian Warner is The Guardian. When we read this article, we took to twitter for a few choice comments.
#WorldGothDay meet fashion’s favourite goths – in pictures http://t.co/RiZJ1MYR92 via @guardian > Pop star, shock rocker, 90s actresses. No.
— The Blogging Goth (@TheBloggingGoth) May 22, 2014
It’s not like we haven’t noticed this problem with The Guardian before – a paper that you’d assume would be sympathetic to the middle-class British institution of Goth has been making mistakes since we started blogging in 2011 – along with most other major news outlets!
Conversely, regional titles seem to cover it best. Early today we read an article in the Plymouth Herald that stood out for one good reason above all the national competitors. It talked to actual Goths, and the comments below this – and many other stories – have been some of the best reading we’ve done today.
That’s what it’s about, of course. Those of us who know it isn’t a fashion trend, or celebrity fad, or even celebrating ‘one day a year’. Fly the flag today, for sure, but don’t put it in a cupboard and forget about it until next May 22nd. As Ministry remind us…
In October last year, The Blogging Goth attended some of the sessions of the inaugural Gothic Manchester Festival. This was convened to celebrate the launch of the academic Centre for Gothic Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Staff at MMU have now released a retrospective video of the Festival, including a brief appearence by Tim Sinister of The Blogging Goth. You can see the video below, and browse the festival pages here!
Another busy Whitby Goth Weekend has come to a finish, and whilst there we learned from Twitter that a new parody video was in the works. We at The Blogging Goth were very interested, as we helped on the technical side with 2012’s Whitby Gothic Style parody song, and we know Goths have the best sense of humour and often the best technology too! So check out the WGW #Selfie video, hot from the Alternative Model Contest 2014!
After cringing and laughing knowingly a bit, we got in touch with the Alt Model Contest organisers to find out more! Their statement said:
All this talk of ‘Selfies’ lately from Hollywood Celebrities to anyone hoping to get a few likes on their Facebook page, had the team at the “Alternative Model of the Year” Competition thinking – and what they come up with was a goth style and rather tongue in cheek parody of the famous #Selfie track by the Chainsmokers, working alongside Cogwheel Films who produced and filmed the video.
This is our way of having a little fun, [and] showing that Goths aren’t all doom and gloom, and like to have a little fun… and of course in a light-hearted way [we’re] making fun of mainstream pop culture.The Whitby Goth Weekend is sponsoring this year’s 2014 national auditions and this is our way to cross promote – we hope this video shows a younger side to the festival, the next generation of alternative subcultures.
The song featured also made comedic references to the amount of photographers congregating during the weekend, in part the video is an ironic take on this.
There definitely was no shortage of photographers on the day wanting to snap a photo of the model featured, whilst filming that section of footage, all the photographers were really helpful and great to work with and we were delighted to include them in the video.Of course, if we may mention: the main reason of the video is to show a younger funkier Whitby and to show this music festival to all ages and isn’t restricted to the older fans of the bands, along with the festival being open to a wide range of subcultures.
We did also film people in Whitby on the day. The response from those participating was great, as everyone seemed really enthusiastic and up for being part of it.… the Selfies, which people later submitted via email as the number of pictures coming through was overwhelming. Over 250 selfies submitted and 180 featured, [but] unfortunately not all could make the edit.
As stubborn opponents of most conventional social fads, we’re only vaguely familiar with the Selfie itself, so we asked for a bit of clarification from Anne Burns, PhD candidate at Loughborough University and academic researcher into the world of photography online. She’s been looking at the Selfie mania in particular, so she had the following to say on the Chainsmokers original first:It’s oddly self-loathing, as well as selfie-loathing, as it’s both celebrating and condemning the figure of the selfie-taker. You have alongside the t-shirts of ‘Fuck Your #Selfie’, and the intentionally vapid and mean character of the lead female, there’s the curious presence of scores of genuine selfies – all of which act to contest the message the song itself is promoting.
[It’s] a much gentler affair – even though the lead female is still seen as vapid, talking of modelling and bitching about someone’s shoes, the content is a nod to Goth cliches, which is done with fondness, rather than disdain as in the original. The comment on “cobble and stilettos – are they trying to kill me?” will bring a smile to anyone’s face who has been to Whitby.Likewise, the dilemma over two black eyeliners and a corset that might be ‘mainstream’ are gentle parodies of Goth culture, rather than outright mockery.The selfie also plays less of a role here, as a symbol of negative ideas about identity – partly because other people are depicted doing it, so it’s not just her own flawed practice, but she’s also a much more likeable and amusing character, so what kind of photos she takes doesn’t immediately equate to being vapid.
The Blogging Goth 