Kitten Kochanie
I can definitely agree that most of the nu- and pastel-goths aren't well informed with the history of goth, and that's a shame. Though most of the "goths" I've met have been of the mallgoth variety, so I'm still just more preoccupied (and amused/annoyed) by them than the nu- and pastel-goth trends. Freaking mallgoths.
stare When you love something, like a subculture, you want to see it done right. Which is why I understand the "I don't think this is goth for these reasons" argument is pretty valid. It's not about keeping people in or out, or protecting their sandbox (which is a very apt analogy, by the way), it's just about maintaining established traditions and keeping goth "pure". If anything and everything could be considered goth just because you want it to, then goth loses a lot of it's "specialness", it's "uniqueness", what makes it different from mainstream "dark" fashions. Just wearing black clothes doesn't make you goth. Wearing heavy dark makeup and black lipstick doesn't make you goth, as she said in the video. While fashion and aesthetics is a part of it, and some value the aesthetics more than others, it's not all that goth is.
To be a goth, one of the first and most important things you need to do is at least know of the original music and appreciate it and respect it. You don't have to listen to it constantly, or exclusively, or even really like it, but you do have to know it's history and it's impact on the subculture that followed it. Goth does have rules, and these new "goth" spin-off cultures don't follow those rules, therefore, they are not goth. The whole "inverted cross" nonsense isn't goth at all, as she said in her video, and I agree 100%. Most of the people sporting these images and icons have absolutely zero idea of what they actually mean, their history, and what sort of message they're conveying to the world. They do it "ironically", hence why nu- and pastel-goth is often also called "hipster goth".
She didn't make the video to change minds. Like I said, I'm sure she just got a ton of messages asking what she thought of these subcultures and rather than answering each one with a copy-paste message, she decided to make a video explaining her thoughts. A lot of her videos are like that, just explaining her thoughts and getting her ideas out there. (Hate to keep repeating myself, but I'm having a rough brain day, and it's been kind of hard for me to properly convey thoughts in general, so you must excuse me for that.)
I agree with things she has to say pretty frequently. For being as young as she is, she's incredibly articulate, informed, and calm about it. I do wish she wouldn't sound so nervous in her videos, her voice sounds shaky all the time, because I don't think she needs to be nervous, you know? She may be one of those people that no matter how often you do something it still makes you nervous doing it before a camera, I know I'm that way. Or that could just be her normal voice, I'm not fully sure. But I like her a lot, I like her videos, her thoughts are pretty good, and her makeup and hair tutorials, as few and far between as they've become lately, are pretty awesome, too.
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