goth

There's more to the gothic subculture than most people think. Being a 'goth' is wrongly interpreted because a lot of younger kids (in the range of, say 13 - 18) made the gothscene rather stereotypical. If you would ask 20 random people what they think of if they hear "gothic", they'll probably say "black"/"piercings"/"morbid". This is not true, actually, gothic was commercialized by bands like Marilyn Manson and Nightiwish. In fact, gothrock has it's roots in new wave, wich was a reaction to punk in the late 80's. But there's a lot of other music goths listen too, hence there are a lot of different "goths": cybergoths, punkgoths, victorian goths, wavegoths, gothrockers, or combinations of those. All of these groups listen to different styles of music and dress differently: Cybergoths: listen to electro(general name for industrial/neofolk/ebm/darkwave/etc.) and wear a lot of latex/pvc or neon colours. Usually they've got a lot of synthetic coloured hairpieces in their hair, but there are a lot of exceptions. Punkgoths: are a combination of goths and punks, they usually listen to punk, punkrock and gothrock. Victorian goths: these are the goths people 'know', they listen to gothicmetal and a bit of gothrock in general. But this can vary. Victorian goths wear a lot of velvet. Usually gowns, corsets and other clothes who could've come right out of the dark ages. Wavegoths: this type of gothic has a lot of different names, were I live, they're called wavegoths, but I've heard other labels, so this may vary. Usually people who kind of "imitate" the newwavers of the late 80's. They wear lots of black and adore vintage, normally, but again, there are exceptions. Gothrockers: is a part of the subculture who listens to gothrock. A lot of gothrockers claim that that's all they need to be goth. For them, the music is the most important, the looks don't matter all that much. And at last, we've got the so-called "wannabe's"/"posers" or "spooky-kids": these are the people who - in my eyes - made the subculture stereotypical and commercial. But I'm old enough to not blame them, they're just kids who want to be someone. Anyway, they wear a lots of black, lots of black makeup, listen to commercial gothic. A couple of examples: marilyn manson, slipknot and of course the more commercial gothrockbands. But bear in mind that my definitons are stereotypical. There are thousands of goths out there who can't be labeled like this. Some cybers listen to newwave too, etc. I hope I 've helped you with explaining the gothic subculture. p.s: I am belgian, so excuse me if I wrote things wrong. My english isn't perfect. =)