What does it mean to be gothic?

I walked into my nearest pop-up of Grimoire Academy’s Gothic Market prepared to do my first ever man-on-the-street coverage of an event for Some Elsewhere.

My sister was my volunteer camera operator, and I had my DJI Mic Mini clipped to a selfie stick because it was the best version of a microphone I had at the moment.

The core question I aimed to get at with patrons and vendors of this gothic gathering was this: What does it mean to be gothic? Or goth. Side question — are they the same thing?

After 3 hours or so observing and asking, I never got a clear, consistent answer. In fact, most people struggle to even provide a definitive answer for what it even meant to them personally. I’ll share some thoughts on that in a minute.

Here’s where it started…

As I prepared to approach people who didn’t ask me to come put them on camera so they could self-evaluate their personal identity in real time, I stepped into the convention center with a pretty stereotypical expectation in mind for what a goth crowd would be like.

We all had that corner of the high school hallway where they gathered before the bell rang. For some reason, it seemed like the young goth couples always had a stronger need to maintain continuous physical contact with one another than the rest of us did. Dark clothes, heavy makeup, macabre imagery. That’s what goth was to me. But the motivation for being goth—I hadn’t given much thought to it.

And somewhere along the line—perhaps through popular depictions, because I don’t think it was through personal experience—I had picked up the “knowledge” that gothic people were dark, cagey, gloomy. Maybe even a bit nihilistic.

I’ll jump ahead now in my takeaway from my attending of the gothic market: my assumptions were wrong.

While nobody seemed to give a clear answer on what it meant to be goth/gothic, one thing was consistent across the various people I interacted with, and that was that they were mostly positive, upbeat and cheery. It was not a pit of pouters or nihilists. They did seem kind of enthralled with the concept of death, but in sort of an artistic, dramatic way—not in a “I can’t wait to die” sort of way.

I spoke with a vendor who took porcelain dolls and added macabre and gruesome alterations to make them appear devilish and zombified before reselling. She talked about how cute they were and how, in her opinion, she was making them less creepy. She called them cute.

I asked a woman with shaved sides, a spiky mohawk and heavy black eye makeup and what it meant to be goth. She mentioned the importance of helping in your community. I can’t say I expected that one. But throughout the whole conversation, she and her partner were friendly, quick with a chuckle, and they left me with an invitation to their gothic rock opera show. There was no shadowy reticence. She looked goth, but didn’t sound goth to me.

I spoke with someone who collected bones, for no other reason than because they’re cool, including human bones. She wasn’t sure she considered herself truly goth, but also couldn’t really define what that label meant. I should have asked her if she was into community service…

I met a witch. A “forest witch from Colorado,” to be exact. When I asked what being a witch entailed, she talked of enjoying mountain mornings and being in nature. No potions or hexes (though she did make quick mention of having used the “money spell” in the past).

One answer that was kinda sorta consistent was that being gothic was tied to an appreciation for gothic music. Apparently there is gothic music. But what makes the music gothic? Again, answer unclear. But I was suggested some bands to check out that represented “the music”.

But does liking a certain type of music inherently make one start putting on a layer of white-base face makeup, then heavily accenting the eyes with pure black, and buying the skulls of deceased rodents for your personal collection? It doesn’t seem to me that “liking the music” is what brought all these folks to the market that day.

So, everyone pretty much dressed like what I expected the dress to be like at a gothic market. The visual stereotype rang true. But the stated reason for resonating with such an aesthetic were not only unexpected for me, but also unclear to me.

It seems to me that goths are gothic because they like being gothic. Don’t ask them to define it more than that. And don’t assume they won’t be interested in a wholesome community service project either, because it turns out they might actually be super into that. I’m still not sure.

— Camden

Most people are experts in something the rest of us have never heard of — a job, a scene, an isolated phenomenon, something you're three years deep in and never thought to explain.

Tell me what you know from the inside. Hit reply, or write to [email protected]. I read every one.