I ran across this article from 2006: Don't mock goths: future's bright for the men and women in black - Features - Music - The Independent According to the study, goths tend to end up filthy rich later in life, and that is a curiosity, considering that the goth subculture is associated, stereotypically, with morose and gloomy subject matter, along with other forms of deviance. Perhaps the tendency to directly confront death, with a sense of fascination, is just a preoccupation of the intellegentsia? At any rate, I think this ought to make for an interesting discussion.
But that's far too logical for the unwashed masses. Could we think of more appealing and interesting explanations, such as deals with the Devil or black magic rituals? Lesser beings eat up that kind of bollocks as quickly as you can serve it.
"Adults who used to be goths" or "adults who were goths as teenagers and might or might not continue identifying with the subculture" would have been too many keystrokes for a thread title.
We steal the life and intelligence of people by sucking their blood. You know when you meet somebody who's just so dumb you can't believe it? Yeah, one of us got to 'im.
I'm leaning toward "deals with the devil" for the common man's purposes, but my own pet theory is that the goth subculture tends to be focused on counter-culture, which is the conventional venue for the deliberately unconventional and self-consciously perverse, which is something that moderately gifted individuals tend to sort of fetishize. And I think that gifted individuals have just always fetishized eccentricity. Read the Sherlock Holmes novels, and you'll find that the character, Sherlock, is presented deliberately as eccentric and moody, and he is designed to appeal to people of above-average intelligence. The way he is presented in A Study in Scarlet is almost like a male version of Abby, off of NCIS. Perhaps eccentricity is simply an intensely attractive form of mental vulnerability? And good show, Lazuri! That's a divine explanation!
"The Goth lifestyle allows you to lead a perfectly sane, stable lifestyle with a proper job, your own flat and even a family, then at the weekends or in your leisure time follow your Gothic activities," said Dr Brill."
Because we can. Goths are very nice people, who are more than capable of living their lives. While someone in their 50s won't look good in goth makeup and fishnet, people can still live the goth lifestyle without looking the part.
That's why when you reach your older age, you switch over to the more Morticia inspired styles of goth. You don't need to stop looking the part when you grow older, you just switch how you represent it. I know that when I'm an old lady, neighborhood kids will think I'm a witch.
Maybe they're stingy? Hard to say; some friends in college went through a goth period in the 1980's, but nowadays, I can't say they'd call themselves that, even if they still listen to Bauhaus, The Cure and This Mortal Coil. But the ones I know are very much struggling to get by, or have already died.
Oh, on older goths still looking the part, check out Leipzig, Germany. There are goth couples in their 80's, in the same role. Then again, they used to have a drinking game, in Leipzig, called "spot the goth." It fell out of fashion. It fell out of fashion because there wasn't enough beer in Germany for them to continue playing it, and they got tired of the hangovers. Kind of like furries in Portland, Oregon. I swear, they must have the highest ratio of furries to non-furries in the country.
I would rather drink their beer and gawk at their tourist traps, myself, like an obedient and agreeable consumer whore. I have a little piece of Heaven in Raleigh, and I am content to daydream about having enough money eventually to help finance theirs.
Well, I would love to die like a dog. The way we put down dogs looks actually kind of pleasurable. It's just a high dose of a tanquilizer, and the way an animal that has been stressed and scared for so long just becomes so calm and contented really gives me a lot of peace. When I take an animal to have it put down, I sort of smile and run my fingers through its fur. If I believed that a spirit departed from that animal, I would think I heard it say, "Yeah, that's better." If we woke up and decided to give humans such dignity, we would be a nicer generation. I think that one reason that goths might end up being prosperous is that the society we live in really has so much wrong with it. If you are not in some way wanting to revolt against it, then you are either a fool or just lacking in empathy. If goths are more people who have their eyes open and seeing the world for what it truly is, then I could see them having a bit more vision in general, which can turn into success. Another thing I would speculate on is that goths are sort of an artsy subculture, and taking time to develop your creativity can really lead to you having a great deal more potential in many occupations.
