Corpse Party

power word kill

That’s all, carry on.

I think this goes back to the “what counts as goth” debate, to which every goth has a different opinion. Personally I think it’s important to remember that the music-based subculture called goth started in the late-70s, but many things and influences that are now deemed inherently gothic were around years before the subculture was officially born. The Addams Family? 60s. Vampira? 50s. Poe, Shelley, Stoker? 1800s. So even though the subculture wasn’t around, “goths” were already kind of a thing before that on a smaller scale and in other ways than through music. (It’s also important to remember that not even original goth music icons always identify as goth. Robert Smith actively tried to write happy songs to stop comparisons between him and Ian Curtis, and Andrew Eldritch seems to absolutely despise the subculture.)

Sometimes what is “original goth” (be it fashion or music) isn’t goth in style at all, it is simply what appealed to that gothy demographic at that time.

As all things do, the subculture has evolved and branched out, and even though its roots are in the music, it doesn’t seem to be the main focus anymore. How often do we come across a fellow goth and start talking about Killstar dresses rather than our favourite Bauhaus album? How many goths wear Batcave patches without ever having been there? In my opinion no one can expect any subculture to stay the same for 40 years, otherwise it will become outdated and stagnant. We have taken in more influences, we have more bands and genres that appeal to gothy folk and the same goes for films and books. There is much more media and influences for us to choose from than there was in the beginning. (I also think that a subculture can be based on music and still put emphasis on other social bonding factors that made it successful like fashion, freedom/lack of gender/sexual expression, counterculturism… Nothing is ever as simple as “we all loved this one exact same thing.”)

Long story short: To pretend that modern goth is about the music as much as it was 40 years ago is just not realistic and it overlooks a huge chunk of the growth that the subculture has gone through and the overall history of it. Being a music-based subculture has its perks (wear what you want, think what you want, believe what you want) but the “extra” things like literature and films are things that further the bonding. They appeal to a large amount of goths for a reason and they have become a part of the subculture, whether elitists like it or not.

Tumblr’s at it again, thanks to the new European Privacy Laws. There’s probably nobody who will read this, but it pissed me off so much that I decided to make a post about it. (Ignore the weird language mish-mash, depending on your country the language might differ.)

OK, so many of us get this screen when we try to access our dash:

Realise how the ‘OK’ button is a nice, attention-grabbing blue? If you’re like me, you’re not exactly into reading a 100 pages document and tend to just click it.

My tip? DONT. Instead click on ‘Manage Options’ right next to it:

Now you’ll see this page:

Still pretty harmless, right? That ‘Accept’ button is looking really attractive right now. Instead, click on Verwalten (Probably something like ‘Manage Options’ or something in english) and you’ll get to this page:

Now that’s not too bad, right? I just switched all the buttons to ‘off’, because I’m jealously guarding my personal information and don’t want Tumblr to go off and do who knows what with it. Looks like we’re done! But wait: There’s a SHOW option.

When we click on that one, what we will get is this:

A HUGE list with OVER 300 ENTRIES of companies that can use your data by default if you’d just clicked ‘OK’ on that very first page. Coincidence that this list is hidden that much? Me thinks not. They’re all switched on by default, but I am still a petty bitch that doesn’t want to give out her data, so I switched them all off. All 300+ of them. There is no option to switch them all off at once, and even if you disable all the options above, the companies are still switched on.