Whither gothdar?

[reddragdiva]

Paul Hodkinson (who reads this, but if he wants to reveal his journal that's up to him ;-) says in his book Goth (this is not an exact quote) that goths tend to spend a lot of time in the subculture ... so if you say you're not a goth but you spend quite a lot of time there and look like one, you're a f*cking g*th.

From the gothdar poll, my new rule of thumb might be: if you know what "gothdar" is without further explanation, you're probably a goth. If it's always on involuntarily, you're definitely a goth, or at least a pervy goth fancier. (ronebofh?)

Do your eyes spot goths before you've consciously noticed them? Does someone trigger your gothdar then you have to try to work out what set it off and whether it was correct?

The obvious question is: why gothdar? Why is it always on? What does it do for (or against) you?

Comments

[deeply-spurious.livejournal.com]

Actually I believe I could define it reasonably well - and arguably did ;P - but the problem is that goth types always want to use things like Wiki entries as a means to fight their own parochial battles and the result is that you get definitions that draw massive attention to rather unhelpful distinctions of little use to the general reader... The example of saying categorically that NIN are not goth (and I don't care how it is worded) is a good one... it just isn't remotely helpful to anyone (except people fighting rather silly battles within the goth scene that is). Indeed arguably it is both confusing and misleading. But as I say, I don't have the time or energy for such arguments unfortunately.

[reddragdiva]

Yeah. I've tried NPOVing the entry from time to time, but it's a losing battle.

You think that one's bad, try the Linux entry. Leaves Israel-Palestine in the dust for bad advocacy ...