Goth GF Analysis
Why do guys on the internet want a Goth GF? The Goth Girl is mysterious. She is visibly “not like the other girls”. She stands out, and even more, she is cool. When depicted in memes and media, she is often above what’s petty, in control of herself and strong willed, those who desire her often have a crush but are too hopelessly uncool to ask her out.
This cartoonish dynamic spread far beyond cartoons, and into the real world. To understand the desire for an “alt girl” beyond the simplicity of “I like dyed hair”, or “I saw a cute goth girl when I was a Kid" we have to look at the psychological value of the Aesthetic.
In dark hair, dark makeup, and pale skin we find a revival of the Victorian femme. Morbid, curious, and refined. A product of the increasing popularity of novels and essays in the public, she is far more individual in her thinking than centuries past. Fashion pieces from this time remain staples of the Goth aesthetic even today.
In memes, it would seem as though she is the direct counterpart to the morose, musically inclined, Doomer, clad in nightly colors. An Ophelia to his depressive Hamlet. This was the case in decades past, before the Internet: When a modern “doomer” would have found an outlet for his dissatisfaction and enjoyment of music in one of the many subcultures, where he would have been met with other young people, friends and potential romances. Today there are no real subcultures, materially at least. All of these feelings have been reduced to digital moans let out in online forums.
Long before the internet, subcultures generally arose through meetings of people who shared an interest, this was accelerated with the formation of Popular Culture, allowing for massive amounts of people to share the same media, products and fashion. Of course, the dominant pop culture gave birth to discontents, who formed counter cultures, namely rockers, hippies, and punks, all of which spawned their own sexual desires.
All of these subcultures formed around musicians and bands, took on a fashion, a new language, and often a politics and way of life. From the beginning, there were those who wished to be counter culture, without being counter culture, posers who put on a costume, often to get laid or otherwise get clout. While this can easily be levied at modern goth kids, there is far more to the phenomena.
Goth style was solidified in the 1980’s, with dark wave and eventually goth music itself. Countless spinoff cultures, like emo and scene, relished in the same dark aesthetics of dyed hair, sensitivity, and communities formed by and for outcasts.
Here we get into the real issues, for the people who want a goth girlfriend, how many have listened, or even know who the Sisters of Mercy are? And for the Goth girls themselves, how many have been to a concert? The Goth of today is atemporal, because it is no longer a subculture, it exists solely as an aesthetic, one without history or culture.
Where does it come from? Not from old goth artists, but rather from the cartoons they watched as children. The only exposure young people had to goth girls was through cartoons, and so the only real goth girls are Raven, Sam and Shego. So all it takes to be goth, is to take on the aesthetics of a cartoon.
We are left then, with the question of why guys online are into goth girls. Previously in this series I looked at the idea of the “Girl Next Door” and her importance. Let’s delve deeper into this idea, that young men who grow up with restrictive parents, and who experience childhood as a series of cartoons and games, miss out on the formative experiences of other children that lead to the healthy development of the personality, and in particular, the healthy growth of the Anima, the archetype of femininity formed by the women around them.
The anima of these young men was formed by the media they consumed, her aesthetics are cartoonish, but verily she is animated with their souls. As real as anything else in their lives.
This story is not unique to the internet, and not even unique to the 21st century. We find the perfect archetype of this child in the cartoonist R Crumb. Crumb and his two brothers were raised in an extremely abusive household. They found comfort and meaning in the cartoons and old movies they watched on TV.
Each brother reacted to this abuse and media in very different ways. Robert took on cartooning, expressing his subsequent perverse sexuality, caused by his abuse, in the form of the cartoons he grew up making and enjoying. Max raped women, and then settled into an extremist ascetic lifestyle, producing art and meditating. The most tragic of the three is Charlie, who I won’t walk about here, but you should watch the documentary Crumb to explore this crazy family.
I have found their struggles and dynamics to be a very clear parallel to some very common problems on the internet. Seriously, give it a watch!
In R Crumb’s cartoons we are met with depictions of his Anima in the Women he draws. Massive Amazons, human and anthropomorphic animals. Crumb is in fact the originator of the Furry art style. His childhood development also mirrors that of modern furries very clearly.
An animated anima.
Addendum: As a brief aside, I’d like to look at why a young fellow might seize upon a goth girl as his girl next door rather than a “normal” character. Namely the child who is already an outsider seeing a character who is also outside, which is the same mechanism punk music had, outsiders hailing popular discontents. The goth character is the one who would get him, because they are both not like the others. As I mentioned earlier, in the past alternative fashion may have actually led to interactions like these, while the modern meme proliferates only greater isolation. This is a long winded way of saying that she’s relatable to the kind of guy who shares the memes, but nonetheless, it’s worth a look!
The guy who wants a Goth girl may very well have had lived experiences that produced this desire, but I suspect most developed this fantasy through an interest in cartoons, due to a bleak childhood. This is why the Goth Girl is the big tiddy goth gf, a proxy mother, meant to comfort and pacify young men, rather than incite them to action.
So rather than finding an active social outlet where he could meet other people, collectively, we decided to stay at home and go online. Remain voyeurs to a potent past and a lively but nonexistent world of media, while the present and future are wasting away.
This may seem like an exaggeration, of course there are active scenes! Just not enough, and clearly there are none for the young people trapped in the web. For art to flourish, artists need a community, to grow with one another, to have a greater direction. I really wonder how much art we are missing out on because massive portions of our generation decided to remain online.
Wild Men wrote on the symbolic character of this dynamic: I feel like this might be tied to the same kind of relationship that Hermes has with Hekate: the Phallic God of Fertility and Life entering into the chthonic Goddess. The female reproductive system is not only our entry into the world but is also where we gestate like a corpse rotting in the ground to provide new life from out of the soil. The penis, corpse, and seeds are the bios entering the thanatos of the vagina, grave, field and thus are given a womb and tomb. The Goth GF is thus one of the most intrinsically female archetypes on the internet as it taps into the natural chthonic potential of the feminine receptacle which is the ancient counterpart to the virile masculine life-givers that internet guys would be if they realize themselves as and escape the matrix of the internet (yet another tomb and womb...)
I am going to explore these themes further in my case studies, and perhaps, if you are all interested, in a look at Furries as a whole. Through memes, we can gain insight on the collective social ills of modern man. As always, remember Memes Matter.