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Rather, in boiling it down to three parts fashion to one part music (which wouldn’t be quite so insulting if they didn’t list black-clad youths and our “apocalyptic” racket after an archaic definition of Goth as an “uncivilized or ignorant person”) they have reminded us that the guardians of language have not kept up with all the ways in which this word has evolved, its myriad meanings.
    What about the academics, then? Yes, they too have tackled the question. In the past decade, several dense explorations of our spooky sub-cultural capital have emerged to line university library shelves — essays and treatises on Goth identity by curious English professors and music critics and sociologists and historians. If you devour these works you may come out armed with more highfalutin words to describe our bonds (and our bondage attire) but not a useful definition of What Is Goth.
    In defense of hardworking dictionary editors, reporters and scholars everywhere, this is, after all, an unpopular culture. It not only lurks in shadows, it lingers, it loves, it
lives
to be mysterious. Despite this, the first rule of Fright Club has never been “Don’t talk about Fright Club.” In fact, quite the opposite. Goths spend an extraordinary amount of time discussing and debating and defining their Gothness. The way Goths talk about being Goth (or not Goth) is as intrinsic to the culture as big boots and a copy of The Cure’s Disintegration . It is precisely our distinct lexicon (and the black humour that goes with it) that most distinguishes us from the similarly pale-faced, apocalypse-obsessed Norwegian black metal church burners, emo wrist-cutters and anyone else wandering back alleys in cloaks after dark. If you truly want to understand us, you need to participate in the ongoing dialogue about What Is Goth. So why hasn’t all this (pierced) navel-gazing translated to the world at large?
    It’s fair to say that Goths aren’t too keen to talk to outsiders about this lifestyle. Perhaps because the conversations so often begin with “Why do you wear black?” — a question to which most of us truly have no answer. Or perhaps because no matter what we say in interviews the media always spits out the same shallow stereotype. For every bang-on interpretation (
Saturday Night Live
’s “Goth Talk” or the Goth Kids of
South Park
), there are many more network crime dramas or daytime talk shows that get it completely wrong — all blood drinking and Satanic Bible toting. Granted, it’s hard to blame them. If we can’t even define ourselves, how is a TV writer (who probably works in a state where it’s sunny all the time) supposed to get it right?
    Once upon a time, being misunderstood was not actually a big deal. It made us laugh, a somewhat welcome affirmation of our outsider status. Then came the Columbine massacre in 1999, wrongly attributed to teenage Goths, and a shitstorm of panic rained down on trench coat–clad kids everywhere, especially in Middle America. Suddenly, the fact that the public at large had no clue what Goth was became a pretty big problem for a lot of people. Goths had joined the ranks of heavy metal music fans as alleged devil worshipping threats to The Children. We were victims of ignorance heightened by hysterical media stories and gossip.
    And that is one reason I wanted to write this book. Beyond my word nerdiness and my passion for documenting subculture, I wanted to do my best to counter the notion that Goth is about violence, about self-harm, about depression or destruction or evil. I knew that it was about music and fashion and art and history and the appreciation of nature. (Well, at least bats.) And I determined that in order to define this thing we call Goth — for myself, my fellow Goths and the world at large — I must actually define the entire Gothdom. (Yes, that’s a word. You can look that one up too.) And so here it is, a compilation and celebration of our obsessions, our heroes,