2004-05-07 - 7:01 p.m.

I have just invented a new word... well, sort of: I've just given it a meaning.

Thog: n. (Etymology: a reversed spelling of the word 'goth'. The word itself first appeared in 1935 in a humorous essay by James Thurber, when he described a badly tuned radio making noises like "thog, thog, thog") A person who thinks they are a goth, but who does not fit the full profile; a poser; a kindergothen.

The idea came to me when I was reading the web diary of an adolescent individual (who will remain anonymous, likewise their diary) who claims to be a goth type, when in fact, they merely sound whiny and hormonal as opposed to genuinely sauternine and angsty.

There's a *lot* more to being gothic than wearing tons of black and wierd makeup to make you look paler, etc. In fact, if you do that, you end up looking more like one of Dracula's brides; the only time I'd ever do anything like that would be if I was going to a dance club (which I've never done).

Real goths are often melencholy, but we're more like Nathaniel Hawthorne acknowledging the dark side of human nature than like Marilyn Manson whinging. (In fact, I think it was Marilyn Manson who really ruined the goth image by exaggerating it and exploiting it for sheer shock value. And then more holes ended up being put in the image by the Columbine assassins.) Real goths are well-read, intelligent, creative people who don't put a lot of value on the consumerist nonsense going on around them. They're apt to be seen volunteering at soup kitchens and shelters for the homeless or for women escaping abusive family situations, rather than haunting the malls. They're more likely to read "Psychology Today" or "Popular Science" or "Asmiov's Science Fiction Digest" than "Cosmopolitan". They're often computer geeks (which to some extent makes them 'cybergoths'!) or role-play gamers (with or without the vampire characters!) or artists or writers or musicians or dancers or philosophers... or the really renaissence ones who are a combination of all three and who actually create things, although it's not too unusual for our works of art or intellectual pursuit to have a touch of the emotional, even the unsettling, about it. Like the Romantics of the early 19th century (who are often a true goth's favorite writers/artists, or at least modern writers who have a dark, emotional style similar to the Romantics.), we're unafraid to acknowledge certain things and portray them in our art, things like fear and suffering and death and sexuality (not sex in the "bonk-your-head-off" sense, but in the sense of the erotic, the delicately suggestive), the kind of things that the average American materialist tends to overlook or brush aside.

We've been accused of being morbid, but there's more to it than that. We're not afraid to give the dark side of life a good, hard, honest look in the face: in fact, to be honest, the people who seem to insist on everything being sunshine and roses all the time scare me (mostly because they remind me of my mother's creepy relatives, who've been trying to cover up a family scandal for forty years and who don't realize that the family secrets are poisoning them and their kids). We're more realistic optimists than dry pessimists.

And then you get the thogs. The ones who think that wearing a lot of black makes you gothic. Black may be a primary color in the goth style spectrum, but other dark shades are acceptible: marroon, forest green, violet, midnight blue, silver, scarlet. I've even seen some goth-type ladies who wore white. Shades that suggest citrus fruits or sherbert don't exactly cut it if you're going for the look.

Another key sign that someone may be a thog: they think griping about minor misfortunes (ie. simple family frictions over curfews/allowance, etc.) qualifies as angstiness. WRONG! Angst is reserved only for the big stuff: in my case, what made me acknowledge and embrace being gothic was finding out the big family secret. I'd always thought my mother's mother was a nice grandma, but when I found out this woman covered up the child abuse that went on in her family and didn't do a single damn thing about it, well, let's say I lost my innocence and taking on this angsty style was my way of dealing with it.

I think of being goth as being similar to being gay: you either are or you aren't. You can't try to be it because if you do, you end up looking dumb. I kinda was a thog when I started out, but I soon realized there was a heck of a lot more to it than wearing black...

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