Goths - The Keystone species
Carter's Outbursts - episode 1
I’m bringing the satire articles back. I’ve missed them.
Before we begin, I feel I must let you know I’ve used my sense of humour for this one, so it gets dark.
Goths - The keystone species
Britain is going through a depression. People, from the Arts and otherwise, are now enjoying claiming that Britain does not have a culture, that British people merely steal other cultures.
But I ask, is that not a culture in and of itself?
And, if true, can I get a pirate ship and a parrot?
I want to address these fools who say Britain has no culture. We brits do have a culture, it’s just in a bit of a mess so it’s hard to figure out what is ours and what is the ex’s, and what the new guys have brought in. Britain is like an apartment in a global city. Only one guy applied for the flat we share, but he’s taking it in turns to nap on the kitchen floor with his mates. It’s odd.
But it’s fine, I guess. We have Pulp and pies and Hugh Grant movies.
Do come in. Don’t mind the mold, and the cover-ups, and the collapsing shopping centres, and the decay, and the layers of incompetence, and the manufactured schisms between us. And the violence. There’s a culture here, yeah, a few actually, but the original is so old it’s forgotten where it starts and where other cultures end, like the tragic end to a welding fetishist’s house party.
Our identity was not obliterated overnight.
There has been a death by a thousand cuts. Primarily, haircuts.
At least, I think the modern Brit has a bad haircut.
Otherwise why are they always covering their heads with hoods?
The only ‘hoodie’ the goth Britain would have would be Death herself.
So, considering haircuts, I came to a conclusion about the state of the nation.
There was a time for glorious hair.
That time is the past.
But that time should also be now.
Right now.
BEHOLD
Goths, the crows of the human species.
The common ancestor to both Emos and Steampunks, Goths are a keystone species that for a very long time maintained the complex and fragile British ecosystem.
Stalking cemeteries and the big Tesco alike, Goths had for a long time been the spiritual backbone to the UK.
They were the corset that bound us together.
Relentlessly persecuted by scumbags and dullards and dumbfucks alike, the Goths continued bravely, adding a Victorian romanticism to the decay of the yookay (I just learned that word). They reminded us that it was okay to dress nice, to wear pants which are not your most comfortable but which signal to strangers that you have the capacity to look after yourself even at the expense of getting hot squished balls.
Now we are a country of train carriage open-panted ball-scratchers and maniacs.
Where are the goths?
Last I heard, they flew to greener pastures. America has a growing goth culture, which is probably the best place for it. Lots of pine trees, mist, lots of dead alien societies hidden under brutalist buildings. An aspiring Goth can really thrive in America, where the depression is a sort of mask you put on, rather than a constant genuine feeling that everything is fucked.
It’s the difference between putting on a depeche mode album to voluntarily listen to samples recorded in derelict factories, and being forced to live inside one all the time and being told that complaining is probably criminal now.
Perhaps the goths flew away on their lacy wings because this place isn’t safe for their ideas any more. Here in the UK if you talk even artistically about death there’s a risk the government might sign you up to be killed and have your organs harvested, so it’s just not worth the hassle now, unless you like the idea of being cast in resin and used as a paperweight for some vast demon that lives under parliament.
That said, if you did have some organs removed it might help with the corset thing, so if the government could come up with a list of organs, that would be better than just taking all of them.
Below image: Dead man in suit. He was the coffee boy for the government, they tested the new euthanasia machines on him. Seem to work, which is surprising since they are the only bits of tech actually made in the UK.
So, we need to drill deeper. We need to do some psychological fracking.
Goths
Goth culture is in a way a response to the grimness of things, but it is also a poetic antidote to it. Yes, things die, and that’s kind of hot actually because we can prance around on tombstones that wouldn’t be there if things didn’t die. Goths have a special place in my heart because I am one, deep down. We share the same musical taste, but I can’t wear coordinated outfits because I am a comedian and have a genetic disposition to dressing like the lovechild of a clown and an English tutor.
Anyway, the saving of Britain’s culture will, seriously, involve the reintroduction of Goth and other subcultures into the wild.
We don't see them in shopping centres any more. Just puffer jacket-clad swordsboys and stolen telephone shops, and the SKY TV granny botherers.
Whenever you see those, make sure to tell the meandering pensioners that the SKY TV they are selling is crap. Do it. It’s hilarious.
So culture is stagnating. Everyone dresses the same. Driving past more than one bus stop at any time of day feels like you're stuck in a time loop.
Black coat hood up shite trainers.
Black coat hood up shite trainers.
Black coat hood up shite trainers and a machete for some reason.
Maybe a Peaky Blinders cosplayer every now and again, enough of a fashion jolt to remind you that Matalan still exists, that bastard cousin to TKmaxx that only shows up for weddings, funerals, and court appearances, that devious triumverate of vomiting into an active fight in a hotel lobby and briefly distracting them before they return to punching each other in the head, knocking their singular brain cell from earhole to earhole.
I may write a story from the brain cell’s perspective.
[ this does not mean I don’t like Matalan. I quite like their suits. I would be happy to do a brand deal when this post goes viral. Thanks ]
There should be people with hippy clothes stalking the coffee shops, people with big spiky purple hair ducking under vintage bookshop doors so low you’d be forgiven for thinking the Ancient Egyptians built them. There should be tomboys existing well into their thirties, scene kids posting horrendously noisy memes to the prototypal instagram. It should be 2016 again, and the student loans company or the government should be paying for these delightful after-eight themed cocktails I keep drinking.
Okay, I get the looting thing now. I’d do some looting for some thin mints.
Alas, I now I am employed, and I am now paying for them, precisely a decade after I was sat under fake vines, working my way through the menu like I’d get a special acheivement if I did it all in one night.
I got half way, and unlocked the gift of teleporting into my mate’s bathroom.
At some point we all got old. You probably don’t think I am old. I am 32, and from the handful of conversations I’ve had with my readers I have discovered that apparently that isn’t a very big number. But it feels big. It’s half a stack in Minecraft. I’ve got a lot done in that time, and I plan to do a lot more. But should I do it in the UK, or has culture really gone the way of the last goth, falling asleep at desk 49 in building 17, after working on case 987767? Has lady Britain got too many bloody deadlines to find time to put the eyeliner on? Has she moshed her last mosh?
Has it all gone… wrong?
“Yeah, I’ll come out tonight, maybe, but I’ve got a thing. There’s an issue with the Henson case. Yeah. Yeah. I miss the gang too. How is Harry? I knew they’d break up. Yeah, yeah I’ll call him.”
And one by one the cuts to those strings that bind us come like lightning flashes in the dark, and one by one the neurons of our collective brain are severed. The sinew of groups and culture fall apart when everyone grows up all at the same time. And there is no playfulness any more, no youthful enthusiasm for the future.
I hate to say it’s the phones. But it might be the phones.
Back in the glorious peak of the goth days, phones had either an orange or blue screen. It cost £1.30 to look at a single boob, and you always regretted it. Now you can’t even get half a freddo for that much money, and the tits on those frogs are horrendous.
We are too reliant on phones now.
I have friends who call me from my front door, too anxious to knock, in case knocking will activate some quantum switch in my house, turning me into a serial killer.
Jokes on them, phone signals do that. I’ve seen the leaked documents. I’ve seen the hole in Antarctica. The lizard people only lasted this long because they didn’t invent social media. If they want to see each other they have to hop in their discs and hover through those bloody wounds in spacetime which chew and bite and scream. They have to access hell to cross the dimensions between here and there. Sometimes they even have to go through Manchester.
What do we humans do with our tech?
We look at AI-generated fat cats inflating and flying around, whilst on the toilet. This is somehow less overwhelming now than talking to people.
The modern world means we’re closer together, and those lines between subcultures are blurring. You’re apparently a goth now if you wear black eyeliner. That’s it. The definitions are being reduced until such a time that they are meaningless.
My solution to this, obviously, is to bring an asteroid to Earth.
You’ll have seen it on the news.
My idea is that the asteroid will incite in the average person a gloom usually reserved for goths, and in doing so, will revive the spirit of goth.
And with the spirit of goth alive and well, Britain will be saved.
But let’s not save it yet, because its current state is good for songwriting.
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I have been Phillip Carter, and you have been someone who is possibly called George.