Scene Kids Are Not Goth

Humans like to categorize things. It makes them happy. Not all all humans. It doesn't make Goth girls happy, it just makes them feel superior to other less dark and enlightened folk.

The Goth scene has generally had a rep for being insular, and for good reason. While there are bubbly Goths and friendly Goths, many of the Goth scene's reigning kings and queens have very specific ideas on who is Goth enough to really be Goth. Everybody else is just a Scene Kid.

Scene Kids follow "the scene," that is, whatever is popular in clothing dress and music. What's currently popular? Well, it looks deceptively like Goth, or at least elements of Goth.

According to Goths I know, Hot Topic used to be a goth store, or at least it was, for about the first two years it opened. Then it became "mall goth," which I believe is code for "Damn Hot Topic for making widely available the clothing that made us feel as though we were different." Really hard to be different when everyone is wearing the same vinyl corset. Today, Goths have moved on to calling Hot Topic a "scene store." Strangely, they are less snobbish about shopping there than they were when it was known as the "mall goth" store.

Goths have a problem. People keep stealing their scene. First it was Emo. Which people started making fun of about five or six minutes after it was cool. Now it's the Scene Kids. Some people describe them as cheerful Goths who like bright colors.

But Scene Kids don't just steal from the Goths. They steal from everywhere. They got the skinny jeans on guys thing from Emo, they love the Retro look, there are elements of Punk and Skater fashion.

One thing they do tend to have in common is the pin straight often multi-colored hair. Deep side parted bangs either dyed coal black or multi-colored. Guys or girls, many of them have a thing for eyeliner.

Another thing they tend to do is to stay connected via texting, emailing and social networking. This is true of this entire generation coming up--but Scene Kids use these methods more to show off their cool Sceneness to other Scene Kids.

Like most fashion and music movements, including Goth, Scene Kids are looking to express individuality--and that means that they've all started to look the same. Wearing the same ironic t-shirts, sporting similar hairstyles and posting the same sorts of pics on social networking sites, Scene Kids have now had enough time to become a cliche themselves. And that's something they have in common with Goths.

Scene Kids, like Goths, quickly developed a sense of irony when it comes to their status as a cliche. Scene Kids are still pointing out that some Scenesters are posers, but many are savvy enough to know that deep down we're all posers. And that's not always a bad thing.