I keep getting content where people are complaining about “goth” being treated as an aesthetic rather than a style associated with a musical scene. On one hand, I get it. I believe we have our resident punk who does something similar with how watered down that term has become. On the other hand, this isn’t something that should be morally blamed on individual “posers”. It’s the result of capitalism in the Information Age. Short interactions and low-overhead context switching means all interactions are biased towards being processed as brand interactions, where everything is about initial impressions and recognizability. In a very literal sense, there’s nothing outside of familiarity that can make people associate gothic dress with gothic music. And familiarity is a scarce commodity. Aesthetics under capitalism are merely the visual aspects of market demographics.