punkrockstories

Earlier in the week I decided to check on the site stats for monkiboi dot net and found two or three site I hadn’t seen before clocking up marginal hits. After checking further they turned out to be Livejournal Manson freaks who’d decided to hotlink a blackbox screenshot I have of a Manson theme and use it as a background to their own site.

Initially I was peeved as hotlinking (and with no credit either) is up there amongst other web crimes such as eating babies. My next thought was to substitue the image with something altogether less savoury. The idea lasted all of 10 seconds when I realised I was being a bit petty about it all.

We’re talking marginal hits so as far as bandwidth theft is concerned, so what? It’s a non issue. The non-credit bit hurt but that was just my ego and that’s big enough as it is. I’m confused as to how these site found the image as they don’t appear to link to each other and google doesn’t turn up anything but what the hell.

I guess the reason I’m feeling so generous about the whole thing is that these people remind me of my teenage years. Yes I was a goth. My teenage years seemed to be full of the usual self doubt and I tended to express my fears by listening to the Sisters, The Birthday Party, ASF and the Banshees. Life didn’t feel pleasant but at least my music made me feel better.

Reading a livejounal written by a goth is a one way trip to anguish city with it’s only stop being torment mall, but that was me all those years ago. I so wanted to stand out from the crowd, to be noticed but to also be accepted by the “normal” people around me, the problem being acceptance and (the idea of) individuality are poor bedfellows. Trust me, you may think you’ve managed to combine the two but your friends just think you’re odd.

The idea that wearing dark eyeliner and having black spiky hair as a way of expressing your individuality is also at odds with the fact that every goth looks just like you. My teenage brain couldn’t cope with that one and so I dismissed it entirely. Of course this is entirely my take on the whole thing and some would argue they do it for different reasons. What do I care?

I’d like to think I wasn’t as anguished, disturbed and fucked up as these people appear to be but I’d probably be suffering from a selective memory. Still, I thought I’d give them a break.