transcription: women be like "where can i find a goth gf?" my sister in christ we killed the american shopping mall and the goth girls lost their natural habitat
The idea that the only Habitat of the Goth is the American Shopping Mall is a misunderstanding, as it is the habitat of the American Mall Goth. Here's some other places where you can find Goths:
New Age/Witchcraft shops (The Witchy Goth).
Metal bars/Nightclubs (The Metal/Tradgoth).
Medieval/Victorian Old Towns (The Lesser European Dark Academic Goth, The Greater European General Goth)
Second Hand Bookshops (The Greater European Dark Academic Goth).
Museums (The Medieval Academic Goth).
Glasgow Central Station (The Glaswegian Cathouse Goth, also sometimes hybridised with the Electric Trainspotter due to interbreeding).
I know a lot of the reason people say malls are failing is the internet but I also feel like its due to rising inflation. The malls that still exist near me are so fucking expensive. Most of the stores you can't even get a T-shirt for less than $20.
Not to mention the privacy concerns. The local mall near me has banned face coverings and hooded jackets. I have no doubt's that somewhere along the line footage is being sold to data brokers
Hot Topic is losing its edge (seriously there was like one rack of fishnets and the rest was branded stuff including Bluey branded stuff) and Spencer's has been reducing locations.
They're definitely waning, I agree. They're still around, though. I still go there every once in a while for cheap, body safe jewelry and band t-shirts.
Goth girls were hunted to extinction by the rolling giants and the mall ecology collapsed as a result. The niche is now occupied by urbex enthusiasts and Julien Reverchon.
If you're in the US.... uh... the Gathering is in August? I dunno, I've been posting tour info on !gothindustrial@lemmy.world as I come across it... (edit: see here for a collection of tour/festival dates)
I've seen emo-themed nights advertised at clubs, for nostalgia. So they might just be called emo. Tho to bring in larger crowds they might use different terms, yeah.
On kind of a weird note, a kind of bright side... a number of former malls are basically being converted into... sort of really slapdash, improvised arcologies.
Most of the stores get resectioned and converted to basically apartments or condos, and sometimes a few are kept open as actual stores.
So... you can now, theoretically, be a goth girl who actually literally lives in a mall, possibly even directly inside a former Hot Topic or Spencers.
Here's Forbes laying out the case for this potentially making financial sense:
Ironically... the original intention of the guy that came up with the concept of a shopping mall... was that they would actually be much more like this, intentionally planned, walkable, largely self-sustaining, utopian communities, dreams of the 1950s/60s.
The mall was commercially successful, but the original design was never fully realized, as the intended apartment buildings, schools, medical facilities, park and lake were not built.
Yeah.
Malls were actually always supposed to be this way.
But we decided to build suburbs and highways instead, fundamentally missing the entire point, because Oil and Gas profits must go BRRrRr
They've been dying for a while. COVID was a bit of a deathblow, but the rot was setting in way before that. A combination of online marketplaces becoming the norm, and the progression away from people ever leaving their houses really ate away at American malls over the past two decades.
I don't live in America, but I spent a decent amount of time on r/deadmalls back in the day and found the factors behind these monoliths crumpling fascinating.
Honestly my interpretation is that many of the malls that were either built in places they shouldn't have been or built too large are finally dying off but I've still been some absolutely popping malls as recently as last week
Basically any mall that continues to rely entirely on a big box store or 4 to sustain themselves is crumbling but those which have refocused on smaller stores are in much better shape