Reading free gothic novels online got me thinking. I’m the exact right age to have a pre-internet and post-internet life, and the difference is profound. Pre-internet, finding obscure books and movies and music and fashion took so damn much research, and either spending a lot of money or knowing the right people. It was a lot of work, but that work gave us a lot of pride in the things we managed to find and create. And often, you just couldn’t get what you wanted at all and had to settle for something sort of close.

Forging an alternative look or lifestyle, even in a smallish way, was a matter of hard work but also of luck. A dedicated goth or punk in London or L.A. or even Baltimore could find shops and clubs that included their interests even in the ’80s and especially ’90s, but the geographically (or otherwise) challenged among us had to make do with much less.

I was somewhat geographically challenged, somewhat culturally challenged, and fairly personally challenged in my teens and twenties. Because of family dysfunction and other factors, priority number one for me was becoming and staying financially independent, and I often sacrificed personal expression and “finding my tribe” for grades and health insurance and such. I was also severely depressed for several of those years and after convincing myself to get dressed and go to my shitty job (with great insurance), I didn’t have energy for much else. I was able to indulge a bit here and there, but I could never manage enough to qualify as a “true goth” back then and the small bit of clubbing I got to do never included a goth night. Mostly because I didn’t have a car and most of my friends were into country music.* So I have deep respect for the Eldergoth Elder Gods, but also sometimes envy and bitterness about the things I gave up to get where I am.

But this was about the internet, wasn’t it? I didn’t have my own computer until I graduated college, but my school did have shared computers I could chat on. The graphics sucked and connections were slow as molasses in January, but the internet was the only place I could really be myself. I had a cheesy poetry website and chatted on forums that no longer exist. I called myself Shards of Glass, after one of my cheesy poems, and poured out my frustrations online. But I wasn’t a true net.goth either–I was never part of alt.gothic or its generation of newsgroups. I was just part of that geocities generation, though my site was actually on Tripod and not recoverable. I have never been cool in any way. Not even in a limited ’90s goth way. And those poems are lost forever. (Though that might be a good thing.)

So now I’m in my 40s, and I have typical midlife responsibilities, but for the first time in my life I also have time and energy to pursue my interests, and even a little money to put into them. The internet has made that so much easier than it ever was before, but it also reminds me what I could have been if my life had been just a little different. If I’d been a little braver, lived a little closer to a subculture hot spot, had a little different priorities or a better handle on my depression.

People can be hard on baby bats, especially the really young ones, but I’m secretly a little jealous of them. Today, even a baby bat in the middle of nowhere can use the internet to find music, fashion, makeup tutorials, movies and books, and most importantly to connect with gothic culture in a way only the lucky few could achieve before the internet took over the world. Sure, it attracts more people who really are going through a phase, or who don’t understand the deeper currents of what they’re looking at, but I fully accept that as the price for reaching all those lost souls that used to just stay lost. In my experience, the ones who complain the most about “the internet ruining everything” or “baby bats today just don’t understand” are the ones who don’t even recognize the ways they were lucky, to live in the right place and meet the right people to build or join a scene in real life. The rest of us know how hard things can get.

*I did have one friend into metal, but she didn’t have a car. We did make it to a Depeche Mode concert once, by bus. I also went to see Rascal Flatts once, because my car-having friends had an extra ticket and I was curious. We had nothing in common but they were really, really nice people.