I found out around the age of 10 when i started to like this kind of music and like differnt colors and stuff.

I was about 4 or 5 when I first realized I was not "normal"... my mom would take me to the library once a week and after I started taking stacks of Halloween books home with me for a while she got upset and told me I couldn't get Halloween books anymore Of course I didn't think of myself as goth, I didn't find out about that until high school, but I knew I loved everything dark and weird

After I met my first boyfriend at 16 I wanted to dress in a more gothic style but he told me it looked stupid and I reluctantly stopped, but goth was always lurking at the back of my mind. When I met my current boyfriend in 2010 I decided to try some goth outfits around him and he said he really liked me dressed that way. That's how I knew it was meant to be

I don't think you can ever really put an age on it. Growing up I would watch the Adams family and the Munsters. I always tended to dress in darker colors. I would read Poe, Byron, Keets, and the rest. I listened to...well everything from the classic goth rock band all the way to Eminem (I was an angry white kid in the late 90s, it was the thing). I always enjoyed the old Gothic churches. In all honesty I think I knew I was Goth when I was around 8. I just didn't feel comfortable jumping in headlong, so I danced around, listening to the music, reading all the books, even lurking on forms every now and again, until about 6 months ago when I had my great epiphany. I'm not normal, and I never want to be.

I started getting into gothy clothing when I was in 6th grade, I was 11, but I didn't get into the music until the next year. My parents helped me get into it though they aren't goth themselves. That was six years ago and I can't imagine being any other way now.

It wasn't very long ago. I never really fit in with many people. I had max, 5 or 6 friends before I got to high school. Then I started listening to new kinds of music, and it just got darker and darker from there.

Almost 21, 6 years ago.
I am aware of having some "dark tendencies" already for many years before that, but I had not known anything about the goth culture of music before. It was not and still is not very known of in my country of origin. But then only thanks to the internet I was able to get to know more about goth and I fell in love with it...

My parents kept me from dark things for long, so I didn't get in contact early. But I always had a love for it, so I just looked around for it myself. Then by chance met a Goth, dear friend of mine, who gave me the courage to actually get into the scene. Always thankful for that.

I was about 17 then. But I had my love for dark things for a long time.

It was at a very young age at which I discovered my fascination with the macabre. From there I just grew more and more into it.

[quote="Gawain"]I don't think you can ever really put an age on it. [/quote]

I think that sentence says it. It's not at what age you [i]became[/i] goth but more of at what age you [i]Discovered you are[/i] goth. Goth is something you are born as, not some thing you become like a caterpillar becomes a butterfly even as cool as that is. All it takes is inherent gothiness, pressure ie. something to nourish it, and time. Then goth flowers like the black rose. You were still goth before, just had not come to full bloom.

Sound right?

I'm 24 but in my even earlier 20's I started developing gothic characteristics and interests which slowly developed over time.

I never embraced the goth subculture until about a year ago. That being said, I was always a misfit in school and always did things out of the norm. I also have always been an introvert, but now I am in a season where I don't really care what others think. I also started wearing all black clothes about 6 years ago because I just like how the colour looks. I wasn't trying to prove anything to anyone, but now I can see that I am a goth at heart.

I've always been rather odd, but it wasn't until the end of 6th grade I started dressing darker and listening to less pop and more rock music. My love steadily grew from there. I think it was my freshman year of high school I really started getting into the subculture and listening to more Voltaire and less Marilyn Manson.

I'm not sure when I discovered that i'm Goth.

However, I do know that I always loved the Addams Family. Can remember watching it as a kid and absolutely loving it! I loved that kinda stuff without really knowing what goth was, or anything. I grew up not really knowing what subcultures were, just knowing that i didn't like mainstream culture, and didn't want to fit into it. I moved primary school when i was about 10, and met the people that would go on to become my best friends, and the only people who were remotely similar to me until i was 16.

Anyway, I found out that goth was a subculture soon after i found out that counterculture and alternative subcultures actually existed, which was when I was 14 and 13 respectively. I didn't consciously jump into the subculture, mainly because i'd started to dye my hair black and wear dark clothes etc before I got labelled the school goth, which was around the same time my 2 best friends were labelled the moshers. What is described as goth, however, is generally how I always felt, and was therefore natural to me.

Everything else, like the reading and writing, was pretty much always there, and I still enjoy writing. But I suppose the end answer is that I can't actually put a number on when i "became" Goth. I just know that I am. [:

I never considered the violent things I wrote and drew as goth. My parents didn't seem to care what I watched. When I was younger I never understood why Samual Jackson kept shooting all those unarmed people in Pulp Fiction, I was too young to understand the plot or dialogue, all I knew was that it was violent and it was awesome. I still remember violent fragments of movies I watched as a kid that I never found the names of.

It's not just the pointless violence in films that affected me, it was that these things were happening to characters that seemed believable, that were humans. It's really something that's hard to explain. It wasn't just the violence, it was these people who I associated myself with in the films who were being electrocuted to death. It made me think about it, and it made me want to watch more violent movies and draw violent pictures.

Is that why parents generally avoid showing their kids violent things on TV? They're afraid they might like them? I think of some of the violent stories that I wrote that were just, well, violent. The things I was exposed to as a kid are the things I still enjoy today.

No one I really know is normal, I don't do anything to try to be normal. Many people just live their lives pretending. So, when did I become goth? I like dark stuff, the victorian and industrial styles and since childhood I've always liked skeletons. I'm about as much goth as I am not goth, I'm about as normal and weird as everyone else, or maybe I'm weird in a different way. It's all about how you channel how screwed up you are.

Um...maybe I'm wrong but there's nothing inherently gothic about violence? (If you are this obsessed with violence...and this is overstepping my bounds a little here...maybe some counseling ought to do you good.) Dark does not have to equal violence/depression/anger, etc.

And no, I don't think anyone is "born" goth. That's just silly. Goth is a subculture that sprung up in the 80s...