By Vexen Crabtree 2001 Jun 09
Mundanes
Mundane; noun; also; trendy, a normal, a member of the herd, a sheep.
Mundanes are the faceless sheep that swarm through the streets. Many mundanes prove themselves to be ordinary, acceptable people. But unfortunately (as every alternative person knows) they mask and nurture a whole breed of bloody stupid mainstream idiots who are offensive, vulgar, aggressive and obnoxious to anyone they take a dislike to.
Much violence and discrimination is directed against goths and anyone who is not "one of us" ... it seems that all you have to do to provoke people into a mindless fucked up state of mind is to dress oddly! People are fucked up!
These are examples of how not to behave. Hopefully by putting up bad examples it'll stimulate people to think before they act. You know... there's always hope, however fruitless. Of the people I know, some of the mundanes are the best, but, as a crowd and a concept, they're the worst type of sheep. Generally a person becomes normal rather than mundane if they show themselves to have humane levels of empathy and compassion, and I generally use the term "trendy" when talking of fashion tastes in particular in order to differentiate between different scenes.
So here is her story, taken from her journal: www.livejournal.com/users/silveraj/
"i've been in tears for the last hour and i can't stop shaking. some man attacked me today in waterloo station.i was down there alone, around 3-4ish, taking photos of escalators for my new animation. it was fairly quiet and i was just wandering around at random, photographing whenever there were no people in sight. i hate people staring at me when i'm trying to do stuff like this, so i was out with my hair tucked into my jacket out of sight, no makeup on, and baggy black and grey clothes. most people left me alone, until i heard someone asking me a question.
i turned round and there's this tall burly black guy and he saids the usual "doesn't that hurt" line. i said "what?" and he started jabbing at my face with his fingers, saying "all that shit, all that metal". i hate this, so i just said "no. why would it?" and walked off. he was shouting after me "because it makes you look like an ugly bitch, that's why. you look like medusa. you're disgusting", yelling this across the platform. i have had this sort of thing before, and didn't really care, let him think what he likes, he's the hideous fat ignorant moron, not me. i said as he walked off, just loud enough for him to hear, that what he was doing was worse than what racists do to black men like him, and how could he not see that. i was saddened.
i thought that was the end of it. i was in a totally different part of the station, taking more pictures, still fuming a bit from his rudeness, when suddenly he walked round a corner right next to me. then he went absolutely mental. he started screaming at me that i was following him and how i disgusted him, how i am the ugliest thing he had ever seen, and that he couldn't stand to look at me. going on about all that metal and stuff. he came closer and closer and people were just walking past, staring. i was backing away, into the corridor, trying to verbally fend him off. suddenly, he just lashed out and hit me on the side of my head. i was so shocked, i just blurted out that i couldn't believe he would just punch a girl, someone a lot smaller than him. he yelled out "you're not a fucking girl, not like that. you're disgusting and ugly, you're a monster. you're no girl. you need a big black cock up your arse" then he punched me twice in the face, and turned and walked away.
i don't know how i got home. i had a nosebleed, my septum ring got knocked out, and my left cheekbone is swelling up. my face feels sore, my mind feels violated. there's nothing i can do, i've had this happen before, the police don't do anything. there wasn't a camera in sight where he hit me, and i just wanted to get home. i don't want this to beat me, but i can't help but be scared. last time i was beaten up i couldn't go out for months. on the way home today i was a wreck, every time i saw a black man i wanted to scream and run. i just cried. i can't believe there are people like this. i feel terrified that one day it will be worse, that i will badly hurt, that i shouldn't ever go out again. i wasn't even dressed up, it was just the piercings. i don't know what to do.
i need andi, and he's left his phone at home.
i can't stop shaking."
AJ receieved hundreds of supportive responses, she continues with her life and recovered fine. But why does this happen? I don't really know how to dissuade people from judging others by appearance, when faced with them face to face sometimes they are just purely aggressive, violent and impossible to talk to, in those situations walking away (as AJ wisely did) is best because otherwise you get drawn in to their own games. But how, aside from citing examples of such bad behavior as I do on this page, do you get the general public to improve themselves?
On May 5th, 1993 three 8 year old boys, Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie Branch, West Memphis, Arkansas, were killed sometime after leaving their elementary school and arriving home. Their bodies were found naked, tied, and mutilated. The small town was in shock, and the police eventually arrested and jailed Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, Jr. Damien is still on death row. The only evidence used to convict them was the Judge, in this small Christian town, and people's opinions of these youngsters (which were three of the few people not to be Christian in that town). And of course, there was much talk of Cults, Satanic Abuse and (shock) one of Damien's black T-shirts was even used as evidence against him (not for forensic reasons, either).
From a secular, Western, European point of view it is all hard to believe. But this occurs all the time in the part of America jokingly called the Bible Belt, and the West Memphis Three are just one example (albeit a particularly famous one).
Five of us go out to a pub, and there we happen to meet two other friends. We go and sit in the little basementy thingy, which has a really big table so we could all sit round it. Aanyway, we're at one end talking and whatnot in a fairly normal stylee, and a bunch of shouty-drunky-type townies come and sit at the other end, generally a-raucusin' and a-carousin'. They eventually catch onto the fact that we're from the college, and they start insulting us on the grounds that we must be posh bastards. So blah blah, we ignore them for quite a long time whilst they get more and more obsessed with insulting us, eventually all chanting (in a football-fan stylee) "Poshos take it up the arse! [repeat, repeat, etc]" We continue to ignore.
Then one of them started a little monotribe about how if one of us tried to take him up the arse he'd kill us, and his arse was far too good for us anyway, and so forth. Anyway as he finishes it I lean forward to me mates and say "Sorry..did he just say 'denial'..?" As luck would have it my words happened to come out just as there was a small silence, and also beer had perhaps made me say them a little louder than I meant. So he (small, scrawny) comes up to me and puts his face to mine in a confrontational stylee, saying something along the lines of "Orrr orrr orrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" which I suppose translates roughly as "You frontin', nigga? What you be spittin' 'bout my homies?" I say, "What? Nothing mate, I was just making a joke about the state of the Tory party. They're an absolute shambles these days, it's disgraceful!" Which prompts him to stare at me in a mixture of anger and possibly confusion... trying to make my head explode maybe, Ionno. Anyway then he's like "Eeeeeeeeeee ee eeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeee e ee" which was able to discern as "If I ever see you in the fuckin' town you're fuckin' dead mate! You fuckin' poshos comin' in 'ere, you don't know fuckin' nuffin! You don't know nuffin!" (By this stage his friends and the general populace are prompting him to leave it out) He then slaps the back of my head and tries to spill my pint, which I was able to save using my incredible powers of 'not moving my pint and trusting to his spasticity and drunkenness to make him miss', tactic which paid off.
Anyway, his mates were leaving now and prompting him to do the same, which he did, generally shouting and burbling as he goes. McLaff.
Okay, a bit of a lame story I know, but it was amusing at the time.
Er. I guess you had to be there *cough*
Maybe it was election fever, but last night I confronted the casual who shouted 'twat' at me as I walked past. I sat down with him and asked him why he shouted 'twat' at me. He actually used the words 'because you look different'. So I asked him why he wants to look the same as everyone else. He spouted some shite about how girls wolf-whistle at him as they drive past him and asked if I was gay.
I asked him why he felt the need to shout 'twat' at me just because I look different and he replied, 'because it's not right, is it?'... so I knew I was arguing with a prime prick. He was actually proud to say, when I asked him, that his clothes were from Gap, Next and Topshop!!! [1] He asked me what I wore to work and when I told him I didn't dress up for work, he said that that made me a hypocrite. At one point three blokes wearing matching black trousers and white shirts tried to join in, one of them saying 'freeeak!' every few seconds. This intelligent trio then went round the corner and pointed and shouted 'freeeak!' at me. I was fucking upset, I can tell you. To be fair to the bloke I was arguing with, he did agree with me that those three looked fucking ridiculous in their same clothes.
Throughout this 'discussion' the trendy wanker kept repeating, 'you look like a twat' and 'it's not right, is it'. Eventually (I spent a good half hour with him) he turned away and said, 'I don't want to talk to you anymore, you're a twat'. Maybe he thought he'd won the argument or maybe he'd come to realise the extent of his tosserness (though I doubt it)... I just pointed at him aggressively and said 'ha! cos you've lost the argument haven't you, you casual twat! Now fuck off back to Burgess Hill!', because if these fuckers get offended by seeing people who don't shop at Gap, Next and Topshop, they shouldn't come to Brighton for their nights out.
Anyway, he was a prick. I just thought I'd get that off my chest.
Posted by Smogo on uk.people.gothic (reproduced with permission)
"Well, as anyone who has ever worked the door of an alternative venue would know, the ratio of drunken, rude and unpleasant would-be entrants goes up noticeably when other pubs and clubs in the local area close (remember that while we know they stop serving alcohol at 2am, you wouldn't know that from outside). Either that or they're looking to pull sexy deth chix..."Sheriden on goth mailing list, 2003 Mar 05
"Though you did mean this as a joke it does bring up another subject - I've lost count of the number of my female friends who have been groped or otherwise sexually harassed by GAP-wearing interlopers to Slimes or other primarily goth clubs - and this is a large part of why they go to the clubs they go to anyway, to escape this kind of behaviour at more mainstream clubs..."
Sheriden on goth mailing list, 2003 Mar 05
By Vexen Crabtree 2001 Jun 09