Goths rule the world…

but in secret.

In a blatant excuse to fill a page of the newspaper, The Guardian has decided to cover a recent doctoral thesis that argues that goths end up in well paid jobs. The theory runs that the goth attraction towards art, literature, and music creates networking, aesthetic, and other skills that then come in useful in education and the workplace.

Sometimes I wonder why I bothered to write about literature at all, I could have just said ‘goths are picked on and find solace by reading stuff so end up well read’…. That’s a bit of an unfair summary of a thesis, but that does appear to be the revolutionary proposal put forward by it.

A PhD is supposed to be a genuinely original contribution to a field of study, and while it seems logically obvious that many goths will be pushed to achieve good academic results it doesn’t seem like this proposal ranges much beyond common sense. I assume that the study is backed up by analysis of groups of society and their fashion choices during their lives. Given that ‘goth’ in the modern sense has only really been around as a recognised group since the 1980s then it is only now that a reasonable study of the life-impact of the movement can be made on its followers. Perhaps it’s not such a daft thing to study, when we have now reached a point where anecdotal hypotheses can be made into workable theories.

There is another reason why this proposal may be considered to be worthy of a PhD: the thesis only has to be an original contribution to a field of study, so if no-one has bothered studying this before then it naturally it will count as an original thesis, even if it is common sense. In this line of thinking, for my next thesis I shall be working with the title: ‘Eventual career paths of teenage poets: Do they all end up a bit floaty or do they become outwardly more normal?’

Hahahahahaha… ‘Next thesis’!

The Guardian article also has a handy ten tips to spot if your boss used to be a goth. They’re pretty accurate, and once again reveal that I’m not a goth. Or at least, not a proper goth!

3 thoughts on “Goths rule the world…”

  1. HELLO,
    My name is Christian and study MSC Computer Animation in Portsmouth University I wonder if anyone knows about if is possible to get PhD in Animation, and knows any university wich they take PhD student
    thx
    christian

  2. you can email me at:

    christian_pauletti{at]yahoo(dot}se

    (Edited by Mata, it’s best not to put a full email address online if you don’t want to be picked up by spam-bots)

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