Two different articles based on the same UK study, by Sussex University's Dunja Brill, with the SHOCKING conclusion that teenage goths are non-violent, non-destructive, and likely to stay in school and grow up to be well-educated adults with professional or artistic careers. And, while their adult looks tend to be less extreme, they are generally, more or less, still goths.

"They won't like me saying it, but their lifestyle, unlike the punk scene, is a middle-class sub culture," says Dunja Brill, who carried out the study.

Brill insists that goth is a non-violent subculture. "They're like hippies. I don't know any goths who are into graveyard destruction or cat slaughtering. They like their graveyards and they love their cats."

Of course, this study was done in the UK, but it's obviously true here as well -- for the most part. The thing is, people tend to become goths because they're interested in art, history, architecture, and so on. It's primarily an aesthetic movement. And aesthetes have a long history of shocking bourgeois society, while at the same time being fundamentally good and responsible citizens. Think Oscar Wilde.

Also, to anyone who knows any goths, the notion of them doing harm to cemeteries or cats seems the height of absurdity. I mean, if there's anything that all goths like, it's cats and cemeteries.