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This Economic Blah is Making Everyone go Totally Dark, Man

Most people who like statistics are the same cellar-owning stalker who note the bra size of every woman on their bus route on their Hello Kitty notepad, but that’s not what the good people at Harper’s magazine are like at all.

Most people who like statistics are the same cellar-owning stalker who note the bra size of every woman on their bus route on their Hello Kitty notepad, but that’s not what the good people at Harper’s magazine are like at all. So when Harper’s notes that goth is on the rise, it’s time for Mephisto Walz to get their gloomy shit together.

Two statistics quoted in Harper’s in the August/September 2009 issue:

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– Chances that a U.S. college student in May reported feeling “down, depressed, or hopeless”: 2 in 5

– Percentage change between winter 2008 and winter 2009 in sales at goth- and punk–themed retail chain Hot Topic: +13

Which is good news for retailers of bleak, rebellious, shitty clothes, but bad news for the mood of a generation when you consider that goths are kitting themselves out in new tartan mini-skirts as the rest of the nation are making do with hand-me-downs.

– Average percentage change over that period in sales at teen-directed retailers overall: -8

So while the jocks are darning their old wrestling shorts back together and fixing their prom dresses with safety pins, the outcasts are flashing the cash. What can we surmise from this? That all goths and punks are rich kids who will happily blow their parents’ cash on shitty t-shirts with Heath Ledger on them, or the only thing that cheers up depressed college students in the face of a country in economic turmoil is a quick whiz through the mall? Perhaps they’re all buying leatherette chokers and paying for their way through college by becoming Suicide Girls?

Either way, it’s nice to know that America’s students are expressing their feelings in a healthiest, least fashionable manner possible.