Goth Code

The Goth Code is a code for members of the Goth subculture. It is notable for directly inspiring at least 15 other codes and leading to an Australian Politics spinoff code. Since 2000, copies of its specification have been taken down at author Peter Caffin’s request.

Structure and examples

Goth Code versions 1.0 - 3.1 follow a readable syntax similar to Geek Code with letter tags and values comprised of letters, numbers, +/-, and punctuation symbols to represent special values. To use the examples from a GC98-producing tool, Gabi, GothCode 3.1A might look like this, approximating the same category-modifier types as in bear code and geek code:

GoGD6$Im4 TNrD7 PNa B10/25Bk]3! cDbr-p7S V7s M4p2wgD ZExgIps C7m a26-(20) n5AM b64 H179 g6L??91FYin mEa2Ey2@Z3A w6L v4 r5E p65757RdZz D46! h6(TNr) sM8n SrYn k7p N1090EWB HfsM LusNY7

Goth Code 98 (4.0) uses a base64-like “grey table” of 65 values (a = 0, a-z, A-Z, 1-0, !, #, $ = 64). Codes from GC98 might look like this:

ATieda5GaPeaiebcabaa67bvFTZZfnzZqajzeZaj5dmaab5b6m ac8maeqGafcmgH#caahakuii7aiarNbqH7ZZFbaaaakiUSNY

Peter Caffin later pointed to the similarity between Goth Code and Whore Code as a possible act of plagiarism.

Appearance in the Columbine Report

Goth Code appeared in the ~11,000 page Columbine Report, in a section titled “A closer look at the people who wear black in Secondary Schools across the United States”, dated 1999-04-23 and reportedly assembled by Lakewood High School teacher Tim Harp shortly after the shooting.

As Allen Berres wrote in the abstract of 2002 Children’s Folklore Review article “Everybody Is Their Enemy”: Goths, Spooky Kids, and the American School Shooting Panic:

One of the earliest details to leak out about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold following their horrifying shooting spree at Columbine High School was that they were supposedly members of a clique that called itself “The Trench Coat Mafia.” This name was readily snapped up by the journalists covering the story, and by the evening following the shootings, numerous news organizations were running pieces about this group in an attempt to shed greater light on the reasons why Harris and Klebold killed thirteen people and themselves. Although the Trench Coat Mafia clique was confined to Columbine High School, journalists quickly pointed out many supposed links between this clique and two larger music fan cultures whose members occasionally wear black trench coats that are found in almost every American high school: goths and Marilyn Manson fans. A wave of anti-goth, anti-Marilyn Manson sentiment immediately followed this over-hasty association, motivated by the overwhelming fear that any member of these black-clad legions could turn out to be the next school shooter.

The excerpt in the report contains only the Goth Code 3.1A header and introductory paragraph as well as an instance of the Goth Code apparently posted with “The Suicidal Aspects of Gothics: The Dominion of the Dark Sinner”. There is no indication of any use of the Goth Code attributed to anyone involved in the shooting, but its inclusion demonstrates how the teacher and report viewed Goth Code among “the secret codes that they use on the internet” (as on page 5753).

The report has been uploaded in 100-page chunks; the Goth Code references appear on pages 5770 and 5771 under a heading labeled “The Gothic Sub Culture”. Though only the initial page appears in the documents, it does include date information and a description of the difference between Goth Code 3.1 and 3.1A.

Removal

Author Peter Caffin recommended the deletion of Goth Code across late 1999 and early 2000.

Multiple reasons have been given for its removal. On code.goth.net the reason given was about the availability of graphical user interfaces:

Web pages on GUI systems do the job and do it better. Don’t get me wrong: I took great pride in the way that Goth Code extended the genre and made ever-more efficient use of .sig-space, even to the point where v4.0/98 used 6-bit ASCII byte encoding! But its time has passed.

He also described reasons related to safety and code-users’ privacy in a USENET thread on 2000-02-11:

For the other reasons I have outlined, I simply don’t think that Goth Code is useful enough for individuals in this day and age (with the WWW offering much more freedom of content) to warrant the dangers it presents by encouraging young teenagers to present data of a sensitive nature for stalkers to examine. As a document, it’s simply not worth the risk of death to even one teenager. It may have been recommended reading once, but, the Internet was a much smaller and friendlier place back then. Goth Code’s time is past.

Finally, more recently, Peter Caffin has published a mini-FAQ on his website (along the lines of the previous mini-FAQ in 1999) regarding Goth Code, its origins, and its removal.

Why was it removed?

While working on a Goth Code decoder in C (which would have translated all of them, from 1.x-4.0), it struck me that:

• The Internet was getting very popular by 2000.
• The Internet was no longer the cosy little anonymous place for computer geeks that it was in 1995 when I started.
• The sheer depth of data availabe to be mined from Goth Codes made them a dangerous resource for stalkers.
• By their nature, Goth Codes tended to appeal to younger people who might want to fit into a new peer group.

Added to this, was:

• By late 2000, signature codes were well out of fashion anyway.
• I seemed to be making a break from the local goth crowd anyhow.
• I was already a bit shirty with people assuming that I’d given its Copyright into the public domain.

By far, the stalker bait issue was strongest in mind. Other people believed other reasons were at the forefront.

Community members discussed creating replacement codes in February 2000, and community member The Exiled posted to alt.gothic in June 2007 about a proposed successor renamed to “net.goth.code”, but there is no evidence of publication for any successor codes.

Examples

GoGD6$Im4 TNrD7 PNa B10/25Bk]3! cDbr-p7S V7s M4p2wgD ZExgIps C7m a26-(20) n5AM b64 H179 g6L??91FYin mEa2Ey2@Z3A w6L v4 r5E p65757RdZz D46! h6(TNr) sM8n SrYn k7p N1090EWB HfsM LusNY7

ATieda5GaPeaiebcabaa67bvFTZZfnzZqajzeZaj5dmaab5b6m ac8maeqGafcmgH#caahakuii7aiarNbqH7ZZFbaaaakiUSNY