There’s A New Name For Those Pierced, Weird-Looking Internet Addicts You Keep Seeing
I've noticed a new trend among my students. While most trends used to stem from a pop icon on TV, film, or music, this new trend is an incoherent smorgasbord of various influences online: influencers on TikTok or Instagram, fashion crazes from past generations or other countries, and above all, Japanese manga and anime.
What would have easily marked a person as a social outcast when I was a student in the ’90s is now cool (or “tough” as the kids say). Instead of being bullied and shamed, sexually ambiguous introverts who style themselves as magical pirates from the manga One Piece, boast about their neurodivergence, and base their whole worldview on Nintendo products now represent the social avant-garde. By contrast, the conventional social set who play sports, host parties, and show charisma are dwindling into a negligible minority.
In a recent viral essay by Robert Mariani in The New Atlantis, this unexpected inversion of social dynamics, this “great weirding of America,” finally has a name: dinergoth.
According to Mariani, the emergence of dinergoth core is “what you get when economic mobility dies, suburbs become psychic deserts, and Discord becomes more real than your cul-de-sac.” In addition to the new trendsetters at high school, dinergoths can be found among older adults as well: “The dinergoth core is the pierced-up, gender-fluid Amazon warehouse worker who streams on Twitch, writes fanfiction, wears a furry tail to raves, runs an OnlyFans, and dreams of voice acting while working nights at the fulfillment center.”
Perhaps the most popular example of dinergoth right now is the Olympic champion figure skater Alyssa Liu — fittingly, she hopes to become a professional piercer after retiring from skating.
As with any other alternative lifestyle, dinergoth works as a spectrum. On one extreme is the ex-girlfriend Mariani describes in his essay who often dressed an anime character, identified as “nonbinary,” was open about her trauma and mental disorders, and sexually adventurous. On the other extreme are the normal adults (“normies”), like Mariani himself, who might not outwardly adopt the dinergoth lifestyle but sympathize with it and catch the references.
While older generations can live blissfully unaware of this “mass-cultural wave,” the younger generations (from X on down) have no choice but to confront it. Should we welcome this change before them and accommodate these unique individuals, or should we push back against this trend and try to stop it? It should be obvious by now that we should discourage and destroy dinergothdam by any means necessary before it spreads to the next generation.
For his part, Mariani nevertheless favors the former approach, framing it as the inevitable outcome of today’s economic and cultural “stagnation and the breakdown of barriers.” In an interview with the writer Dudley Newright, he repeated this Marxist materialist interpretation of culture being a direct consequence of economic conditions. Conveniently, this viewpoint bypasses any moral questions about dinergoth culture and implicitly approves its subversion of traditional social hierarchies.
However, this logic has it precisely backwards. Material circumstances are the product of culture, which itself is framed and informed by a preexisting moral code. It would therefore be far more appropriate to oppose the rise of dinergoths, seeing that it potentially destroys what is good in a community. No matter what form it takes, it is dumb, decadent, and dangerous.
This is mainly because dinergoth core lacks an actual core. There is no philosophy or set of values that define what constitutes dinergoth; rather, it is based on mimicking media content whose messaging is artificially predetermined by an algorithm. The typical dinergoth will cultivate a furry fetish, watch and quote the anime Demon Slayer, deface his body with a plethora of piercings and tattoos, and self-diagnose himself with adult ADHD all because his feed on TikTok effectively brainwashes him into doing so. He learns not to think twice about whether these choices actually correspond with reality, benefit him practically, or even make him happier. He simply assumes these affected poses, acts on his conditioning, and becomes an unattractive freak with no judgment, purpose, or basic awareness.
Put another way, the dinergoth phenomenon is a manifestation of today’s nihilistic escapism. Instead of developing important skills, forming meaningful relationships, and striving toward something greater, dinergoths play make-believe and relish the personal shortcomings that prevent them from living the good life. After all, they have based their way of life on the assumption that success is impossible and have subordinated physical reality to virtual reality.
Predictably, this usually makes dinergoths unhappy, undesirable losers. They are hollowed-out people who save face by blaming an unfair system for making them the way they are. They never grow out of their immaturity because that would force them to take ownership for their failures. For the sake of their short-term “mental health,” dinergoths need to believe that their choices are all a natural outgrowth of their true self, not online propaganda.
To be clear, criticizing dinergoth core does not necessarily mean criticizing all its influences. I personally believe that anime and manga are rich forms of entertainment, filled with great stories, deep characters, imaginative settings, and beautiful artwork. Like anything else, it has its share of superficial slop, but it also has veritable classics that elevate and inspire audiences. The same applies to most of the music, and general sensibilities that are seen among dinergoths.
Problems arise when these influences are twisted into unhealthy obsessions that detract from a person’s humanity. Because dinergoths spend relatively little of their time in the real world, they have no moderation or discernment for the media they consume. They experience slop and quality content with equal indifference, draw the wrong conclusions from the stories they follow, and take on the ugliest and most off-putting aspects of the characters they emulate. What they are watching and listening to is not the problem. How they are watching and listening is.
Fortunately, for all these reasons, the dinergoth trend will likely fade just like every other trend that appeals to insecure people. Sure, it is currently having a moment, and its ubiquity says something important about today’s culture (or lack thereof), but in time, it will become as passé as the old diners and melodramatic goth kids from which it draws its name. The youths already have enough to worry about. They don’t need to add becoming an insufferable dinergoth to the list.
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