Goth GF is a running online joke about wanting or having a goth girl as a girlfriend, framed in image macros and tweets as a rare and highly desirable romantic partner. The bit started on Tumblr in April 2014 with user gothstan and spread through Twitter one-liners, Facebook fan pages, and the viral saga of a rainbow parrot named Kiwi paired with a black-and-white parrot dubbed his goth gf.
Origin
On April 12, 2014, Tumblr user gothstan published a short mock conversation titled "me and my goth gf." In the exchange, the narrator tells his girlfriend "bb ur hands r so cold," and she deadpans back "that me soul" [3]. The post pulled in over 69,300 notes across the following four years and set the template for how future goth GF jokes would sound: quick, romantic setup meets a supernatural or morbid punchline.
- Platform: Tumblr (origin) / Twitter and Facebook (viral spread)
- Creator: gothstan (Tumblr)
- Date: 2014
Overview
Goth GF refers to online jokes about wanting or having a goth girl as a girlfriend, framed in image macros as a rare and highly desirable romantic prize [2]. The bit plays on stereotypes of goth women being aloof, mysterious, or literally cold to the touch, and it shows up as everything from one-liner tweets to cartoon-character reaction images.
Urban Dictionary defines the goth GF as a woman "really into post millennial gothic subculture" who spends time on nu-goth Tumblr blogs and reads dark poetry [2]. A parallel strain of the joke centers on the phrase "big tiddy goth gf," which produced its own Facebook fan communities and image-macro variants throughout 2017.
How It Spread
The joke jumped to Twitter in the mid-2010s. On September 7, 2016, user @Sadieisonfire posted an Ed, Edd n Eddy image macro of Ed holding a hand-lettered sign reading "looking 4 a goth gf," which pulled in more than 1,700 likes and 960 retweets [3]. On February 12, 2017, YouTuber FrankJavCee tweeted "My goth GF just turned into a bat and flew away into the night, again!" which cemented the supernatural-punchline flavor of the format.
Facebook communities picked it up next. The "Fuck I Want a Goth GF" page launched on June 22, 2017, followed by "Big Tiddy Goth GF Memes" that September [3]. In October, the SenpaiWaifu page posted a What's the Matter, Little Fella macro captioned "Don't have a big tiddy goth gf?", which pushed the big-tiddy variant into wider circulation.
The joke's biggest single moment came from a pair of parrots. On September 4, 2017, Twitter user @painthands posted a photo of her rainbow-feathered bird Kiwi standing next to a black-and-white parrot named Siouxsie, captioned "I got Kiwi a lil goth gf." The tweet racked up over 421,000 likes and 129,000 retweets [1]. Twitter Moments ran a feature about the birds the next day, and by July 9, 2018, @painthands was posting photos of the pair's newly hatched chicks, drawing more than 763,800 likes in 48 hours [1].
How to Use
The text version typically pairs a soft or romantic first line with a goth-coded punchline: the girlfriend's hands are cold because she has no soul, she turns into a bat, she lives in a coffin. The image-macro version often pastes the phrase "looking 4 a goth gf" or "don't have a big tiddy goth gf?" onto a cartoon character or reaction photo to signal comedic longing rather than a real personal ad.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Goth Gf?
A recurring online joke format about wanting or already having a goth girlfriend, treated in image macros as a rare and desirable partner and usually punchlined with a supernatural or morbid twist [2].
Where did Goth Gf come from?
Tumblr user gothstan posted the seed post "me and my goth gf" on April 12, 2014, a short mock conversation ending with the line "that me soul" [3].
What does Goth Gf mean?
Urban Dictionary describes a goth GF as a woman deep into post-millennial gothic subculture who spends her time on nu-goth Tumblr blogs and reads dark poetry [2].
How do you use Goth Gf?
People pair a romantic first line with a goth-coded punchline (cold hands, turning into a bat) or slap the phrase "looking 4 a goth gf" onto a cartoon reaction image, as @Sadieisonfire did with an Ed, Edd n Eddy macro in September 2016 [3].
Is Goth Gf still popular?
The joke peaked between 2016 and 2018, with the @painthands Kiwi-and-Siouxsie parrot tweets pulling in hundreds of thousands of likes and staying the format's best-known moment [1].
