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# What romantasy and e-girls have in common
- URL: https://www.memorydoll.com/what-romantasy-and-e-girls-have-in-common/
- Published: 2026-08-22T15:30:28.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-22T15:30:27.000Z
- Description: See? We're more alike than you think!
- Author: Aubrie Johnson
- Tags: Archetypes, #archetypes

In 2009 Hiroki Azuma coined the term “database animal” to describe people who consume media based on a particular bundle of traits. While we're only now seeing the database animal become a global phenomenon, they've been around for ages. For as long as the internet's been searchable, rule 34 has existed for everything under the sun, for example.

I am not a goth — and technically, neither are any of the e-girls in this photo. Although they’re probably genuine in at least *some* aspect of their presentation, they are what all social media influencers are: [personas](https://www.memorydoll.com/are-you-not-entertained-by-ai-art/), available online for anyone to parasocially bond with. (And probably sell you something.)

Surely, I hear you saying, these “fake goth girls” with their power to drain bespectacled boy-nerds’ wallets have nothing in common with [romantasy](https://www.memorydoll.com/wicker-2026-whimsy-amatonormativity/), the literary genre geared towards women, endlessly memed on for its prevalence of “spice?” *Surely*, you say!

Both audiences are a different kind of "porn addict." *Pornographic art* is any work of art designed to manufacture desire — for a person, a product, or anything in between. The social media e-girl persona is both person *and* product. So is the [enemies-to-lovers morally gray demon lord love interest](https://www.memorydoll.com/bl-lovers-have-broken-containment/) that’s all but guaranteed to run the main character through in the first five chapters or less.

**Links:**

- I investigated the "fake goth girl" industrial complex ([YouTube](https://youtu.be/vHDYjlcCyIA?si=dm6gyD94MVdeWZU1&ref=memorydoll.com))
- [Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice by J. F. Martel, 2025](https://bookshop.org/a/116410/9781541607248?ref=memorydoll.com) (Bookshop)
- [Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals, 2009](https://bookshop.org/a/116410/9780816653522?ref=memorydoll.com) (Bookshop)