What does emo mean to you?

[Mark Anthony Quested]

Originally Posted by DemiGoth

To me emo is another alternative subculture that came after goth and punk and is overall annoying.

It's not really the emos' fault they're annoying though, or atleast not all the time. To me I feel the mainstream abuses the word 'emo' to the extent that I just get sick of hearing it. Some examples...

Someone talks about suicide "EMO!"

Someone talks about murder "EMO!"

Someone talks about darkness "EMO!"

Someone talks about cutting wrists "EMO!"

Someone is different "EMO!"

I swear I hear someone get called 'emo' atleast twice a week because of those topics, but really it's another form of self expression usually by dark/depressed teenagers (as far as I know atleast). Hopefully this was able to answer your question.

Teenagers, eh! I don't envy them; I'd hate to be a teenager now. So many of the shops from my childhood have closed, it must be a real bugger trying to get a Saturday job now. (A new ASDA store is opening in my local area. 70 jobs were advertised and it is alleged that about 900 people applied!)

I don't like "Emo" because it usually has a lot of negative connontations attached to it, like those you described.

OH NO, EMO!

[CountVonCount]

Jesus, people, I understand not wanting to side with the living but to say emo is ok? NO! I'll tell you why:

Emo boils down to emotional; angst,brooding, aching until your little bleeding heart can't bleed no more and then wanting to shriek twice as much angst out like the final upchuck after a good drunk, EVERY. LAST. DROP.
Then, because 'Emo's' are all teenagers or pre-pubescent adults, they feel the need to make every inch of attire, every word they write or utter, every feeling they give anyone else has to be the most desperate, desolate, unbearable-weight-of-the-world-because-this-is-all-I-know-and-understand and make it fucking rain shit on everyone simply because it IS all they known and all they seem to think applies to the word 'understand.' Emo is that achey, on the verge of a flood of a thousand tears, heard-of-bulls rush of hormones that defines the average awakening of a 13 yr old except these kids think it's something to build a life on.

Ok. That is understandable, they ARE children. But it really is damaging. It's...it's hard to explain, really, but it's so clear. Emo is pointless. It's feeling as if the world is def while you're screaming your lungs out by smearing some color on your eyes and wearing and saying things that seem edgy.
GROW...THE FUCK...UP. We all went went through the roller coaster ride that is puberty, we all have our bag of broken dreams, of childhoods lost, but jesus fucking christ.
At least being goth there's a real UNDERSTANDING...understanding of mortality and life and death and the yin yang that is bloom to perish...both sides of the spectrum in a beautiful prose or painting...foundations of literature, history, intelligent debate and discussion...at least goths are forced to fight to become part of the batcave or become the shit that is stepped on that will stay stuck to your souls for a week instead of the hideous mental orgy Emos seem to converge to when put together, like fruit flies trying to devour a mass of rotting fruit. It's like the endless wail of a baby mixed with a fire engine that's actually just a shitty recording on a melting record that keeps rotating ever so sloooooooowly.

Besides they're reluctant whine that they feel, too, and even more than you could Emo has killed goth.
If you're an adult, it's easy to see why you couldn't give a shit and just ignore it, but if you're in school, recently out of school, or have been around anyone 'in the know' or hipsters you've likely had Emo come up in conversations without so much as a mention of goth unless you're being asked if you're mistaken as Emo or how you feel about Emo. Because it's so new and does breed in the pits of prepubesence, it's a direct reflection of the kids today. So bored with their surroundings because there are so many distractions, so many idle convinences like the internet to reach out and proclaim to the world 'this is me! love me! hate me! me attention and a reaction!' To an extent, everyone wants fame or granduer. They've taken 'be yourself' completely out of context and self prescribed it as 'be as wild and outrageous as can be!' and because of the way entertainment has evolved, they see life as a show.

People didn't have time for goth before but now that they have such distractions as Emo? They really could not give a flying fuck or a rolling rim job how to pronounce Cthulhu or Siouxsie or what that wierd 80s band was trying to say with the messy hair and smeared lipstick, who Nosferatu was and why he was any different from Bela or that movie with Keanu Reeves and how Satanism has nothing to do with eyeliner, black fishnets or doc martins. Good god, they even think Emo is Punk.
So it's not really what Emo IS, it's what it is NOT, and that is Goth.

Now, it really isn't that bad because it'll pass...but it sure as hell sucks. A decade without goth. But hey, there were the 30s and 60s, right? And the 70s were mostly just literate, even the 80s were an over glamafied mockery - but at least they gave way to real aknowledgment that continued to the 90s. Everyone got so carried away with the millenium, there's been so little progress, we're just starting up where the 90s left off. I think we'll see a re-emergence of Goth by 2012, with the dark neon that's coming up in hip hop/pop and the way everyone's becoming enlightened once again, goth will be able to rear it's head to the living in a fiercer shade of pale.

[Anima_Severem]

I've seen so many guides to tell you how to be emo.

They forget the final, and most important, step. And it only works before you turn fifteen.

If you are male, you must find a sufficiently sized pair of pliers.

Next, firmly grasp one of your testicles and squeeze the handles as hard as your flimsy muscles allow. Repeat for other testicle.

Then and only then will you be able to attain the coveted emo crown jewel: The singing voice trapped forever between puberty and manhood. Aged into an adolescent, yet will never deepen with age.

Go forth, young emo kid. Sing your sad little heart out.

Also. Emo is the result of forbidden genetic experiments to combine punk and goth. Somehow, estrogen was added to the mixture, and lo and behold, the beast was born.

Also.

Emo kids sulk. Goths scoff.

[Ophelia's Snorkel]

[quote=Anima_Severem;557710]Emo is the result of forbidden genetic experiments to combine punk and goth. Somehow, estrogen was added to the mixture, and lo and behold, the beast was born. [\quote]

That description is a thing of beauty.

Also.

Emo kids sulk. Goths scoff.

Whatever happened to the angsty kids in eyeliner being slowly funnelled into the calmer waters of goth? We used to draw those kids in and eventually end up with a few mature, contributing members of the subculture. Now we only have babybats and mallgoths - some of them turn out pretty well, thank goodness.

I just don't understand how the eyeliner-wearing, bad poetry-writing youth got split into two groups, one which believes itself aligned with goth and one which is trying to develop its own subculture. I'd be curious to see them in 20 years, full of elder emos, but I don't think they'll survive that long.

I feel old, crotchety, and get-off-my-lawn-y now.

[DepthsofSpace]

Originally Posted by CountVonCount

..lots of Emo can go fuck themselves talk..

Listening to the NIN cover of Joy Division's Dead Souls while reading made that post epically dramatic.

Well done. =P

[SiouxsiePernova]

Originally Posted by CountVonCount

People didn't have time for goth before but now that they have such distractions as Emo? They really could not give a flying fuck or a rolling rim job how to pronounce Cthulhu or Siouxsie or what that wierd 80s band was trying to say with the messy hair and smeared lipstick, who Nosferatu was and why he was any different from Bela

Is that a reference to "Gypsy 83"?

[CountVonCount]

Indeed! Altho it's every 'of course' in the goth book I couldn't help but smile thru the whole thing. Her song at the end was well done.
Funny how Stevie Nicks and Andrew Eldritch don't like to be called goth and yet they have been deemed Grandmother and Grandfather of goth. Sisters of Mercy no shit...but Stevie Nicks? Hm:/

[Ophelia's Snorkel]

Originally Posted by CountVonCount

Indeed! Altho it's every 'of course' in the goth book I couldn't help but smile thru the whole thing. Her song at the end was well done.
Funny how Stevie Nicks and Andrew Eldritch don't like to be called goth and yet they have been deemed Grandmother and Grandfather of goth. Sisters of Mercy no shit...but Stevie Nicks? Hm:/

I'd have a hard time even calling her a proto-goth; still I'd imagine a lot of little '70s/'80s girls who grew up to be goths did admire her at some point. Her music and performance persona didn't really have a gothic bent, but you could make a very tenuous connection in her darker fashions if you really wanted.