Someone please define EMO for me

[tartparty]

This word gets thrown around alot these days and I've asked tonnes of people and no-one has been able to give me a satisfactory answer. I know it's short for emotional but isn't all music emotional? I mean I got called an emo once just for wearing black skinny jeans. can someone please give me an answer.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

It refers to a sub-culture and that sub-culture's interests.

 

[Darken12]

It refers to a fashion style that emphasises hair over your face, black/dark clothes and make-up, and complaining far too much. Sometimes there's a dash of hipster thrown in, and you can tell because they're wearing an accessory or piece of clothing in a very bright colour (usually yellow or pink).

Examples:

Spoiler

 

[Pink Gregory]

It's an unpleasant word used to describe people that tend to congregate towards a certain music and a certain way of dressing.

Not that it can't be used as a non-unpleasant term, but it's often used as such.

 

[AnarchistFish]

It refers to a fashion style that emphasises hair over your face, black/dark clothes and make-up, and complaining far too much. Sometimes there's a dash of hipster thrown in, and you can tell because they're wearing an accessory or piece of clothing in a very bright colour (usually yellow or pink).

Examples:

Spoiler

No, that's scene.

Emo is a musical genre. It's a sub genre of punk and it's actually not that popular.

Then there's screamo, which is in itself a subgenre of emo.

Neither have anything to do with fashion and the two terms get misused constantly.


If we're talking about scene, then that's just the general culture around certain fashion (i.e. the one posted above), certain music (generally certain metalcore and post hardcore bands) and other such things. But it has nothing to do with emo.

 

[Darken12]

No, that's scene.

Emo is a musical genre. It's a sub genre of punk and it's actually not that popular.

Neither have anything to do with fashion and the two terms get misused constantly.

If we're talking about scene, then that's just the general culture around certain fashion (i.e. the one posted above), certain music (generally certain metalcore and post hardcore bands) and other such things. But it has nothing to do with emo.

Well consider me educated. Thank you for the explanation!

 

[DoPo]

can someone please give me an answer.

Yes [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emo]. You literally had the answer at your fingertips. For the people you asked, it was probably figurative at least but pretty damn close. So did everybody else you've asked.

If you need me, I'll be here in the corner - weeping for the waste of combined millenia of manhours making information easy and accessible to everybody.

 

[Esotera]

I've always been told that it's short for emotional mosher. I'd also say that emo is pretty much dead as a genre of music as the majority of music was created in the previous decade, and has since morphed into stranger and more awesome things, like hipster metal.

Basically think of Hawthorne Heights, My Chemical Romance etc as definitely emo, and stuff like metalcore as soft emo. It's sort of hard to define a boundary...

 

[Hero in a half shell]

It's a petrol station company in the South of Ireland.

Because when you fill your car up and it costs all the money in your wallet, you'll feel like cutting yourself.

 

[Terminal Blue]

It refers to "emotive hardcore" (or "emotional hardcore", can never remember which), which is a genre of hardcore punk music so called because the lyrics tend to focus on quite personal or emotive subjects.

In the 2000s, though, Emo achieved quite a lot of mainstream popularity, particularly among teens, and the subject matter of the "average" emo band became more angsty and much more fixated on things like relationship drama and mental illness, which I think is where the popular stereotype of "emo" today comes from.

A lot of that stereotype is oddly familiar though, it's really just the same recycled bollocks which teenygoths like myself used to get in the 90s. Basically, any subculture dominated by or music written purely for teens is going to end up being slightly laughable and shallow, but all the self-confessed "emos" I've met seem like pretty nice kids.

 

[Strain42]

I'm sure I could be mistaken, but I always saw it as people who were depressed for the sake of being depressed. This does not include people with actual clinical depression.

Just people who don't really have any problems with their life but choose to act like their life is this cold dark place of misery and angst.

Someone who could have a perfectly nice day of sunshine, getting a raise at work, getting a date and playing with a puppy who at the end of the day would still go "My life is this pit of sadness and despair."

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

I'm not an expert, but I believe it was originally a musical sub-genre of punk. I'm not really a punk fan though (I do however, have an interest in getting into crust punk someday) so I can't say for certain. I believe it turned into more of a (very shitty) fashion over time, and less musically focused. Emo seems to have been around for quite some time though, because there is some graffiti to the extent of "Fuck Emo" in an old GG Allin song, which was early 80's or so. It's been around for awhile, though in the previous decade I think it was more of a trendy teenage thing rather than any kind of solid musical undertaking.

Though, as always, I could be wrong. If the emo culture has something to be thanked for, it's the chicks. I've seen some pretty fine looking ones.

Edit: Just out of interest, can someone more versed in the subject than I, tell me how close I am to accuracy?

 

[Juan Regular]

When I asked a friend of mine once he explained it to me by grabbing my shoulders and yell "WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?" at me and I always considered that a pretty good definition.

 

[kouriichi]

Well, by my groups standards, "Emo" people, music, and clothing are all "Goth" rejects. It tends to gravitate towards the more high-end commercial products though.

For my school, "Goth" kids (whom i hung out with), wore black clothes (that they may have dyed themselves), baggy chain pants, and had black hair. But their clothes were often torn and home repaired, mostly with duct tape. Even the chains were poorly attached. You could often find them listening to Metal.

Where as the "Emo" kids (whom i did no hang out with) bought their clothes ripped, black, and with chains attached (Extremely well made). Their hair was black, but often with highlights of any color they pleased (red, green, white. Didnt matter really). And the music they listened to tended to be less "Metal", and more, "Kiss my love who left me for another man" depressing.


I guess in the end, it mostly comes down to the:
1: Music
2: Clothing
3: Hair

This was my experience in middle/high school several years ago at least.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Someone who could have a perfectly nice day of sunshine, getting a raise at work, getting a date and playing with a puppy who at the end of the day would still go "My life is this pit of sadness and despair."

That is a person with clinical depression.

If someone has a truly horrible grotty day, gets fired from their job, gets dumped by their girl/boyfriend and watches a puppy getting run over and at the end of the day feels horrible and depressed and miserable, that's not a mental illness, that's a normal reaction to traumatic events.

A person with clinical depression is locked into negative ways of thinking so that even when good things happen to them it doesn't change their belief that their life is worthless and terrible. They stop feeling any kind of joy from good things and things which used to make them happy and fixate on the negative things to the point where tiny, insignificant problems can become overwhelming.

It strikes me that there's a certain mythology around depression whereby "real" depressed people will be expected to react stoically and retain a facade of normalcy in order to demonstrate that they're not just crying for help. In my experience (and having been one myself) they're not often like that. They're generally pretty whiny, irrational, self-obsessed and melodramatic, and they do cry for help.. because it hurts.

They fixate on tiny things because they can't mentally process any level of trauma. They never recover from anything, they never process any of their issues or "bounce back" because they are locked in a state of mind which prevents them from doing so. In fact, that's the actual illness.

Actually, far from being a sign that someone isn't really depressed, being part of a subculture that fixates on misery or negativity can be a pretty clear sign that something is not all right. Sure, I don't think many "emos" are clinically depressed, but I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say they don't have any real problems or are just faking it.

 

[Vault101]

it became a derogetry term as a backlash against the sub culture (whining teenagers) and would be applied to anything remotly showing angst, often getting confused with goth as far as the actual subculture went

funnyly enough I was a teenager right when the emo craze was at its height....I didnt understand why so many people qere so "depressed" and figured it was the natural state of things...

...or somthing

 

[Strain42]

Someone who could have a perfectly nice day of sunshine, getting a raise at work, getting a date and playing with a puppy who at the end of the day would still go "My life is this pit of sadness and despair."

snip

I probably should have specified better. I mean a person who CHOOSES to do that at the end of the day.

Because I've known people who do that who aren't clinically depressed. They just decide to be negative about good things happening to them on certain days. I know almost any example I give can be countered with "Oh, well it's possible that they're such 'n such or manic depressive" and it's true, they could be, I'm not going to deny that.

But the truth is, some people aren't. And to me that's what emo is. People who choose to be depressed without actually being it from a clinical or medical standpoint. Like how some people think they have aspergers just because they're a bit socially awkward or some people claim to have OCD because they're a little anal about things. Some people are just negative people despite having good lives who wouldn't necessarily have any chemical imbalances in their brain that would result in such a thing. They've just made being negative and moody part of their personality.

That's emo to me anyways, and like I said in my initial post, probably not the exact definition of the word. That's just how I always saw it.

Of course I haven't really met anyone I would deem "emo" since junior year of high school which was almost a decade ago so...I'm probably not the best source on this anyways.

 

[Squiddles]

Emo use to be the group of people that stopped caring and just spent most days aimless and questioning their lives. Didn't really have a drive to do anything and never understood why. There's also the whole black clothes, longish fringe, skinny jeans part, no idea where that came from I guess it just seemed to meld with the culture so well that it stuck.

Though these days it's muddled up with other terms and branching sub-cultures of an already sub-culture. Insane hairstyles, lots random streaks of vivid colour showing through the black clothes, more designed clothing and branded stuff labeled "Emo" or something. That's "Scene".

Honestly I think actual the actual "emo" generation has gone by, now "Scene" is trying to take its place I guess.

 

[Yopaz]

When I asked a friend of mine once he explained it to me by grabbing my shoulders and yell "WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?" at me and I always considered that a pretty good definition.

Not the most accurate definition, but without a doubt the best one.

OT: The word emo has been used in so many ways that any meaning we put to it wont cover its use. The origin is from music, but right now it has lost all meaning. It's kinda like gay. It used to mean happy, then homosexual and now it's an insult used on everyone we don't like.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

A subculture of people who are like more sensitive goths and implies depression, aimlessness and self-harm. Characteristics typically associated include long fringe and black, tight-fitting clothes, but not so much piercings.