Real Emo: A defence of posers in the year 2024
Today, winged eyeliner and black double grommet belts seem enough to constitute belonging, with “goth” and “punk” being thrown around in place of “emo”.
To quote an infamous copypasta, ‘“Real Emo” only consists of the dc Emotional Hardcore scene and the late 90’s Screamo scene’. What was once a thriving teen subculture has since been lost to the passage of time, leaving only traces of its existence: adult disapproval, stereotypes about choppy, side-swept bangs, and a lot of rockish woe-is-me music. However, 2000s nostalgia maintains its momentum. A question of authenticity arises — has a new wave of emo been saturated by posers? The answer to this is yes, and we should be grateful for it.
At its core, the discussion is one of genre. Musical ancestry provides neat frameworks for things such as goth, which developed subgenres after its British birth in the ‘70s. Likewise, metal and its categories have diversified considerably since the late ‘60s. At the expense of its preservation, emo lacks the same modern understanding. Offshoot bands like Hawthorne Heights are deemed too pop-punk, while Death Cab for Cutie is decidedly too indie. Those who claim otherwise may be sentenced to online responses like this isn’t emo lol and pinkerton is literally indie rock [crying face emoji], among other expert opinions. The argument must be ceded in part; I Write Sins Not Tragedies bears little resemblance to self-pitying guitar riffs propagated by Rites of Spring. But just as early rock has aged into its modern counterpart in spite of purists, so too should emo. We cannot imprison sounds in a 1990s chamber when their echoes continue to reverberate into the present.
I myself am not sure where the line is drawn. Nevertheless, if we assume emos’ unanimity on which artists represent the scene, we may move onto an in-group pastime: criticising the lowest of the low (i.e. “posers”). Lyrical angst and proximity to mental health taboos facilitated emo circles a couple of decades ago. Today, winged eyeliner and black double grommet belts seem enough to constitute belonging, with “goth” and “punk” being thrown around in place of “emo”.
As we walked past an Emo Night at the Burdekin, my millennial uncle suggested that the alternative is ‘mostly a fancy dress theme now’. If there is no denying that current trends transformed pre-existing niches into a less nuanced #aesthetic, we should instead ask ourselves why we’re upset.
A new internet is merely a catalyst for norms that started in the 2000s. Twenty-odd years ago, posers were the laughing stock of MySpace; mislabelling and stylistic appropriation are not recent things. However, there is a positive correlation between the dissemination of subcultures and the density of people who misidentify with them; the revival of cultural icons like Fall Out Boy bleeds into internet microtrends, and new tie-wearing youth who lack knowledge of post-hardcore proclaim themselves emos. Yet Y2K-romanticists’ engagement with the scene — which had been suspected dead — has given us back My Chemical Romance, Johnnie Guilbert of My Digital Escape on Youtube, and countless fifth-wave emo musicians. If casual enjoyers can only bolster a market catering to “real” emos, is it worth being bothered by them at all?
Ultimately, it’s about contradiction. Once a culture founded by the alienated and misunderstood is shared with mainstream audiences — “preps”, if you will — it is a jarring shift. When the senior yearbook editor defaced my rawr XD by attaching a period to its final letter, part of me was relieved that the phrase was still relatively unknown. Regardless, it seems an obvious blessing to have resuscitated the emo scene without giving a stronger pulse to society’s contempt for anyone requiring antidepressants or a therapist. Whether the subculture is rendered obsolete by outsiders’ acceptance of it is irrelevant to me. Like other Gen-Z teens, my own immersion began with introductory media — the same media condemned by a more weathered alternative coterie. My stance remains the same: in spite of an individuality complex, I will continue to thank posers for saving emo as it flatlined.