That's right, I'm old. I'm not far enough gone to use words like whipper-snapper or pull my pants 3/4 of the way up my torso just yet, but dang it -- I just don't understand kids today.
Out of curiosity, I conducted some high level research (*ahem* google) on
this phenomenon that has historically been pretty much under ground for a very long time now, only recently transcending into general pop culture (*ahem* suburbia). There is, of course, a veritable buffet of popular bands that appeal to sad and depressed legions of emo kids, as they're known. Panic! At The Disco (yes, that's one band name)
Fall Out Boy
Dashboard Confessional
Sunny Day Real Estate
New Found Glory
.....and so on, and so on.
The names of these bands are often upbeat and trendy, yet their lyrics -- which often cut deep into the tortured souls of the emo who suffer so greatly in the well groomed and generously funded halls of their high schools and in the broadband internet/IM/myspace equipped bedrooms of their comfortable two story colonial homes and McMansions where they are senselessly and mercilessly imprisoned -- are forlorn, foreign and somehow intriguing in a sort of....depressing way...which apparently is precisely the point.
I know I can't be the only one caught by surprise here, so in the spirit of sharing I'll enlighten/warn anyone...er, any old person who happens to stumble across my blog. Blatantly plagiarized from another site, I present to you....emo.
How to spot an emo kid:
Sometimes, you'll be at a party sipping on a frosty beverage and talking with a few people that are standing around the same area as yourself and you'll turn to someone new.
"Hey," you'll say.
"Uh," he'll grunt.
"Did you see that football game this weekend?"
"Uh, I don't WATCH football."
That was a little weird. Still, you'll persist.
"Um, OK. Well, I just got the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album, and..."
"I've been listening to a lot of My Chemical Romance."
Then it hits you. Holy crap, I've been talking to an emo kid!
At least with Goth kids, you can spot them from a mile away. But for the emo kids, it can sometimes be a little difficult to figure out who they are, and you can get ambushed into a conversation about Panic! At The Disco.
So, to ease your mind, here are a few easy ways that you can spot an emo kid from a mile away.
1. His hair covers one of his eyes. Not both of his eyes, or you've got a hippie on your hands. Emo kids like to only see half the world, because it's sadder that way. They'll often have horrendous looking hair that serves a dual purpose; blocking out half of their vision and making them look like huge tools.
2. His shoes are chucks, and some thing's drawn on them. Not the peace sign; emo kids don't care about the world outside of their own tortured souls enough to promote peace. That would be hippies again, and if you were dealing with a hippie, you'd have smelled him by now. No, an emo kid will have a word drawn in block letters like PAIN or a picture of a broken heart.
3. He's looking at the ground. Don't try to look at the ground with them; there's nothing there. They're staring at the torn and tattered fragments of their own souls, or maybe their broken and battered self esteem. To the rest of us, though, it'll just look like tile.
4. He's drinking wine. Unless it's new year's eve or you're celebrating something of equal magnitude, no dude should be caught with wine at a party. Emo kids forgo this rule; they don't like the taste of beer, because they aren't real men, and they like anything that resembles blood because it's depressing. Bonus emo points if he's drinking it from a fancy glass.
5. He's crying. Emo kids will always be crying about a girlfriend, a girl they want as their girlfriend, the new Dashboard album, or something to that very sad effect.In fact, it's very rare for emo kids to have enough self esteem that they can make it through a commercial break of a sad, sad TV show without crying. They cry when their favorite bands come out with new albums and they cry when they're happy. Emo kids live on tears, they same way that bears live on fish.
If you spot an emo kid, make no sudden movements; they'll try to explain their passion for crappy music to you if they notice you're interested in them. Instead, just wander to another corner of the party and don't talk to him. Eventually, he'll cry and leave, and you'll be glad you spotted him when you did.
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Well, there you have it. Print this out and keep it as a handy reference, especially at parties.
Finally, as a sort of old-person rebellion of my own, I want to give something back to the emo community at large. Here's a happy smiley face to cheer up all those emo kids listening to their fast tempo sad music on the iPod their parents gave them for Christmas last year, which of course was the wrong color:
>8 ^ )
3 comments:
Yeah, I think we've all been there as youth: "Having earned nothing on my own yet, so as not to appreciate what I have, I am depressed about all that I do not have."
That's pretty common. And sooner or later, a job and the need to pay rent start to force the light to flicker on above their head that there are people out there that work twice as hard for half as much. Then the used $4,500 sofa that you were "forced" to take into the apartment your parents co-signed for you starts to look a little better when you realized that there are families of four living in cars that are worth 1/3 of what your sofa cost.
HOWEVER... while this phenomenon is common, it perhaps has never been expressed so comicly than with the emo (a term I had never heard before, but love). I think every adult has seen a kid that was bent out of shape and figured it was over exactly what I've described above. The entire punk rock movement could fall into that category. But at least with punk rock, there was some release of energy, something exciting, something rebellious and controversial, no matter how much you regretted the photos of yourself twenty years later. You could later say, "I was a punk rocker with pink hair and my parents HATED IT!!!"
What will the emo champion after a couple of decades? "Son, I too rebelled when I was your age. I modified my hairdo and wrote forlorn words on shoes."
"Woah. Dad. You're freaking me out. I had no idea you used to be SO COOL!!"
Not.
So I guess "emo" translates to this: Standard youthful dissatisfaction, but without the motivation to really lash out.
Perhaps emo could be called "lashing in" instead, or more accurately "non-directional quasi-lashing".
Great post.
P.S. I'm still laughing about the quite superb use of the word "tool" in the quoted text. It's a dangerous word: use it wrong, and you become one. But use it right, and it's a work of art.
I am taking notes here as fast as I can. Gee, I thought I was old last week when I learned that Mary Lou Retton has had hip replacement surgery and Donnie Osmond is a grandpa. They're both younger than me, BTW; never mind. Great post!
But you're substantially younger at heart, OBVIOUSLY!
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