"Redifining 'Emo'" or "Emo Posers Fuck Off!!!"

You wanna know the real reason I closed my old blog?

Two words. Emo *FUCKING* posers. OK, two words and an expletive.

Back in my old blog (you can still check it out, if you like), I talked about the popular subgenre called 'emo', most of it focused on the Santa Rosa, Laguna-based Typecast.

How craptastically wrong I was.

What I defined as 'emo' back then was simply a hodgepodge of pop-punk/pop rock/alternative rock bands that the layman vaguely defines as 'emo', when in fact, they are not 'emo' at all, in the musical purist sense, that is.

So, what is emo? The true emo, I learned later, was the second wave, 90's emo. If you don't know what I'm bantering about, that means, this iteration of emo was more melodic than chaotic, more indie than its original hardcore punk origins, and IMO, the proper definition, since the lyrics and vocals alone define it.

Examples of these bands (and their respective albums) include:

- Sunny Day Real Estate (Diary)
- Weezer (Pinkerton)
- Jimmy Eat World (Static Prevails; Clarity)
- The Get Up Kids (Something to Write Home About)
- Mineral (The Power of Failing)
- The Appleseed Cast (The End of the Ring Wars)
- Pedro the Lion (It's Hard to Find a Friend)
- The Promise Ring (30° Everywhere; Nothing Feels Good)

Now, if you're a self-declared emo and you don't recognize any of the bands I've mentioned above, then let me officially label you as a POSER.

Emo is NOT Paramore, Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, Hawthorne Heights, Alesana, Saosin, Silverstein, The All-American Rejects, Boys Like Girls, Coheed and Cambria, Dashboard Confessional, Fightstar, Funeral for a Friend, Quietdrive, Matchbook Romance, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Senses Fail, Something Corporate, The Starting Line, Story of the Year, Taking Back Sunday, The Used, and ESPECIALLY NOT My Chemical Romance.

Secondly, if your idea of emo 'fashion' looks like this, either partially or completely:

Or this:

Worse still, this:

Or, if you're an emo girl, and your idea of emo 'fashion' looks like this:

Or this:

Then let me officially declare that YOU ARE A POSER.

Bonus poser 'points' if you actually look like one of these wackjobs.

Believe it or not, and as funny as it may seem, a true, genuine, authentic, and 100% real emo looked like this:

So, bottom line, if you're any one of the emo posers i've labelled, then GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME.

The real reason why I closed my first blog, then? These posers are fucking fawning over it, making me sound like I'm their savior, just because I talk about emo in a favoritive view. For the record, I AM NOT EMO. Why? Just because I listen to it doesn't mean I am it.

Secondly, I have recently developed a distaste for the current mainstream music, since it used the term far beyond its original intentions. Back then in the late 90's, being 'emo' is synonymous with being 'underground', 'indie', or 'cool'. Sadly, times changed.

Third, and most important, the most ironic thing I hear nowadays is how you can easily tell what music a certain person listens to just by looking at how he/she wears. For me, that's just bullshit. If you're trying to be against all forms of authority, why wear this emo fashion like a fucking uniform? That's not rebellion; that's conformity; the same type of conformity that convent-bred schoolgirls adhere to.

In the words of Rob Dobi, creator of yourscenesucks.com, and the images I used here:

"Everyone seems to be involved in some sort of strange contest where the winner wears the tightest jeans, puts on the silliest looking makeup, and sports the worst haircut. In the end, everyone loses. You all end up looking the same."

See what I mean?

EMO IS NOT A FUCKING FASHION SHOW. IT ISN'T ABOUT BITCHING ABOUT HOW PATHETIC YOUR LIFE IS, IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE, IT'S NOT FUCKING GAY, AND MOST IMPORTANT: IT'S NOTHING ABOUT SLITTING YOUR FUCKING WRISTS!!!

And if you still think emo is all that, then I suggest you look at the title of this post for my parting shot.

Please stop sending us Magic 8-Ball Questions!

NOTE: Believe it or not, I wrote this post (unedited and all) while at work. Why? When your team gets banned from doing anything else, you're bound to resort to something. And this post essentially just popped out of my ass. OK, enough rant. Let's start.


Here we are, my team being punished because we think so high of ourselves.

For a minute there, I thought that my team is so fucking metal, we kick every other team's arses.

Then reality kicked us right in the stomach and shouted in our ears that we're only human.

No playing, no loud chitchatting (sic), no searching. 'No playing' I can endure, I don't play games much anyway, even when I'm bored and on the verge of... well, I'll leave that to your imagination. 'No loud chitchatting' I can handle, I mean, I'm not much of a chatter anyway; I prefer to be silent. But no searching!? Damn, that's the only thing I'm doing whenever there's not a texter around asking some stupid Magic 8-Ball question.

Which brings us to the topic of this 'blog' 'post', which will be deleted an hour later because I have to take a 15-minute break.

Ever had a Magic 8-Ball? Me neither. I never had one, simply because I have no knowledge of its existence. But I've seen it countless times in movies, on TV, read in books, hell, even played in video games. This little plastic ball, made to look like an 8-ball seen in a game of billiards, is filled with liquid and has some weirdly-shaped dice-like thing that has writings on it, that every time you ask a 'yes' or 'no' question, you shake it, then some answer pops out, hence the name.

I remember our trainer/DJ, Aaron/CutterJ, mention something about this text service being treated by most people as some new-fangled 'Magic 8-Ball'. Truer words have never been spoken. Because right now, most of the questions we receive are almost always in this format:

"Will Amanda ever love me?"

"Will I be rich in the future?"

"Does this blouse make me look chubbier than I already am, because I'm a stupid, fat, lazy fuck who does nothing but sit around eating junk food and whatnot, debating useless, pointless stuff on Internet message boards, and giving some reed-thin geekazoid from Cambodia a righteous '+99 silver staff of the moon' of smiting?"

The first few times you get these types of questions, you're like "OK, maybe they just need somebody to talk to", but later on, you'll get so fucking annoyed that these people think that we do know everything. Wow! Like we have security cameras wired on every street, every house, even in your fucking bathtub, in all of the 50 states!

Then again, when your text line guarantees people that we can be asked ANY question, you know you're gonna expect the worst of society: racists, haters, or the just plain stupid.

But hey, thank God Almighty I have a job. And these people are paying me to fill their apparently empty heads with some fluff that I only know too damn well that they'll shit it out eventually.