"real" emo?

brace yourself for my hot music take! its basically what the other person said in this forum thread but more in depth.

scene kids / emo kids were and are generally regarded as posers. its because they have no idea where their music originates from and think mcr is actually emo. being an emo / scene kid is not actually an identity though and a lot of scenesters on here think it is. thats the problem.

its a term to describe the kids who were involved with the local music scene who went to shows with various "core" genres like hardcore. posthardcore, screamo(skramz) etc. its not always elitism, they just dont know that emotional lyrics do not make a band emo or they think that other genres are emo when they have almost nothing to do with emo music (just associatied because of society).

emo a subgenre of hardcore punk. there are subgenres of emo too. what exactly makes it emo is the hardcore influence but it depends on the context and which wave of emo were talking about. music is unfortunately complicated. from what i understand, originally the 80s pioneers of emo(tional hardcore) music were coming from hardcore and wanted to sing about something more emotional and experiment more in contrast to hardcores abrasiveness and anger. then in the 90s it branched off into midwest emo, emoviolence, sasscore/skramz (formally known as screamo) and its brother posthardcore (screamo and posthardcore get mixed up a lot).

a lot of people hated scene kids because they thought they were appropriating the genre which they kinda did by calling everything from pop punk to metalcore emo as they slowly departed from actual emocore music. they made it into fashion when its not about that which pioneers of the genre especially didnt like. they made it for the message, not just to dress up. but the scene kids also did things no one else did and got some music super popular because myspace. especially with deathcore and sometimes arguably emo pop bands like weezer, say anything, fob, mcr, dashboard confessional, AFI, bmth, jobforacowboy, and suicide silence that all got big on myspace there was suddenly lots of teenagers listening to this music influenced by emo/indie/alternative/posthardcore/hardcore/death metal etc and stuck up old people into death metal equally didnt like that young people were doing something new with the music just like OG emo listeners didnt like myspace people throwing around the term emo on bands that werent necessarily emo. along with the stereotype, generally people did not want to be emo. there was so much elitism back in the day with punk music (umbrella term) culture there was even a song written about it called "boxcar" by jawbreaker. "'youre not punk and I'm telling everyone' save your breath, i never was one. you dont know what im all about like killing cops and reading kerouac". basically, you cant be a poser if you dont claim to be something

especially since the scene / emo kids of today think that bands like pierce the veil are emo, emo elitists still dont like em. the ironic thing is that the emo elitists dont realize they are also scene kids and MCR and FOB are not emo bands. i dont think it matters if someone is a "poser" or doesn't listen to actual emo music as long as they realize just how estranged they are from emo music and they realize that they arent "emo" and just understand the social context. its been overused so much its been defanged and the movement has lost its subversive effect. i could go into another rant about how "emo" music is being used as a commodity by corporations like the when we were young tour with a bunch of bands and how it was terribly planned out but this is already long enough. theres actually a name for this, its recuperation, google it

tldr: im a music nerd with lots to say, bear with me

oh, no worries. ^^

Aurelio Voltaire said that what Goth is is up to the individual. This is how I also look at Scene and Emo. Who the fuck knows, who the fuck cares? It's up to you to figure that out.