inthe00s
The Pop Culture Information Society...

These are the messages that have been posted on inthe00s over the past few years.

Check out the messageboard archive index for a complete list of topic areas.

This archive is periodically refreshed with the latest messages from the current messageboard.




Check for new replies or respond here...

Subject: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: Marzipanner on 12/24/20 at 8:12 am

Are we associated with emo?

I mean, we often talk about emo as a Millennial thing, but I remember emo being a really strong force for my batch (class of 2015) especially since we were in middle school when Paramore and Green Day were still topping the charts in 2009. I'd say it was still a central thing to many of us, and to say otherwise kinda some of our peers' middle school experiences. Idk, what do you think?

Subject: Re: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: GuapitoChico on 12/24/20 at 8:31 am

There's no official Zillennial range, but a commonly-used one is 1995-1998, and I'm class of 2015 too, so I'll go with that for this analysis.

In my circle of society, yes my batch had emos in middle school, but we only went as far as listening to the music, having emo lyrics as statuses on Yahoo Messenger, sporting side-swept bangs, and wearing black. We were fans of the music, and Fall Out Boy was everyone's go-to band, emo or not. We didn't go as far as getting tattoos nor dyeing our hair, though. We viewed emo as one of the usual archetypal social groups (e.g. the nerds, the gangsters, the jocks, the preps, etc.), rather than a cultural trend of the time.

But I suppose you want more than just an anecdote, so let's see...

Firstly, plenty of music that are labelled emo, aren't actually emo in terms of genre (Like MCR isn't actually emo, though they were the poster band of the subculture). However, there is no denying that the emo subculture is heavily grounded on the music it listens to (few actual emo, mostly pop punk and alternative mislabelled as emo), so I will still take that into consideration when analyzing this.

Emo subculture grew at around 2002-2004, think "Hands Down" (I'll term this the "Growing" era)
Emo peaked at around 2005-2007, think "Welcome To The Black Parade" (I'll term this the "Peak" era)
Emo was still popular but started waning in 2008-2010, think "Gives You Hell" (I'll term this the "Waning" era)
Emo wasn't underground yet in 2011-2012, but that was its last breath in the public eye, and most of it was just residual popularity from releases from a few years past. (I'll term this the "Dying" era)
By 2013, it was pretty much underground.
Consider also the fact that songs are still popular years after their release (e.g. "Grand Theft Autumn" was released in 2003, but was still hot on the radio in 2007.)

Emo generally has a young demographic; its musical and cultural themes cater mostly to adolescent angst.

High school students (14-18), who are at the peak of their edgy adolescence and fully immersed in pop culture, old enough to go to concerts on their own, would've been the primary audience.
College students (18-22) who are still into pop culture, but weaning off their edginess and leaving adolescence, are a secondary audience.
Middle schoolers (11-14), who are new to hormones, and at the dawn of their angsty adolescence and finding their niche in pop culture, are also a secondary audience. (There's a pretty good reason why "7th grade emo phase" is a term)
Some elementary schoolers and full-fledged adults listened too, but they're probably not in the target market.

Now, with all of that being said, to answer your question: Are Zillennials associated with emo? Let's see... we were in middle school during the late 2000s, which means we were a secondary audience, and only in its waning era, and for a short period. Plus, while 2008-2010 had its fair share of new emo hits, most of the music we were likely listening to were songs from a few years past that still had residual popularity on the radio. If you want a nitpicky precise answer: Yes, we have some association to emo, but it's a rather weak one. If anything, it's our entry into the world of pop culture, but not the bulk of our experience. I'd say that our defining culture is really more the first half of the 2010s, spanning the middle of the electropop era to the EDM period. Think of everything from "DJ Got Us Falling In Love" to "Thinking Out Loud" That's what being a cusper is about - having a slight degree of association with typical Millennial and/or Gen Z culture, but ultimately having a quintessential cultural period in between.

Also, remember here in InThe00s, we recognize that people have different experiences. Socio-cultural discussions here are not meant to dictate how you should identify, but are just used as a lens to describe how society changes over time. We acknowledge that while most people are mostly influenced by their high school or college years, many others are also more attuned to their middle school years and there's nothing unusual about that.

Subject: Re: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: 2001 on 12/24/20 at 1:01 pm

I'm a millennial (b. 1993) but I felt like people my age were too young to be the main audience emo. It seemed to peak sometime around 2004-2007. By my third year of high school it was already seen as very passé. I remember my brother in late 2008 tried to go for an emo style because he was too lazy to cut his hair, and everyone's general reaction was "Emo? Aren't you a bit late?"

Other posters say emo hung on until 2010-2013 so it might be very regional, so I wouldn't rule out people  oen in the mid-late 90s getting into emo. Where I'm at it was already on its death bed in 2008, people were more into rap, R&B, electropop, generally stuff you could dance to. Rock was only popular if you could dance to it, stuff like Dance Floor Anthem, Gives You Hell, Check Yes Juliet etc. Rock was very noticeably less popular in 2008/2009 than in 2005, although not completely dead yet like today. Putting sad poems as your status text was in the dust bins of history.

Subject: Re: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: GuapitoChico on 12/24/20 at 2:55 pm

I think another thing to consider is that the concept of "emo" as people use it today wasn't limited to a cultural trend of the past. The "emo phase" has since become an adolescent rite of passage (like how middle aged adults have midlife crisis). Kids today don't go full-blown 00s emo fashion, but at some point within their adolescence, they do go through a dark-themed period (whether it be an excessively angsty attitude, outlook in life, or their music/aesthetic) that people loosely refer to as the emo phase ever since. I would know, because I teach 7th, 8th, 9th, and 11th graders and lots of my students have at some point experienced that HAHAHA.

Subject: Re: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: karen on 12/24/20 at 3:03 pm


I think another thing to consider is that the concept of "emo" as people use it today wasn't limited to a cultural trend of the past. The "emo phase" has since become an adolescent rite of passage (like how middle aged adults have midlife crisis). Kids today don't go full-blown 00s emo fashion, but at some point within their adolescence, they do go through a dark-themed period (whether it be an excessively angsty attitude, outlook in life, or their music/aesthetic) that people loosely refer to as the emo phase ever since. I would know, because I teach 7th, 8th, 9th, and 11th graders and lots of my students have at some point experienced that HAHAHA.


This I would agree with.

Not everyone,  but plenty of teens do. In the eighties they were called goths, but essentially the same.

Subject: Re: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: HazelBlue99 on 12/24/20 at 5:50 pm

Well for me as someone born in 1999, emo was the music I grew up with as a kid during the mid-late 2000s and a lot of people my age got into the music for that reason. We were 7 when My Chemical Romance released The Black Parade, 8 years old in 2007 when emo was at its peak and Fall Out Boy released Infinity on High. For a lot of us, it was our introduction to rock music. Emo is the genre I personally associate with my childhood the most and it makes me feel pretty nostalgic.

We're probably the last to have gotten into it. One of my best friends in primary school (he is gay) had a crush on the lead singer of Short Stack and chatted to him in private messages over Facebook when he was 12. Another one of my friends, who I didn't know at the time as he went to a different primary school, used to even wear the eyeliner and dye his hair black when he was 11-13. During my summer art camp in Year 12 back in 2017, my friends played Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco and Paramore through a portable Bluetooth speaker while we were in our room for the night.


Other posters say emo hung on until 2010-2013 so it might be very regional, so I wouldn't rule out people  oen in the mid-late 90s getting into emo.


You should see my 7th grade class photos from early 2012. Half of the boys in my grade sported emo swoops or skater hair. :-[

Subject: Re: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: wixness on 12/24/20 at 6:17 pm

Sad to have missed out on it. It stopped being a thing by around 2013, 2014 or 2015 at the absolute latest. Started around 2004 or 2005 at the absolute earliest maybe, but came to be as I preferred it about 2006 or 2007.
I loved the gender non-conforming and generally non-conforming and cute aesthetic of it. I loved the music too. I just hate that I was born too late to enjoy it when it was most appropriate for me, not to mention I lived with parents who weren't really OK with this too.

Subject: Re: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: wixness on 12/24/20 at 6:18 pm


You should see my 7th grade class photos from early 2012. Half of the boys in my grade sported emo swoops or skater hair. :-[

I wanted to be one of those kids.

Subject: Re: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: 2001 on 12/24/20 at 6:24 pm


You should see my 7th grade class photos from early 2012. Half of the boys in my grade sported emo swoops or skater hair. :-emo revival by then ;D

P.S. I have an "emo swoop" right at this very moment. The barbershop is closed because of the lockdown at the moment, and that's just the way my hair naturally falls. :P

Subject: Re: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: GuapitoChico on 12/24/20 at 8:32 pm


Sad to have missed out on it. It stopped being a thing by around 2013, 2014 or 2015 at the absolute latest. Started around 2004 or 2005 at the absolute earliest maybe, but came to be as I preferred it about 2006 or 2007.
I loved the gender non-conforming and generally non-conforming and cute aesthetic of it. I loved the music too. I just hate that I was born too late to enjoy it when it was most appropriate for me, not to mention I lived with parents who weren't really OK with this too.


Many of us had that of "there, but not totally" kind of involvement with emo. Like as middle schoolers in the late 00s we were old enough to have gotten into the music and sport some minor fashion/stylistic changes, but a little too young to have attended concerts without a chaperone or have sported the full-blown aesthetic with black eyeliner, hair dye, piercings, etc. Kinda like how my mom (1968) had a lot of disco influence in middle school and that was their genre in their school dance, but she was a little young to go to the discotheque at that time.

Perhaps find solace in the fact that you still actually caught emo when it was still a thing in the late 00s/early 2010s I guess? hehe

Subject: Re: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: GuapitoChico on 12/24/20 at 8:46 pm


I had a swoop hairstyle up until 2016, and emo was old enough to be having an emo revival by then ;D


The "emo revival" wasn't a revival of the mall emo sound as we know it, though. Genre-wise, the likes of MCR and FOB are not actually emo at all, but just pop punk/alternative. A number of emo purists eventually got frustrated at how popular this faux emo was getting and felt that the emo subculture was heavily misrepresenting the emo genre by appropriating just any alternative/pop-punk sound as emo. The revival started as early as the late 2000s as a movement to shake off faux emo and return to the "true emo" sound in the 90s. Of course, the faux emo was still miles popular at that time, and the emo revival movement never surfaced into the public eye.

So basically, no, the revivalists weren't trying to get the swoop hairstyle back, but rather the opposite. HAHA

Subject: Re: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: 2001 on 12/24/20 at 11:05 pm


The "emo revival" wasn't a revival of the mall emo sound as we know it, though. Genre-wise, the likes of MCR and FOB are not actually emo at all, but just pop punk/alternative. A number of emo purists eventually got frustrated at how popular this faux emo was getting and felt that the emo subculture was heavily misrepresenting the emo genre by appropriating just any alternative/pop-punk sound as emo. The revival started as early as the late 2000s as a movement to shake off faux emo and return to the "true emo" sound in the 90s. Of course, the faux emo was still miles popular at that time, and the emo revival movement never surfaced into the public eye.

So basically, no, the revivalists weren't trying to get the swoop hairstyle back, but rather the opposite. HAHA


You are 100% right. You actually gave me déjà vu for the discussions we had on here about emo revival back in 2016 ;D

Subject: Re: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: wixness on 01/22/21 at 9:33 am


Many of us had that of "there, but not totally" kind of involvement with emo. Like as middle schoolers in the late 00s we were old enough to have gotten into the music and sport some minor fashion/stylistic changes, but a little too young to have attended concerts without a chaperone or have sported the full-blown aesthetic with black eyeliner, hair dye, piercings, etc. Kinda like how my mom (1968) had a lot of disco influence in middle school and that was their genre in their school dance, but she was a little young to go to the discotheque at that time.

Perhaps find solace in the fact that you still actually caught emo when it was still a thing in the late 00s/early 2010s I guess? hehe

The "emo revival" wasn't a revival of the mall emo sound as we know it, though. Genre-wise, the likes of MCR and FOB are not actually emo at all, but just pop punk/alternative. A number of emo purists eventually got frustrated at how popular this faux emo was getting and felt that the emo subculture was heavily misrepresenting the emo genre by appropriating just any alternative/pop-punk sound as emo. The revival started as early as the late 2000s as a movement to shake off faux emo and return to the "true emo" sound in the 90s. Of course, the faux emo was still miles popular at that time, and the emo revival movement never surfaced into the public eye.
So basically, no, the revivalists weren't trying to get the swoop hairstyle back, but rather the opposite. HAHA

I liked the mid-2000s to early 2010s alternative music and fashion - it was rather gender non-conforming for me and looks and sounds a lot better than what the 2010s has been putting out. I don't like how the short back and sides became popular and I don't like how bland music seems to sound, among other things. I still wish I were older though occasionally. Now that all our music's being streamed there's no way to get it if it goes (I'm only lucky to have bought some, but not many of the emo music around). With the fashion I hope I can still rock it - I'm 23 in a male body and am not a fan of it.  For me the only thing the 2010s did right was improving awareness of climate justice and marginalized groups of people, and to a limited extent some of its tech. Most of it was a mistake that we can't undo unless we take drastic action.

Subject: Re: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: Voiceofthe70s on 01/22/21 at 11:11 am


I liked the mid-2000s to early 2010s alternative music and fashion - it was rather gender non-conforming for me and looks and sounds a lot better than what the 2010s has been putting out. I don't like how the short back and sides became popular and I don't like how bland music seems to sound, among other things. I still wish I were older though occasionally. Now that all our music's being streamed there's no way to get it if it goes (I'm only lucky to have bought some, but not many of the emo music around). With the fashion I hope I can still rock it - I'm 23 in a male body and am not a fan of it. For me the only thing the 2010s did right was improving awareness of climate justice and marginalized groups of people, and to a limited extent some of its tech. Most of it was a mistake that we can't undo unless we take drastic action.


Since you brought it up I thought I'd ask a question,, even though your situation is not exactly what I'm talking about.  But it reminded me of this other thing. I have noticed a very new phenomenon that some young gay/queer males of the social justice warrior/identity politics type, even though they clearly identify as "queer", are actually UNHAPPY that they are attracted to males because they detest "toxic masculinity" and basically maleness in general. This is a distinctly different breed than somebody who cannot adjust to being gay because they feel it isn't "right", or for religious reasons or whatever. I'm talking about somebody who loves being "queer" and all that comes with it but wishes they didn't have to be attracted to males because males are basically "toxic". I find this VERY bizarre and somewhat twisted. I mean, for heaven's sake, WHATEVER gender or sex one is attracted to they might as well ENJOY it!  Has anybody else noticed this odd phenomenon among the identity politics bunch?

Subject: Re: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: 2001 on 01/22/21 at 12:09 pm


Since you brought it up I thought I'd ask a question,, even though your situation is not exactly what I'm talking about.  But it reminded me of this other thing. I have noticed a very new phenomenon that some young gay/queer males of the social justice warrior/identity politics type, even though they clearly identify as "queer", are actually UNHAPPY that they are attracted to males because they detest "toxic masculinity" and basically maleness in general. This is a distinctly different breed than somebody who cannot adjust to being gay because they feel it isn't "right", or for religious reasons or whatever. I'm talking about somebody who loves being "queer" and all that comes with it but wishes they didn't have to be attracted to males because males are basically "toxic". I find this VERY bizarre and somewhat twisted. I mean, for heaven's sake, WHATEVER gender or sex one is attracted to they might as well ENJOY it!  Has anybody else noticed this odd phenomenon among the identity politics bunch?


The gay community turns its nose up at more "feminine" guys, it might be a reaction to that.

Subject: Re: Zillennials: What is our association with emo?

Written By: Voiceofthe70s on 01/22/21 at 12:44 pm


The gay community turns its nose up at more "feminine" guys, it might be a reaction to that.


Could be, but I think it's "bigger" than that. I think it has to do with them being turned off by "maleness"  in general due to this "patriarchy"/"toxic masculinity"/politically correct thing, yet at the same time they are attracted to males, causing turmoil in their lives. What do these guys do, hang around exclusively with women and shun all men? It strikes me as a very narrow way of being. And since they are attracted to males even though they hate "maleness" it's kind of like "cutting off your nose to spite your face".  What strange times we live in.

Check for new replies or respond here...