Your experiences with the Emo scene

Hahaha I know right?! I'm owning it though. ("Check Yes Juliet" IS a bop.) There's something about the whininess now that feels so current even if stylistically it isn't at all. As I said above, the idea of discussing mental health issues is mainstream now. Depression and anxiety are seeming virally contagious and suicide is getting frighteningly commonplace. Even in the 00's, this was still something people largely kept to themselves, so a lot of these lyrics felt bizarre and uncomfortable. Since then we've open up to a degree, like hey maybe there is something wrong here, maybe it is different growing up in this century.

Yet at the same time, the attention on this topic nowadays can get almost exhausting. It's just gotten so serious. And that's where emo comes in. It's so over-the-top in its angst and expression that it almost feels like a clairvoyant spoof, without dismissing the reality out of the content. Songs like "I'm Not Okay" by MCR are kind of amazing in 2019. In one realm, it's hilarious, because the whining is so in your face and practically kitschy. Yet the willingness to sound vulnerable also feels relevant. 

Speaking of "Check Yes Juliet", do you remember if it ever a big hit in the US? The Wikipedia article states that the song was certified platinum, but it only peaked at #70 on the Billboard Hot 100. I can only assume that the chart placement wasn't entirely reflective of it's overall popularity at the time? It was a pretty big hit here in Australia, but because "Check Yes Juliet" wasn't released as a single until We The Kings went on a nationwide tour of the country, it didn't become a hit until Early 2011. I remember how weird it was to have a song straight out of 2008 amongst all the electropop on the Top-40 charts.   

Yep. I feel as though the growth of social media has largely been responsible for topics such as depression and anxiety becoming "mainstream". People are being exposed to a lot more questionable/vulgar content that they otherwise wouldn't have and as a result, it is desensitizing all of us. Just referring back to Emo, I think the one thing that goes against it is that it can be easily taken the wrong way and that's partly the reason why Emo suffered through such a huge backlash. Depression and anxiety are not topics that should be made light of in anyway, yet Emo often approaches those two topics in a way that it could almost be viewed as though they are being mocked. 

True since we were all born in the mid 90s, graduated high school in the first half of the 2010s, last wave of myspace users, Facebook dominated our high school years, our high school years were during the golden age of smartphones, all of us became teens in the late 00s.

I feel like MCR genuinely didn't try too hard to be cool or hardcore like a lot of bands did at the time, which ultimately made them trendsetters. I think they were pretty self-aware in what they were doing, more theatrical and bizarre, while still able to sit comfortably in an existing genre. Ironically MCR gets cited as just about the poster child of emo today, though what it inspired and what it actually was may be two different things.

Ha I know I could never stand his voice! But I think I'm like trolling myself for finding it entertaining at this point. I heard some people sing "Welcome to My Life" at karaoke sometime last year and that's what made me start to find some value in it. It's just amusing. I feel like their attitude, along with other pop punk bands, did supply a lot to emo, and even though they themselves didn't particularly look it, they're almost like its older sibling.

Yeah, for whatever reason, people around my age were never able to get into it; it was mostly popular with the post-2000 crowd. I know this is getting off-topic, but I think the one interesting thing about my time in high school is that it can actually be equally split between when pop/school culture leaned more towards the Millennials and/or Gen Z. The first-half (2012-2014) was generally defined by the popularity of Facebook, HTC smartphones and the rise of app culture, while the second-half (2015-2017) saw the emergence of Music.aly, Trap music and Snapchat (three things which are associated with Gen Z). That's partially the reason why I have never able to identify solely with either generation; I experienced equal amounts of both Millennial and Gen Z influences/trends.

Just relating back to this topic, when I started high school in late January 2012, people born in 1994 (so around al 's age) were the seniors of the school and the school culture at the time was purely Millennial, so much so that there were even a few lingering Emo/Scene influences (e.g some of the males still sporting long hair) during a good proportion of the year. One of my closest friends (who I didn't know at the time) even wore dark eyeliner at the time, as well as dying his hair black and sporting the long, Emo hair look. Emo music may have, for the most part, fell out of the mainstream around 2010, but it's influence could still be noted until as late as the second-half of 2012. Coincidentally, it was around that time (Late 2012/Early 2013) that my friend got out of his "Emo phase".

Fast forward five years, 2004 borns were the "juniors" of the school and the school culture was overwhelmingly Gen Z. I'd say that the cusp period between Millennial and Gen Z culture was probably between 2014-2016. IMO, 2016 was the first year in which pop culture, as well as school culture, leaned overwhelmingly more towards Gen Z. 

Yep, when I entered senior year in 2016-2017, I could tell that Gen Z influence started to dominate over the Cusp Generation. It was the year when XXXTentacion blew up. Right now, high school is extremely Gen Z.

Emos did disappear in 2010 but the Scene kids still were around. I remember there were a group of Scenes in the 2013-2014 school year and were gone by late 2014.

I find it interesting you guys didn't experience Snapchat until the mid 10's because it was pretty big in 2012 at my school. Perhaps it's like Twitter and had its waves. I feel like Twitter boomed when Facebook initially did in 2009 and then was stagnant until around 2012\2013, when Facebook started getting lame and teens/twenty-somethings sought better platforms. There was such a change in teen culture between when I started and finished high school.

But back on topic, I agree that emo was dead in 2010 in exchange for "scene". Whatever exactly that was, and people only really identified as scene until 2012/13. Elements of the style didn't really die as I said before, as much as blend with mainstream. I probably see more people with vibrant hair colors or unusual styles than ever, long hair is getting more accepted on males, tattoos and piercings have been normalized, skinny jeans are just jeans, etc. Sure the styles quite literally referencing emo have gotten more rare, but what hasn't evolved in a decade.