Your experiences with the Emo scene

I've already said it in stone. 2006 was my heartbreak year, I fell deep for this girl I knew and I was cringe about it. >_< Its embarrassing. I will never forget the memory duo to all the worst reasons.

My experiences with emo is that I remember that dressing head to toe in black and having dramatic eyeliner in 2002 started to become "cool". It was called goth at the time but I find it hard to differentiate between goth and emo.

In 2004 emo reached its peak, it felt like every song was a sop song. All my favourite bands went for a dark look and came out with sad albums (for example Avril Lavigne with Under My Skin or Green Day with American Idiot). As an 11 year old I ate it all up! 2004 is probably my favourite year in music, probably because I can relate every life moment back to some 2004 song.

2005 was when everyone had some sad song as their MySpace background music, or like me who have some sad poetic verse as their MSN handle. I think MSN introduced its "Listening to" feature this year so listening to music became a social media thing. People would play sad songs so they get more attention. Around late 2005 was probably when I first heard the word emo. It felt like every band got accused of being emo, even bands like Linkin Park and Simple Plan. Nobody was safe. I listened to All American Rejects and Fall Out Boy, but no one was playing that aloud at school like we were with Green Day and Sum 41 only just in early 2005. You can tell it was embarrassing to be caught listening to bands like that now. The emo backlash was beginning in earnest.

2006/2007 were the décline years for emo, but interestingly also when some of the most iconic material came out such as MCR/Paramore. But you could tell emo scene was washed up because almost all the rock bands put on a happy theme for 2007. In terms of fashion, I remember taking inspiration more from Japanese rock bands than Anglo ones. I was trying to go for an anime style but invariably ended up looking emo; I guess the style had left its mark on 2000s fashion.

By 2008 emo was pretty much dead. I don't remember any news coming out of that scene that year (funnily enough, I can think of more 2009 emo albums than 2008 ones). I remember rock taking a more acoustic, and also electronic sound that year. I do remember a lot of people listening to metal and continuing with the satanic look, but I'm unsure if that was a trend or just my school.

In late 2008 or early 2009, my brother got an emo hairstyle (in reality, he was too lazy to cut his hair so he straightened it instead). The general reaction was "Emo? Aren't you a bit late?" I think by then emo was pretty much history. In 2009-2010 school year, people covered their face in shame when 2005-2007 emo-looking pictures were brought up. We couldn't believe we ever thought that looked cool

You're right that emo wasn't a word that was used very often before 2006. Other than Taking Back Sunday and Hawthorne Heights, I can't really think of a band that calls themselves emo. It's a derogatory term that got applied to everything remotely sad and dark under the defenition "emo means emotional". MCR actually explicitly denied being emo, but despite that they're considered the face of emo these days.

Hell yeah it does. Brokencyde sucks ass. If you go on the comments of the emo videos, it's people being nostalgic and appreciating the music. If you look at the scene videos, it's people REGRETTING they were ever into this sort of stuff.