Emo

(Noun, Adjective) - A word of many uses, emo generally describes: A) A genre of music B) Style of fasion C) Lifestyle/subculture (NOTE - The following may be just slightly biased) Emo music (short for Emocore or Emotional Hardcore) is a derivitive of the mid 80's hardcore scene. Born in Washington D.C., early emo was a mix of hardcore punk with both emotional lyrics and performances, dominated by bands such as "Rites Of Spring" and "Embrace". By the late 90's, most original emo bands had disbanded or changed direction. From 2000 onwards, many bands have unwillingly or unrightfully been labled as emo, such as "Dashboard Confessional" and "Taking Back Sunday". Many "classic" emo fans and outsiders view modern emo music as warterd-down punk rock. Emo fasion or "the emo look" has a number of simple characteristics. For males, hair should be black (although dark red/brown is acceptable), greassy, have a long fringe and a bang covering one eye. For females, although dark hair is prefered, any colour is acceptable. While hair may be cleaner, it must still cover a large portion of the face. Black shirts and jackets are worn, although on rare occasions an emo may wear a grey or white hoodie. Jeans are the clothing of choice for the emo, although for males anything out of their sisters closet is fine. Footware is typically any sort of skating shoe. To complete the look, apply excessive amounts of eyeshadow (males and females), put on a pair of black horned glasses and start listening to your eyepod. Emo culture, dominated by middle to upper class suburban white teenagers, is characterised by weak music, self loathing and melodrama. After listening to some emo music (generally, but not always shite), emo-boy will log onto myspace to talk to his emo friends. After blogging about how shit life is, how he fucking hates his parents, and how the whole world hates him, he'll have a look at emo-girls myspace page. A quick look at the 17,000 photos she's uploaded (either of her looking into the distance, her looking up at the camera in a confused and drugfucked way or her at an emo gathering), emo-boy and emo-girl will chat to each other. The conversation quickly turns to how they are both alone and nobody understands them. Emo-boy has had enough of myspace (for a few minutes at least) and decides he is depressed. He writes a "deep and meaningfull" poem, before deciding to end it all. A quick slash of the wrists and it's time to sit in the dark and wait for the end to come. Unfortunately, he only drove the razor 2 milimetres into his skin, so there's a pretty good chance he'll be back at school next week, trying (not very hard) to hide his fresh scars and emotions.