Breitbarth
The Emo-Phenom c. 2002

Well, this essay of exposure and complaint describes everything that its namesake exhibits--certain things must be said, and this will be the forum of discussion.  Emo:  the glam rock of our decade, and just as gender bending.  Generation after generation has it distinct fads; fads that have cult-like followings and rules.  I predict that this generation of adolescence will have the "emo kid" phenomenon to recall.  Since when did being sad and friendless make you popular?  

To clarify matters, the emo fad starts much sooner than the commercialized despair of Dashboard Confessional; it is actually rooted deep within the Grunge rock days of the early to mid 90s--no to be confused with the punk-rock of the late 80s.  From 1989 to 1994 the soon-to-be-emo kids had no reason to be so sad, Kurt Cobain was sad enough for all of us and then some.  The seed of overly emotional depression sprung its first leaflets with Cobain's sudden suicide.  All of the sudden people saw their chance to be sad on their own, and they just carried it on.  

So for the past nine years have emo kids simply been mourning the death of their fallen angel?  No.  The original feelings displayed directly after Kurt Cobain's death have long since died, but the shadows and side effects still strumming there way into modern society.  

Some people who never liked Nirvana or Kurt Cobain embellish themselves in an emo lifestyle too--how do I explain that?  Easy, they are stupid--but seriously, Cobain may have started the fire, but it was always burning, just as the world kept turning.  Most emo kids are just going on with the fad.  After the hurt of Kurt Cobain's loss wore away many emo kids had gotten so much attention that it would have been rude just to end such a good thing.  Consequently, they found other miniscule problems to whine about.  If their parents refused to go to there soccer games, or if they were not going to subsidize the garage band that the kid had aspirations of creating, and even more ridiculous reasons immerged:  "my parents still won't get me an i-pod." – Yes, it is that bad – this gave them the right to be sad; if any amount of people even hinted at disliking these children inclined to despair, all kinds of sadness would break loose.  By overly exaggerating the neglect of their parents and peers they become the part of the popular crowd.  These rash reaction and consequences sustained them.

For example:  not being popular in general.  Have very few friends; this is another emo-"sitch" of choice.  Constantly claiming that your few emo-friends don’t really care about you, that is also pretty popular these days.  

What about the emo diet, where did that root from?  Well, the hefty diet of air and scraps disfigures their body beyond all feasible attraction; thus giving them one more reason for people to feel sorry for them, and deep down that is what emo is all about.  Given enough time, disfiguration has become confused with sex appeal.

How about the glasses? Geek-chic and they call it.  Back in the day, those were the cheapest glass one could buy, and the fact that many emo kids were originally klutzy "geeks" meant that they broke their glasses a lot.  Being able to easily replace the broken equipment is very valuable; thus resulting in the implementation of the cheap, boxy glasses.  Again, people began to feel sorry for them.  Feeling cheap and desperate: the motifs of the emo lifestyle.  Perhaps this is one good thing about emo, knowing that your cheap, boxy, glasses help you enter the popular fad, could be a good boost of confidence; unfortunately, showing such happiness would definitely eliminate a membership from the emo group.

Let’s talk about language.  After hundreds of years of mixing and matching races and societal customs, we in the United States of America bask ourselves in one of the most complicated languages on the face of our overpopulated planet; and they are trying to kill that too.  ‘Rents, sitch, mod, these are just a few of the lingual atrocities committed daily by emo kids everywhere.  Parents, which they are intelligently referred to as, are simplified to "rents," the idea being that they are a rent away from being just landlords.  Actually, the real idea would be “that they are not worth the time to use an entire word,” this explanation came from formerly “straight-edge,” emo kid Melissa Frost; mind you, Melissa currently models in New York, and goes to modeling camps all paid for by her parents.  To Frost the cake, her parents pay for her drug abuse, reasoning that she does not use them “that much.”  “Sitch,” more commonly known as “situation,” has also become a popular saying. As far as I know, this abbreviation comes from the Disney channel’s “Kim Possible.”  Why an emo kid would watch “Kim Possible” is beyond me.  Watching a cartoon about an intelligent, attractive, and happy teenage she-spy does not fit the stereotypical emo mold.  “Mod”:  the tri-blade in the emo dialect.  “Mod” can be used in the context of modern to the point of ridiculousness; for example a flashy article of clothing that is just a bit over the top.  Another use for “mod” would be simply “modern,” and in this case it is usually a good thing — one of the few in all emo culture.  Nonetheless, returning to the normal negativity, “mod” is also an emo-verb meaning to humiliate or to destroy.  In a sub-culture that glorifies being worthless, the children of emo seem to consider themselves above feasible language.

Emo: love, happiness, and lack thereof.  Moping in the shadows, feeling sorry for themselves, and making sure everyone knows about it, this is the living.  The fifties had the rock and rollers, the sixties had the hippies, the seventies had the discophiles, the eighties had glam rock and early punks, the nineties brought the Goths, teeny boppers, grunge, and thugs, and we have the emo kids; where is the fairness in that?  When will be allowed to be happy again?  Sometimes, like now, I do not have all the answers, the emophenom needs to be stopped, and time is our only weapon.  Beside, who knows what could be next, it could be worst?  For the time being I say deal with the crisis in your own means:  join them, fight them, glorify them, study them; just don’t try to cheer them up.