What exactly is ‘emo’? Any rock music lover will tell you that emo is short for emocore, which in turn is short for ‘emotional hardcore’, which is a type of rock music characterized by wild, varying song structures, harsh vocals, and flourishing patterns. However, emo has grown into a subculture of many teens today, and somewhere along the line, the term was lost in a sea of misunderstanding.

‘Emo’ is a now a term used to describe any person that is in touch with their emotional side. It is sometimes a side effect of depression, but is often just a stage of self-realization. It is commonly related with the ‘goth’ subculture because of clothing style, but emo people can also wear the brightest things; in a sense, they wear their emotions on their clothes because they have difficulty expressing them otherwise. Some can be classified as loners, yet others are often quite sociable.

Emo = “Emotional?”
Emo is a slang term known to be short for emotional, but that doesn’t make much sense really. If “emo” meant “emotional”, emo would be an all-encompassing word; it becomes extremely vague and has no limit as to what it can describe. Emo, when wrongfully used to mean “emotional”, describes every living thing, every song, every word, every breath, and every statement.

Lifestyle

When used to refer to a person’s personality and attitude, most definitions of emo include a number of the following terms: shy, quiet, mysterious, introvert, angst ridden and sensitive, often identified by his/her music taste and fashion (generalizing here). Artistic talent is known to be associated with the emo culture along with a degree of sophistication and depth. Emo people also tend to feel like they are misunderstood by society (which, oftentimes, they are).

Self-Harm?

Self-harm is wrongly associated with the emo culture and the media has played a large part in this. For example, bands such ‘My Chemical Romance’ and ‘Fall Out Boy’ (which, by the way, do not make emo music at all) have been accused of leading fans to cut themselves.

Posers

Those who are emo not because they feel that way, but because they like to be trendy, are named ‘posers’. Apparently, a big percent of the current emo subculture is formed by posers. These individuals are the ones who have purported many misconceptions about the culture, such as cutting and over-emotional tendencies.