The west coast has been traumatized
Since jeeves disabled comments on his post about emo, I figured I'd 'reply' here.
Now I'm not the biggest fan of emo myself. I've heard a lot of it that I don't like, and there is a lot of it that is wallowing in self-pity, whining about girls, etc. Yeah, maybe the more well-known acts like Dashboard Confessional fit that description, but seriously, not all emo music is like that. So it doesn't seem fair to hate the entire genre for that.
Also, a serious question: does music you listen to, whether categorized as 'emo' or elsewise contain elements of self-pity that is more acceptable since it's “deeper” or less obvious (instead of outright singing something like “she broke my heart, wahhhh” ) I don't know Sunny Day Real Estate's music much myself, but I imagine they have songs w/ self-pity in them, but they're generally considered “deeper” or however you want to say it. I don't know, that's just speculation.
At the least, though, jeeves.. you can't entirely hate emo - SDRE is considered emo, at least last I checked.
Anyway, I agree pretty much with what you said about self-pity, it's not good for us. Just not necessarily hating the entire genre. Didn't mean to “call you out” jeeves, but hey, you disabled the comments. :-]
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Heh heh. It's all good; I was specifically referring to the whole teenybop, folk emo mentality — like Dashboard Depressional. There have been several stages of “emo” throughout the years, of course, and I didn't mean all of them.
A lot of this comes from certain friends I have who are just eat up with the whole depressing nature of it, and... I've seen it happen. It's people making money off of other peoples depression, and that just irks me.
That was meant as a statement against self-pity, no matter what form it takes... and yes, music can be one of them. And I never said I didn't listen to depressing bands myself... heh heh. A lot of what I listen to depresses others(or just weirds them out), even though I don't really see a lot of it that way, but this is something that has just kind of hit me lately... that I'm tired of depression... dealing with it in myself, and with my friends - none of whom have a real good reason to ever be that way, heh heh.
I'm just tired of dealing with depression, because it's so useless and stupid! I mean... really! Heh. And if it means weeding my musical selection to get rid of it... then so be it.
Of course... I've never been one to let music control me — I can handle it because I know what I believe, and that's that — I don't look to musicians to think for me. I think we're both strong, that way. But... a lot of people aren't(meaning... the emo kids who follow every trend and cry on command because Dashboard or Saves the Day or whomever tells them to, hahah).