Be Excellent To Each Other

Do you not think the culture itself encourages depression and self-harm? Surely it can't be actually helpful to one's mental state to make a lifestyle out of sitting around in dark rooms listening to incredibly bleak music and discussing the pointlessness of living?

Emo is just proto-Goths, with less suicide and more Harry Potter. The Smiths with makeup. The only thing half of them are rebelling against is the imposition of double maths.

I joke about it because I really, really don't want to rant about it.

Do you really think that's all they do? Really? I have friends who own MCR shirts, they like sunshine and lollipops and partying in the sun.

That is.

That and take pictures of emo boys kissing, according to Google Images.

Oh, so you hate gays, too? Hmm?

VOTE: MR. CHRIS

Is.
\

Jesus, that looks like my ex. A girl.

Really, Fugazi were emotional hardcore. It's about the lyrics and that.

Indeed. I would have thought that singing the masterpiece of parody that is 'Teenagers' would make anyone happy.

(please note, those are my actual thoughts, not sarcasm)

what's "emotional hardcore" then? As opposed to, say, Sara McGlachlan or Amy Mann?

Hardcore, except they're not shouting about punching men.

Biohazard - not emo.

Circle Takes the Square - emo.

I'm confused, sorry - hardcore in what way? I don't know the bands you've mentioned so can't use them as a reference point.

Danger! Danger Mr Chris! This will take some time!

Davydd, are Sunny Day Real Estate emo?

It seems to me that adolesence, always a difficult time, is becoming harder and harder, for a variety of reasons. Going back 15 or so years, when I was mid-teens, things weren't so regulated or difficult, or so it seems.

From personal experience, I find that being able to be negative in company is a great help - that's one of the reasons I value this place for example. Listening to depressive music gives a sense of community that listening to positive music doesn't, when I'm in a negative mood. It's not just music either - had a long conversation about 18th century poetry with someone last night which cheered me up no end. A Goth type, obv.

Quite apart from my own experience, I know many people who for whatever reason find the company of people who aren't relentlessly cheery far more pleasing. Probably the worst thing about negativity, whether clinical depression or the confusion of adolesence, is the loneliness. ANYTHING that alleviates that is, overall, a good thing in my book.

I imagine the emo types get exactly the same from their music and culture that I got from Alice In Chains and the rest of the grunge scene 15 or so years ago.


Also, that last post was flagged as a rant for a reason.

No, I genuinely don't. As D.Grimm pointed out, that's not the whole of what is done.

Also, to use a metaphor I think works, sharing negativity can dilute it, not concentrate it, speaking from personal experience.

Typed, sitting in a dark room listening to incredibly bleak music. Er, country music from the 60s...

Hardcore, um, it's sort of punk but a lot more aggressive.

Aaarghh, no, the questions! I'm not that familiar with SDRE, as it goes.

Craster and I were mid teens 15 years ago. We were quite cheery, and listened to Sleeper. And the Beautiful South.

Fuck.

Unrealz.

Man, I'm not letting you get away with this. Don't make me quote Wiki.

Louise Werner 4TW.

Tish and indeed, piffle. Every generation thinks they have it bad, worse than their parents had it. Its called being a teenager. Mods, punks, goths, emo, Smiths fans, navel-gazers. Difference is that we didn't have internet sites to act as bloody support groups.

The only problem I have with stereotypical emo is the idea that "having issues" is worn as a badge of honour. I damned near throttled someone once who was very loudly proclaiming about his "depression". As someone who really has suffered depression I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy so to see some young scrote trying to show off about it - and make no mistake, that is what it was - made me utterly furious.

I have some friends who are teenagers, and it does seem harder now. The ridiculous attitude that you are a child up until the day of your 18th birtday is something new - just look at the amount of IDing people having a drink in a pub and not kicking off, despite being 17, or the recent law change to the age limit for cigarettes.

Add to that the ridiculous social and financial pressure connected with university, and the fact that most people now have to work more or less full time whilst at uni, and things have changed a great deal. That's in the 13 years since I was 18.

As for people "pretending" to be depressed, yes that is seriously annoying. However, being 15 or whatevee is a seriously unpleasant age for many people, and whether or not they are clinically depressed a lot are genuinely unhappy.

Frankly, I'd far rather it be talked about than ignored, the way it was even 15 years ago. having suffered from depression on and off for at least that length of time, I would say that attitudes have changed much for the better.

Sorry if none of this is entirely coherent - my head is not at a great place today...

to be 'Emo' do you have to only have one eye visible and the other hid under a big shelf of fringe?

No
\

More or less. Unless you're the old sort Davydd was on about. When you don't.

The guy on the far left looks like a young Ronnie Corbett.

It is quite clearly Ben Elton.

Idiot FTFY

I see where you are coming from and I think it might be prudent for me to point out that the self harmers I work with are at the 'blood everywhere' end of the scale and, given the causes of self-harm, cracking a joke about it is very often the first point at which a client and support provider might properly begin to address the issue. I've never got anyone to even admit to sefl harm by being serious about it, but I've known people to unlock whole torrents of stuff for the first time in their lives, which was causing their SH, due to the fearless candour of the conversation at hand.

I must add it isn't as simpleas cause/effect, but obviously this is a webforum and I'm trying to get drunk so I eed to be brief.

Emo lawn jokes aren't always appropriate, but they aren't always not. Irreverent web forums where bad taste jokes are prevalent is probably not somewhere you'll ever be able to avoid such stuff, mind you.

Maybe you're right, Goatboy. I may be being oversensitive, but I got the impression that there were people saying "ha ha, laugh at the miserable kids". If that's a misunderstanding of anyone, I apologise.

Suffice to say, there's personal reasons it bothers me. I alluded to them above, but I don't really want to go into detail.

http://www.fourfa.com/

Best guide to emo EVAH.

To be honest it's one of those words like "punk" that has meant so many different things that it's now pretty much meaningless, or at best context-dependent. I remember when "emo" was all Promise Ring and Get Up Kids...

You're absolutely right of course, but a fair old percentage of them are just playing at being depressed. I should know, shamefully I did exactly the same thing when I was 16 and listening to Nirvana non-stop. The music's miserable, your idols are miserable, so at that impressionable age you try to follow suit. As anyone knows there's nothing more frustrating than seeing people walking straight into mistakes you've already made yourself, which is why, broadly speaking, I think emo kids are a bunch of twats.

The mention of faux-depressed teenagers listening to Nirvana has reminded me of Arseface from the Preacher comics. There's a salutory lesson.

FTFY

Well, I wasn't playing, which is why the musci then meant something.

Still not playing at it, either.

I doubt that the several friends I have, of various ages, diagnosed with depression, bipolar disorder, any eating disorder you care to name, or who self harm, are all playing at it either.

My point is not to have a go at anyone, it's to try to make people realise that a LOT of people, especially but not exclusively teens-early twenties, have real problems.

Broadening this into something more general - I'm not entirely convinced this is true. Far, far too many people have some kind of "illness" or "condition" out of all proportion with reality.

Some people have glandular problems, some people just eat too many pies - "I'm not fat, I'm big boned." Part of this is because hell, you can't tell off the disabled, giving some people a handy excuse. Part of this is encouragement that "hey, everyone has issues. Everyone has problems! What is yours! And how can we take money off you/give you something to fix it?"

This was kind of prompted by an advert I kept seeing in the US talking about something like, for sake of argument, "Enlarged Prostate Syndrome". It irritated me because having an enlarged prostate isn't a fucking "syndrome". It isn't some kind of inherent genetic defect. You have an enlarged prostate, you have some pills, it gets fixed.

IMO, in an increasing number of cases, people are using a "condition" to excuse themselves when pulled up for acting like a twat. Had a bad day - stop taking it out on some innocent bystander, rather than acting like a git and going "oh, well, I've got some shit going on in my life". Everyone has bad days, the difference being some of us a) don't demand everyone else give us a special break for it and b) we don't have that particular condition that prevents us from saying "sorry".

I've just realised that could possibly be construed as a pop at CUS, and I really don't mean it that way. I'm just being general and ranting about the excuses culture. Everyone is a bloody victim. I've had people try to blame forum postings in txt speak on having a minor form of ADD for fucks sake!

All this takes attention away from the genuinely needy.

But surely the amount of people who are emo because it is a 'scene', and don't have real problems, are obscuring the problem?

I think perhaps the definition of "real problems" is the issue, here. Is teenage angst being medicalised into depression a bit too much at the moment? We know for certain that young kids being boisterous young kids is resulting in them being dosed on Ritalin, so it wouldn't surprise me. And, as Plissken says, there seems to be a growing desire amongst certain sections of society to have a "condition" to blame things on.

This is not to belittle those who are genuinely ill - quite the opposite. The spreading "me too!" with these things is what's belittling the genuine cases.

Right, erm, you probably already know this, but I suffer from depression, quite badly at times. I'm on medication for this. I strongly believe that, had I been diagnosed with this many years ago, as opposed to the 5 or so I was, my life would be a hell of a lot better now. As it is, with a couple of exceptions my life is in about the best place it's been for 10 years. One excption being a particularly lovely ex-girlfriend who is still a good friend, and who will never read this but I would feel bad for not mentioning.

Anyway...

I'm not suggesting that all teenage angst is depression, or should be medicalised. However, it is a serious issue at that age. Anything that helps is, in my opinion, a good thing. I know several people in their teens and early twenties who might actually benefit from medical assistance, but don't choose to go for it, as believe it or not there's still a stigma attached to it. I also know several people of that age group who are happy, balanced people, and these people have been great friends to me when I've needed. There are of course many in between.

Plissken - I don't think I know anyone with genuine problems who would use that to get out of being responsible for something. It may be the reason for their actions, that doesn't make it an excuse. This is my approach, for what it's worth, and I've already had to apologise to someone on this forum today for similar reasons.

Craster - I'm not sure. Maybe the scene is hiding problems, maybe it's helping the people who do have problems. Probably, to be honest, both. As I posted earlier, but I think it bears repeating, one of the worst problems with depression is loneliness. Anything that helps that, again in my opinion, cannot be a bad thing.

Honestly, unless you know them and their circumstances, I'm not sure you should. To put it bluntly, I don't think adolescent angst equals silly children, and whilst "silly children" may apply to some people, I think that attitude causes more harm than good.

As for the wall punching, I've been known to do that, although not boast about it... Better than punching another person. Also, if anything like that is done in a group, the likelihood of someone who goes too far getting help is increased. As for the wheelchair girl, at the very least it sounds like she had stress she couldn't cope with.

Actually, that can often be a way to tell if it's real or not - virtually no-one I've known with genuine problems uses them as an excuse. An explanation sometimes, accompanied with an apology, but not an excuse.

Also, I'm not condoning fakery or twattish behaviour, far from it. It's the assumption* that most or all such behaviour is that that I'm questioning.

*Not that I'm suggesting anyone here is assuming that, but some people in some places do.

No one will turn up anyway.

I reckon 200 people, tops.

The time clashes with Hollyoaks.

Which, er, at the risk of agreeing in a negative and confrontational fashion, is why I'm keen to stress that not all people are faking.

This thread has been a surprisingly good discussion.

And this was what I was aiming at when I was complaining about the 'scene' - if it's trendy to appear depressed, you both mask the people that really need help, and also turn public opinion against all of them.

Some highlights from the march....

Audiojunkies - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0KyyAIxZo8
Anonymous - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=E9gqvYYU2vk&fmt=18


I kinda wish MCR's fans were still varied. They used to be.

what a bunch of losers.

the guys with the cameras, I mean.

grow up tbh.

When you are an adolescent you experience emotions that you haven't experience previously. Adult emotions that, because they are new, are difficult to interpret correctly. They can therefore appear far more extreme than if a fully mature adult were experiencing them. Perhaps that maturity comes from constant management of such feelings or perhaps those feelings become lessoned with experience.

It is however so dominated by the individual's circumstances and sense of self that it is very difficult to make sweeping generalisations about it. It seems to me that some people's experience with depression is intrinsically associated with their growth into adulthood. Thus even if all auxiliary problems are solved they remain depressed as though the act of growing up is itself the problem. Ofcourse as an adult there are a multitude of socially identifiable problems (alcohols, drugs, gambling, violent abuse etc) that can act as an expression of such feelings that a child perhaps doesn't have access to.

Parents, teachers etc. should obviously do all they can if a child seems to be suffering from some emotional or mental problem. I've seen all sorts of problems amongst my peers, anorexia, self-harm, drug abuse and who knows what else that you can't see. And frankly the support they have received has not often helped them. Once they become adults and the concern of teachers and others disappears the problem invariably becomes worse. It does all seem like a "cry for help" rather than a physical or physiological problem they can't control and even after the problem (if there was one) that caused such actions have been removed, the crying can become such a habit that it continues.

Frankly, I think the vast majority of people with such problems should be told to buck up and in no way indulged. The world will continue whether you are in it or not so you either take responsibility for your problems and take charge of solving them (i.e. reach adulthood) or shuffle off. That I am afraid is the 'real' world. Being a depressive can be quite an expensive business, maybe that's why so many middle-class kids suffer from it?