prattletendency

New and Improved!

  • She/Her

I'm kind of like Mob from Mob Psycho if the unlimited power hidden inside was being a girl

Last.FM


nearly 3 years ago, I was emo-pilled by COVID 19 (and Spotify)


since I was able to work from home in March 2020, I spent a lot of time with videos, podcasts, and music on in the background. I was too afraid to do this at work before (now that I’m back at the office I still listen to music since I don't care anymore)

my 2020 spotify wrapped does a pretty good job of showing the ingredients coming together. Car Seat Headrest comes from a weird little path starting with Welcome to Night Vale years prior, Bloc Party and Tyler come from the Friends at the Table playlist for Partizan, and Screaming Females comes from a mention on Giant Bomb, I think. I go back to the office in 2021 and lose a lot of video and podcast time. so I'm not getting many outside recommendations and I start leaning into The Algorithm pretty heavy, using the weekly and daily playlists a lot

the day before my birthday, 2021, I like Nausea from one of these playlists and soon hit Jeff Rosenstock like a brickfucking wall. at this point I'm katamari-ing through the Rosenstock-verse, picking up Bomb, Antarctigo Vespucci, & Chris Farren. meanwhile I'm still accumulating scraps of punk, ska-punk, pop-punk, and other related songs along the way

last year things have settled down to where I want to actively find new music again. so I'm skipping through my liked songs last night, looking for a new thread to follow. I hit one, and for some reason I start wondering if the song was emo. it occurs to me that I only have the vaguest idea of what emo sounds like based on MCR and Fall Out Boy songs I don't really remember from 2000s radio. I actively avoided it for reasons I'll touch on briefly in a sec. it's time for research. first I check the song I'm listening to. according to the tags on bandcamp, it's not, but I'm no genre surgeon. then I go to wikipedia and look up emo. I read the style origins

I put my phone down

I'm exaggerating a but for dramatic effect, but this is a legit dumb little revelation I'm having. for reasons I don't think I'm prepared to get into yet, I've had a very complicated relationship with myself, how I want others to see me, and the identity I've been living under for all my life until recently. the important detail is, back in the 2000s I had decided emo was Not Cool. as the years went on I let myself listen to and enjoy genres I'd previously written off for similar reasons, but I still wouldn't touch emo music

because of my irrational aversion to it, I was actually surprised that it's in the same punk (I know there's more to it, but if you're with me so far let me overgeneralize some more). Wikipedia goes on to quote the fuckin dictionary, which states that emo is "a style of rock music influenced by punk rock and featuring introspective and emotionally fraught lyrics."

that is what I am all fucking about right now dude

I start looking up other bands I'd picked up in my liked songs semi-recently

Clip of Wikipedia entry for the band Spanish Love Songs. Emo is listed under genres
Clip of Wikipedia entry for the band Slingshot Dakota. Emo is listed under genres
Clip of Wikipedia entry for the band Chumped. Emo is listed under genres
Clip of Wikipedia entry for the band Little Big League. Emo is listed under genres
made with @nex3's grid generator

maybe there was a reason spotify's been recommending me emo playlists for the past few years


(this is all very similar to when I realized I was trans)


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in reply to @prattletendency's post:

emo is great and fantastic. it got a really bad rap in the 2000s because a few of the things people in the 2000s really loved mocking were:

  • mental illnesses
  • teenagers
  • teenagers with mental illnesses

the introspective and passionate lyrics spoke to a lot of that demographic so there were constant derogatory jokes about kids doing SH while listening to the black parade. it sucked!