CHEER UP, FORMER emo kid.

‘Emo’ was (and still is) a music genre and subculture which reached peak popularity during the mid-2000s. It was characterised not so much by the music but the fashion – tight jeans, long fringes, and rings and rings of black eyeliner.

A bit like this:

Flickr / Sweet Hair Style Flickr / Sweet Hair Style / Sweet Hair Style

Who knows why, but Irish teens took to the ‘emo scene’ with vigour. If you were one, you’ll know exactly what we’re on about.

Saving up all your pocket money to buy something from Asha

Facebook / Asha Facebook / Asha / Asha

To find Asha on the top floor of the St Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, you had to pick your way through the splayed legs of the other emos sitting on the ground outside.

Inside, you could buy €65 cupcake tutus and €100 long leather coats – but you probably just shelled out your hard earned €20 for one of these.

Shopbamboozled Shopbamboozled

Hanging around Central Bank

Flickr / William Murphy Flickr / William Murphy / William Murphy

It was important to stand around Central Bank every weekend. Why? No idea. You still can’t walk past without shuddering.

If you weren’t from Dublin, you and your friends gathered at the place you were all least likely to get bothered by your respective parents.

Giving out yards about ‘posers’ and ‘normals’

Basically anyone who pretended to be an emo, or wasn’t an emo at all.

You had a t-shirt, sticker or pin badge emblazoned with the slogan ‘You laugh because I’m different, I laugh because you’re all the same’. You identified heavily with this.

Shocktees Shocktees

Your Bebo page was central to your identity as a member of the ‘scene’

Three things were very important:

1. The standard MySpace-angled profiler, with one eye covered by your hair.
2. A screen name like ‘x_MySweet666_x’, ‘RazorsKissxo’ or ‘Sarah Switchblade_x’.
3. A full list the bands you liked (or wanted to seem as if you liked) in alphabetical order.

You had an online friendship with someone who was ‘Bebo famous’, but never got that far yourself.

Being jealous of people allowed to dye their hair and get weird piercings

Pinterest Pinterest

You said you didn’t want to dye your hair pink, but in reality you just weren’t LET.

On the other hand, if you WERE allowed, it was probably a holy show.

Black eyeliner isn’t just for girls

Gerard Way and Pete Wentz wore it.

Suzan / Tammie Arroyo/EMPICS Entertainment Suzan / Tammie Arroyo/EMPICS Entertainment / Tammie Arroyo/EMPICS Entertainment

But no other men could ever pull it off quite like them.

Moaning about a lack of a ‘scene’ in your town

Awesomelyluvvie Awesomelyluvvie

No gigs, no skate park, no adequate music shop. How were you supposed to SURVIVE?

This song

Plus the discography of any and all of the following: Panic! At The Disco, Fall Out Boy, Paramore, Jimmy Eat World, The Used…

Stringently denying you were an emo at all

Flickr / Wesley Mason Flickr / Wesley Mason / Wesley Mason

But still, you were secretly annoyed when they called you a ‘grunger’ or a ‘goth’. Labels are for soup cans! You’re your own person, OK?

Even though you and your mates all looked like this.

Wikimedia Wikimedia

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