SCENE RANT [UPDATED 9/2/08!]
Monday 2 Oct 2006, 11:30pm
Today, September 2nd, 2008, is the two year anniversary of when this blog was first written and published and, I kind of hate to say it, but most of this is no longer relevant. Like all empty fads, the whole "scene" trend has died down a considerable amount, specifically since I first wrote this in 2006; the terrible teen-based bandwagon-hopping deathcore bands that were once so prevalent on MySpace are breaking up, the perfection/vanity groups and trains that used to be everywhere are disappearing, friend counts are going way down, the once public and hugely viewed profiles of all the countless scene queens are either going private, becoming unused, becoming "real life friends only" or are being deleted entirely, scene girls are taking their piercings out of their face, washing their raccoon stripes out of their hair, taking out their extensions and suddenly becoming "above it all" and are going from being a semi-myspace celebrity to just another normal girl who "only talks to people she knows" and disowns her former self as an e-famous scene queen.
People are becoming "too cool" for MySpace and are moving to more private, real-life friend oriented sites like Facebook or are just disappearing from the internet entirely. Basically, the kids who were a part of it as part of a high school fad for the three years it was really big ('05, '06, '07) are now graduating, becoming college kids, becoming older, going from being 16, 17 and 18 years old to 18, 19 and 20 and don't have anything to do with it anymore. From my online observations, it's kind of being picked up by the next generation of teens who were too young back in '05 to jump on the scene bandwagon, but definitely not to the same extent as it was before.
So where exactly does "scene" stand now and are there any scene kids left? Well, you can still find some stragglers or johnny-come-latelys at your local shopping mall, at your local hardcore show (if local hardcore shows even exist where you are anymore) or possibly even still on MySpace if you look hard enough, but for the most part you won't be able to find them anymore, at least not anything close to the extent that you used to. There is one place that is sort of the exception to that statement, however, and that is Stickam, a truly vominous website dedicated to sharing webcam feeds of yourself with other people that's really taken off in popularity over this past year. On a website consisting of literally nothing but appearances and physical image you will of course always find a considerable amount of scenesters, since it gives them an opportunity to so exquisitely exploit their natural trait of attention-whoring. Still, overall, the "scene" fad in general has mostly dissipated by now.
From a human societal viewpoint, I suppose it's good that people are growing out of it and not letting a shallow trend define themselves and their personalities, but it also means that this blog is, for the most part, no longer valid or applicable to the modern day trends and, in addition, it means that I don't have much to write or complain about anymore. :[
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Alright, first of all, yes, I do realize that it's cliché posting a rant blog about clichés, but too bad, here it is anyway.
Second of all, I am not targeting any one individual in this rant. There is no one person who I based anything in this blog after. I based it on the collective MySpace youth in general, so if you see something in here that you read and think "HEY, he's talking about me, that asshole!," you're wrong. It's not about any one particular person.
Third of all, I am not dissing or badmouthing any of the bands mentioned in this blog, I'm simply using them as examples. I could love their music, I could hate their music, it doesn't matter, that's not what this blog is about, so don't hate me for thinking I'm talking shit about your favorite band(s), because I'm not.
Fourth of all, I don't have anything personal against the people whose pictures I've used as examples in this blog. In fact, I don't even know who most of them are; I just found their pictures at some point and used them here because they were a good example of the point(s) I was trying to get across.
Fifth of all, you'll notice that I don't use the word "emo" even once in this blog. (Well, besides in this paragraph, anyway.) This is because I don't consider the people/bands I'm talking about in this blog to be emo; I consider them to be scene. Emo is an actual genre of music that was formed in the 80s as an offshoot of punk/hardcore. The actual emo genre is completely different from what people are labeling as "emo" these days, but I won't get into details about it; I'll save that for another rant. BOTTOM LINE: My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco, Fall Out Boy etc. = not emo. The people I talk about in this rant = not emo. Scene kids, yes. Emo kids, no. It is unfortunate that this fad is being labeled as emo by so many people, because in reality, it has nothing whatsoever in common with what emo actually is and what emo actually means. Bands like My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy are to emo what bands like Good Charlotte and Simple Plan are to punk and what musical artists like Paris Hilton and 50 Cent are to talent. That is to say, they're not actually emo in the least.
Sixth of all, as with much of the other stuff I write, this isnt something to be taken entirely seriously. Some of it is a joke. Some generalizations I make are just for the sake of humor, I know that not everyone is like that. So please don't think this rant is purely about hatred, because it's not. Chances are, even if you fit the descriptions mentioned in this blog, I still don't hate you. I don't judge anybody on how they look. It's what you do and who you are that counts.Okay? Okay. So, without further ado, here's my scene rant.
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Since my last scenester rant is outdated now, I thought it was about time I post a new one. So here you go.
The scene sucks. The end.
No, just kidding.
But seriously, am I the only one who realizes how enormous and repulsive of a trend this whole scene thing has become? Scene is the new goth, except it's sucked even more brainless teenagers in with it this time than the goth trend did. Bands like Fall Out Boy, Taking Back Sunday and Panic! at the Disco are the new Backstreet Boys, Nsyncand Britney Spears. Bands like As I Lay Dying, Atreyu and Norma Jean are the new Linkin Park, Korn and Limp Bizkit. Pop punk is the new pop. Metalcore/hardcore is the new nu-metal. And, like any other musical fad, as the fanbase grows and grows, the actual meaning and message of the music lessens and lessens. Back in 2000 when thousands and thousands of teenage girls flocked to Backstreet Boys and Nsync concerts, they didn't go because they actually appreciated the music, they went to screech about how hot or cool they thought the members of the band were, or maybe even to meet some cute boys while they were there. Back in 2002 when thousands and thousands of teenage guys flocked to Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit concerts, they didn't go because they actually appreciated the music, they went to jump around, act tough, show off their testosterone, and maybe even meet some skanky goth girls while they were there.
And it's essentially the same thing now, except with different bands. It's like evolution, except backwards. "DE-evolution."
For a visualization of this slow but steady decline over the years from an already-bad sub-genre of adolescent clones (goths) into an even worse sub-genre of teenage clones (scenesters), I've created the following image:
Anyone else see a pattern here?
God only knows what the next Marilyn Manson or Jeffree Star in 2010 is going to look like…it's hard to picture anything WORSE. But of course every time you think that things have hit rock bottom, that things couldn't possibly get any worse than they already are, they of course do, in some horrible twist you never would have thought of beforehand. I bet 3 years ago NOBODY would have believed you if you had told them that three years from now the vast majority of the teenage population would listen to and adore the whines and screams of skinny black-haired guys dressed like drag queens. So who knows where this mind-numbing trend is going to go next, but I can't see it getting any better from here on out.
Anyway, it's not necessarily the bands' fault that all of a sudden they're an overnight mainstream, trendsetting band with billions of 12 year olds as their new fan base; most of them played for years where hardly anyone knew who they were before the trend shifted and they became huge. Of course they have to take some blame; you'll notice that if you look at photos from two or three years ago, the vast majority of the bands that are so popular now looked completely different; normal-looking, even, before they altered their appearance drastically to match the latest fads (see below; “What the Scene Does to People” ).
Now, with their success, they suddenly wear skintight jeans, eyeliner, and have jet-black dyed, straightened hair to match the latest fad. You'll also notice that their music has changed; on their older CDs they'll have 5 minute songs, lyrics about most anything, and an actual meaning in there somewhere. Now they're all 2 or 3 and a half minute radio-friendly catchy songs, with pointless lyrics and no meaning. And I'm not just referring to pop-punk like Fall Out Boy or Taking Back Sunday, I'm referring to metalcore/hardcore as well. Their songs have also all been cut down to 2 or 3 and a half minutes and have become radio friendly by adding singing vocals (usually by a guitarist; if the old one couldn't sing they kicked him out and got a new one) and choruses so that all their songs have exactly the same mainstream, watered-down structure: verse (screaming)-chorus (singing)-verse (screaming)-chorus (singing)-breakdown-end chorus (singing).
It's no longer about the music. It's about catchiness, trendiness, sex appeal and fads. People don't go to shows to sing along, people go to shows to stand around and act cooler than everyone else. Of course there's always been a fad/genre that's had this; it's just that before 2005, it didn't apply to pop-punk/metalcore/hardcore shows.
I remember a show I went to back in 2004 in Augusta, Maine, where a certain band played. The stage was maybe a foot off the ground, insulation was coming out of the ceiling, and there were about 50 people there, none of which had tight pants or eyeliner. The band played mostly songs from their first CD, even though they still had two CDs out back then. I saw this same band for a second time in Fredericksburg, Virginia a few weeks ago and it was like it was a totally different group. The floor was packed with scenesters standing around and trying to look cool, and the band only played their new, noticeably more mainstream and watered-down material.
This show in Fredericksburg that they played at was a prime example of what the hardcore scene has become. The most noticeable example was right after a local hardcore band from the area got done playing and the next band, a very MySpace-famous "hardcore" group, started to set up. The local band had gotten a huge response; 300 or so people all dancing, stage-diving and singing along. Then when their set was over and the next band started to set up, everyone that had just been on stage singing or on the floor dancing walked away to the other room, and, like a slow tidal wave, the scenesters that had been previously hanging out in the back of the club started moving up towards the front to stand around and sneer at people. When the band started playing, no one moved. No matter how much the band themselves thrashed around, there was no dancing, no singing along, no stage diving, no movement or activity in the crowd whatsoever. Just a swarm of scenesters staring blankly up at the stage, occasionally taking pictures with their shitty digital cameras to post on MySpace so they could claim they were at a hardcore show and brag about the brutal mosh they were in when they took those pictures. Then, their set ended, and like a tidal wave slowly getting sucked back out to sea, the scenesters all retreated back to their shadowy corners in the back of the club to smoke cigarettes and bitch about the non-scene bands that were playing.
I've made an image of the hardcore scene then and now to better convey the point I'm trying to get across:
It hasn't gotten to the point where there are NO good bands left and there's NO band that hasnt been completely swallowed up by scenesters and trends, and it hasn't gotten to the point where there are NO good shows anymore, where people actually sing along and the music means more to them than the image, but as time goes on, it gets closer and closer to that point. Bands are turning mainstream, losing members or just breaking up entirely. As hardcore gets more trendy and popular, there are more and more scenesters at shows and less and less people there for the actual music. As hardcore and hardcore sub-genres continue to gain in popularity, the music isn't getting more popular, the image is.
And what exactly IS "the image?" Well, for those of you who have been living under a rock for the past two years (or for those who simply have never browsed MySpace and haven't been to any concerts, malls or any kind of social teen gathering since 2004) the "scene" image is essentially the same as the goth image was, except more slutty and trashy, with tighter clothes, more outrageous usage of make-up, more ridiculous hair styles, less chains and much more of a transvestite feel to the whole thing. Still don't get it? The picture below should serve as a fairly accurate representation of what the scene community looks like overall.
The traditional "scene hair" is basically an enormous black backwards mullet. Curls are a big no-no. "Scene hair" is always perfectly straight, while remaining poofy on top, and is normally accompanied by some sort of small colored bow. The whole “backwards, poofy black mullet” thing doesn’t always have to be what all scene hair looks like, though; scene hairstyles can range from looking like a large dead skunk to looking like a large dead raccoon. Possibly in some cases just a very large dead bird of some sort. See below for examples.
Besides the larger more excessive hair, one of the big differences between the teen-goth trend and the teen-scene trend is, for males, the more feminine, skinny and resembling of a homosexual coked-out drag queen from the eighties you look, the cooler you are and the more attention you get. This makes it incredibly difficult to distinguish between genders amongst scene kids, especially when they are in large groups; 'is that a scene boy trying to look like a scene girl, or is it just a scene girl?' Yes, the people in the pictures above are indeed all male. The goth trend definitely never had this kind of shit. And before you say it, no, I have absolutely nothing against transsexuals, but there is a huge difference between someone who truly feels they are a male or female trapped in the body of the opposite gender and teenage High School hipsters who dress insanely feminine simply for attention and because it's the cool thing to do at the time.
…Which brings me to my next topic. Here are a few images I made of what "the scene" does to people over time. Yes, the "before" and "after" photos on both images are the same person.
Oh, and please don't give me the line about how these changes in appearance were done because of originality or self-expression; both of those things go right out the window when you have thousands of other people doing the exact same thing that you're doing.
To quote the 1998 movie SLC Punk, a film about the punk scene in the 80s, a girl asks a punk:
"Wouldn't it be more of an act of rebellion if you didn't spend so much time buying blue hair dye and going out to get punky clothes? It seems so petty. You wanna be an individual, right? You look like you're wearing a uniform. You look like a punk. That's not rebellion, that's fashion."
And to quote a 2003 episode of South Park, where a goth kid explains to one of the main characters how to become one of them:
"If you wanna be one of the non-conformists all you have to do is dress just like us and listen to the same music we do."
So, no; using the "originality" card does not apply when sending me hatemail about this blog. The scene trend is no more original than any other trend, and being a part of it doesn't make you an individual, it makes you a statistic. Believe it or not, looking and acting like everybody else does not make you original. For further proof of how unoriginal scenesters are, I've compiled a group of photos taken from random MySpaces, each one displaying a common MySpace pose.
For an animation that I created of these poses, look here and here.
My point is that fads are like a plague; they spread from one genre to another, attaching themselves to the bands of that genre until they have completely sucked the life and the music out of it, then they move on to the next one.
MySpace is the new MTV. The "MTV era" has evolved (although, again, I think DEvolved would be a better word here) into the "MySpace era," but it's still essentially the same thing, just through a different medium.
MySpace popularizes bands and genres that most people were previously uninterested in by showing off a brand new "cutting edge" type of music/fashion that brain dead impressionable teens see and cling to so that they can fit in with the newest trend. One person sees a new band and that band's fan base and decides to start dressing and acting like them. Another person sees this first person, notices how popular they suddenly are, and then decides to start dressing and acting like them too. More people see this and they start following suit for the sake of trendiness and popularity until you have thousands of people looking, dressing, and acting exactly the same. Copies of copies of copies of copies.
This same concept works for bands as well as people. One person hears a new band's musical style, notices how hugely popular they are, and copies it and calls it their own by making a new, almost identical band. Other people see this and get the same idea until you have thousands of replicas of essentially the same exact thing flooding the internet.
In the past few years this plague has slowly moved from rap to nu-metal to pop-punk to metalcore and now into grindcore/death metal, or the so-called "deathcore" genre.
Bands such as Job for a Cowboy, Wecamewithbrokenteeth, Preschool Tea Party Massacre and Bring Me the Horizon are quickly gaining in popularity not because the music they're making is new or unique but because scenesters are getting bored of metalcore and pop-punk and are latching onto the next genre they can find, slowly making it more and more popular until the music is completely irrelevant and it's only about the image and being fashionable.
Here's a short list of the "deathcore" bands that have become so popular recently due to the aforementioned MySpace plague (in alphabetical order): (Remember, I have nothing against any of these bands; I could actually love some of these bands and listen to them all the time, so my point is definitely not to say that they suck. I'm just pointing out that these are some of the bands that scenesters are latching on to the most.)
2 O' Clock Girlfriend
25 Dollar Massacre
A Black Rose Burial
Anally Aborted Fetus
Annotations of An Autopsy
Arsonists Get All the Girls
As Blood Runs Black
Bring Me the Horizon
Dance Club Massacre
The Devil Wears Prada
Dr. Acula
Elysia
Fecal Corpse
Flesh Intoxication
Gutted With Broken Glass
HeavyHeavyLowLow
The Irish Front
IVEBEENSHOT
Job for a Cowboy
Killwhitneydead
Knights of the Abyss
Misericordiam
Murder Comes in Rows
O Captain! My Captain!
The Preschool Tea Party Massacre
Said the Gun to the Girl
See You Next Tuesday
Sender Receiver
Suicide Silence
Through the Eyes of the Dead
Underneath the Gun
Waking the Cadaver
War From A Harlots Mouth
Wecamewithbrokenteeth
We Speak Texan
Whitechapel
To go along with the newest trend, MySpace names have changed from Bang! Bang! Guns go bang! and Laura! At the disco to Sarah Slutslaughter or Gertrude Gorefuck.
Instead of having neon-colored robots, dinosaurs, hearts and guns such as these:
The new trendy thing is having pages full of gore, skulls, "br00tal" things and fashion logos such as these:
Many will also have collages on their page of things they like, that often times look very similar to this:
I've created two images of what the average 2005 and 2006 scenester look like:
2005 scenester:
http://lanimilbus.com/scenerant/regularscenester.jpg (LOST MEDIA)
2006 - Present scenester:
http://lanimilbus.com/scenerant/br00talscenester.jpg (LOST MEDIA)
These self-proclaimed br00tal scenesters are even more elitist than their Fall Out Boy-loving predecessors. They often will only talk to people as “amazing” and trendy as they are, which means, if you don't have jet black hair (extensions necessary if female), ghastly panic font (see more on "br00tal" fonts here: LOST MEDIA), 5,000+ friends/comments, have a br00tal name (see my trendy MySpace names list for more info: LOST MEDIA) with a billion abbreviations in brackets after it (especially abbreviations of MySpace groups that only the selected "elite" can get into, where everyone talks about how much better and prettier they are than everyone else and shows off how amazing they think they are by putting any of the following abbreviations after their MySpace name: , , , , , , , , , etc.), post a billion whore train bulletins a day with names like "TRAIN OF BRUTALITY" or "GORE KIDS" or "COCAINE SLUTS" or "DEATH TRAIN" etc., and a br00tal song called something like "Post-Mortem Pussyfuck" by a band named something like "Anally Raped With a Chainsaw" on your page, they most likely will not ever respond to your comments or messages, but will always accept your friend request because, of course, it raises their friend count and makes them look cooler and more popular. God forbid they would ever consider anyone on their friend list an actual friend, though. At least not the ones who aren't as cool as they are. Of course, no matter how much gore they have on their page, no matter how br00tal they suddenly consider themselves, you can bet they listen to Fall Out Boy and Panic at the Disco just like the rest of the scenester world. They only have that growling, squealing profile song about killing girls on their page because they want to be cool. In reality, they would never listen to that; they cant stand that music. They stick to their From First to Last and My Chemical Romance, but they never tell anyone because they wouldn't dare run the risk of being considered less tuff and br00tal.
Here's a timeline I created that shows the yearly changing look to meet the latest trends:
The truth is that, no matter how vain and arrogant these scenesters are, their fame and popularity does not exist outside of the internet. This is the case with most any teenage internet celebrity. In reality, they're a loner. The kid that sits alone at lunch, the kid all the jocks and cheerleaders pick on, the weird one. So their revenge is to find the one place where the weirder they act and dress, the more they're accepted. The internet. Particularly, MySpace.
In high school, the most popular girl, the tall blonde all-American girl that has straight As, is class president and head cheerleader, the girl that all the guys want and all the girls want to be, well, you can bet her MySpace has maybe 80 friends and 150 comments, tops. You can bet she has that lame cliché automatic survey on her page, all those flashing pink icons and a million things like "What drink r u?" all over her page. And guess what, the captain of the football team, the 6-foot-5 guy with perfect abs that all the girls want and all the guys want to be, well, his MySpace has maybe 60 friends and 100 comments, tops. But, remember that skinny boy with the black hair and makeup that sits by himself in the corner all the time, that all those jock and cheerleader types make fun of? Lets call him Bob. Well, Bob has 47,000 friends and 19,560 comments. He has 750,000 profile views and a billion girls and guys telling him how much they want his sex. He's #1 in the top 8s of people he doesn't know and has never met. And he thinks hes the most amazing thing ever because of this. So he gradually becomes more and more of an elitist snob and expects everyone to love him but at the same time treats everyone else like shit. And of course, that's exactly what happens. Just like the tall blonde class president and the 6-foot-5 football captain, except their popularity is only in real life, whereas scenester kids like Bob are only popular online. In real life people beat him up, call him a fag, a pussy, a tranny, and he gets revenge on the world by being just as snobby and cruel to everyone else as the real-life people are to him through the only way he knows how; by becoming a self-absorbed scenester MySpace celebrity.
In a few years, months, weeks, maybe even days, this trend will be dead. People will look back on bands like Panic! At the Disco the same way people look back on bands like Nsync now. And then they'll spread to the next trendy genre, and once it's been used up, the next and the next and the next. The world could be deaf and scenesters would still claim to love whatever band has black hair and millions of MySpace views.
Basically, the whole scene thing just sucks.
The end.
