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everybody is a poser, nowadays

this is gonna be pessimistic but i've been thinking about how to put this into words. today, it feels like everybody is pretending to be something or someone else. performing. people spend ages carefully curating their identity around a certain thing, or a certain theme, only to do absolutely nothing with it. you call yourself "dark academia", but when was the last time you even picked up a book? you call yourself "cottagecore", but all of the plants in your bedroom are dead and rotting. you say you dress "mall goth", but you spend your entire life in your bedroom and make fun of people who act 'weird' in public. 

everybody is obsessed with having a picture-perfect "aesthetic" that they've forgotten how to just be people. subcultures have been stripped down to a bare style, nobody acts like they belong to anything anymore. there's no identity or meaning in fashion -- a hyper-connected internet and dependence on clicks has erased the lines between communities. people care more about being popular on tiktok than they do about living freely and having people they really connect with. being alt is mainstream. 

maybe that's not an all bad thing; maybe it's good for us to be able to interact with other people so easily and dress however the fuck we want without getting hardcore cyberbullied. (still irl bullied, for most of us who aren't "trendy" alt.) but like, what happens to subcultures when they get adopted into the mainstream? when people pick out the most popular (and often attractive) parts of a subculture -- being emo is just mcr and heavy eyeliner, right? -- and act like that's all the subculture has ever been. it erases the history and throws people who are actually a part of that subculture under the bus, imo. how many emo kids used to get picked on by people who are now claiming to be "so emo" themselves??

people have always been trying to shut down/demonize subcultures and pretend they don't really exist (it's just a phase!). it just pisses me off that now it's other teens fucking up our rep rather than out-of-touch adults.

maybe this is just me complaining about copycats and people i personally dislike. or maybe it actually makes sense to some of you. i kinda got off topic tho xD i'm not very active on social media, i don't share much, but i've been watching all this chaos happen from the outside.


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Grandaddy.purp0

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I like when people invest in themselves beyond the external. As you said, now all people care about is style and being able to identify with something but people forget the meaning to that, now it has absolutely no meaning and no one can take anything seriously or even develop somewhat of a personality because they're so caught up and how they seem to other people. I wish people would think for themselves maybe even practice self love and gain some originality because I am so sick and tired of only being able to talk to someone for 10-15 minutes till they're all washed out and have nothing more to give. People now have no depth.


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Grandaddy.purp0

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This.


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Em0Kitten

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This is PERFECT couldnt have explained it better myself, thank you for this.


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spicy-sparklez

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I agree. While it's awesome that people seem to be more accepting nowadays of "alternative fashion" (whereas in the 2000s people would tell you to kill yourself if you dressed emo or ask you if you cut yourself and bash on green day lmao), I feel like a lot of people are jumping on the alternative train for the sake of it being popular and cool now. And a lot of times, people are more focused on looking perfect or checking off as many boxes in the fashion style as possible rather than experimenting and having fun. It also bugs me when some people call themselves "goth" because "big tiddy goth girlfriend" is trendy but don't take the time to understand the subculture/gothic music scene.


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Lily Lethal

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I totally agree! I fully deleted tiktok a while ago and more recently deleted insta from my phone and that was one of the main reasons why. It's so frustrating when people say they're emo for wearing fishnets and dyeing a streak in their hair, or when they don't listen to emo music. In my opinion, most subcultures revolve around music. People dress up in an emo outfit for 5 minutes to film a tiktok to some trending song but would never leave the house like that and it really annoys me. Also, with a whole new thing about being more 'open minded' and 'stopping gatekeeping' people think they can call themselves whatever, but imo it's a fact that the new trendy alt is not emo and you can't change that fact. Dress in that aesthetic however you want, just please don't call it emo, ya know? It's good to find people with similar opinions! :)


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yeah exactly. maybe im gate keeping a little but egirl/alt/punk are all different things and already separated so naturally emo should be to. i could even argue that emo/punk/etc need some gate keeping to keep them what they are. they're so different and imply many different things in terms of style. emo revolves around music, specific styles and experimenting. its also about going against the norm fashion trends. its not anything else. if you're not willing to go anywhere looking emo then you're not emo. if you don't even try to listen to the music you're a poser! you need to at least listen to a few songs and really see and feel the 'culture' of being emo. otherwise you're just dressing up for fun time to time. that could be ok if you didn't post it on the internet one time for some attention because its popular. emo is supposed to go against mainstream trends so you'd be making it into fast fashion which isn't the point of emo. i mean elder emos went through a lot compared to now and its kinda unfair so lets not go running around calling everything emo. have a little respect for it.

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xoozim

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I totally agree with this, I get so pissed when I see people calling themselves "emo" because they wear eyeliner and "y2k" shirts because it's popular on tiktok. No hate to the style, but the people?? They all deeply depend on validation through instagram likes and tiktok views... I once had one of those kids tell me I was the "bad" type of emo, when they're not emo to begin with. They're more like a different style of e-kid than emo. Not to mention, they're probably going to dress normally like nothing ever happened here in like 1-3ish years... Makes me so angry all the time >:///


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Dropdead Dani

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yupppppp exactly this, on social media theres lines blurred between an actual community or the trend
i wish more ppl were into it for the community

i remember last year on the last day of school this girl came up to me and she basically was like "R u like emo??? why would u do that" and asking shit like that and like. How am i supposed 2 explain that to her like ??? I didnt care enough to answer her so i ignored her cuz it was annoying. funny thing is, a few months later once school had started again she dyed her hair like me like a week after i did mine and dressed in dark clothing (def not emo) as if she wasnt making fun of me literally just 3 months prior... shes so doing it 4 the "trend" i cant stand her, she made fun of me all the time besides just that situation


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sienna

 sienna's profile picture

amen to that


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