I often consider my generation; those currently in their 20s to be the pioneers of social media. We were on Myspace (though most of us weren't supposed to be), we made Facebook a household name and we started the popularity of Twitter. Not only that, but we weeded through many more failed attempts at popular social media sites.
Sure, the internet was around before many of us were born, but the big boom of the internet becoming more and more popular and without having to tie up the phone line to use it started when many of us were roughly middle school aged.
I didn't have internet in my house until around 2005. Before then I had to resort to using school computers or battling my cousin to use my grandma's computer. My parents like many others were paranoid of the dangers of meeting people online. I wasn't allowed to post photos of myself or use my actual name...not that that ever stopped me. Myspace was in its zenith with the birth of "scene kids" - the terrible trend of teenagers spending way too much time on their myspace pages posting selfies and blingee gifs. Even worse was the style - ratty teased hair, tight clothing colored like a rainbow threw up and adorned with brass knuckles, Hello Kitty and Gloomy Bear. Girls taking pictures with cans of hairspray and straighteners, wearing enough eyeliner to put Alice Cooper to shame and those obnoxious "coon tails" type of hair - a random striped, colored piece of hair modeled to look like a racoon. They were all obsessed with MAC cosmetics and energy drinks.
Yes...I was one of them.
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| Me at 15/16. All that is missing is my signature neon rainbow eyeshadow look |
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| A typical scene kid collaged wallpaper |
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| HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! There was so such thing as a "cool" emo kid. |
Speaking of the music! It was a huge (and terrible) pillar of the whole movement. Yes, not all of it was bad; I still listen to All Time Low. But MAN was a lot of it shitty. Most of the music consisted of pop-punk (more so on the pop side) and electronica. Many of the artists had terrible singing voices or really just "talk sang" but they were popular because of their look. Because let's face it, looks were everything in the scene community. Blood on the Dance Floor is one terrible band that comes to mind. I used to love them embarrassingly enough. I thought they were "edgy" because most of their lyrics were about sex and they had lyrics like "I'll cut, cut, cut you up. I'm a monster, ha ha ha" ...yes those are actual lyrics from one of their songs. I'm cringing just from the fact that I STILL remember some of their lyrics.
Jeffree Star, now known for his makeup and feud with Kat Von D was a huge face of the community and came out with his own music. I do still dig some of his songs, as terrible as they are. Metro Station - a band featuring Miley Cyrus' brother, Trace Cyrus and Mitchell Musso's brother Mason Musso were one of the king bands in the scene. You may know their song "Shake It" from the only album they ever debuted. And of course everyone had "Here In Your Arms" by Hellogoodbye on their profiles.
Some other bands from the era to note are Hey Monday, Cute Is What We Aim For, 3OH!3, Paramore, Boys Like Girls, Hollywood Undead, Forever The Sickest Kids and We The Kings. Though I don't really listen to Hollywood Undead anymore, I still listen to the rest of the bands in this list. Hey Monday was a great and fun pop-punk band featuring a female lead singer - Cassadee Pope. Many of you may know her now from The Voice and her subsequent country music career. Cute Is What We Aim For only really had one big hit "The Curse of Curves", but oh was it great. 3OH!3 was very popular and mainstream; they even did songs with the likes of Kesha (back when she had the $ sign in her name) and Katy Perry. Now, I hate a lot of their lyrics - they are very disrespectful towards women ie "Shush girl, shut your lips. Do the Helen Keller, and talk with your hips.". But the songs are damn catchy and the line "Tell your boyfriend, if he says he's got beef that I'm a vegetarian and I ain't fucking scared of him." still to this day makes me laugh.
Boys Like Girls had a few really good songs - The Great Escape and Thunder. They even did a song titled "Two Is Better Than One" with Taylor Swift before she climbed to superstar status. We The Kings is still a good band, though you don't hear much about them anymore. They were the artists behind "Check Yes Juliet." and Forever The Sickest Kids had one hit song, "Whoah". The only band aside from All Time Low to really make it huge from the scene was Paramore. Back in the day everyone wanted to be Hayley Williams with the emergence of "Misery Business". So many girls were dying their hair and cutting it to match her signature style. Yes...I'm guilty of the haircut.
And the all time staple of the scene kid - the scene name. Yes, I had one of those too. Also called the Myspace name, it was a name one formed for themselves to appear "unique" on the website. They often had a misspelling of a name with various non-letter characters mixed in such as R3b3cca. Or they just had a misspelling of another word used as a last name, with the same first letter of the first name in attempt to appear edgy for example Kara Krayola or Beth Bloodshed. I went by Heather Homocyde.
Yes....spelled exactly like that. *Face palm* -_______-
At the time I thought the whole scene kid thing and community was fun. I enjoyed wearing bright colors and dressing like a fucking weirdo with my dead glow stick bracelets and my necklace fashioned from the tabs of those god-awful Monster energy drinks on a chain. My best friend at the time began to look more and more like the stereotypical scene kid and she made it look so awesome that I wanted to get in on it.She was always much "cooler" than I was and people were always drawn to her; I often found myself wanting to be more like her and wishing I had that sort of charisma. I was always the nerdy weird kid that never truly fit in anywhere growing up.
The thing is...the scene community was terrible. It was SO fake! Like really, really fake. A lot of the scene kids were such catty, snotty, judgemental little assholes that whined about not being accepted and not being like everyone else. If you didn't have a certain look, and if you weren't rail thin they mostly wouldn't want to deal with you. Everything was about appearances.
After a while, the entire look and community grew tiresome. Yes, I liked it but after a while I had realized I was trying too hard to fit in with this style and in the end was being something I wasn't. And that is never cool. Sure, all teenagers do that at some time or another; but I was so disappointed in myself because I had always vowed never to do such a thing.
Even though my scene phase and that entire era is an embarrassing mark upon my teenage years, they did really shape me as a person and showed me what was actually important - being yourself.
I leave you with this question: were you also a scene kid? Share your experiences below!
Xoxo
Heather Zombie <3
