The Emo Stereotype: Right or Wrong?

The stereotype of Emo is a depressive, self-mutilating, bi-sexual or otherwise gay teenager, who has a fascination with 'darker' style things and clothing, and has attempted suicide. They listen to rock music and things noted as 'heavy', 'melodic' and 'depressive'.

As you may have noticed, a common running factor of the emo stereotype is depression. And unfortunately this tends to be true. Surprisingly an awful lot of the 'emo' stereotype is true by nature, but aren't most labels.

Labels, are generic groups given to people, who have provided evidence of certain like or sympathy of the group. So, if someone were to walk into a building, most people tend to look at them, and instantly you decide whether you like them or not, as narrow-minded as it is this is today's society and the way it works. How do we make this assumption; we look for similarities, and in doing so we label people.

Immediately upon hearing the word 'stereotype' most would stick up there noses and rat out someone else, who was apparently not as good as they were because of their preferences, in lifestyle.

And that is basically all a stereotype is, a lifestyle, grouped in with those similar. Thus, harmless, however today's society have turned into another abuse of character, in particular the younger generation. (Despite my slight bias because of myself being grouped in there.) That there, itself, is a stereotype, 'younger generation'.

Another thing about stereotypes is they aren't set in stone, and at any given moment you could be thrust in with another group of kids, because they found something slightly different on their iPod.

Unfortunately because of this, people feel harassed by stereotypes and they now have become a horrible form of playground abuse.

So are they good or bad?

Well, in my experience, that's up to the person and what personal encounters they've had with them. So you know my opinion:

They are neither good nor bad, however if I had to chose one, it would be good. Why? Well, I think I've explained, and pretty thoroughly at that. They are good, to a certain extent when they're not used with malicious intent.

Think about it though, anything and everything can be used against an individual to harm them when they are twisted and manipulated into the correct form.