Emo

Recently, we received an e-mail from an anonymous web surfer. Your Name: A random web surfer Your Email: anonymous Subject: Photos of Emo

Message: Hello Matt! Just thought you might be interested to know--the word, "Emo" in pop-culture slang refers to a genre of music somewhere between punk-rock and emotionally charged alternative music, as well as a life style and look centered around dark clothes and excessive teen angst. Many teenagers embrace this, but just as many hate it, mock them, and spread phrases such as the very well known, "cry emo, cry!" along with malicious pictures mocking their subculture throughout the internet. Why am I telling you this? Because a Yahoo image search on the word, "Emo" which I can guess thousands of kids do everyday, evidently brings up numerous pictures of what I assume is your daughter on the first dozen pages of links. I would like to point out that the Internet has a history of taking things which are innocent or random, and photoshopping them or otherwise transforming them into something meant to be funny and famous, but ultimately is simply hurtful to the person it's focussed on. There's also just the point that this is potentially a very easy way for people who know your daughter as well as a large number of people you don't know simply finding their way to these photos and your blog, which, if it were me, would be rather troubling. I would guess Yahoo should be able to remove them from their search results if you were to ask, but if not, I would suggest at the very least changing the names to the images.

Aloha and happy holidays! A friendly web surfer

Well, Web Surfer, let me say this. Yours is not the first comment like this we have received, and it surely won't be last. Actually, yours was the most friendly as most say things like, "I was searching for 'emo haircut' and got your site, you suck". We first discovered this genre a few years ago when we were searching the 'net for clothes that said "emo" on them. Since then, the term seems to have crept up more and more in pop-culture. That doesn't change the fact our daughter is also Emo. We shared your comments with Emo and asked what she would like us to do. She said, in her normal spirit, "I'm Emo and I'm not changing the nickname I've been called since the day I was born" (it was her uncle Ken that awarded her the nickname when he first saw her at the hospital).

That got us thinking, what else does Emo mean?

A gas station! A brand of binoculars! Some place in Italy! In fact there are even other people that go by Emo and let's not forget about the one that most consider the original Emo... Emo Philips!

A search on Yahoo! images for "emo" returned over 300,000 items... and only a few hundred or so are from my sites.

So, to all of you worried kids, thank you for your concern but, if you happen across our site looking for other emo stuff, sorry to have diverted your attention.