Out of Touch

So yesterday's Times2 supplement ran an article on emo's. It highlighted how out of touch I am with youth culture -- and therefore middle-aged and old -- as I hadn't heard the term emo before.

Apparently emo's are all emotional and are basically goths with frills and an internet connection: Boy emo's pretend to be gay. Girl emo's wear polka-dots and animal prints in addition to the black drain-pipe jeans and wide rubber, cut-disguising, bracklets on their wrists.

Ask an emo, Family Fortunes style, what a razor is used for and their response will be:

1) Cutting yourself whilst listening to Joy Division or some internet band nobody's heard of outside of MySpace
2) Ummmmmm.... Having a shave?

Of course teenage-angst, and dressing up like the Manic Street Preachers, is nothing new: Ironically the term emo is almost identical to the brief emu youth sub-culture that was spawned in the UK after this self-harming skin-cutting 1999 tragedy.

Play those Radiohead albums emu.