Why We Hate Indie Kids
Eighteen Reasons
1) They like indie music. Obviously.
2) Their regulation thick-frame black glasses. No more breakable item of nosewear has ever been invented: on slow afternoons I could happily cruise the streets for hours walking up to indie kids, lifting these ridiculous excuses for spectacles from their filthy-pored noses and breaking them at the bridge. How the indie kid would howl! Perhaps they would threaten to “kick my ass”. Needless to say all indie kids have adequate eyesight: any slight impairment of vision is due entirely to their regime of perpetual masturbation.
3) Indie kids are at it like rabbits. Or want to be. Scratch any ‘community’ or ‘scene’ of indie kids and you will find a seething cauldron of sexual frustration and backstabbing. Most indie kids are vile to look upon: I think this because I am enslaved by societal standards of beauty.
4) Societal standards of anything are bad, pretty much. Unless it gets you a shag. Or earns you – or more likely your parents – the vast amount of money needed to get through college on some no-mark computer games degree AND buy a billion useless identical records.
5) On the rare occasions when an indie kid does get it on it at least distracts them from listening to indie music. Or making it. All indie kids are in indie bands.
6) Indie is short for independent, because indie kids are not mainstream. No sir. They are individuals. A quick look at an indie kid website will reassure you of that.
7) All indie kids are unique. They are however looking for other indie kids who are unique in exactly the same way as them – cool, huh?
8) Among the unique things about indie kids are their haircuts. The square mainstream observer might mistake the uniform dyed bobs and crops of indieland as the sinister hairstyles of a clone army hell-bent on taking over teenage america and making it listen to At The Drive-In. But such an observer would be a fool. There are crucial differences in the haircuts. Some are, like, really expensive.
9) Some records are really expensive, too. You must really love the music to spend $200 on eBay on a one-sided seven-inch, right? It shows your dedication to music is for real and unique, like your taste.
10) Indie fashions are individual and unique too, and are marked by the indie kid’s strong sense of irony. For example, a lot of indie kids like wearing overalls and workshirts as worn by real live working class people. As the indie kid finishes a two-hour shift at Border’s they feel solidarity with their working-class brothers and sisters in the bakeries and pizza delivery companies all across the nation.
11) They don’t feel solidarity with the suits working in offices, though. Those people are a plastic fake herd of manufactured, soulless brainwashed lemming robot drone sheep enslaved to mass culture pap. (This is true, obviously. But sorry, indie kids are worse.)
12) Not all mass culture is pap, though. Hey! What about those cool Powerpuff Girls?
13) Infantilism is endemic to the indie kids. When was the last time you heard one of them use the word ‘man’ or ‘woman’. Nope, it’s always ‘boys’ and ‘girls’. Some girls are ‘cute’. Some boys are ‘cute’ too. The more incurable indie kids use the words ‘grrrl’ and – shudder – ‘boi’, for all the world as if they were living in a Disneyworld 1994 Experience ride or fell into a copy of Sassy once and never escaped.
14) When indie kids pair off with a cute grrrl or boi (all indie kids are in theory bisexual, of course. Just don’t ask them to do anything about it.) they tend to treat each other like shit and then write it up on their web pages (“I am SUCH the geek”). This is because they are very sensitive, not as the casual observer might have guessed because they are emotional dwarves with no concept of human interaction outside a fanzine problem page. You become sensitive by listening to Belle And Sebastian a lot.
15) All their records sound the same, due to influence inbreeding. The gene pool of influences on indie rock has been shrinking steadily since 1977, thanks to paranoid scenester tastemaking. The constant slathering praise directed at the likes of the Get Up Kids and Sleater-Kinney is the critical equivalent of a one-eyed chinless inbred mutant winning a beauty contest.
16) Indie kids like experimentation, but not too much experimentation. They like extremity, but not too much extremity. They like songs, but they like them to be a bit shy and fuzzed-up and nervous and not too songish. Best of all they like bands which sound comfortingly like the other ones they already know are cool.
17) Of course they listen to other stuff too, carefully weighing it up for its purity of motive and general indie-ness. Other genres are assessed with a practised eye, and only the records which have the most spiritual kinship to indie are acceptable – no attempt is made to take these musics on their own terms, since indie is in any case superior. Eventually a fashionably anti-PC stance allows the indie kid to reject even bothering with hip-hop or dance records – that would after all be ‘tokenism’.
18) The worst thing about indie kids is how apalling they are at even being indie kids. After idling their college years going to ‘shows’ every other day and then spending two years in retail working on a screenplay or writing a novel about following a band or recording a thousand tinny songs on a hundred cheap cassettes and giving them to people they fancy in the hope that a rare Braid EP track might get them a quick fuck on some other indie kid’s sofa and pretending to like the Spice Girls and pretending to like the Magnetic Fields and pretending to like each other – after all that they suddenly get a job and start listening to Moby and Aimee Mann. What I ask you is the fucking point?
Tom Ewing and Maura Johnston
SPECIAL 2007 EDIT FOR THE COMMENTS BOX MASSIVE:
1. This was written in 2001. So don’t complain that we’re talking about emo not indie. Back in 2001, this stuff was indie, and emo was merely a gleam in a marketer’s eye.
2. I don’t know whether the View and the Fratellis are indie or not, but I do know that you should be ashamed to listen to them.
I listen to indie music and yes I probably would be labled an ‘indie kid’, but this shit is actually pretty funny. I dont know why people are on here getting all worked up about it, it’s just a piece of well structured, comical writing, not anything to be taken too seriously… To be perfectly honest, if you really were ‘indie’, you wouldn’t care what anyone thinks of you, let alone some random person on the internet who has nothing better to do than list 18 things he hates about indie kids…*smh* @ the fakes who see the whole indie scene as ‘cool’ and now want to be a part of it. I’ve probably been listening to the music since you were a sperm in your dads penis…
Oh and also….
“AMERICA STARTED EMO! your the ones to blame!!!! and indie in the 90’s or britpop if youd looked a little bit more into your claim was the center of the universe…just because we enjoyed life down here and you guys sat and masturbated to nirvana on repeat for most of the 90’s we own AMERICA at music always have always FUCKIN will mate 60’s we owned you 70’s we owned you 80’s we owned you 90’s we owned you and now america decided it would bring a little thing called fuckin emo to england! well thanks a fuckin lot you fuckin idiots.”
^^^ LOL, hahaha, co-sign 100%….
Thanks… a…. fucking…. lot….. you ….. fucking…. idiots.
LOL
HERE YOU LOAT ARE CALLING INDIE AND EMO KIDS WHEN THE SCUM OF THE EARTH CHAVS ARE IN YOUR GARRAGE TRYING TO STEEL YOUR BIKE OR CAR RADIO THE PEOPLE WHO HANG AROUNG IN ASDA CAR PARKS AND DRESS IN BURBERRY SO FUCK YOU NOB HEADS WHO CALL INDIE KIDS!!!!!!!!111111
Anything off Arts & Crafts. Matador records. Touch & Go. So on.
hip-hop/rap, reggaeton, reggae, 80′s soul/r&b, folk, antifolk, psych folk, folktronica, new wave, no wave, postpunk, proto punk, punk, oi, queercore, riot grrl, psychobilly, indie pop, synth pop, postrock, art rock, math rock, experimental rock, glam rock, garage rock, psychedelic rock, lo-fi, classical, jazz, blues, electroclash, electronica, dance, ambient/lounge, trip-hop, thrash/hair/classic metal, grindcore, and any other silly genre created for different movements in music.
Emo originated from mid to late 80′s bands similar to The Rites Of Spring. The Rites Of Spring were influenced by hardcore pun bands. So by the transitive property, emo has some of its roots in punk rock (it’s painful to say that, it is).
In the early 90′s, the sound softened a bit and the product was bands like Texas Is The Reason and Sunny Day Real State. All through the 90′s, emo was nothing like the overplayed and obnoxiously pretentious bands today (i.e., Panic At The Disco, Fall Out Boy, Cartel. Those three bands make up the trinity of mainstream music whored by 14 year olds. I like to refer to the aforesaid bands as Fall Out! At The Discotel, considering that they all sound exactly the same). Emo used to be stuff like Saves The Day and The Get Up Kids (The Get Up Kids were never indie, no matter what was stated).
So how did emo get a sound like that which we associate it to Taking Back Sunday, MCR and Fall Out Boy? What happened to “real emo“?
Well, before emo went mainstream, you had bands like Good Charlotte and Blink 182. It was “pop punk” and all about “rebellion”. They skated and they had dyed black hair, eyeliner, and tatoos because they were “punk” (and we all know that all punks skate, have black dyed hair, mohawk, and wear eyeliner, of course). They were “dangerous” and “threatning to the social norm”. But there’s only so much people can hear of such bands before they realize that it sucks.
Well, if the image of GC and Blink was what made them popular, then pussies like The Get Up Kids couldn’t replace them on the radio and on MTV. They wrote “poetic music” (yeah right) that was neither edgy nor dangerous (like the shit GC put out was).
But what do you know? Taking Back Sunday and all of the 39439 identical bands had been starting a movement. What did their movement sound like? A cross between pop punk and emo. So of course, major record labels went after them and they were easily marketed. Why? Because Taking Back Sunday was just like GC and Blink, the only difference was that the former had more substantial music (and when I say substantial, I mean by comparison).
Then TBS evolved in to Panic and A Static Lullaby and MCR and so on. And don’t get me started on all this nu-hardcore bullshit like Further Seems Forever, Norma Jean, Killswitch Engage, and From First To Last
So where does indie play into all of this? Well, I’ll jump in and say that indie isn’t very similar to emo (in terms of music, at least).
We all know “indie” is short for INDEPENDENT as in on an independent label. Well, by those terms, indie then means any band on an underground label, which could be anywhere from streetpunk to hardcore to emo.
Now, indie, as in the subculture and the music asscoiated with it (Broken Social Scene, Built To Spill, Arcade Fire, so on) and not just anything on an independent label has at least 15 subgenres to it. They range from: Indie Pop, Math Rock, Psych-Folk, Anti-Folk, Electroclash, Experimental, Post-Rock, Lo-Fi, Brit Pop, so fucking on. Oh, and by the way, many people who do listen to INDIE are not afraid to admit that they listen to Aimee man, so the reference to her, which I believe was intended to be condescending, was lacking.
Indie has its roots not solely on punk, but on scene of the 1960′s of the >Velvet Underground, Patti, Smith, Nico, Television, Bob Dylan, and similar artists. It has its roots on Sonic Youth, The Smiths, The Pixies, (The London) Suede, Husker Du, The Replacements. Arguably the greatest, most novel artists have influenced the movement which we refer to as indie. And I might be biased, but it is a phenomenon.
One cannot say that the lyrics of Panic! At The Disco have the same intellect as those of The Decemberists (although, the latter is a poor example considering they just signed to a major record label. Their sound is still indie rock, however). Or that they even sound the same, for that matter. How can someone even begin to compare Something Corporate, Alexisonfire, Hawthorne Heights, Thursday, Funeral For A Friend to Belle & Sebastian, Cat Power, Do Make Say Think, Death From Above 1979, Fiery Furnaces, Joanna Newsom, Sleater-Kinney (though mostly associated with riot grrl punk scene), Yo La Tengo, The Dears, and Blonde Redhead ?
Sure, you’ve got bands such as Bright Eyes and Cursive that blur the distinction between the two genres, but other than that, the contrast is extraordinary.
What most of you fail to realize is that you cannot understand the core differences between emo and indie because you do not have an extensive comprehension of music as a whole and how it has evolved into all of these different subgenres. One has to understand how rock music has progressed from its very beginning to present day. Each band (at least from the very beginning ’till the 90′s) has influenced another band with an inexplicable magnitude It may seem trivial, and it’s easier to just generalize everything and call it all the same. But no matter what is held to be as popular belief, indie and emo are not alike.
Now, on to the debate of indie KIDS and emo KIDS. Sure, indie kids and emo kids do resemble each other, but that’s because they were both at some point still UNDERGROUND. Not mainstream. Not household words. They dress similarly, that is true. And there’s both pretentiousness and stupidity in both scenes. And that sort of behavior is the what is associated with members of both scenes. Many people have made the following statement: Indie is like emo‘s older, graduated-from-college, smarter stepbrother or cousin. In the end, though, the truly devout fans of music will stick above the rest. Because for them, it wasn’t about the trendiness and the surrounding bullshit.
I, however, thoroughly enjoyed this article. It’s amusing and satrical while simutanously pointing out the hypocrisy that does exist. I’m glad someone has taken the time to poke fun at the subculture and all the idiots who go around obsessing over their $200 pair of jeans which they claimed they got at a thrift store, but in reality, they bought at the Diesel store.
I really want to hear some hardcore pun bands now.
[insert really obvious carter USM reference here]
lol @ how sad some of you critics are analysing scenes.
you’re worse than the scenesters themselves.
i think jealousy plays a large role in the backlash.
stop worrying about what other people are doing because they really don’t give a shit.
yeah, indie kids stand in that one hella annoying stance too. with their hands half way in their two small front pockets and with their one knee bent out. it just looks annoying. if a band is really shitty than they really like it too. examples..bright eyes or belle and sebastion. or that same old indie downstroke music that sounds like a shitty rehash of the 70′s lol. I don’t understand what to like about any of it.
Anyone saying they hate any person because of their music taste, their hair and clothes is a fuckin’ bully cuntbag. It’s people like you that make this world a shitty place to live in. Judge people individually and not because of what they look like, or one day a large “indie” kid like me might just smash your face in.
Yr logic is impeccable.
i hate chavs on October 21st, 2006
HERE YOU LOAT ARE CALLING INDIE AND EMO KIDS WHEN THE SCUM OF THE EARTH CHAVS ARE IN YOUR GARRAGE TRYING TO STEEL YOUR BIKE OR CAR RADIO THE PEOPLE WHO HANG AROUNG IN ASDA CAR PARKS AND DRESS IN BURBERRY SO FUCK YOU NOB HEADS WHO CALL INDIE KIDS!!!!!!!!111111
Now to me, you are the one that seems like a “Chav”.
I am a jew :)
Sonic Youth Hitler Youth
The fascism of bohemia
An army all clad in black
With black frame glasses and bowl cuts
Everyone look at me
I am better than the masses
Any phenomena of social and aesthetic discrimination can be accused of elitism: but to cast the question in terms of democracy and aristocracy is misleading (i.e. it’s not about taking sides between the Christian egalitarian culture of resentment vs the pagan artistic and hierarchical project. There’s nothing inherently good about the masses, just as there’s nothing inherently good about being better than the masses.) The more interesting issue (i.e. one which doesn’t just take one side or the other) ought to be about the regulation of the dialectic between these two positions, about the framework which holds them in this tension.
Existence involves negation: I negate my family by identifying myself as an individual, but then I negate my community by identifying myself as a member of my family, or negate universal humanity by identifying myself as a member of a particular community. In the contemporary world some of these lines of tension are adopted in musical cultural terms — which is perhaps better than hating someone because of their religion, ethnicity or nationality. (perhaps because it’s the SAME thing happening over and over, better because no repetition is every the same, so it might be an improvement. Regression is also possible). Because the musical subculture thing happens at a specific stage in life and then dies down, wouldn’t the question be whether identifying yourself as emo or indie as a teenager is going to have any effect on the predominant natural-cultural pressures which reappear when it comes to resettling in terms of future negotiations of various duties (e.g. to start your own family etc.) since the definitive modern form of the teen crisis is disidentification from family and social environment and identification with dispersed international subcultural identity (obv mediated via commerce, but that needn’t necessarily be bad, it’s neither more or less ‘natural’ than any other such identification, since the kind of break we’re talking about is precisely with what appears ‘natural’.)
You, my sad, deluded, inferior, know nothing about indie.. It’s not a scene you idiot… Maybe when you have sprouted pubic hair you will take your head out of your ass (provided of course you aren’t talking out of it at the time) and get fucking real!
FUCKING HELL! Why do you actually care?!
This whole article amused me; it sort of made me chuckle, and I definitely appreciated it. But lordy, the comments make me want to impale a bunch of people.
Imala, aka First Comment…you are a fucking idiot, and I’m surprised nobody’s told you off on it. Way to stick up for indie kids by telling the authors to go jump off a bridge (what an insult) with a thousand misspellings and a sad attempt at ironic humour that didn’t work. At all. Way to set the tone for the comments.
A lot of you dumbfucks are even getting emo mixed up with gothic, and this makes me a little sick to the stomach. First of all, read up on your indie/scene/hardcore/emo/goth history, because it was gothic kids who started cutting their wrists. Emo kids…I guess they thought it was cool or something. You like Dashboard Confessional? You can have them and your little razorblades. I don’t mind emo kids, just a lot of them don’t even know what emo kids stand for or what emo music is. It’s obnoxious. And roughly half of them are probably unblossomed indie kids. I sure was at one point, and gosh darnit was I happy when I realized I didn’t fit into emo.
It seems like you don’t recognize sarcasm when you see it, either, little indie kids…and this is a trait required of indie kids, thus, you’re fucking retarded if you didn’t notice the application of one of your favourite literary devices besides irony (only one did, and he/she was unsure of him/herself–what’s in a name?, I give you props). You go to one of the sites written about indie stereotypes and you evaluate your indie cred. Yeah, I know. How do you think the authors know so much about indie if they’re NOT? They know about our obsession with fanzines and quiet music and even how we evaluate music in itself. Lord, that’s either an insider’s job, or they must have researched long and hard to get this list perfect.
By the way, Comment 78, by Jumper, is probably the most decent and well-thought-out comment thus far, even in realizing the hypocrasy in the article. Everything he or she wrote was completely accurate and some of the dumbasses here should read it for the definition between indie and emo and where each started. God, I love whoever that is. Either he/she played his/her share of Emo Game (I did, too), or he/she is just a natural music buff. Perfect.
Oh, perfect except for the fact that I probably wouldn’t consider Cursive quite indie (more of some subgenre of rock, although I’m not sure which), and that Bright Eyes, although they have a mainstream name that causes controversy and has pushing and pulling on both sides of the indie-emo spectrum, they’re certainly not to be compared with the likes of Taking Back Sunday (emo shit); you just have to listen to all of their albums (especially Noise Floor) to realize this.
This has been fun…definite props to Tom and Maura and Jumper, with semi-props to What’s in a name?. I am linking this shit to my blog (that sounded too stereotypical right there). Peace!
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Indie is a passion without me even thinking about it?
If someone doesnt like it, they wouldnt be listening to it.
But this is quite funny. You’re assholes. But funny nonetheless. So stereotypical. It’s like an asian making fun of theirselfs and saying.. “me luv yew long tyme” or somthing..
bahah.
p.s.
I agree with chouette..
and I laughed throghout this whole thing, because I picked out myself in bits of pieces with it.. Ha.
Can I have the last word?
Alpha and Omega? NO. Idiot boy knows nothing. U all suck. wioth the exception of some people. In general. Tom Ewing and Maura Johnston suck and are gay. and know nothing.
whoever wrote this is the best they r like well good they got the rite idea but all those wannabe emos who rite in this poll who r like bisexual in every way suck ass coz they like to. some of the people who rite in this r absolut emos who need to get some proper ideasin their head coz all the guys who think the guys who wrote this is wrong should be put in a room to die and rot so we dont have to live with them anymore cozz they must die but theyl probaly do it themselves the dirty emos
Bisexual in every way??
U stupid bunch of pricks, ur talking bout music! i like all rock, i HATE indie wiv passion, that doesnt meen i hav 2 make up a website and tell evry1 how great I AM and how evry body else sucks, thats not right. wat bout ppl who listen to reggae and rap, go make a website bout them and tell them how much u hate them,…………. or r u lil too scared? whether ur indie or emo, u all suck dick if fink ur musics better!
that comment there from the irish golf experience?!?