Emo musings, Part I (Or Getting Older, Part II)

Now that I am an adult, I can't relate to youth culture. One term that I hear but don't understand is "emo," so I decided to investigate it. Yes, I am now old enough to investigate pop culture trends like an anthropologist. I asked our office's resident music critic to lend me a book about it. He did and gave me a mix CD of emo songs, too, which was very generous.
And I've been listening to them tonight. Dashboard Confessional, Jimmy Eat World, Brand New. Now, these are bands I've never heard of. Well, I have heard of Dashboard. But I never listened to it before. My limited impression of emo is that its sad music, its listeners wear tight pants and they have long hair in their faces. And they cut themselves.
These stereotypes were protested by an actual emo listener.
To me, emo sounds like the bastard grandchild of punk; fast beats, simple, quick riffs, not a lot of flair. But instead of the screaming protest of early punk bands, it's all straining vocals and melancholy. I am intrigued by it, the way I am to any catchy tune. But I don't think I could stand a steady diet of the emotional content, which is filled with the sort of self-indulgent sadness and maudlin wallowing that filled my journals as a teen.
When I was in high school, we had grunge. The music styles are different, but the emotional landscape is the same: alienation, angst, and ennui. Every generation of middle-class white kids must have a version of this kind of music. The thing I pick up on in emo is the same sort of apathy and boredom that we had. There's a real desire for an authentic experience, not one manufactured by marketing or production values. I can relate.
But I often listen to music to provoke an emotional response, and emo fosters my own self-pity with its sentimental lyrics and sound. This is why I stopped listening to Dave Matthews years ago; because his later stuff always put me in a sad mood.
I leave you with Grandpa Simpson's thoughts on music and generational differences, which he related to a young Homer and Barney after seeing them "rock out" to Leo Sayer:

I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was. Now, what I'm with isn't "it," and what's "it" seems weird and scary to me.
It'll happen to you.