Emo

[Sarah]

Genre of softcore punk music that integrates unenthusiastic melodramatic 17 year olds who dont smile, high pitched overwrought lyrics and inaudible guitar rifts with tight wool sweaters, tighter jeans, itchy scarfs (even in the summer), ripped chucks with favorite bands signature, black square rimmed glasses, and ebony greasy unwashed hair that is required to cover at least 3/5 ths of the face at an angle.

[Little_Girl]

An entire subculture of people (usually angsty teens) with a fake personality. The concept of Emo is actually a vicious cycle that never ends, to the utter failing of humanity, and it goes something like this:

Girls say they like sensitive guys (lie)
Guy finds out, so he listens to faggy emo music and dresses like a dork so chicks will see that he is sensitive and not afraid to express himself (lie). He dyes his hair black, wraps himself in a stupid looking scarf, develops an eating disorder, and rants about how nobody understands.
Now an emo guy, he meets Emo chick and they start dating, talking about how their well-off suburban lifestyles are terrible and depressing (lie)
Emo guy is just too much of a py. His ps is too small, hes too depressed to bathe, and has more mood swings than emo chick, and he doesnt even have a menstrual cycle. Emo chick dumps him, saying Its not you, its me. (lie) as she drives off with Wayne, the school jock and captain of the football team.
Emo guy goes home and cries, proceeds to write a weak song and strum a single string on his acoustic guitar. Another emo chick sees how he is so in touch with his feelings, and the cycle continues.

This is the sad truth of the emo lifestyle/music, and now that I look at how pathetic it really is, maybe the emos DO have something to cry about!

[Jessica]

Like a Goth, only much less dark and much more Harry Potter.

[Tanya Shivari]

The Difference between Emo And Goth:

[Tina]

[Punk] music on estrogen. Often acoustic guitar with soft, high male vocals that dwell exessively on the singers feelings, especially melancholy remembrances of past relationships/mistakes in life. A form of music that diverged from punk in the 80s, the name emo is derived from the emotive style of the lyrics and music. This genre has lately been marketed heavily by the music industry to teenagers with bands such as [Dashboard Confessional] and [Taking Back Sunday], and has seen much commercial and mainstream success. The music has also spawned a subculture which conforms to certain conventions in dress such as tight sweatshirts, tight band T-shirts and horn-rim glasses. Adherents profess to exessively melancholy temperments. Males that adhere to the emo subculture are sometimes confused with metrosexuals; indeed the line between the two is somwhat blurred, though both groups claim to be intouch with their emotional side. The ephemeral and hackneyed nature of emo songwriting suggests that its audience will be restricted largely to teenagers. the genre suffers from a lack of credibility outside the aforementioned demographic group, much like current Nu Metal bands.

[Jessica]

Emo is not short for Emotional. Emo does not mean Taking Back Sunday and Dashboard Confessional, despite what MTV has lead you to believe in the last few years. Emo is not sidebangs, tight pants, and male vocalists who sing like little girls about their failed relationships. Emo is not the use of diluted, meaningless metaphors and similes such as My arms are like pinecones, and most definitely is not the rampant use of words such as autumn, heart, knife, bleeding, leaves, and razorblade.
I just thought Id clear that up after all of these definitions in which I have encountered an unbelievable amount of people who try to pass off their blatantly false pretenses as fact, and are slowly infecting others with their high-horse, holier-than-thou bullshit. Because honestly, with your ridiculous definitions, Beethoven, George Gershwin, and Britney Spears are/was emo bands.
Now, onto the real definition.
In the early 90s there was a movement in the hardcore genre that came to be known as Emotive Hardcore, spearheaded by Rites Of Spring. Harder-core-than-thou kids, who swore by Dischord Records a la Minor Threat, actually coined the term Emo as something of a put-down for the kids who really liked Rites Of Spring, Indian Summer and this new wave of Emotive Hardcore bands. Thats right, Emo was once not something kids called themselves. The field exploded outwards from there - Level-Plane Records has always been the most famous Emo label. Acts like Yaphet Kotto, I Hate Myself, Saetia, Hot Cross, A Day In Black And White, Funeral Diner, I Would Set Myself On Fire For You, You And I, and hosts of others came in the next decade. Most emo bands have since broken up, but theres still the occasional hold-out (again, the majority of Level-Plane Records roster has been a procession of emo acts). Like most DIY hardcore/punk of the time, a majority found its way onto vinyl and not much else. Some people consider bands like Fugazi, and later Sunny Day Real Estate, a progression of emo, but personally, I dont quite follow that philosophy.
Often, more recently, this gets intertwined with post-hardcore, and understandably so - thats nothing to make an issue of, since well shit, at least its close.
Since the late 90s, though, bands have been emerging in the vein of Taking Back Sunday, Dashboard Confessional, and the thousands of their clones. As far as I can tell, some lazy journalist somewhere, writing an article about them, decided Well, fuck, no one knows what emo is anyways, so Ill call these bands emo - sounds more appealing than bubblegum pop rock... and the spiral continued downwards into the current amalgomation of bands MTV has told everyone is emo.
Somehow, people decided that emo meant emotional, which is obviously bullshit, as 99% of bands make music to illicit emotion, which would make emotional a completely all-encompassing genre from classical to opera to pop to rap.
Hope that helps.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

A group of white, mostly middle-class well-off kids who find imperfections in there life and create a ridiculous, depressing melodrama around each one. They often take anti-depressants, even though the majority dont need them. They need to wake up and deal with life like everyone else instead of wallowing in their imaginary quagmire of torment.

[Sonia]

a musical genre/ scene that has almost 1000 definitions in urban dictionary most of which are making fun of it

[Justin Bieber]

The word that holds the record for the most definitions at urbandictionary.com at 1,181.

[Couch Potatoe]

the word aunt in korean.

[Little_Girl]

[Punk] music on estrogen. Often acoustic guitar with soft, high male vocals that dwell exessively on the singers feelings, especially melancholy remembrances of past relationships/mistakes in life. A form of music that diverged from punk in the 80s, the name emo is derived from the emotive style of the lyrics and music. This genre has lately been marketed heavily by the music industry to teenagers with bands such as [Dashboard Confessional] and [Taking Back Sunday], and has seen much commercial and mainstream success. The music has also spawned a subculture which conforms to certain conventions in dress such as tight sweatshirts, tight band T-shirts and horn-rim glasses. Adherents profess to exessively melancholy temperments. Males that adhere to the emo subculture are sometimes confused with metrosexuals; indeed the line between the two is somwhat blurred, though both groups claim to be intouch with their emotional side. The ephemeral and hackneyed nature of emo songwriting suggests that its audience will be restricted largely to teenagers. the genre suffers from a lack of credibility outside the aforementioned demographic group, much like current Nu Metal bands.