Break out the black eyeliner! The announcement of a major one-day music festival in Las Vegas, including some of the biggest emo and pop-punk acts of the Noughties, has been met with delight from millennial fans who grew up relating to angsty lyrics by acts such as My Chemical Romance, Paramore and Avril Lavigne. Their music was an analgesic for teens who felt like social outcasts. You could identify a fellow Fall Out Boy or Funeral For A Friend fan by the badges pinned all over their school bags. Teenage wrists were weighed down by black rubber bracelets and faded wristbands from Reading and Leeds, Download and Slam Dunk. Sales of skinny jeans, converse trainers, black hair dye and piercings went through the roof. Side-fringes were everywhere.
Yet news of the festival has prompted some fans to go on the defensive, even before tickets have gone on sale. “It’s called When We Were Young, I don’t wanna see none of you Gen Z motherf***ers,” one person tweeted. “Listen little Gen Zs, I let you have the Olivia Rodrigo tickets but you better not come for my When We Were Young tickets,” another warned. This comes after months of eye-rolling over viral videos of teenagers discovering “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World, or making tutorials for how to dress emo. It’s an unsettling display of tribalism.
