Punk rock, rock and roll, art culture, and everything about "cool" is and always has been a reaction to what already is, and what is becoming stale. Wearing fashionable or glamorous clothes while making music that was the most noisy and extreme on earth by leaps and bounds was ironic and exciting in 1999 as a reaction to the machismo and homophobia of nu metal and rapcore. Straight Edge lifestyle was Ian MacKaye's personal reaction to the drug addiction and stale vacuous culture of self destruction in the late 80's hardcore scene. Indie dance music made to mimic the cliche's of pop hip hop in an ironic fashion was a super cool thing in the 1990s. Introspective, heartfelt anthems of love by jilted punkers, a genre called Emo, served well to scare off the tough guys in the mid 90s. Death metal with garbled vocals that sound like pigs or screeching banshees with lyrics about gore and satanism were against the grain, absurd, incredible sounds in the late 80s to mid 90s. Grindcore, with its fifteen second songs and controversial anti-pc lyrics, brought rooms to a standstill, dumb with shock, in the mid to late 90s.

But bottom line, all the SEENS you guys are copping right now are not yours, and are not cool any longer. They were ironic, funny, misunderstood, and controversial, in the past. Now they have become silly, cartoonish trends; bobbly-headed carnival caricatures of themselves.

Hardcore, strong tough revolutionary activists like Henry Rollins fronting Black Flag, have become fat, dorky mobs of guys in army hats and basketball shorts ganging up and picking on little effeminate 14 year old boys in girl clothes at shows. Their music has become one giant half hour long brain-dead breakdown with lyrics about rising above or overcoming some unknown problem they don't actually have. Claiming straight-edge temporarily to have a subculture of elitism, despite the fact that claiming edge requires that you actually know so little about the concept as to realize that Ian MacKaye himself, the father of the idea, called it a personal movement, that if anyone else participates in it, invalidates it. The simple act of claiming straight edge right now requires a certain ignorance of punk culture, and betrays it.

Gore lyrics don't scare anyone anymore. Modern "emo" bands, with their prissy, effeminate, attractive, early 20s men have more in common with Motley Crue than they have with Rites of Spring. Death Metal has become so bland and monotonous, that its top selling album ever to date, Deathklok, is actually a joke on the genre. Punk rock went from an idealogy of being forward-thinking and progressive, to an outfit with a mohawk, bondage pants, and safety-pins.

Bottom-line... its time to move on kids. Hot Topic has bought all of these scenes, and therefor they are not cool. In fact, as a general rule, when Hot Topic carries something, it ceases to be cool. If you can dress as a certain type of person by attending hot topic and buying the proper shirts, pants, and accessories, your now a cartoon character of a dead scene.

Do your own thing. Listen to whatever bands you like. This is the information era. We should all be INFO punks. We should listen to all the genres that we like, the best bands of any of them. We should dress in whatever we want, **** everyone else. We should have bands that sound like a mixture of all the things you love, into one awesome band that sounds like your ipod smashed into a song. We should not consider voting for whoever Fat Mike thinks you should vote for "punk rock politics". Between Last.Fm, Wikipedia, Votesmart.org, and the infinate information available to everyone, theres no excuse anymore for this bland, tasteless underground culture. Grow some balls and be yourself. Write songs with your own lyrics, about things that happen in your life. Listen to songs that challenge you and have a soul of their own.

Conformity was cool in the late 90s because America was rich and happy, but those days are over. We're a poor nation now and most people can't even afford to drive cars. Get pissed off and start researching who you really are. Join us.