Becoming Scene

This story is submitted to us by the wonderful Ethernet! Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us <3!

This post is shared entirely unedited!

Make sure to check her out on Bandcamp & DeviantArt

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Hi, I'm Ethernet, I'm a musician who has a number of influences ranging from cloud rap to hyperpop to denpa music, I like taking from a variety of musical pockets. This includes scene music which has always been a really big influence on me, with a lot of my work being direct homages to the scene, namely xXx_scenequeen2008_xXx. The way I got into it goes all the way back to when I was an 11 year old who didn't know shit about fuck when it came to myself, a blank slate for alternative culture to make its impression onto me.

So once I was an 11 year old kid discovering this thing called "metal", and that this music can have growls and screams and heaviness beyond my feeble comprehension. I was bothered and disgusted, but very interested, especially in a band called "Suicide Silence". It was powerful and strange in a way that I knew I related to but had to prime my ears to fully enjoy. Around the same time I was informed that our family is broke as fuck and have to move into the basement of my aunt. Also living there was my cousin who was very into metalcore. Playing it around me all the time, I got more and more accustomed to the music. He pointed me in the direction of discovery, even giving me band shirts of bands like Sleeping with Sirens and Miss May I.

We only spent 3 months there before we moved back to Georgia where I would begin middle school. By this point I was listening to heavy music pretty regularly. Anything heavy I wanted in my ears immediately. Suicide Silence was my particular point of fixation, as I listened to The Cleansing and The Black Crown almost everyday. During this point I would meet 2 people very crucial to my developing understanding of "scene" for I was still in the dark culturally, only scratching the surface of this every elusive alternative culture.

The first one would be this boy who lived in my apartment complex who I will just refer to as J. He was an annoying piece of shit and I hated him for constantly being mean to me but I hung around him because he liked heavy music and played guitar. We would lay around listening to Bring Me The Horizon and Chelsea Grin while he would tell me increasingly worrying stories about his seemingly troubled life. Either way, it was nice to have someone who seemed to be receptive to my musical taste.

The other person would become a long time best friend. Chris was this tiny emo kid with a straight dyed black fringe, band shirts, and skin tight jeans. He was the full myspace package in 2014 when that was already on the way out. We vibed with each other immediately. He would introduce me to the full breadth of emo and scene culture. Our weekend ritual became him coming over to my house as we ate Little Ceasars pizza and had fake mosh pits to the likes of Asking Alexandria, Attila, and Motionless in White. The gender bending, genre meshing nature of the scene really hit me in a way that I couldn't fully reconcile as I was a ball of repression at the time.

He would also show me stuff that we would regard as "cringe" like Blood on the Dance Floor and brokeNCYDE. Sure, I liked it and thought it was super cool, but I was far too embroiled in the metalhead elitism to even allow myself to entertain those thoughts. It was just the music I knew I wasn't allowed to like. But Attila was okay for some reason??? We made no sense but hey, weird repressed adolescent insecurity can flip your brain gymnastics style into some wacky places.

Eventually, I would gradually get out of scene in the coming years, basically taking a back seat to my /mu/tant indie phase raving over Death Grips and Neutral Milk Hotel. It wasn't until 2018 I would rediscover the crunkcore and scene pop I disregarded in my middle school years with newfound love. I was finally based enough to embrace the way the twinky vocals and screams over electropop and hip-hop influenced instrumentals made me feel. They would also be integral to both my musical evolution and queerness.

Not just the music, but the aesthetic would also begin imprinting onto me. The Hello Kitty, the myspace, the late 2000s internet culture, the colorful swagged out randomness that was scene aesthetics really excited me, and I enjoyed meshing them with my other aesthetic influences like otaku culture and vaporwave. I would annoy my friends to no fucking end with brokeNCYDE and I Set My Friends On Fire spam. I would listen to Let's Start a Riot and actually like it. A lot. And into 2019 I would find myself at peak obsession with this kind of music to the point I would wanna make it myself.

I was a 16 year old with like a year and a half of music production experience and I would make scenequeen2008. It felt euphoric, like I finally found my specific sound. The deluging of gender and the embracing of edgy, absurdist, colorful sounds and lyrics made me feel like I finally found myself, and while wholistic acceptance of these things would be a treacherous journey ahead, I am eternally grateful to what scene did for me in finding my identity.

As years passed I also got into more into the wider scene music sphere, diving deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole. I would get into the cutsey teen pop side of things like Owl City, NeverShoutNever, Nickasaur, Amy Can Flyy, more crunkcore like DotDotCurve and Millionaires, trancecore like Attack Attack, Ghost Town and Kuma AKA...(who's my gf now hehehehheheheheh). I'm still exploring and experimenting with scene sounds to this day, and I'm very happy with where this subculture has taken me <3