Personality
When referring to a person's personality and attitude, most definitions of emo hold that an "emo person" is candid about their emotions, sensitive, shy, introverted, broken-hearted, glum, and often quiet.[6][9] Emo personality is also often connected with writing poetry, which addresses confusion, depression, loneliness, and anger, all resulting from the world's inability to understand the author. Emo poetry uses a combination of any of: a highly emotional tone, stream of consciousness writing, a simple (ABAB) or nonexistent rhyme scheme, references to the flesh, especially the heart, heavy use of dark or depressing adjectives, concern over the mutability of time and/or love, and disregard for punctuation, grammar, and/or spelling. Themes such as life is pain are common.[10]
Some definitions of emo hold that typical "emo persons" are likely to inflict self-injury, most often by means of cutting, burning, or otherwise mutilating themselves.[11] [9] Some assert that it is cool within the emo subculture to pretend to be suicidal and self-harm,[12] or that participants self-harm purely for personal enjoyment.[13]
Emos are also stereotyped to use depressing Internet screen names that sometimes contain straight edge X's, often using ironic sloganry, a poetic sense or cliché (eg. xmourningafterx).[8]
