The Neverending Straight Edge Discourse

was in punk before i found hardcore. Everyone around were in their late 20s - early 30s, and just wasted their youth up on weed, coke and rolling rock. I mean, guys nearly 15 years older than me with no car, renting a shitty house, working dead end minimum wage jobs. Never wanted that for myself, gorilla biscuits was probably the first band that pulled me toward hardcore, and their message really just resonated with me. Straight edge is all about dealing with the absolute storm of shit that life hails onto us constantly, without needing some substance to escape reality. Raw doggin life

everyone delete twitter

One thing when it comes to the whole Straight Edge discourse is this ideology from the Tumblr people...it usually revolves around mentioning this kind of "Ohhh, this 90s/2000s edge band said that drunks/druggies should die, uwu that's really mean." I remember the "Kill your local heroin dealer" and "Drugs are for sluts and losers" shirts from 2007, so I get it if you're maybe 18 years old and that's the first thing you see from that, but as someone who lived through the 90s/2000s era, I remember how people were back then, and I can tell you that era's Straight Edge culture of reflexively railing on drug/drinking culture makes absolute sense, because so many people were absolute assholes. Every dickhead who had access to cigarettes had a huge shitty ego about it, stoners too (dudes were not chill, like the stereotype), a stupid fight between drunks broke out at almost every party I ever showed up to back then, every actual adult acted like a fake Tony Soprano asshole, and all that abuse/using drugs to get underage girls/domestic violence that the 18-24 year-old Tumblr people typically complain about with our own generational peers was infinitely worse when boomers/Gen-Xers did it amongst themselves and to us. Drunk driving and getting caught up in opioid addiction is a rather small fraction of what the entire scope of drinking and using drugs has been historically, and these people should understand that before saying shit that gets quote-tweeted into oblivion. 

That xWEAPONx demo is really good but some of the lyrics are kinna cringe

I'm not at all "pure-edge" or whatever the fuck some people like to call it, I've claimed it before then had a relapse but eventually got into it for real and now I've been clean three years straight. Yeah, sometimes there's assholes who happen to be SXE (like on this board, Twitter, etc) but there's assholes in all subcultures. Even before deciding to go clean for the first time I always had a lot of respect for SXE and loved Youth Crew. Bands like YOT and GB weren't important to me just because they were sober but also because of how despite how terrible the world could be they made an effort to see the best in themselves and the ones around them. I preffer to get along with an "edger" (funny term) who's positive than a SXE prick who really hasn't dealt with shit who's just looking for an excuse for their anime-esque arc. These are my experiences around SXE folks online, at least some of the ones that stick out the most 'cause the terminally online folks are the worst. I have friends who do tons of drugs; do I support that? Absolutely not. But they do it in their spaces or where it's safe to do so and don't hurt a fly. If the ones doing drugs ain't hurting you or the ones around you why do you care? Unless the drug user is someone you actually care about like a friend or family for example, if that's the case of course you care 'cause they matter to you. This of course isn't my full opinion on SXE and drugs in Punk, HC, etc. Just a fraction of it as it's quite a complex topic that encompasses not only loads of different philosophies but also personal experiences. Tell me your experiences please, I like this topic of discussion.

True. Every year, it's some band or someone loosely associated with a band that manages to set people off with some kind of joke post. XelegyX, Inclination, and I think Year Of The Knife managed to do this in previous years. 

YOTK is one of the best "newer" Edge bands around IMO, I have Internal Incarceration here at home, hard hitting album.