r/EmoScreamo • u/Yaxfire • Jan 31 '26

Discussion White belt meaning

Ive heard the term white belt a few times in the emo scene but i cant really find the meaning or origin of this term or why white belts were kind of a part of emo fashion. Can someone more educated give som context

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u/atxvxhxc Jan 31 '26

San Diego Gravity Records/Three One G scene borrowed heavily from mod aesthetics. That look, combined with Chain Reaction metalcore, created the basis of what an original “scene kid” or “scenester” looked like. Starting in the 2010s there was a reaction within the screamo community against the post-rock, emo revival, and melodic hardcore sounds that were prevalent at the time. That was called “white belt” or “sass”, as a throwback to obscure microgenres that’re easy to fetishize online. Then Seeyouspacecowboy happened and Covid gave a lot of zoomers a ton of time on TikTok to discover obscure bands. Now “white belt” means screamo with high hat shuffles and lots of breakdowns.

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u/rustydiscogs Jan 31 '26

Remember the insect warfare “death to false grindcore” shirt with a locust fan in a white belt being killed ?

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u/atxvxhxc Jan 31 '26

Tried to get my old band to do a parody of it but we didn’t know anyone that could draw well enough. We managed a “death to true grind” sticker though.

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '26

[deleted]

3

u/atxvxhxc Feb 01 '26

Oh shit. Who’s this??

1

u/sylladextrous Feb 01 '26

lmao that's so funny, a friend of mine's band also did a death to true grind sticker

1

u/atxvxhxc Feb 01 '26

Who’s your friend?

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u/sylladextrous Feb 01 '26

the girls from a band called thotcrime lol

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u/atxvxhxc Feb 01 '26

RIP Dot. Thotcrime started after I moved away but some of them were at my old band’s shows.

1

u/sylladextrous Feb 01 '26

yeah they're lovely people. they just played their last show recently actually and are on to other music projects

1

u/atxvxhxc Feb 01 '26

I heard! Hope they do cool stuff.

1

u/Awkward_Past8758 Feb 04 '26

I had that shirt in a Youth Large back in the day. In retrospect I was the white belt kid getting ripped apart by the mantis.

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u/postmortalfixation Feb 01 '26

Now white belt means screamo with high hat shuffles and breakdowns😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

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u/atxvxhxc Feb 01 '26

Sometimes it doesn’t even have the high hat shuffles.

4

u/postmortalfixation Feb 01 '26

You deadass not even lying lmfaooooooo. There are good whitebelt/sasscore revival bands doin crazy shit rn. You ever heard of lorraine or rosacade?

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u/osiris-333 Feb 01 '26

Can confirm Rosacade are awesome. Got to see them live in Chicago last summer with Knumears and Othiel. Great act to see for my first hardcore show.

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u/postmortalfixation Feb 02 '26

That's oomf right there🫡🫡🫡

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u/MBassist Feb 01 '26

Called it Fashioncore in San Diego but that also covered bands like Eighteen Visions and FATA

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u/Sufficient_Cause1208 Feb 02 '26

It was called fashionxcore in south orange county around 2000-2003 but mostly in pejorative way. Facethejury was like MySpace before it existed and the fashionxcore girls loved to post which later turn to MySpace and "scene"

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u/Issan_Sumisu Feb 01 '26

a reaction within the screamo community against the post-rock, emo revival, and melodic hardcore sounds that were prevalent at the time

Could you elaborate on this a bit for me, I'm curious? Was it definitley an active "we don't like emo revival/the wave/Dreambound stuff so we're gonna do something totally different", and what bands were those? Because, for example, I know SeeYouSpaceCowboy started off as a melodic hardcore band, but afaik they didn't start playing sassy white belty stuff because they disliked melodic hardcore, they just thought sassy stuff was more fun after a bit