It looks like emo is now seen as a relic of the 2000’s
Yep. The tag itself seems like it’s destined to forever be associated with that particular decade, but I don’t think the actual music has changed much. It’s a very basic formula:
anxiety riddled teenager + guitar + emotionally charged & sometimes very personal lyrics and expressions + distortion (optimal)
So long as there are kids interested in playing the guitar this type of music isn’t going anywhere, it’s just that the “EMO” tag itself seems like it’s no longer cool to anyone not named Machine Gun Kelly. But before it was Emo, it was called Shoegazer and College Rock before that.. And Metalcore is pretty much just Emo on roids.
In the bigger picture it’s really just an easily adaptable platform for youthful expression and therefore often thought of and dismissed as immature and something you eventually grow out of naturally.
The thing that sticks out about it is the art of it. It’s youth being able to express themselves without necessarily all the traditional restraints of skill level, as awkward as that may sometimes sound.
But where good skill and a little maturity are factors, I find that the best of the genre is quite engaging, and the emotional attachment that some young people eventually develop for this music is very real. So of course these new cats out there give it a nod, because deep down they love it, but on the surface they’ll more likely say it was a phase.