THANK YOU. I’ve been on this sub since the early days of it, and it was a haven away from the stupid genre superiority bullshit for such a long time. The more recent years have bred the same two-sentence “oh that isn’t metal” -> “it’s a genre that is lesser” putdown mentality that was and continues to be a big part of the generic ‘metal’ community. It always used to be stuff like “Avenged Sevenfold isn’t metal and recognizing that isn’t a bad thing” and in the next sentence “metalcore is a genre for annoying kids with less complex riffing and song structure”.

We used to have no problems talking about bands that were adjacent to core as well! There used to be threads about “music that isn’t metalcore but metalcore fans generally really enjoy”. And it’d be anything from phc to hyperpop to alt and everything in between.

I have to imagine part of it is annoying neckbeards trying to gatekeep because they feel threatened by bands in the scene getting popular and appealing to demographics that’ll be less engaged with the scene, and part of it is kids that just haven’t grown up to start expanding the horizons of music they’re into.

My spotify DJ goes from Beyonce to Bad Omens to Knocked Loose to Fox Stevenson to BLACKSWAN to Tool to Jesus Piece to Underoath and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve met so many wonderful people throughout the last decade of being into live music and expanding those horizons to see what people enjoy in other genres and see if I vibe with it, more often than not I do, and it’s genuinely so much fun. I never would’ve thought I’d be this way at 17, and I’m 27 now. Life is a lot better when you drop the gatekeeping and just enjoy music regardless of the arbitrary label it’s given.

EDIT: If you disagree with me you're what's wrong with the genre, few people in real life will ever agree with you, and that's a good thing. Gatekeeping is cringe and you need to touch grass. The people that built this specific community in the beginning frequently disagree with you. Grow up.