u/Alarming-Giraffe5447

I don't have pictures yet because I'm still working on the board but I will eventually and hopefully update soon! I just wanted to brag c:

Look. I am a "new gen" myself, but I've had a small discussion with someone on a a MCR chat group, and I just want to put this out: without "new gens", your fandom will be dead.

I find the way older fans (not ALL of them, but certain ones I've interacted with) treat younger fans as if they're fake is just... Weird? This isn't a problem with just MCR, but other things as well, but I've mostly experienced this with MCR.

As a " new gen" myself, I will take a stand as an unofficial representative, and start with these key points: Just because we are teens or kids doesn't mean we're just listening to the music for the aesthetic or to seem depressed. Depression and abuse and self harm does not have an age limit. Just because we weren't around when the band first came out or before MCR disbanded doesn't mean we aren't a real fan.

While I won't go into too much detail,>! I almost killed myself, but listening to "Mama" made me feel so understood and seen for the first time, it made me cry so hard I forgot about the pills I had ready.!< And I know that I'm not the only one who almost ended themself but MCR was quite literally the thing that saved them. But I've had people tell me that I'm lying, and that it was "too dramatic" of a story. "Too dramatic."

What is the most crazy, is I know full well my dad would have blamed me liking rock music on it. That is the type of person he is. But if this happened, I know that nobody would have said it was me being relentlessly bullied, that it wouldn't be used as a warning for other kids not to be assholes, but instead be used to keep kids away from rock music because its the devil.

While I will admit some people would fake SH for attention, its still important to take that serious because wanting attention that bad is a bad sign either way.

Saying that someone isn't a real fan, especially, like, a 13 y.o., they don't actually like a band because they weren't born in the 1990s to be around when the band was first made/active. To which I say, that is the most idiotic shit ever. What do you want us to do? Alter the course of time to make our parents make us when they were teen so we could be around when MCR first started?!

Now, onto younger fans being weird and parasocial, I'm sorry, but the people who were fans back when MCR was still active were just as bad. After all, isn't it likely that one of the "OG" fans was the person who made the milk fic? Ever thought about that?

There will always be parasocial fans, whether they were around when the band first started or only just now joined the fan base. I have been on a server talking about MCR with someone, and I said jokingly that Frank was hot during the Pro Rev era (which is just facts), and someone replied with: "I swear, I can't with teen fans, always sexualizing the band" (Which is absolutely absurd).

A lot of the older fans I know (which is family and family friends) have let em confide in them. I felt weird for finding another person, especially Gerard, attractive as wrong. I am bi and masc presenting, and I started to feel this way about myself as a younger teen in the middle of puberty; my cousin/aunt was my biggest help during this time, and told me its okay to find celebrities attractive, and that its actually very common, but as long as I don't become obsessed, its alright.

But I just want to end this with, we are TEENS, we are IDIOTS, and one day, we will grow up and say, "haha... Oh yeah, no I hated how I was then." And we will grow to understand that how we might have acted was weird. So give us a pass. I'm not saying that you should just let everything slide; just correct us, inform us, don't put us down as bad fans.

MCR itself is about acceptance, about feeling okay with who you are, and honestly, if you are a fan, you wouldn't push other people away from the fan base for basic mistakes that you yourself have probably done.

Thank you for reading this.