Why is being edgy a bad thing?

InsaneLeader13 said:
Short answer:
Because it's seen as using something traumatic or bad without reason.

zal said:
Edgy seems to have similar connotations to melodrama in the anime community. There's drama and there's melodrama where everything is exaggerated for the sake of feels. Then there is gore and there is edgy where everything is exaggerated just for the sake of suffering.

galimx said:

Dezaki is master of melodrama. You should watch more of his works. His signature style direction (postcard memories, low key lightning, freeze frames, triple takes, dutch angles) works amazingly with this.

Those two terms are not inherently bad. Depends on the context and how well are they handled.

holysauron said:

3. Daring, provocative, or trend-setting: an exhibition of edgy photographs; an edgy menu.

So my question is basically why edgy got this negative connotation here, and maybe also why things evolved the way they did. I'm sure it didn't just change all of a sudden, right?

_Ako_ said:
Because one dude used it negatively and now a lot of people are using it...

Lordwen said:
Your issue is with the word, why edgy has an inherently bad meaning, while the problem is not the signifier by itself but what it represents for the ones who use it.

Kefka1134 said:
I just realized my comment was edgy, well fuck.

Anyway, to be quite honest I think "edgy" is on some level tied to dishonesty, which is the real problem.

For instance, a lot of edgy people actually really love I don't know.. hanging out with their parents, knitting, kind of non-sexual experiences just playing solitaire or something and being super polite and stuff like that, being super submissive, whatever.

"Edgy" was the result of that personality trying to meet the modern standards of the world and it's ever pressure need to not be a loser.

But instead, it just took those people away from what mattered most to them, and annoyed everyone else.

ashfrliebert said:

saying something different and contradictory to general society to appear cool, I suppose. Like excessive violence or something.

Which I'm assuming comes from the phrase "cutting edge", or forefront.

Edit: I'm assuming based on the way it's used and the definition of the word otherwise.

Psyotic said:
It comes off as contrived and superficial. There's nothing wrong with dark themes, however they can be easily mismanaged and overblown (but at the same time shallow), making them edgy.

Something that is edgy will revel in its own darkness, but not attempt to examine the deeper meanings and explore themes that may be more mature. This is effectively what divides edginess from more mature, darker ideas. Edge will only examine the surface of darkness, while still playing itself off as dark, as if it somehow makes it cool and in some cases will openly glorify its own darkness. Something that is mature will dive deeper and deeper into darkness, portraying it as something that is truely horrible and to be avoided.

An edgy show about war will show soldiers killing the enemy, or assaulting a village. A mature show will dive into the minds of the soldiers, and expose how truly horrible something like war is.

demonskul777 said:
Edgy has just become the term for "shallowly dark", but people abuse it and just call any dark show they don't like edgy.

I don't exactly know how to describe it, since it's kind of a fingerspitzengefühl thing, like, you just feel it you know. Usually an edgy show takes it darkness to the "extreme", but in such a way that it doesn't even make the story darker. i.e. killing filler characters with a lot of gore, kirito sitting depressedly in the rain in that opening for literally no reason, an insane character snapping it's neck and screaming "AI AI AI AI AI AI AI" "my brain trembles.... DESU"... those kinds of things. They aren't honestly per se bad, since they can be enjoyable, but they're just unnecessary and don't really add to the story.

A dark story on the other hand is f.e.A Scanner Darkly, or Blame!, where it doesn't really try to adress the darkness, it's just inherently part of the story and doesn't try anything it's not made for. Then there is Ghost in the Shell, where the setting is specifically created to share a philosophy.
The darkness is inherent to the story, which doesn't make it edgy. Edgy is the kind of thing were you go "oh well that's a thing".

Again it's hard to exactly explain the dfiference since people arel just super biased.



You're missing the point. Edge doesn't glorify its darkness per se, and dark doesn't mean decrying the content of the story.
Edgy stories just kind of go out of their way to be dark, where a dark story doesn't, but again, it's not an objective thing.

the act of being edgy is basically teenage kids that think theyre cool. hardcore kids seem to think theyre the fucking edgyest things everr.

holysauron said:

If it's not an objective thing then how can people abuse it?

demonskul777 said:


The point is that some stories can be objectively dark, like the examples I've given, but other's are like not really, but not really edgy either. It depends on how a person experiences it. And people just throw it whereever to insult whatever.
Like there is just a certain degree of subjectivity related to it, but not as much. So there is still abuse of it. It's just a term specifically used to insult something, so people will just use it when they want to insult a show that has some dark elements.

Pullman said:
It isn't really. People use terms wrongly and without elaborating what they mean by using them all the time, especially on the internet where everything gets turned into easily digestable and funneh memes. People think it gives their opinion more credibility than just saying 'I don't like this' or 'This is bad'. But the context often makes it very clear that this is the only thing they're intending to express.

So I just treat it like that, and pretend they haven't actually used the term because technically they haven't used it, they used the same letters but they didn't intend to express what the term actually means, and the identity of any term is tied to the part of their meaning that is unique to them. The only thing you can really do to counter this culture of robbing terms of their meaning and reducing them to fancy-looking ways of saying 'bad' or 'I don't like it' is to not participate in it and actually use the terms as intended yourself and elaborate on what you mean if you use them. Even on the internet.

They still have their meaning after all even if millions of random anons on the internet pretend they're variations of other, less expressive and meaningful terms. The beauty of language is how it's able to express tons of nuances so it's depressing to me to see people willingly remove these nuances and dumbing down language, but I can't control what they do so it isn't really worth thinking about too much. Humans at their most basic level have a tendency to want to simplify things, to make anything easily digestable. It'll always be that way, the internet just highlights that much more than anything before it.

Just don't join them if you disagree with those simplifications. There are still enough people who use terms like edgy with their real meaning, especially in actual critical and analytical discourse of media. Who cares what casuals on the internet make of these terms? Unless even the people who are aware of their actual meaning join them in using them wrongly because it's the popular thing to do they won't permanently change what the term means for anyone educated enough to know its real meaning.

Treat it like some sort of slang, a simplified form of language that plebs use who can't elaborate on their opinions beyond 'I don't like' and 'I think this are bad' but still want to seem sophisticated, reflected and intelligent by using a larger vocabulary than the 3-5 terms they use to think about, in this case, anime. Let them have their fun and use whatever simplified slang terms they want to to communicate with each other. That doesn't mean you can't use terms with their real meaning when talking to people who are above that level in terms of their ability to use language to express themselves.

Pullman said:
It isn't really. People use terms wrongly and without elaborating what they mean by using them all the time, especially on the internet where everything gets turned into easily digestable and funneh memes. People think it gives their opinion more credibility than just saying 'I don't like this' or 'This is bad'. But the context often makes it very clear that this is the only thing they're intending to express.

So I just treat it like that, and pretend they haven't actually used the term because technically they haven't used it, they used the same letters but they didn't intend to express what the term actually means, and the identity of any term is tied to the part of their meaning that is unique to them. The only thing you can really do to counter this culture of robbing terms of their meaning and reducing them to fancy-looking ways of saying 'bad' or 'I don't like it' is to not participate in it and actually use the terms as intended yourself and elaborate on what you mean if you use them. Even on the internet.

They still have their meaning after all even if millions of random anons on the internet pretend they're variations of other, less expressive and meaningful terms. The beauty of language is how it's able to express tons of nuances so it's depressing to me to see people willingly remove these nuances and dumbing down language, but I can't control what they do so it isn't really worth thinking about too much. Humans at their most basic level have a tendency to want to simplify things, to make anything easily digestable. It'll always be that way, the internet just highlights that much more than anything before it.

Just don't join them if you disagree with those simplifications. There are still enough people who use terms like edgy with their real meaning, especially in actual critical and analytical discourse of media. Who cares what casuals on the internet make of these terms? Unless even the people who are aware of their actual meaning join them in using them wrongly because it's the popular thing to do they won't permanently change what the term means for anyone educated enough to know its real meaning.

Treat it like some sort of slang, a simplified form of language that plebs use who can't elaborate on their opinions beyond 'I don't like' and 'I think this are bad' but still want to seem sophisticated, reflected and intelligent by using a larger vocabulary than the 3-5 terms they use to think about, in this case, anime. Let them have their fun and use whatever simplified slang terms they want to to communicate with each other. That doesn't mean you can't use terms with their real meaning when talking to people who are above that level in terms of their ability to use language to express themselves.

Lobinde said:
Just look at the fans of youtubers like h3h3, leafy, pyrocynical, keemstar etc.

Or the kids who think they are cool because they just found out about 4chan.

It's beyond stupid.

Lobinde said:
Just look at the fans of youtubers like h3h3, leafy, pyrocynical, keemstar etc.

Or the kids who think they are cool because they just found out about 4chan.

It's beyond stupid.

Pullman said:
It isn't really. People use terms wrongly and without elaborating what they mean by using them all the time, especially on the internet where everything gets turned into easily digestable and funneh memes. People think it gives their opinion more credibility than just saying 'I don't like this' or 'This is bad'. But the context often makes it very clear that this is the only thing they're intending to express.

CodeBlazeFate said:
Dark/edgy/violent can be used correctly, like when it leads to something awesome or aptly dramatic, but a lot of people pick on shows for being too edgy because of how unnecessary the usage is;making it beyond melodramatic and unfair to the characters for the sake of misery rather than a decent story.

ashfrliebert said:

this reminds me of the elitist thread(s).

edit: Though on second thought, those seem more like reactions to personal and emotional (supposed) inferiority. at least, most of the time. "I didn't like that anime, he must've understood it better than me. > He must think he's better than me for liking that anime I didn't like".


Have you ever read Berserk? What do you think about that?