like was said, emo stands for emotional...the genre has many different feels, from really aggressive screaming stuff to calm stuff...it's all music that you can feel if you're into it. i live by emo, and cannot listen to pop music because of its emptiness, both lyrically and emotionally.

i started getting into emo back in 1996 and i love the progression it's made. my bands here are (mostly emo and some hardcore):
Sunny Day Real Estate, Thursday, Texas Is The Reason, Inside, Taking Back Sunday, Matchbook Romance, My Chemical Romance, Thrice, The Used, Hopesfall, Skycamefalling, From Autumn to Ashes, Gameface, Atreyu, Poison the Well, Thumb and others.

[rant] Good Charlotte sucks. i have never seen such an image driven "punk" band before. it's kinda pathetic when you see them all over MTV and people are totally into it and think it's punk or anything more than just marketing to sell an image. [/rant]