I always saw emo as two things. There's the musical genre "emo" or "emocore" which derives hardcore punk from the 80s. Then there's the fashion subculture "emo" that's unfortunately associated with the genre with teenagers who wear tight-fitting shirts and tight-fitting jeans and dye their hair black. That is stereotype imo, but it's what's considered by most society as "emo fashion". Today it's sadly become known only as that fashion trend/subculture.. As much as I love bands like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance , I know they aren't emo, they're just good alternative rock. Alternative is a big umbrella term though so it's hard to define what's all alternative. There's umbrella terms for everything in music. The term "indie" for example, is a subgenre of alternative music that draws influences mostly from psychedelia and post-punk, and a term for an form of independent media which includes independent music artist/labels.
As for scene, while it's usually similar to the stereotype "emo fashion" , it's different. I had a time of my life where I attempted to be scene cause it was the cool thing to do. I'd look up "how to be scene" online and thought that because I followed their guidelines, I was scene. I bleached my hair and did th
and thought I was scene. Now I realize I was not, and I'm completely embarrassed when I look back on that phase lol. Subcultures are always going to have an influence on people though. Now hipsters are the popular subculture and everyone's copying it. ( Personally I hate to denote myself as hipster because they're pretentious and annoying, but I do like/have the stereotypical hipster hairstyle.)
I really don't mind if people want to be emo/scene or whatever trend is popular. People should just enjoy whatever they want and make their own choices. Though emo fashion has died down lately , which is probably fortunate according to some people.
(Hot Topic shouldn't be associated with that subculture imo cause they're a pop culture and music store, but unfortunately they are. I just got an Adventure Time shirt and a few band shirts from them, none of them "emo" bands haha. Emo/goth/scene was just a part of pop-culture at one time so they sold that stuff.)