In 2004, Ryan Ross was a loser who'd been kicked out of his dad's house for purposely failing out of college to become a rock star. He spent all day playing guitar with his friend spencer on drums or writing angsty songs to cope with his abusive alcoholic father and cheating girlfriends. At some point he realized he was "terrible at singing", so he recruited a nerdy mormon kid named Brendon Urie to be the voice for his songs. Together the 3 formed Panic, alongside bassist Brent Wilson. He promoted their music by posting photos of his ass on livejournal for emo girls to drool over, and posting his demos in Fall Out Boy fan groups. By some stroke of luck, Pete Wentz, fob bassist, took notice of his fanboy behavior and listened to his songs. Soon after he flew the band out to california to perform for him and, well, they must have done something right, because soon Panic, who had like 3 songs and had never played a concert, was signed to his label.

Nowadays most people know Panic as Brendon's solo project, that's pretty much unrecognizable from Ryan's original creative vision. Over the years members were slowly picked off. Brent was kicked out early on because his drug problem made him unreliable. He was replaced with Jon Walker. Then Ryan and Jon left after prolongued arguments over the band's creative direction, forming a side project called The Yound Veins. This quickly failed (though their (one) album is really good!) preceding Ryan's 2010s downward spiral into drug addiction, alcoholism, and constant harassment from fans and haters alike. Spencer was the last to go because the pressures of touring and exposure to other members' unhealthy habits were interfering with his addiction recovery. As of 2024 Panic has been laid to rest by Brendon after releasing several standard pop albums of disputed quality (i won't give my opinion on those lol). Ryan, after a period of understandable radio silence, comes out of hiding once in a while to perform at small venues with friends from his Panic days, like Z Berg of The Like (who are really good and you should listen to them!!) and Alex Greenwald of Phantom Planet. He claims he's "working on new music", but he's been saying that for 6 years so I'll believe it when I see it.