Popularity $hit

im not usually the one to bitch about stuff, but i guess its time i vented :)

this is more directed toward people that go to school (high school or middle school) or who just finished high school...
does anybody else hate this thing with popularity? everyone is so obsessed with popularity in my school, it makes me gag. people always wearing the latest fashions, talking the latest coolest slang and listening to the latest coolest music (which in my school is rap, which i HATE). the sad thing is a lot of the people that wear these latest clothes and stuff dont really like what theyre doing, they just do it to be cool. truth is, people say im really popular and stuff, but i really DONT CARE. why do so many people care about how others look and think of you? look at me for example, i dont really give a $hit what anyone thinks about me, i really dont, i dont wear the coolest clothes, i just wear whatevers the closest to my bed when i wake up, and i dont listen to rap, i listen to classic rock and red hot chili peppers... and look at me here, alot of people say im popular, i have an awesome girlfriend, and i pretty much have a LIFE OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL. strange isnt it, how me not caring about popularity and hating most of the 'popular' kids, and yet ending up having people calling me cool and popular... i dont really mind, but truth is i dont really care either. one more thing that i think somehow mixes in this popularity thing, and that is this obsession with pimps. the hell is up with that, great that youve gone out with alot of girls, I DONT CARE, i actually have a girlfriend who loves me and i love her not just cause we think each other are hot (even tho she is). i will laugh when all these people grow up having AIDS. doesnt like relationships mean anything to anybody anymore????

had to bitch that out :D

This is why I am a big proponent of home-schooling. This way, those who are fed up with this sort of crap, as I was when I was in highschool, can have a decent alternative. I hate popularity contest too. Funny thing is, most of those who were "popular" are now manning McDonalds stores across the globe.

Lol, yes, I'm in highschool too, but there isn't much of a popularity contest, however fashion is always there of course. I don't intentionally follow fashion, I wear what I like and I don't care a about what most other people think, however everybody is influenced by fashion.
Actually I intentionally don't were what others were because I hate following the mass.
Wtf is that: listening to the latest music????
I listen to older stuff (from the 70ties-80ties): Ramones, Sex Pistols, Misfits(older stuff),...

HMM :) Im the oposite, yeah i dont really care about popularity either, who likes me , likes me and who doesnt can **** off i aint gonna change myself for nobody. I do listen Rap and Trance, i do wear the latest fashion because i like the new Rockawear, Ecko, Shady, Southpole shirts and pants. And the latest "Rap" really sucks ass, i listen to older songs more except when some good rap song comes out.

I don't really care what ppl think of me and as Memory said I wear da lastest stuff because I like it, I'm not going to wear a pink shirt all because everyone else is. And I listen to the music I like. In my school fashion isn't much a problem since it's a uniform :-/ niether is it outside of school, nobody cares what other people wear around here as much.

I was never very popular in high-school... But oncle I got to college and some girls saw me crack a password for a teacher my popularity went up. It's a community college so it's not too big, but hell, I'm popular. It really doesn't mean anything. Although I do like hot chicks asking me computer questions...

As far as wardrobe goes, I either wear something from www.thinkgeek.com or I wear a hawaiian shirt. Always with an old pair of cargo pants.

And finally, music... Gotta love the 80's.

Just remember everybody, if you want to be popular there's only one thing you need to know. Chicks dig Unix. ;)

I typed this up over a long period of time and lost my train of thought. Since the way I ended it I decided to hide it. Oh...and this...
Warning: Game players analyzed. Reader may recieve unfair advantage, although it isn't guranteed.


Having gone to a total of 4 schools in 5 years in two different countries and two different states in the US...I have witnessed many of the things related to popularity. And what I have noticed that impresses me the most is that I have seen certain people that "match" in each of these schools. And the most striking thing I have noticed is that whenever I move, for the next year or so I hear from all of these girls I never thought paid much attention to me...

I simply learned to identify the different characters I ran into. Doing this, I've noticed that some people are mixes of these characters, or are in different stages of these characters.

I've noticed the skaters. And the sk8ers. The people who are true to the sport of skate boarding are usually well recieved, but no where near as "popular" as the sk8ers. But unlike the sk8ers, the skaters don't have people talking behind their backs about things. The popularity they get comes at a price, but they can usually mange to "play-it-up" for a year or two. One sk8er I knew kept it up for about 3 years, but after getting busted (no, seriously *busted* :eek: )... Well I don't know since I haven't heard from him since... Simply put, he hurt some people's feelings, worked hard for a girl he liked, but she was done with him...other things were involved, and he was *busted* :rolleyes:

Then, I've seen the sports stars. The football players, soccer players, baseball players, runners, and others. I haven't quite seen the Tennis players though. Football has been the sport of the popular people, who are usually showing off the rap group but aren't usually as into it as the dedicated rappers, gangstars, and pimps. The groups have connections though. Soccer players fluctuate in popularity, but usually they will have good popularity instead of the drama other groups have. Baseball is the sport that everyone else plays, and usually is something where you make friends. Same goes for running/track/cross country. In many cases they don't quite get the popularity, but if you are okay at the sport it is something where you can meet some good friends. But some people who go for these sports have plans in their mind, as I saw one year where people joined in hopes of going on a vacation for the final tournament. I got my buddies who lived near me and rode the same bus home for an hour or two into the mood of running and we knocked off all of those with the plans. After I left how much they were commited went down, but they kept in sports as the world crumbled away from them...it was a small and close team in the end that shattered after everyone moved on.

The good thing about the sports are that people you meet are bound to have good friends and you can acturally see good things happen. I didn't find out this connection until a year later, but the reason this one girl liked me was because she had a friend who talked good of me in the sports I went for. I sorta got my own secret admirers from these things. :p

The last bit of popularity I've seen are the racers and car enthusiests. Most of these people aren't looking for popularity from their peers, but want some respect from people above them or some fun. If a group of them get together and work on a car, they put aside all differences and are friends for life. In one of my schools they were seen as cool, but had their own ranking system working underneath everything you see. My buddies here didn't care what people thought of them, they only cared about their rides and having fun entering competitions. I haven't seen anyone become "popular" in HS from this though. For the most part, what I see is that it is a side-effect of their love for something. I haven't seen people "faking" this group so much since there are few benefits popularity-wise and more penalties such as getting your ass handed to you by the "real" people.


Fashion wise fashions are changed by "new" people, or people who have been to the big cities. All of the schools I have been to were in mid-sized towns with many people moving in and out. Places with this movement are going to have more of the gangstar/rap fashions. Without this movement, there isn't a fashion to be cool, but what you wear is noticed and talked about. Whenever you have a group of people talking about what to wear, the topic of what other people wear will come up. It isn't always bad or good talk about the other people though, just critisism and at times some people will make plans on making fun of what other people wear by wearing it one week. But some people I've seen will wear comfortable stuff every other week, while others go for the "I just woke up and realized that I am still sleepy" look everyday. I have found that most of this stuff is planned, and is just experiments to see different styles and what others think of them. Anyone who takes this experiment stuff seriously (ie wearing it everyday since you saw someone cool wear it) is talked about in these groups, and sometimes offered an acceptance plan if not ridicule in some form or another.


Where do I fit in all of this? I'm the dude who knows it all (good in sports, knows a little bit of everything, yet laid back and not fully focused) and some how manages to combine my closet in a way to wear the same clothes every week but make it appear that I have a two week supply of clothes. It used to work, but as the season here changed I have even less to work with and I was thus "found-out." Still, I've seen that some girls like what I do, and others seem to like me for no reason at all, but all of them remain silent and hidden admirers. So far the only people who have even considered informing me are those who have a strong base of friends and are generally well recieved by most. I guess that being accepted by people who can either outlive the game (or play it for keeps/to win, same thing) is better than those who are constantly raped by it...

Then again, that is just my view of some of the fields I have seen that remained constant through my different schools. I sorta got lost half-way though this type-up, but I think I covered most of the different "popular" people I came across. Unfortunately this came out as that classic "42" answer, but I have completely lost the question that prompted me to write this...

Let me tell you all something, don't think the popularity contests end when you get out of high school. College and University are much the same way. It may not be the same things that are popular, but the ideas still exist. It's still a matter of who's cool and who's not, who dresses well and who doesn't, who's hot and who's not, and what mode of transportation people use. And it's not going to end their either. Many work places are the same way. The more liked you are, the better jobs you get. If two people have the same experience, the boss is going to pick the person they like better. People are always more lenient towards those who are better liked and more popular. Hell we have popularity contests on here, you see them in TV Ratings, Movies, Books, everywhere. It's a sad part of life, but it's a part of it none-the-less. Welcome to life.

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I've noticed the skaters. And the sk8ers. The people who are true to the sport of skate boarding are usually well recieved, but no where near as "popular" as the sk8ers. But unlike the sk8ers, the skaters don't have people talking behind their backs about things. The popularity they get comes at a price, but they can usually mange to "play-it-up" for a year or two. One sk8er I knew kept it up for about 3 years, but after getting busted (no, seriously *busted* )... Well I don't know since I haven't heard from him since... Simply put, he hurt some people's feelings, worked hard for a girl he liked, but she was done with him...other things were involved, and he was *busted*

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What's the difference between skaters and sk8ters? Do you mean by 'sk8ters' the ones that want to look like one but aren't like that at all?

Well I'm a skater actually, I have been skateboarding since I was 10 and still doing it now, however the time I spend at it decreased drastically...
You have those people wearing over-sized baggy pants (like venom pants) and over new-skool shoes, it's just some fashion started by skateboarders, they aren't skaters.
I don't wear baggy pants at all, but I do have my pants "hanging a lot lower than most people" lol, my parents wine about it all the time.
And "fashion chicks" don't always like the way I dress but I don't care...

If you didn't really care what people thought, you wouldn't get annoyed and complain that they thought it.

I knew someone would say that :D

When I went to highschool, the guys that were "popular" were the guys that now hate their life. They either go to **** colleges or don't go at all. Trust me when I say be yourself and do whatever you think is right. And don't care what anyone else thinks about you, that is for you to decide.

Seriously, you will be a lot happier.

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They either go to **** colleges or don't go at all.

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Hey, I go to a shitty college. :(

Well, at least I'm going, right? :D

lol

Sorry I didn't clear up that part about skaters/sk8ers. Basically, I'm talking about skateboarders. And in the same sense that in the hacking community the l33t and the elite, etc., there is a difference. Basically, the sk8ers are the people who do it simply as a popularity boost (or to simply show off and be cool, not praticing and perfecting), and aren't really doing it for the joy of skateboarding. I tried to skateboard for about two years, but decided it wasn't for me and went back into BMX/Freestyle. Infact, while everyone was skateboarding and roller/inline-blading, I was the only person riding bikes among them for those 2-3 years. I didn't do it to show off or stand out, I rode bikes because I thought it was fun, and quite frankly, because I couldn't skateboard or roller-blade. Later on biking gained popularity, but none of the people who decided to pick it up now that it was cool got the admiration/respect/praise of people like me who did it for so much longer and tried hard to learn and do new things. In the end going against the flow was good when people decided to look in my direction. I didn't take advantage of it since I'm not really concerned about that, I was just happy that there were more people to bike with. So I guess keeping dedicated to something you enjoy can do you good later in life. :)


And I'll tell more about the person who was busted...he was on the front page of the local newspaper related to what he did... He was looking for acceptance in the wrong direction, got involved with the wrong people, but I think he was given a second-chance. He had to move since our school district wouldn't let him return, though. There is a huge story behind what went on that many people at my school didn't fully understand or realize, but there was another person who was kicked out earlier related to drugs before he was caught. I think the year following that a similar event happened since the school was assigned their very own FBI Agent and about a month later I realized that my homeroom class (and another class too) was one student short for the rest of the year... And in one of those classes that ran a kid short, the agent kindly introduced himself and told everyone he is "just going to be doing his job"...

And two of these three people were in the popularity gang/drama. There was only one whom I deeply disliked, one whom I knew for some time before this, and the third was just in my classes for a month or two. I know that what I've seen are the extreame ends of the doom of those who play the popularity contest, but similar fates come to those people who don't realize that they need to win the game instead of pimping it. All three were pimping these different games somehow and all of them lost. I guess that those who come out on the bottom of the game end up flipping burgers, missing opportunities in education to get further in life, or other bad things.


And as HTRegz said, the game doesn't end with high-school. I saw this same game while I was lifeguarding. Office politics, and everything related. I saw the beginnings of it my first year lifeguarding, and I saw the game's gears turning with perfect motion my second year. The big players were the generally the same, the job the same, but different managers (game/dungeon masters/controllers). I tried to keep out of these politics both years, and I can say my second year was pretty crummy. Those who managed to ignore the game and not get burned by it that second year (new lifeguards who didn't see it before) came out 200% better off. Since I was a second-year lifeguard and well respected there was no way I could completely avoid the game since those who were burned by (unsettled/upset first year lifeguards) it wanted appeasement, so I was drawn into it anyways. Simply put, there are going to be many cases where all of well respected (second-year lifeguards) cannot win, and I was quickly the only one left since I didn't get completely involved... Yes, people quit and were fired by quite the handful... In the end, those who 100% avoided the game or simply didn't know it existed came out 200% better off by being neutral to it.

As can probably be seen by my looking into the popularity contest and the other games around it, I am not a person who can just see interesting things go on and not get curious. I like to understand things, and I'll take the risks involved if I think it is worth it in the end. I don't follow the popularity crew, and I don't see any reason to. At my current school, this contest is the smallest I've seen it anywhere. There is very little friction between the different groups and no universal popularity or hate. There are bigger issues inside of some groups, but it isn't wide spread, and usually temporary. I'm guessing that in a small town of 20,000 people these issues were fixed sometime in middle school or earlier, but also prevented by the open-mindedness of northern Idahoans. I just came to the school my Junior year, and the biggest difference I saw was the "senior highschool" was grades 10-12, while freshmen were with middle schoolers. I guess that the smaller age range and slightly more maturity effectively stops the childish popularity wars over here. I guess there is something innately uncool about people in the higher grades trying to pimp freshmen at the Junior high-school, haha. :p

Once again this came out longer than I expected. Oh well. At least I'm going to a decent college that was supposedly rated as one of the best broadband Universities. I guess having everyplace on campus have access to at least 10mbit/s ethernet Internet connection or WiFi isn't too bad for me. :)

I have something i'd like to share:
To fill you in on myself I've been through high school, college (will have my bach. degree in 5 months :) ), professional environments and all types of social functions and for those of you in High School reading this:

Right now you think you've got it all figured out, in 5 years you'll wonder what the hell you were thinking, just as in five years i myself will be surprised how much more there is than i think now :)

Look around you, all the people into the popularity are followers, (not popular people, the people CONCERNED with popularity) The people unconcerned with what others think, the people who express themselves, sometimes the "dorks", "nerds", "weirdos", other times the popular people, these are the leaders, the people who will create new technologeis, make tons of money, and perhaps be happier in life, why is it? Because they think for themselves and speak their ideas without fear of rejection as well as they do not stress with other peoples opinions, or shouldn't. :)

High School is like the first trial at life, the social patters are set down and people move into adulthood, some people learn alot in how to act and stop acting like high schoolers,but many go into the rest of their adult lives keeping those highschooler behaviors such as gossip, office politics ect.. but if you just accept that some people will be like this you'll find people to befriend that are above these behaviors.

Anyone have anything to add

Middle schoolers and High schoolers are wrapped pretty tight about the popularity **** because most of the kids are struggling with self-esteem issues or just trying to figure out who they are. The kids who don't really care about popularity tend to have a higher self-esteem, they don't ned to be propped up by the masses.

Being liked is not the same as "popular." It is important to have friends, good friends. It is important to be liked and respected in your circle or profession. Leave the popularity game for People magazine.