Are you Unpopular?

Actually I have to admit, whenever I hear about school shootings I always feel more sorry for the shooters than the shootees. A small part of my brain that remembers being picked on alot in primary school tells me, "they probably deserved it."

I have to see the grey. No one is innocent. Generally it is one huge pecking order. The relative dorks pick on the dorks relative to them. This was clear in the Klebold / Harris case. They were known for being pricks themselves to the ones they deemed having lesser power.

Shooting the desreved ones is perhaps understandable - but school shootings tend to be ramdom killings. In Columbine they had to ask peoples names before executing them. This was not about revenge on any one - it was about nihilism - plain and simple.

I agree with Montana's signature - I have gotten even by living a good life and at ruinions they see how foolish thier trash was.

TTF

yes 'viewpoint' is of paramount importance; it is hard to get upset at somone who is behaving abominally to someone else when you can see clearly the 'cancerous growth' in their psyche from which the ill considered behaviour comes.

[pain unrecognized, and untreated attempts to find a fertile space in which to 'breed'.]

i suppose i have some sympathy for the school shooters; they're kids after all, but i can't get over the senselessness of it all. they almost all kill themselves afterwards, so why do they need to drag down other people with them?

TTF, your sentiments remind me of the line, "revenge is a dish best served cold" (Star Trek II - the Wrath of Khan)

BBB
I've always thought that during high school years, people who sought to be popular were the most shallow example of sheep. They always seemed to achieve their popularity by putting others down. They tried to achieve elite status by diminishing others. They were usually attractive physically with "good" personalities.

In later years, I gradually learned the truth about these people. They often, but not all, were amoral empty shells of character.

If you think about the recent spate of school shootings, they are usually done by boys who've been constantly bullied by the elite popular students. We already know the tragedy of what the bullied did. But have we condemned the male bulliers? No. Have we examined the female bullies who cause girls to hate their bodies and make themselves sick trying to look like the elite? No.

How sad it is that so many high school students are so insecure that they are led like sheep by the elite to their own self-destruction.

The teen age years are a dangerous time for young people. The mixing of immaturity in body and brain with strong harmone production along with the striving to be popular can have tragic consequences.

BBB

there is a missing germ of 'responsibility' here that goes unnoticed.
the parents of the victims of such a build up of emotional strangulation have not been there to stoke the fires of self image that it is the job of the parent to maintain. By example, and by encouragement, and by simple 'interest' the parents can convey to their children the ability to put taunts and hurts in their place, allowing thier child's self image to overcome the myopic view of the herd.

[a little respect, and encouragement goes a long way; "attention must be paid"!]

Re: BBB

Very well put, B! I could not agree with you more. Of course, these "put downs" were always done in groups in front of other "wannabees" who were fringe. I guess the thinking was that if you were associated with person "X", you must be cool, etc.

Great post!

I recall from high school that one of the tacit rules of "dramaturgical" (Goffman) one-upmanship was not to initiate conversation with someone you did not want to recognize as your equal or superior. It was a ghastly little system of rankings and interacting rituals. At my last reunion--which my brother attended, and showed me a film of it--everyone seemed to be trying to either "correct" their lowly highschool rank or maintain their high rank.
A colleague at work went to his 30th anniversary hoping that his present high professional standing (a well-known sociologist) would correct his low high school stating/reputation. He said that all the previous high school elites (no matter how lowly their present status) tried to reproduce the high school hierarchy and their places within it. Very interesting. People who thrive off such petty systems are like vampires taking their strength from others, from draining their self and social esteem from them in little degradation rituals (put-down behavior).

BoGoWo:

I think you identified the root of Nihilism very well. A lack of attention and a fixation on all things descructive.

JLNobody:

It is odd that this happened at your school. I was plunk right in the middle of the hierarchy and played well on both ends. I am a professor now, and althought that seemed to shock people - no one seemed to care about status now. They just wanted to talk to you again.

I wonder if it was not the sociologists attempt to correct standing that lead to his observation that all other were doing the same. Projection.

BBB:

I think we have fixated on the quintessential bully. Almost every movie I can think about from my childhood has the bully in it and he was played to commical buffonery.

I think today's bully is far savvier than that. I think today it is constant posturing on all sides that leads to a system where all feel worthless - bully and non-bully. So it is a matter of who picks up the tech nine that we fixate on.

I think the difference in todays highschool about who picks up the gun is the one who, this week, is not popular. It seems in most highschools each get thier turn.

All:

It futher makes me wonder if we all don't tend to come from the 'non-highschool-elite' and thus see thier ranking as selfish posturing. This observation is more a musing than anything else though.

TTF

I certainly was not a member of the elite group, not that I didn't try. I just did not have the money to "keep up" with them in material terms (clothes, car, etc.). Even on the few occasions when I was invited to social events, I declined,with a faked indifference. My real reason, and that of my brother who was a football star, was a fear of not being able to "keep up." My actual problem, as I see it now, was that I did not spend those three years in the school orchestra (I was the concert master in the middle school orchestra), instead breaking a wrist and ribs in "B" football trying to gain some prestige. But I hope that even if I had been a member of one of the elite "clubs", I would now see that social system for what it was.

it is all primitive; the ranking methods are vitually the same as you will find by studying any tribe of apes in the wild; heirarchy enforcement, displacement activities, shunning, submission behaviour - it's all there.

[we the 'civilized' have traveled shuch a short distance from the wilds of Africa, to the urban gangs of America.]

Spoken like an anthropologist, BoGoWo.

a mere observation, open to all with the willingness to 'see'.

[we all have the capacity to rise above the primitive, simply by 'thinking']

i was one of those people who spent much of high school on the periphery, not really in any group but mostly accepted by all, but i wasn't what i would have considered popular, and really had no desire to be, i had two really close friends and a bunch of accquaintences

come to think about it it's still pretty much the same, i'm no anti social but i prefer my own company and tend to wander through life as an observer and not a participant

a line from tom waits song, come on up to the house, sort of sums up my life

"the world is not my home, i'm just passing through"

For me, popularity was tied directly to party-going. The more parties you went to, the more people you met, the more people just kind of assumed you were cool, and before long, you're one of those faces that compose the "in crowd."

I was unpopular for most of my childhood, and looking back, this was cause by shyness - not talking much, not going to parties. At the peak of my popularity, I probably had about 300 friends, and this was caused just by being nice, outgoing, having fun, and going to all the parties.

It also doesn't hurt being super cool (or good looking) so people actually like you by and large. But I found this isn't truly necessary. It's much more about merely being seen and being outgoing.

Nietzsche


You mean like Paris Hilton being famous for being famous?

BBB

In a nut shell.... alot of "popular" people attain such social status by being a conformist in public and going with the flow that is favorite. <Fair weather friend>

That's a sick puppy of an avatar, Hammie. Where did you find it?

Let's get over and vote for A2K president.

mmm, well this is an interesting topic.
Im not popular, and im not unpopular, i get on with everyone mainly, i have a large group of friends, yet popular people still intimidate me. strange.

however, I think this is the best way to be. If you are unpopular, you end up with phycological scars and stuff, and if you are popular, then you get so far up your own arse, that people actually hate you, but you dont realise.

Most of the great artists/ rock stars where unpopular or shy at high school. Axl rose, justin hawkins, sid vicious, nikki six, tommy lee, .....

in fact, when im a famous rock star, i want a t-shirt that says, 'I WAS A DORK AT HIGH SCHOOL.' So that when im really cool, rich famous and have had some plastic surgery so i am outraguosly beautiful, then i can give courage to the little unpopular kids and I can show the snooty bitches you looked down on me just because they had a versace bag that they are really not all that.