Popularity: The Breeding Ground for Social Terrorism

“Popularity” in our schools, neither in our nor our grandchildren’s childhoods, has rarely meant “well-liked”. Despite the conventional perception, it does now and has always meant, were we to look at it closely, “well-feared”. It has little to do with friendship and everything to do with power, “social power”, the child’s brand-name tee-shirt or sneaker the adult’s brand-name automobile or house in the right neighborhood.

The country club of our youth is the “popular group”. If you’re in the “popular group”, you’re in the in-group. As in the adult world of country clubs or elite social clubs, few kids qualify. Yet the Popular Group, the in-group, shares with the out-group (the silent majority) the fear and anxiety reducing our students to bullies, victims and sycophants elbowing their way into the upper reaches of their peer society, guarding and maintaining their positions at the summit, or stealthily slipping into safer territory, only to elbow their way in there.

The bully raises his fist, excludes, scapegoats and ridicules to avoid becoming the victim of it. The victim subjects himself to it out of fear of becoming an even bigger target, often shrugging and laughing it off as meaningless, or invites it out of his own insecurity, snobbism and need for attention. The sycophant befriends the bully out of fear, deflecting his abuse elsewhere, often at kids deep down, were he to admit it to himself, he would most like to hang out with.

All kids, at least to some degree, are fearful, and to a proportionate degree all are guilty of snobbism, if not at school, then at home, in the neighborhood, at summer camp. Kids may be afraid to be seen with their parents, a younger sibling, or a “real” friend because the Popular kids might not approve. They spend a ridiculous amount of time and energy “sucking up” and trying to impress, on the one hand, and snubbing, ridiculing and putting down on the other.

Where there is fear, and even rage, there is envy. Despite having been harrassed and excluded at Columbine, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris didn’t dress like “Goths”, all in Black, to avoid attention, but to get it.

Though the rash of school murders is a fairly recent phenomenon, the threat of social violence and physical harrassment that sets off some of these students is not only far from recent, it is indiscriminate and all-inclusive, far more egalitarian than you might imagine.The fear of ridicule, humiliation and exclusion shadows our students daily from the time they arrive at school until the time they leave, down the corridors, inside the classroom, on the playground whether they’re Popular or not. Though they manage to appear otherwise, those in the in-group are afraid too, of each other; that’s why they’re always trying to impress each other. And again despite what may be appearances to the contrary, the out-group is neither kinder nor more sensitive than the in-group. When kids in the out-group aren’t elbowing each other out of the way to get into the in-group, they’re elbowing each other out of the way, trying to impress each other, within their own group.

Malicious gossip, put-downs, redicule, social conspiracies, subtle rejection, social exploitation, outright exclusion and sometimes physical harrassment are the elbows thrown which allow kids to balance themselves, however precariously, on their social perch. Perpetually afraid of being thrown off balance, on the one hand, and aiming for a higher perch on the other, they can’t help but be wary of each other. Socially ambitious, at the very least they’re anxious, fearful of being left, pushed away, and betrayed. Their fear, in fact, their distrust, precipitates their flight from intimacy, propels their social climbing. Often they step on the backs of the very kids they most want to befriend, without realizing it, on the way to the top of what one teacher I know most charitably describes as “the social dung heap”. In the face of such powerful social ambition, based on ignorance as well as fear, “getting real”, as the kids put it, is ludicrous. One does not reach the heights of intimacy, honesty, and truly enjoyable relationships by “elbowing” their way into them and each other out of the way.

In our schools today, the pursuit of Popularity trumps all. For kids to truly be happy and to enjoy real relationships, however, open to listening, learning, reading and writing, to pursuing their real passions and interests, to expressing themselves honestly and meaningfully, they have to be true to themselves, to what they truly think and feel. They can’t spend their time trying to impress and outdo each other. If they’re untrue to themselves, their personalities will be as fake as their enthusiasms, their work dishonest and meaningless, to say nothing of boring, and their relationships fraudulent.

Literature is as alien to them as it is to their parents. Parents escape it through silly bestsellers; teenagers don’t read at all. Closed to themselves, how can teens be open to each other? When they glimpse through literature the alienated adolescent trying in vain to befriend strangers who have absolutely no interest in him (Catcher In the Rye), do they see themselves trying to befriend “popular” kids for the same reason: the rejection, expected, won’t hurt as much as it might from kids with whom they could comfortably be friends? When they see kids diabolically conspiring against each other (Lord Of The Flies), is that too a mirror that so accurately reflects their social mileu it blinds them? If alienated from their own fathers, do they appreciate the close relationship a boy has with his father (A Day No Pigs Would Die), or do they cynically dismiss it as sentimental and idealized (which means if they can’t have it, nobody can)?

The answers are obvious: they’re not reading.

Scared, they clamor toward popularity like adults up the social ladder.

How can they they express themselves, what they most profoundly and dramatically think and feel, through speaking, writing, drama if they don’t know what they think and feel, if they don’t know who they are? What/whose point of view are they expressing? Certainly not their own, if they no longer know or feel safe enough to acknowledge what it is, and they won’t as long as they’re self-concious about the class cynic sitting across from them. They’re not speaking for themselfves, whiich is why their writing is boring. They don’t care.

Wisdom comes from strong, healthy, honest relationships. Superficiality, posturing, and unhealthy competition come from fearful ones.

How can kids learn to be true to themselves, to each other, to their parents and siblings, which deep down, whether they realize it or not, is what they all secretly want?

If kids can learn who they really are and what they really want, if they can really “get real”, the fear of lonliness which causes social terrorism diminishes.

If we as adults want to help them, we’ve first got to look at ourselves and our own values. We are no better—and were at their age no better—than they are. Popular culture—best-sellers, blockbusters, celebrity news, reality tv—is idiotically superficial not so much because of them as because of us.

If we can just remember our own childhoods, as they must, we can recognize theirs. Then everyone gets real.