Not sure this is the correct forum. Perhaps a moderator might move Thread to a more appropriate one. For grades 9-12 I attended a coed boarding school run by the Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers. To minimize exclusive cliques, there was assigned seating at every meal which was changed every 2-3 weeks. Each table, which seated 8, had one freshman, one sophomore, one junior, one senior & 1-2 faculty members. When I was a freshman, there was a Junior named Nancy Acker who was drop dead gorgeous & probably the most popular girl in the school. When a nerdy freshman was assigned to the same table, she was gracious & friendly to him. At a dance, the nerdy freshman asked to cut in on Nancy & her boyfriend who was one of the most popular boys at the school. Mickey excused himself & Nancy never indicated that she had just traded Mickey for a nerd. Mickey waited for perhaps three minutes & then had one of his friends cut in so he could resume dancing with Nancy a minute or two later. Fast forward to when I was a Junior & a similarly nerdy fellow tried to cut in on one of the most popular girls in our class. She was insulting & her boyfriend told the nerd to get lost. I never forgot the difference in attitude of the popular people involved in these incidents & resolved to avoid acting in a like manner. The incidents made me sympathetic to the nerds & I often tried to be a friend/protector of such people.
Firstly, thank you for posting in a font that is big enough that it allows me to read my screen from across the room. Secondly, what exactly are you trying to discuss in this thread? High school cliques? School sporty people? Popular cliques vs nerdy groups? Being on the inside and the outside of such groups? The desire to fit in? 'Why doesn't she like me!?!'..?
It could be about the 'good ole days' when people had manners? The way the OP is written doesn't really clarify what the topic is.
Could be migrated to "Free thoughts". If it doesn't carry enough gravity for "Ethics, Morality, & Justice". No research or news was referenced regarding the study of a classy / mean girls dichotomy, should such be an irregularly desired stipulation in the sci-section. Still, don't garner the impression that this or anything else can ever be too trivial for science to spend time and money on. It might be sharing space in the same category of interest which provokes evaluation of bad boys or their infamous allure: Why Women Choose Bad Boys: Ovulating Women Perceive Sexy Cads as Good Dads So a search might turn-up an investigation that warrants the topic remaining here.
Bells: From your Post #2 Kristoffer: From your Post #3 I hoped to encourage people to be more sympathetic to those who for various reasons are considered socially unacceptable. Id Est: The nerds. I also wanted to compare people with class & decent behavior to those who tease and/or verbally abuse the nerdy types. I hoped to indicate that many who are silent (including myself) have respect for the former & contempt for the latter. Because of my experiences as a freshman at a coed boarding school, I developed sympathy for nerdy types who are often teased & verbally abused. When I was an incoming freshman I was viewed as nerdy, probably due to CokeBottle-like glasses & an obvious interest/ability in mathematics & physics. If I did not have some athletic skills, I probably would have had been miserable for four years at that school. I was subjected to a lot of teasing & verbal abuse which I ignored. A bully with two friends decided to confront me. I am guessing that they were unhappy with my ignoring the teasing & not seeming to be bothered by it. They soon discovered that I had some martial arts skills & the bullying stopped. Fortunately for me, even the bullies in that era fought one on one rather than ganging up on a lone adversary. I was not adept enough to handle 3 opponents. My above experiences resulted in my thinking about & being concerned with those nerdy types who have no physical or psychological defense when confronted with verbal & physical abuse.
Thanks for the clarification, Dinosaur. I certainly sympathize with kids who are bullied since my brother and myself were bullied quite a bit in school. I got the physical treatment, my brother got the psychological. Lucky for us I was/am big and my brother was never really bothered too much about the taunts. I don't really think nerds are as heavily bullied or stigmatized as they used to be though. I've seen plenty of young kids embrace their nerdiness and quite often they weren't ostracized for it. Maybe it has something to do with the old timey jocks now being in to, say, World of Warcraft, a game based on something as nerdy as a roleplaying boardgame, and so a part of nerd-dom becomes mainstream.
