How to Stay Popular (If You Think You’re Losing Popularity)
Posted by CM under Random on Thu 1 Feb 2007
ne of the more frightening things on the internet is WikiHow.
Now, Wikipedia actually has a pretty good thing going. It reports facts, for the most part, and tries to provide references for them. It’s not bad–or at least, it’s not tremendously worse than other sources that you might pay money for. Of course, there’s always the Wikipedia Brown counterpoint, but oh well.
WikiHow, on the other hand, is frightening. Imagine people giving you advice. By committee. That’s WikiHow. Take, for instance, the advice on How to Stay Popular if you think you’re losing popularity.
I bet you never realized that if you’re losing popularity, you need to “[b]e extra friendly with the second in command, which will bring the queen bee down and even the whole clique out.” Way to go. I particularly like how the “Steps” require you to first take out the queen bee, and then, after you’ve smilingly ascended to the top of the heap, realize that “[f]riends don’t claw their way to the top over the ruined egos of others.”
Every so often, someone tells me that women and men are totally different because women aren’t competitive. This always baffles me. I mean, there are differences between women and men, but they don’t think women are competitive? Didn’t these people go to middle school?
February 1st, 2007 at 8:18 am
It certainly isn’t advice I would take, but it makes for an interesting tour of the juvenile psyche.
Alice
February 1st, 2007 at 8:55 am
The whole article is fascinating. Many adults operate this way, too.
Yet another web site for me to explore.
February 1st, 2007 at 12:41 pm
“Friends don’t claw their way to the top over the ruined egos of others.”
There’s a reason that conflicts with the rest of the rules. I’ll bet good money an adult added that part.
It never fails to amaze me when adults refer to childhood or adolescence as this idyllic, carefree time. There seems to be some sort of amnesia that falls over people sometime in their 20s, after which they remember childhood as a series of ice cream cones and homecoming dances. Innocent glee, marred by the occasional bee sting.
So, so wrong, and that little article is just one case in point. Kids are mean. They are ruthless. They are conniving and competitive and cut one another down. We adults get all stressed out over mortgages and job interviews because they’ve somehow become “important” to us, but if every adult had to relive a single day of junior high, they’d realize what total cake adulthood is. For kids, the highs are euphoric; the lows are despondent. And they cycle through them about hourly, on average. Business deals are nothing compared to the workload kids take on before breakfast - sorting through issues like friendship, loyalty, personal identity, one’s value as a human being, and injustice. It’s all about injustice.
To be a child is to be acutely aware of the the capricious nature of affection and success and popularity. To be a kid is to feel oneself the center of the world’s injustice. That’s why almost all great children’s books star orphans - and not happy orphans, but downtrodden, unloved, kicked-around and generally misunderstood orphans. Because we love to read about someone who’s got it worse than us and triumphs despite it, and only an unloved, beat-up, misunderstood orphan seems to have it worse than you when you’re twelve.
So WikiHow is, in this instance, absurd. Kids, sorry. Middle-school popularity isn’t a game you can win by figuring out the rules. The rules change every day, the referees are on the take, and your parents are off buying ice-cream cones at the concession stand. Just do your best to survive. In ten years or so, the amnesia will kick in.
February 1st, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Great words Tessa — I have a 13 yo middle schooler. . . and boy, it sure is tough. Sometimes it’s really hard to put it all in perspective of how important things are to her now that, in the long run, don’t matter. . . but it’s important to ALL of them, thus must be taken seriously. (Did that make sense???)
I know I HATED high school . . . my worst nightmare would be waking up and exchanging bodies with my daughter (like Freaky Friday) — and, to wrap this long post all up in a summary sentence,
“Winter Ball is on Friday and it’s all about THE DRESS” (and the shoes, the hose, the hair, the glitter in the hair) Argh! I’m so glad my two youngest are boys! I won’t have to go through this again.
February 2nd, 2007 at 6:15 am
So that’s how it’s done, eh…