Do you have Highschool cliques like it is portrait in tv?
Posted by Mental-Guarantee8055@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 42 comments
In a lot of movies American Highschools always have cliques like the athletes, geeks or popular kids. Is this an accurate representation and how strictly do you stick with your group?
Vanilla_thundr@reddit
Yes and no. There are cliques and they share some DNA with what you see in movies and tv but obviously the fictional version is usually pretty exaggerated.
3m2coy@reddit
Many high school have before and after school clubs and sports. In addition to sports, my daughter’s high school had clubs for anything you could think of like robotics, anime, people interested in medical school, the sisterhood of the traveling pants (this group had a designated tables for lunch and anyone could sit with them), programming, creative writing, book club, journalism… and so many more. When you regularly spend time in a club or sport with the people who have similar interests, it is natural to develop friendships with the group. As you aren’t limited to one group or activity at a time, there is a lot of cross-over between groups.
My daughter was in a sport and an activity, so she had friends from both groups. She had friends that were considered very popular, and friends considered very nerdy. The school wasn’t perfect, but most students didn’t care if someone had different interests.
Superiority_Complex_@reddit
Agreed that it’s not nearly as uniform as TV/movies portray it, but it’s fairly understandable that those with shared interests/activities would tend to group together. Sports, theatre, music, etc.
But (at least in my high school experience a decade + ago), there was a lot of mingling between groups. One of my grade’s valedictorians was also one of the best athletes, the dumb jock narrative isn’t that true to life anymore, though again that will vary. People all generally got along and had friends with different interests. Bullying definitely happened to some extent, unfortunately, but it was not nearly as common or as harsh as it’s often portrayed. And generally it was kids picking at others in their group of “friends” and not the jock giving a band kid a wedgie.
Equivalent-Cicada165@reddit
Having a well rounded school experience is beneficial for college. Kids know that and act accordingly
I actually mentioned that according to teachers I know, the most vicious bullying tends to happen between friends/within groups
Nothing worse than having your bully know you well
CharlesAvlnchGreen@reddit
At its base, it's accurate but the differences are magnified for dramatic effect. Every school has its popular crowd, which tends to be the best-looking, most charming kids (that also heavily skews wealthy).
Athletic boys are overly represented, possibly because they tend to be better looking and their talents are more on display; e.g. the quarterback who leads the team to a state championship. Cheerleaders, too, especially if they have to be voted in by the school.
Popular kids usually are welcome in any clique and many have friends in other groups, like the drama/theater crowd. In my school they were "quirky" outcasts, but apparently in Hollywood drama was super prestigious. In Silicon Valley (and other tech centers), uber-smart "geeks" can be popular in the same way football heroes are popular, but they have to have a modicum of charm and looks, too.
In religious areas of the country, apparently there are "God squad" cliques: kids who say grace before lunch and wear purity rings, IDK.
There are always a few "bad kids" who are into drinking, weed, skipping class, making mischief etc. They can be popular too, though; and some popular cliques are mostly bad kids. All depends on the school and region.
tl:dr: Yes but it's exaggerated for TV, and there is a lot of overlap between cliques that varies from school to school, state to state.
Street_Lettuce1243@reddit
I moved to the US in Highschool.
I once mentioned to my wife (American) how Highschool wasn't as cliquey as TV/movies make it out... and most people were just kind of in groups of similar interests but not quite so hard-cut category as on TV. She said hers was just like TV.
So either as an outsider I didn't notice it as much- or it really depends on the school.
Equivalent-Cicada165@reddit
Seeing all these comments, it seems like it varies on school
j_delta_c@reddit
Not strictly in my experience. At my high school there were groups that overlapped and you'd hang out with certain people for different things. Some of the jocks would hang out with stoners at lunch to get high and then the stoners hung out with the skaters after school while jocks did their sport activities. The most isolated group was the nerds but that's more of their own choosing.
RedneckBorealis@reddit
Smartphones and social media have changed this a lot. I think pre-07 the clique dominance was strong and driven by the proximity-necessity of friendship. The movies of that late 90s / early 00s high school era are exaggerated, of course, but the error is one of magnitude, not kind. High school really was "like" that, just not quite so insane.
Being in "a group" in that era required a physical dimension that might isolate you from other groups, which created easily identifiable cliques. Similar social isolation in the social media age happens, of course, but it's on other dimensions not at all like those older high school films. I actually think the 2012 21 Jump Street shows this evolution (again, exaggerated) pretty well. So short answer, kind of, but it has changed so make sure you're watching the right era of TV/film.
-SnarkBlac-@reddit
If you are thinking of Hollywood (High School Musical for example) the answer is really no. Especially now with technology which I’ll get to later. Sure cliques and social tiered levels exist but it’s not as clearly defined.
There aren’t “jocks” for example. It’s more so, the soccer team hangs out with the soccer team because they simply spend the most time practicing together, football team hangs out with the football team, debate club hangs out with each other, etc.
That said crossovers between groups are common. Some people play football and then also do theater. Siblings exist. Neighborhood friends exist. People date and friend groups do cross over as a result of a couple dating. Also if you were all from the same middle school you tend to stick together at least the first half of your Freshman Year (First Year). I’d say the drug dealer can be decently popular because it doesn’t matter if you play football or paint in the art studio, everyone needs a reliable dealer if you are into that sorta thing.
Now in the current day and age, technology and social media has broken down these barriers even further. Social groups have blended together even more as people have shared mutual friends, interests and relationships that they post publicly. You can literally go to someone’s Instagram or TikTok and see how similar you actually are at any time of day.
I graduated in 2020 so 6 years ago and my siblings are finishing their freshman year right now. We all went to the classic American Public High School. The “cliques” are more so “friend groups.” They aren’t determined by what you do more so by who you are. Being on the football or cheer team doesn’t automatically make you the “cool” kid. Being on the debate team or chess club doesn’t make you a “nerd.” Instead it’s come down to how well known and how well liked your group of friends are. Then you get outliers like me who I call “floaters” who have 3-4 different friend groups they are a part of and they float between them based on the events going on at the given time.
I’ll finally say, for me personally, I was a soccer player (jock), in college level art classes (your art guy) and then in college level history classes and clubs (your nerd). Definitely floated around and never felt like I was unpopular or popular. I was pretty shy though perhaps if I was more outgoing I would have been in the “popular” category.
Regardless I knew I was going out of state for college and I’d never see 99% of the people I knew in High School again so I didn’t make too much of an effort to have life long friends. I had enough to enjoy my four years and then once I was done I didn’t look back. I’d say for a lot of Americans this is the case unless you are in a very rural area of the country where people don’t move away to school or if they do once they are done they move right back.
jginvest71@reddit
More like friend groups. Which is normal in life. To me, “clique” implies animosity toward other friend groups. I think that’s rarely the case. Also, when it is the case, it’s worse in junior high (grades 6,7,8) than high school.
Top-Nectarine-835@reddit
I moved states in the middle of high school so I had an opportunity to see different versions of this. In one school (rural public school) the cliques were extremely well defined and as rabidly at war with one another as you'd see in the movies. In the other (suburban public school), the cliques existed, but they were much more fluid and the stakes were extremely low.
manicpixidreamgirl04@reddit
Not exactly. It's natural to be friends with people who have similar interests, and activities like sports can take up 8+ hours a week, so kids who do those activities spend a lot of time together and become friends that way, but it's not like those are the only people we ever talk to or hang out with, and some kids are involved in multiple activities.
sundancer2788@reddit
Yes, but it was quite a bit ago. I wasn't popular and I didn't fit in with any group at all. Just kept to myself.
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Equivalent-Cicada165@reddit
I graduated 13 years ago, so it might have changed
In my highschool, not at all
The nerds did sports, the sporty kids did drama and so on
Yes there were groups, but there wasn't really bullying based on cliques. Bullying existed of course, but it was way more typical between friends and friend groups than one group vs another
My sister teaches highschool and says it's still pretty similar to when we went
Equivalent-Cicada165@reddit
I've also been told by teachers that the worst bullying usually happens between friends and groups
They're the ones who know you best, and relationships that strain can get much more vicious than someone the kid never even liked before deciding to pick on them
ancientastronaut2@reddit
Yeah, we sure did. Mean Girls was triggering for me. 😅
We had jocks, cheerleaders, metal heads, punks, band geeks, skaters, surfers, breakdancers, rockabillies, mods.
And then lots of average people like me that didn't fall neatly into any specific group and had friends or acquaintances in several groups.
Keep in mind this was the 80's and my high school had over 2,000 students.
dgmilo8085@reddit
There absolutely are, but they are exaggerated for TV and movies. Most people find their way into one or two and cross-pollinate between maybe 3 groups. The real social butterflies will fall into multiple cliques.
davdev@reddit
I went to an all boy high school and I think that honestly kept a lot of the cliqueness at bay. Yeah, football players hung out with football players and theater kids hung out with theaters kids, but the football players were also working with the theater kids helping setup props and running the lights etc, and the theater kids would make signs and posters to hang at football games. Kids with common interests will almost always hang out together and there is nothing wrong with that, as long as the groups arent becoming hostile to each other.
Ok-Energy-9785@reddit
Yes
goose-and-fish@reddit
When I was in school in the 90s, there were distinct clicks. Jocks, band kids, punks, artsy kids, wannabe communitsts, etc. The borders were fuzzy and there were plenty of kids that didn't neatly fall into one category or another.
For my kids in high-school more recently, it seems like things are less clicky and its more about different friend groups that aren't defined by a single trait.
patty202@reddit
There are definitely cliques.
pikkdogs@reddit
Pretty much. Not that simple, but pretty much like it.
WritPositWrit@reddit
Yes. Thats one of the few things in shows thats actually accurate.
FireHammer09@reddit
No. My sister is was a cheerleader and frenemies/in constant competition with another girl for first chair flute.
SnoopyFan6@reddit
I went to high school in the mid to late 1970s. Around 1200 or so students. We definitely had cliques and also social hierarchies.
AwakenedDreamer__44@reddit
Kinda, but it's VERY exaggerated in the movies. Yeah, there's different social circles, but there's no strict hierarchy of popularity that everyone is obsessed with.
LakashY@reddit
In my experience, similar people tended to hang out with similar people, so there were cliques. That said, there were people that had friends among different cliques, and most people didn’t only hang out with their clique.
Not much rivalry or bullying between cliques - just some cliques tended to have general distaste for other cliques.
SouthernCancel6117@reddit
I would say yes there can be certain cliques based on interests, but at least in my high school they weren’t super strict. I played soccer and was an art kid so I had friend groups involved with both of those. I was also geeky and had a group of friends that we could argue over whether whatever new marvel movie was actually good or not. There were some “popular” kids that were just kids with parents rich enough to not really care what they did
OptatusCleary@reddit
I’m a high school teacher and I would say it’s pretty outdated. I went to high school in the early 2000s and it was already outdated by then, if it was even ever precisely accurate.
Different groups of students exist, and they often have common interests, but there’s also a lot of overlap and go-between. If two kids have been friends since elementary school, they don’t necessarily stop being friends when one joins band and the other joins the football team, but they might now get other friends as well which can lead to more separation. It’s nowhere near as absolute as movies and tv shows make it seem.
Wonderful_Shower_793@reddit
I was a cheerleader and a huge nerd, not popular at all. So…not true for me. But currently my kid goes to school with a high schooler who’s already signed for college football and has millions in endorsements and drives a sports car, so what do I know?
iHasMagyk@reddit
The common sentiment is that cliquiness has declined since the 80s/90s/00s when a lot of that media was made and those stereotypes were created, but again it depends on the school. I actually found that high school cliques were accurate to how they’re portrayed in 21 Jump Street where Channing Tatum’s character expects it to be like when he was in high school but times have changed
Western-Finding-368@reddit
It’s an exaggerated version. It’s true that people tend to hang out with people they have stuff in common with, but that’s just…fundamentally how friendships work.
BGKY_Sparky@reddit
They did back in 2005 at least.
glowybutterfly@reddit
When I was in HS in the early 00s, there were definitely groups like this. But basically everyone was nice. And there was a lot of crossover, where you might have your group that all hung out together, but you still also had friends you talked to from other groups.
IzzybearThebestdog@reddit
There is definitely truth to it, but it’s not as rigid as the stereotypes on TV. People tend to be way more multifaceted in real life. Yeah the cheerleaders might all be friends, but a few might be In the band, or play basketball. Some guys from the basketball team might do theater, and have friends who don’t do anything. But that can vary by school size and location to some degree.
Prestigious-Dust-820@reddit
I think it depends on how big the school is. My school had 2500 students, there were cliques within cliques within cliques & not everyone knew each other, so it was not like the movies portray.
clap_yo_hands@reddit
When I went to high school in the 90s we absolutely had cliques like they are portrayed in the movies.
river-running@reddit
Similar people tend to form groups, that's reality everywhere, but the seriousness of it is definitely exaggerated for media.
GhostOfJamesStrang@reddit
It is barely accurate. It is used in movies to give short hand explanations of people and characters without going into detailed character development.
No_Report_4781@reddit
No, and just like every single school in the universe, it’s different at each school