Popularity

pop•u•lar•i•ty

/ˌpɒp yəˈlær ɪ ti/ –noun

1.The quality or fact of being popular.
2.The favor of the general public or of a particular group ofpeople: His popularity with television audiences is unrivaled.

This is supposed to be the first post in what I believe will become a series of two (or more) posts. And in case you are wondering, yes I do have too much free time on my hand.

This whole train of thought started when my friend was complaining about her friend (she-who-must-not-be-named) and the way she acts and treats other people around her. According to her story, this girl acts as if she’s the biggest thing that has ever happened to her school. And it doesn’t stop there. This girl would mock other people around her whom she felt is less compared to her. She cheats to attain good grades and then mocks other students who aren’t doing as well as she is. Furthermore she also mocks other people who are not as well off as she is, judging people from their financial status (talk about materialism).

I guess hearing these stories about her being such a vexatious (yup, got this one from thesaurus under ‘annoying’) person got me thinking about why is she like that, what is she trying to achieve? There are countless of explanations towards why some people can behave like that. But from my point of view which is shaped by the stories that my friend told me I believe she is trying to achieve what most teenagers would be trying to achieve. Popularity.

This is what many believe to be the holy grail of teenage life. A lot of teenagers felt that being popular is be all and end all of the teenage life and many strived to achieve this so called popular status. I have to admit that being popular does give you a lot of advantages and privileges. Being popular makes it easier for you to make friends as well express your opinion because people have known you beforehand (or at least your name and who you are) and therefore regards you with some degree of respect as compared to some obscure school mate whom nobody remembers or takes seriously. Due to this fact popular kids tend to have far reaching influences on the student population, and this I believe is by far the biggest perk that you can get from being popular.

This subject have been immortalised in countless pop-culture references. One that I'm going to refer to is from the TV series Glee. Glee's depiction of high school life is a hyperbole and simplified depiction of the presence of social chaste inside a community. On one hand you have the jocks and the cheerleaders, the most powerful and influential (the so-called "it" group). While on the other hand you have the glee kids (the ones who are neither a cheerleader nor a jock) who are deemed as losers, the outcasts, and therefore are rejected by the rest of the school population. The big picture is mostly like that, but I believe that this subject on popularity is much more complex than what is depicted in Glee.

First of all there are two types of people who can achieve popularity. The first group of people are the lucky ones. They are somehow gifted with some special charm, charisma or just simply a great personality which will make them an instant hit in any community. These people can attain popularity just by being inside a particular community. While the second group of people are the ones that worked hard to achieve popularity, aka the social climbers. They are the group of people who will try anything, from befriending the popular people hoping the popularity can rub off to them, trying to achieve various positions within the student population (Cheerleaders, Students’ Council, Jocks), to even creating countless personas to suit the needs of the community and become more popular.

Honestly, I was having a hard time tackling this particular subject as I myself have never had any full understanding of what it really is. As you can see the dictionary definition does not help at all as the human social life is not as straightforward. After lots of pondering and chatting with my friends I kind of feel we were finally able to break it down. We concluded that, not only that there are two types of people that can attain popularity through different means, but there are also two types of popularity that resulted from the two different methods of achieving popularity.

For the first group of people, the ones who attain popularity naturally, by virtue of their charm, charisma and or personality, they will attain what I believe is true popularity. This true popularity is when you can relate to a lot of people and vice versa, allowing you to garner influence and have a huge social circle. People who obtained this kind of popularity will still be able to maintain their influence towards the different individuals even after school is over as they manage to build real connections with people through their personality. While for the second group of people (social climbers) will only attain superficial popularity. I mean sure everyone knows them and all and they may have quite an influence within the student population. But once you are out of school that’s the end of your influence towards the individual. Superficial popularity works by making you popular through the things you have or the positions that you hold. So the cheerleaders and the jocks in Glee, they have what I would think as superficial popularity, as they are only popular by virtue of their position within the students population and not by making real connections with the people around them.

A little disclaimer's notice, all of what's written here is pure guess work from the observations that my friends and I have made through our various encounters with different social groups, so its not like I've done research or anything.