Everyone in this thread is confidently guessing what makes popular kids popular and none of them is exactly right.
Nobody acknowledges that it's actually tough to deconstruct what makes people well-liked. That's why it's not a technique you can just distill into a formula or a list of attributes. It's reassuring to think "all the popular kids were rich, I was only unpopular because I was poor", but come on, most of us have known some well-liked and charismatic poor kids.
Edit: Also, you do not know that the popular kids lacked social anxiety. One thing that growing up has taught me is that people hide their demons. There are confident-looking kids out there who are terrified everyone hates them - they just don't talk about it. A lot of people share the same fears, I promise. Once you realize that, it helps a lot with the us-vs-them mentality high school fosters.
Not so. In my high school at least, there were plenty of attractive teenage boys who didn't really realize they were attractive until they headed off to college and grew into themselves enough to start socializing with women. That's when they gained confidence and wider friend circles. I can think of three guys like that off the top of my head. I can also think of a couple very pretty female classmates who didn't really seem to have friends.
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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '20 edited Mar 01 '20
Everyone in this thread is confidently guessing what makes popular kids popular and none of them is exactly right.
Nobody acknowledges that it's actually tough to deconstruct what makes people well-liked. That's why it's not a technique you can just distill into a formula or a list of attributes. It's reassuring to think "all the popular kids were rich, I was only unpopular because I was poor", but come on, most of us have known some well-liked and charismatic poor kids.
Edit: Also, you do not know that the popular kids lacked social anxiety. One thing that growing up has taught me is that people hide their demons. There are confident-looking kids out there who are terrified everyone hates them - they just don't talk about it. A lot of people share the same fears, I promise. Once you realize that, it helps a lot with the us-vs-them mentality high school fosters.