Almost everybody remembers their high school years. For me, mine weren’t that long ago, under 10 years as a matter of fact. However, I couldn’t care less. For me, high school was basically torture, as I imagine it was for most of us with undiagnosed mental illnesses. Yet, there is one thing that still bothers me from those days. In fact, I don’t really even think that anything has changed in high schools around the world. As you could probably tell, from this post’s title, I’m talking about the idea of popularity.

The way I see it, popularity rules the world, or at least the human aspect of it. There is this inate need to fit in, instilled in us from childhood. Whether or not it is instilled by the parents, by nature, or by socializing, I don’t know. However, I can say, with utmost certainty, that everything I did in my younger days, was to fit in. I don’t honestly even know if I wanted to be popular, I just wanted to not be a loner…which I ended up as one anyways. However, everything that I did, the clothes I wore, the music I listened to, my hairstyle, the way I walked, the way I talked, everything was just to fit in. Though, I would always choose these things, by emulating the “popular kids”. Y’know, the ones who either were really gifted in sports, or looks, or had very wealthy parents. I was not one of them, not even close. There was one thing that really sticks out in my mind though. When I was in 7th grade, roughly around the end of 2006, I remember asking my parents for some NFL gear. A Jersey, and a hat is what I got, for Christmas I might add. Now I know that sounds really normal, and technically it is. The part that I remember though, is it was for a team, The Atlanta Falcons, that I not only didn’t like, but knew nothing about. Why? You might be asking yourself. Well simply put, the Falcons were the favorite team of the popular kids that year. So to try and fit in, I wanted to be a Falcons Fan too. Not only did my plan ultimately fail, but it ended up driving me to play football with my local pop warner team, a choice that I regret whole heartedly.

This concept, of fitting in by doing what the “popular kids” are doing, is not a new one. It has been around for as long as humans have recorded history. Yeah there are millions of theories why we do this, and a lot of them make sense, but I’m more concerned about why this is still accepted. Why do schools allow these groups to form? Easy, because life operates like that too. Look at the rise of the Kardashians, just because they were “pretty” and marketed themselves as the popular kids. There’s a song that comes to mind, as you know I love music, and think it is so influential. It’s called “High School Never Ends” by Bowling For Soup, a rather well known “punk” band from the early 2000’s that has since faded into history. It’s about how these cliques of people are not just in the school systems, they exist everywhere. It’s why shows like TMZ even exist. We are so caught up with what the “popular kids” are doing, that it has its own brand of news. And we think that the more we can be like these “popular kids” the more people will like us, which essentially increases our chance of success in life (or so they’d like you to think). It’s why guys like Brad in accounting (I made Brad up) has thousands of Instagram followers because of his gym posts. It’s why girls like Chloe (also made Chloe up) can sell jars of her bath water for 30 bucks a pop(I know that the parallels between imaginary Chloe, real life are pretty obvious)

At the end of the day, we all have a desire to be a well liked part of a group, why? Well, google it. But anyways, I’m glad that a decent number of people are starting to realize that this desire is being taken advantage of everywhere and that we should just all not give a f*ck. Who cares what that girl with 20 million followers just bought, or how big that guy’s muscles are. Like we are all born different for a reason. Being different is not all bad, I mean it’s a lot of bad, but not all of it. Being different is slowly becoming socially accepted, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Now I can dress how I want, eat what I want, do what I want, without a care in the world…not really, but you get my point. As my mother always says, ” you don’t need a lot of friends, just one or two good ones”. So with that, let’s not care whoever the hell is pushing a particular whatever. Let’s just be us! From my mind to yours, Alan Wolfgang, signing off.