Awareness of social status

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I'm aware that Social Hierarchies that are set out by NTs exist, but I don't notice it all the time.

My observations are that within a "clique/group", the loudest and fastest talking person seems to be at the top, along with the person who makes lots of humorous anecdotes, even if those anecdotes are factually incorrect. I think many NTs are insecure that they must figure out their own and other people's rankings in a social hierarchy and treat them accordingly. While it's important to be polite to your superiors, anything beyond formal politeness makes me cringe, eg "brown-nosing" and sucking up. Unfortunately, many aspects of NT society aren't particularly meritocratic, and reward people based on how charming and pleasing they are as opposed to the hard skills themselves.

I get bored of these "NT-style cliques" very easily. The only reason why I would follow it is to avoid getting "punished", but certainly in my mind, I would much rather prefer these rankings don't exist in the first place. I get along with the "loners" (not necessarily AS) precisely because they never took part in these cliques in the first place, and are less likely to negatively judge me based on superficial appearances.

Have thought about what Kat said I feel that popularity in of itself is not a going concern for us. What we're interested in to look from a anthropological standpoint are allies and not patronage because we expect people to respect who we are as a default.

Thinking about a my awareness/understanding of a few of the related concepts that have come up in responses.

Comparing myself to other people on these matters is always a bit tricky because I had a different childhood environment than most people. I was homeschooled, so my main social environment was not school. When I was roughly elementary-school aged, my major social environments were the children from the homeschooling group my family was involved in, and the children at my family's church. (And the neighbourhood children, but they didn't tend to come together in a group.) When I was roughly high-school aged, my major social environment was the children from the musical groups I was involved in; I was involved in quite a few musical groups that had a substantial overlap in members. None of these environments, however, had as many children together for as much time as school does.

Popularity:
From the things I've read and heard about social hierarchies and social status, I know in theory that popularity is closely connected with social status.

I do have some concept of popularity that I can actually apply, as opposed to just knowing as a theory, but I think my concept of popularity is primarily about being well-liked. If someone is liked by most people, then that person is popular. I don't think my mind usually makes the jump from being well-liked to having some sort of high social rank or power.

Cliques:
Even when I was elementary-school aged, I was aware of social groups. Among the kids at my church, I remember thinking it was neat that I was "the big kid in the little kids' group" while someone else was "the little kid in the big kids' group", so obviously I was aware that these groups existed. When I was high-school aged, I think I also had a concept of some people being more central and some people being more peripheral to groups. Among the kids in the music groups I was involved in, I remember being particularly aware of two main groups, and noting that some kids were solidly in one group or the other, while some kids moved between the two groups. I didn't connect this with status or rank, though, and I'm still not sure in that case that it did connect with status. One of the kids who I most clearly recall as moving between the two groups was, I believe, well-liked by members of both groups, so probably not low-status. I don't think I've ever really been aware of clique dynamics and mangement and how membership and status are maintained and controlled. (That is, I've read things about it but I haven't connected them with my experience.)

I wonder if now that I'm thinking about this, I might become more aware of social status. I don't know if I want to.

I can see different statuses among my peers but I wouldn't put myself above or below anyone. I see my peers as my equals but some of them get more respect than others depending on their actions.

I'm aware of the "perceived" pyramids. Generally, though, I think the people at the "top" are just being humoured by everybody else, and generally speaking a truer "top" would be somewhere in the middle. That is, the "popular" people are those who self-identify as "popular", but they have less friends than the people in the "middle", who consider the "popular" people to be a bunch of dicks. The "popular" person is the stereotypical NT.

^^^ This.
Also I never know my own social status and my place in the hierarchy so I couldn't interact with people according to their status even if I wanted to.

I know relatively much about popularity and the like because my best friend for years was quite popular and it took me a while to figure out why he would be extremely nice and friendly to me one-on-one but a tad icy in more social situations (Not saying anything bad about him though. I'm pretty sure that if it weren't for him, my childhood would've been a lot worse). I don't think I was very much aware of popularity beyond the "who picks whom first when playing sports" line. This gave some insight into popularity. I certainly noticed which people hung out in groups, but I don't think I was (or am) able to pick out who's the higher-ranked person in each individual group.

Throughout childhood, I had a pretty good idea of my own social status - I was unpopular, because kids made fun of me and I had few or no friends. Typically I could pick out one or two other kids whose statuses I knew, always either extremely popular or unpopular, but most kids I had no clue. And 'popular', to me, generally meant they were a bully who other kids seemed to like.

I realize that such social hierarchies exist, but I often do not follow them. I frequently get into trouble with authority figures for, well, I don't know how else to put it, but not looking up to them as authority figures.

I dunno. Peers is generally defined as those on an equal footing with you. Let's lose the dictionary definition and take it as it was intended for the question and mix it with the phrase 'social status' to come up with the desired (?) response.

Re: School

I had notions of which people were tied up with which people. Generally people of the same personality type, or people who subsumed themselves to a central figures' personality type. I don't believe I ever actually tried to place myself on any social scale or marker - I was apart. And I wanted to not be noticed or judged. From time to time the "lesser tied" people would interact with me positively, but I was always eventually let to drift when the "important' people came back around.

3 classes:
important (whether boring glamours or absolute arses)
not important (quiet and un-noticed, often studious)
victims

That was my understanding of social hierarchy.

RE: now
I don't really think I have enough exposure to other people to have an opinion / insight.

Me too, but I can play as if I look up to them and find myself in a live comedy Then I dont get into trouble.

I have a very basic understanding of social status and hierarchies... and I think I gained almost all of it from watching movies and films about high school.

When I was in middle school, I remember wanting to be "popular". But that wasn't that I wanted to be one of the popular girls or even be friends with them... it was more that I didn't have any friends and I attributed this failure of mine to not being popular enough. I thought that if I had more material things, such as I dressed better, then I would be more well liked. I tried this for some time before I finally just gave up.

I always had a lot of respect for teachers and authority figures, though. I would challenge them if I felt the need, but most of the time, I got along with adults better than the kids who were in my own age group. I thought the kids my age were immature at best (though I'm sure they thought it was me who was the immature one). I never did understand the celebrity worship mentality or liking people who were famous. It didn't matter to me. It also didn't matter to me who the popular guys were or who liked who.

Oh well. I'm just glad that most of this seemed to disappear when I got to college. There were still sororities and popularity contests, but I could ignore them.

Well-designed poll!

I voted "I just want to see the results". Partly because I'm between the first two, I think, and partly because maybe I'm not autistic enough for my vote to be appropriate.

Me, mostly I've noticed them when I've run afoul of them. I imagine it's something I could learn to be more aware of, and better at dealing with, if I cared to. I don't. It doesn't fit with my values.

Cliques having that much "power" is a pretty distorted and highly exaggerated version of reality, but it makes for great teen movie villians. Movies like Heathers, Jawbreaker or Mean Girls play on the assumption or illusion that a group of people can make high school miserable for someone if a person in the clique is high enough in the "pecking order" has taken an interest in destroying your life.

The reality is, these cliques are formed by groups of individuals sharing a few common interests. When things go bad is when one or two members of a clique or group derail it's purpose with manipulation and insecurity. High schools are cesspools of insecurity.




While I didn't break down my relationship with specific classmates in the same categories you did; I did tend to view them as individuals rather than a collective. I never was asked to leave a table because I wasn't in the appropriate clique, and I refused to tolerate "friends" dictating who I could spend time with and who I needed to shun.



I'm sure that has more to do with those individual's inflated sense of importance than it does with some mystical hierarchy.

I agree. The group as a whole is as strong as the weakest/most labile member, so in a strong group people are able to take care of each other.