What causes popularity/unpopularity?

Post Reply New Topic

The popular people in school seem to have no one thing that unifies them except for the very fact that they are popular. What is that?!

They're not the nicest people. Nor the cleverest. Not even necessarily the prettiest, so that old theory is out the window. What makes people popular or unpopular? Is it something they're born with, or what?

I think it's to do with how outgoing someone is. Also to be good at manupilating people and stuff like that. Maybe some people are just people magnets, I'm not too sure myself actually.
Also the most nastiest of populars are popular because their friends are too scared of going against them, so the unpopulars are more independant minded or maybe more brave/couragious than populars for going against the bitchy one.

In my experience, the "popular" people were the ones with physical beauty or who associated with those who did.

Many "football jocks" weren't that handsome, but they were on the varsity team, which automatically made them popular.

Perception seems to be everything. A beautiful face can hide an ugly personality. Makes you wish for the day when that person's boobs are sagging at the knees and nobody will give her the time of day.

I think popularity has something to do with how manipulative you are and how much points you score in coolness, which is a constantly changing function prefering the unreachable.

leadership is a mysterious concept for aspies

I'm in university. From what I can see, if you want to be popular, it is important to either play a lot of sports (and be good at them), and/or be physically beautiful. Also, don't be too intelligent. Getting high marks is ok, but if you talk intelligently or have deep conversations, you'll be very unpopular. Going to bars/campus parties every friday/saturday night, taking pictures for facebook all the time, and pretending to be friends with everyone all help a lot. Yeah you have to drink all the time too.

How to be popular: Be in the cheerleading group, play football.

How not to be popular: Be concentrated on academics.

Popularity has much of its foundation in social status. People who are more closely associated with high-status activities and characteristics will be accorded higher status. Other people who seek to acquire status can either associate with the same activities, or associate themselves with the popular people who are. Since everyone can't be on the varsity football team, it becomes helpful to know those who are. As a result, they acquire popularity.

If you have trouble understanding how popularity works in your environment, then it may be that you are having difficulty perceiving what leads to high status. It may also be that you don't particularly care about seeking high status as your group attributes it.

My overall experience of groups or communities is that nepotism is a very important factor. Greed and poor moral principles often lead to the most ruthless working together and kind of "inflating" each others popularity as well as giving each other status through brother-in-law politics. The most popular doesn't necessarily have to be the "alpha", but rather the most morally degenerate and ruthless or even more likely, the one who can balance the largest number of different interests at the same time, being diplomatic, ruthless and friendly at the same time.

It's rare with friendship built entirely on love and trust but it's also rare with friendship built entirely on ulterior motives. In most cases I think it's 50-50. Those businessmen who pats each others backs and drinks champagne in the sauna together really do like each other, on some level, but at the same time they use each other like tools. I think if you look at it this way it's easier to understand popularity.

My asperger makes it hard for me to balance different interests like that. I usually feel provoced in an environment where I'm expected to fake honesty in order to achieve the best collective gain. I'm either 100% loyal to death or openly hostile, this makes me come across as awkward and contributes to impopularity within the group.

dealing drugs is also a good way to get popular, apparently. You can be ugly as hell and will still have a girlfriend and people around you.

any one of these will make you popular:

- attractive appearance (perfect hair, figure, makeup, ...)
- expressive talent (music, painting, poetry, ...)
- material wealth (car, clothes, jewelry, ...)
- charismatic personality (superficial niceness...)
- athletic skill (jocks)

any of these will make you unpopular:

- intelligence (you make others look stupid)
- diligence (you make others look lazy)
- integrity (you make others look untrustworthy)
- deference to authority (you make others look rebellious)
- honesty (you make others look dishonest)

I think the more of a sheep you are, the more popular you are. From what I've seen, the more pop culture you're into, the more you drink, and the more you love base, polarized political paradigms, the more popular you are.
Yeah, there's other stuff that goes into it, but the more of these you take away, the less popular you become. Hmm.. THAT explains why most people didn't like me.