Popularity (Revised)

*This is a revised copy of an old post. To see the original post click here *

I am currently right in the middle of a book called Looking for Alaska by John Green. The book is about a boy who decides to leave his boring school in Florida behind and go to a boarding school. Lots of interesting things happen to him, and many of them are as a result of the rivalry between the “in” crowd and the “out” crowd. The “in” crowd is the segment of the school that is rich kids. The kids in the “out” crowd all hang out with each other (this boarding school is small) and, for the most part, avoid the “in” crowd kids. Still, they consider themselves less popular because… well there isn’t really a reason. This got me thinking. The kids in the “out” crowd don’t want to hang out with the “in” crowd and vice versa. Why should one group be considered more popular? The popularity of the “in” crowd does not seem to be based on anything. The “in” crowd kids don’t have more friends or better grades, or nicer faces. The only reason appears to be that they have more money.

When I was in 6^th grade, I first started to discover that there were popular people in our school. I am not quite sure how I knew who was popular. I think my friends pointed the people who were popular out to me. Then I knew they were popular, and I started to realize that everyone else did to. That was my first real life encounter with the idea of popular people. It just always made sense to me. Of course there are popular people. I never thought to question it.

            After a lot of thinking on the topic of popularity I believe I have a theory as to why people are popular. Popularity is all about perception. If we all expect someone to be popular, then they are popular, and this only reaffirms our belief in their popularity. This applies to Looking for Alaska as well. In the book, when people started looking for who was going to be popular, they saw the rich kids. There is a stereotype that the rich kids are the popular ones, so when there was a group of much wealthier kids, it was assumed that they would be popular, so they were.

           

            In truth, popularity is not that important. It won’t give you a better life. You wont become immortal. You can be the least popular kid in the school, and still have friends who care about you. The kids in Looking for Alaska prove that. They said that it was fine they weren’t popular because they were going to hang out with other kids, and they are perfectly happy. All in all, the concept of popularity is just a circular mind trick that we play on ourselves. If you think about it like that, it seems kind of sill how much we care about popularity.

When I Grow Up, I Want to Be...

(Warning: This blog post contains occasional rambling and a few off topic paragraphs)

I am still reading Scarlet Fever by Maureen Johnson. The book is about a girl named Scarlet whose family owns a small, and failing, hotel in New York City. The main character’s older sister, Lola, is out of high school but “taking a break” before college to help out at the hotel. This is what she is saying anyway. In reality, their family doesn’t have the money to send Lola to college right now, and Lola didn’t even apply. On top of this, Lola has absolutely no idea what she wants to do with her life. She doesn’t see her self as good at anything and there is nothing she is passionate about. Mean while Scarlet’s older brother, Spencer, knows exactly what he is doing. Spencer wants to be an actor and *****SPOILER ALERT******thanks to his new recurring role in the TV show “Crime and Punishment” he is actually making money doing this. Scarlet is in high school and the family’s youngest child, Marlene, is only ten. This leaves Lola feeling lost and alone.

            The situation Lola is in made me think a lot about what I want to do with my life.  In all honesty, I have almost no idea, but I don’t see why I should need to know right now. I’m thirteen and my interests are still changing and evolving. Lola shouldn’t have to make a decision like that as an eighteen year old either. If I were to walk up to a person and ask them if I need to know what I want to be when I grow up right now, they would probably say no. At the same time however, we are expected to make these choices. Just this year we had to decide if we wanted to go to a performing arts school or one of the science schools or the school for fashion design ect. We had to choose whether to go to the performing arts middle school or the math and science one.

Once we were in this school, we had to pick a talent and stick with only that one for three years. I love being in photography. At the same time, I do participate in other things outside of school, because while I love photography, I have other interests. I had to go and search out ways to do these things, but that is not something everyone is able to do. It would have been nice to be able to participate in things like drama in school. I admit that being in photography for three years really helped me develop my skills in a way otherwise impossible. But if we had had the opportunity to try other talents in school, then I could pursue the ones I liked further, and reach the same level I am at in photography, while also finding out what I like and don’t like.

As I keep thinking about this, I am starting to wonder what the purpose of making kids make all of these choices is. I don’t really understand. If we make decisions too early, then they are more likely to be decisions we regret. I don’t see any use in that. I started to think about dancers, who often train from when they are as little as three. They do it because if you start young, then you have an advantage over people who started when they were older. The same principle applies to this. In theory, if you start focusing on something earlier, then you have an advantage over people who started later. Then soon, everyone is starting earlier and earlier and earlier, always trying to get an edge. At what point do we stop and say, “How the heck do we know if a four year old is ‘Gifted and Talented’?” Because in all honesty, the average fifth grader doesn’t know what they want to be when they grow up, and they shouldn’t have to.

Scarlett Fever: Justice

            I am currently reading Scarlett Fever by Maureen Johnson. The book is about a girl named Scarlett whose family owns a struggling hotel in New York. Scarlett’s family is on a very tight budget right now because the hotel is having serious financial problems. Many of Scarlett’s friends are very well off, as is the former boyfriend of her older sister Lola, Chip. Spencer, Scarlett’s older brother, hates Chip. Scarlett mildly dislikes his lack of personality and amazement at the life of an average person (Chip is very well off), but Spencer simply hates him because he was born into money. Chip doesn’t have to worry about not being able to afford college, or what he wants to do with his life, and Spencer despises him for it.

            This is something I have noticed in another book. In Looking for Alaska by John Green, one of the characters hates all of the characters that have money, just because his family doesn’t. On one hand, I understand why characters like Spencer were upset. They hated the fact that other kids with more money were living care free, while they have to struggle to pay for college. Characters like Spencer are taking out their frustration with their own life, on someone else just because they don’t have the same problems. My first reaction to this is not fair. They don’t control who their parents are. But then I started thinking, what is justice in this situation? Because while Spencer shouldn’t take his anger out on Chip, it is certainly not right that Spencer should have to work his butt off for a chance at a decent life, while Chip just has to get good grades, go to college and inherit his family’s money. I guess in an ideal world, everyone would have the same amount of money, and the same chance at a good life, but that isn’t how the world works right now.

            It isn’t fair for Spencer to hate Chip. It isn’t fair for Chip to have so many more opportunities then Spencer. Maybe they sort of cancel each other out. Spencer does have some sort of right to be upset. And it is hard to be upset with the universe for putting you where you are. But projecting your anger onto someone else is not all right either. So Spencer can hate the system, or the world or whatever he wants, but in the end, I don’t think it is right for Spencer to hate Chip.

Racist Against Wizards

In the book Magyk by Angie Sage, wizards, who were once prosperous, are treated as scum who are worthless and must be punished for who they are. They are kicked around and Magyk is treated as if it is a disease that must be exterminated. This reminds me of discrimination that is going on in the world today as well as discrimination that happened in the past.

            In the beginning of the book, most wizards lead fairly normal, productive lives. One of the gatekeepers even talks about how the ExtaOrdinary, wizard, the most powerful wizard, has class. Then the Custodians take over and everything changes. Suddenly, highly respected wizards are “wizard scum” and having the telltale, green wizard eyes automatically marks you for scrutiny. The Custodians even tried to beat this idea of hating wizards into their children creating mean and hateful rhymes about the ExtraOrdinary wizard. The rhyme mentioned in the book talks about the ExtraOrdinary wizard being crazy. One of the characters, Boy 412, realizes something important when he finally meets actual wizards. The wizards are not the crazy ones, the people who write the rhyme are. This part in particular made me think of the holocaust. In the holocaust Jews were portrayed as greedy thieving evil people. Some people knew that the stereotype was untrue and risked their lives to save people. Those who knew that this stereotype wasn’t true knew the truth. They knew that the Jews were not the evil ones, the Nazis were.

            The holocaust was an extreme example of discrimination. I cannot even begin to understand the amount of hate and insanity it must take for one group to hate another so much that they no longer want to live on the same planet as them. There is nothing that one group can do to provoke enough hate to make that response excusable.

About a year ago, in Arizona there was an immigration law passed that said that Police Officers could stop and ask for the papers of anyone who looks like they might be here illegally. This law is basically legalizing discrimination because there is no way to look at someone and determine whether they are here illegally. There are illegal immigrants in this country from all over. However, only people that look Hispanic are going to be stopped. There are ways to stop illegal immigration without harassing people because of their skin color.

Of course, wizards aren’t real, but the problems in this book are serious. Unfortunately, there will always be people out there who will insist on discriminating against someone so they can feel better about themselves or blame someone else for their problems. What we can do, however, is keep these people from controlling the media, or passing laws like the one in Arizona. If we can do that, then we are on the right track.

Popularity

I am currently right in the middle of a book called Looking for Alaska by John Green. The book is about a boy who decides to leave his boring school in Florida behind and go to a boarding school. Lots of interesting things happen to him, and many of them are as a result of the rivalry between the “in” crowd and the “out” crowd. The in crowd is the segment of the school that is rich kids. The kids in the out crowd all hang out with each other (this boarding school is small) and, for the most part, avoid the in crowd kids. Still, they consider themselves less popular because… well there isn’t really a reason. This got me thinking. The kids in the “out crowd don’t want to hang out with the in crowd and vice versa. Why should one group be considered more popular? What is this popularity based on? The in crowd kids don’t have more friends or better grades, or nicer faces. I guess it could be because they have more money.

This got me thinking about our school. We have popular people. I started thinking about why they are popular. I couldn’t find a reason that made sense. Some people are popular because they know people that are popular. But then why was that first person popular? I am entirely confused by this.

When I was in 6^th grade, I first started to discover that there were popular people in our school. I think my friends pointed the people who were popular out to me. Then I knew they were popular, and I started to realize that everyone else did to. That was my first real life encounter with the idea of popular people. What I think is weird is that I never stopped to wonder why these people were popular.

            After a lot of thinking on the issue I believe I have a theory. We expect there to be popular people, so we start to look for who is going to be popular. Then people start to subconsciously decide who they think is popular, then they tell other people, who tell other people ect. All of the sudden, we have a group of popular people. Unfortunately this is just a theory, and while it makes sense in our school, it doesn’t really make sense in Looking for Alaska. I usually like to end my blog posts with some sort of answer to whatever question I posed in the beginning of the post, but this time I really don’t have an answer. If you want to tell me your thoughts in a comment that is great because right now, my only answer for why people are popular is, they just are.