Yeah, I had a pretty similar childhood in terms of being excluded by the popular crowd and being a misfit. America is all about these social popularity contests. You can see it clearly in something like Greek life (frats/sororities) -- no other country has this phenomenon, and foreigners and immigrants are very puzzled by it. Vivek Ramaswamy has also made negative comments about America's obsession with social popularity and glamor at the expense of academics or intellect -- perhaps because he also didn't fit in and would have liked a more "conventional" culture, like everywhere outside the US.
Were there specific reasons you were excluded? You look like an ordinary American kid in that photo, with blondish hair. Were you not tall enough? But yeah, this cliquishness and standoffishness is a very real thing in the US, I wish more people would write about it.
Your school memories are totally relatable in my high school days in the bougie South Bay. This one was really bougie, and I am sure you know what I mean :)
Americans at large have the impression that Californians are very transient people, especially in the Los Angeles area. One common complaint you'll hear from someone that moves to a Midwestern city like St Louis is always being asked where they went to high school. The Midwest must have the people that never moved, and everyone in California is from somewhere else anyway, right?
This is far from the case. Greater Los Angeles is a massive region subject to decades of microsorting, with each neighborhood hyper specializing in very specific demographic segments. Within said specialized segments, people all know each other. So when someone says they went to Malibu High, SaMo High, Buckley, Elco, Calabasas, Agoura, or Westlake... associations already form about just where their parents stood in the social pecking order. Most of my LA area friends are locals, so people just assume I'm a local as well. When I get asked the high school question, I just say... NorCal. Oh, not easily sorted after all.
The 1980's films were all about the people growing up in the San Fernando Valley. Very middle class and somewhat generalizable to the country as a whole, just with the beach on the other side of the hill. By the time you get to the 2000's, you have plotlines about the teenage daughter of an upper middle class family going to Pali or SaMo High that falls in love and gets in trouble with a lower class guy from the Eastside (24 season 1, Havoc, Crazy Beautiful). Or the very envious television writers behind shows like Weeds or films like The Chumscrubber or Orange County showing how they're having to slum it in places like Calabasas or Santa Clarita when they want to be in the Palasades or Santa Monica. Life is just so monotonous... All the people too much like me are just boring.
Finally, another thing this article covers does apply nationally. The US really needs to have some form of academic selection / tracking. Too much energy and effort is thrown into the bottom quintile when we really should be investing and nurturing the truly bright. One reason politics in the last 15 years have been so deranged is damaged Millennials that went into woke narcissistic authoritarian mode in adulthood. These people then form a vendetta against the general population and predictably lash out, never really leaving the mentality of high school behind.
And yeah, it is crazy to think back and wonder if Elliot Roger was at that Barnes and Noble the same time I was...
Lots of middle-class neighborhoods in Central AZ are located right next to ghetto schools, and I myself went to a ghetto high school for twoish years (but wasn't supposed to, but moved two neighborhoods away just before). Although my experiences with elemiddle school were the exact opposite, and I had a great community in there (especially of men).
As for the permanence part, we all need a stable community, and the fact that much of the Sunbelt has people moving around a lot regardless of economic standing scrambles that.
We do have similar stories, but I did grow up lower middle-class, and I wasn't even born in the sunbelt.
Yeah, I had a pretty similar childhood in terms of being excluded by the popular crowd and being a misfit. America is all about these social popularity contests. You can see it clearly in something like Greek life (frats/sororities) -- no other country has this phenomenon, and foreigners and immigrants are very puzzled by it. Vivek Ramaswamy has also made negative comments about America's obsession with social popularity and glamor at the expense of academics or intellect -- perhaps because he also didn't fit in and would have liked a more "conventional" culture, like everywhere outside the US.
Were there specific reasons you were excluded? You look like an ordinary American kid in that photo, with blondish hair. Were you not tall enough? But yeah, this cliquishness and standoffishness is a very real thing in the US, I wish more people would write about it.
I get the feeling that when people write about trauma they want to lose their sense of agency.
Your school memories are totally relatable in my high school days in the bougie South Bay. This one was really bougie, and I am sure you know what I mean :)
I have family in the South Bay.
Americans at large have the impression that Californians are very transient people, especially in the Los Angeles area. One common complaint you'll hear from someone that moves to a Midwestern city like St Louis is always being asked where they went to high school. The Midwest must have the people that never moved, and everyone in California is from somewhere else anyway, right?
This is far from the case. Greater Los Angeles is a massive region subject to decades of microsorting, with each neighborhood hyper specializing in very specific demographic segments. Within said specialized segments, people all know each other. So when someone says they went to Malibu High, SaMo High, Buckley, Elco, Calabasas, Agoura, or Westlake... associations already form about just where their parents stood in the social pecking order. Most of my LA area friends are locals, so people just assume I'm a local as well. When I get asked the high school question, I just say... NorCal. Oh, not easily sorted after all.
The 1980's films were all about the people growing up in the San Fernando Valley. Very middle class and somewhat generalizable to the country as a whole, just with the beach on the other side of the hill. By the time you get to the 2000's, you have plotlines about the teenage daughter of an upper middle class family going to Pali or SaMo High that falls in love and gets in trouble with a lower class guy from the Eastside (24 season 1, Havoc, Crazy Beautiful). Or the very envious television writers behind shows like Weeds or films like The Chumscrubber or Orange County showing how they're having to slum it in places like Calabasas or Santa Clarita when they want to be in the Palasades or Santa Monica. Life is just so monotonous... All the people too much like me are just boring.
Finally, another thing this article covers does apply nationally. The US really needs to have some form of academic selection / tracking. Too much energy and effort is thrown into the bottom quintile when we really should be investing and nurturing the truly bright. One reason politics in the last 15 years have been so deranged is damaged Millennials that went into woke narcissistic authoritarian mode in adulthood. These people then form a vendetta against the general population and predictably lash out, never really leaving the mentality of high school behind.
And yeah, it is crazy to think back and wonder if Elliot Roger was at that Barnes and Noble the same time I was...
Lots of middle-class neighborhoods in Central AZ are located right next to ghetto schools, and I myself went to a ghetto high school for twoish years (but wasn't supposed to, but moved two neighborhoods away just before). Although my experiences with elemiddle school were the exact opposite, and I had a great community in there (especially of men).
As for the permanence part, we all need a stable community, and the fact that much of the Sunbelt has people moving around a lot regardless of economic standing scrambles that.
We do have similar stories, but I did grow up lower middle-class, and I wasn't even born in the sunbelt.