Ah...
cliquesAnyway, I never noticed, personally. But
can you, when you're embroiled in the middle of it[1]? This is despite (or because of?) all kinds of obvious clique-ridden US imports. The Breakfast Club, Grease, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, etc... Actually, given how lampshaded the concept is in the very first episode of Buffy (and how it continues to be pointed out as an obvious cliché in even more modern productions, like Sym-Biotic Titan), I'm wondering if was
ever quite so true.
OTOH, I could believe that the real-life source of all those American dramas (American High Schools)
do have the Lettermen and the Pink Ladies and the Nerd Clubs that my own High School (secondary education) and Sixth-Form College (next stage on) never really had.
And, now I come to think of it, at University there's the "Soc" structure... Never quite as extreme as depicted in the US-sourced fictions (but then would it ever be in even the US-sourcee
facts?) as one could easily have ones toes in both the Rugby Club and the Role-Players Soc and the Anti-<insert some subjectively vicious, evil, diabolical world-view here> League without insta-ostracising oneself through some sort of unspoken mutual-exclusivity treaty.
As with evolution[3], the development of separate species from a single gene-pool occurs where separate occurs. Geographic or some other form. At least until you get to the stage of choosing your off-campus house-mates based on who you'd be happy sharing with[4]. But I think there's way too much possibility to mix it up when Freshman (gen. "Freshers", in the UK) start, at whatever level. Yes, the big dumb brute is probably going to be part of whatever flavour of hard-hitting football variety you have in your locality (Gridiron/Rugby Union or League/Aussie Rules/whatever), but then so are less brutish individuals who provide the finesse, and they maybe
can also be part of the Theatre Group or Chess Club (perhaps a prime candidate for
Chess Boxing) or even, one would hope, be able to openly be part of the local LGBT organisation without problems... (Pssibly with a number of advantages for the rest of the membership...)
I'm not disbelieving that cliques
exist... However, I do think they get exaggerated for dramatic effect. Looking back in life I reckon I've been a member of a clique-
sized grouping a number of times (which actually surprises me, not being very good at making social connections), but very rarely could I see these as being a
clique. There was the one time I was part of a "gang of three" where we were really quite disparate. A bit like the
Class Sketch from TW3 (I was the middle-one), except that my taller friend was more spivvy while the smaller friend was very much on the "upper" side of upper-middle class, son of a respected local magistrate/shopkeeper. I don't really know whether we were a "clique of the cliqueless" or a "what's-left-over-after-all-the-other-gangs-had-formed gang". I'm trying to remember what everyone
else was doing, and... well, the boys were (as far as I could see...) an amorphous mass. There were groupings of girls that I could (barely) identify by name (girls' names, no Pink Lady-like group-names that I know of), after so many decades, but then girls
do that...
Or
did that. This was before Social Media and the likes of forums like this where one can self-identify with any group one wants and (at least in the less photo-ridden ones, i.e. outside primary Facebook accounts and the like) where one can easily plonk oneself within any sub-culture one wishes (with virtually the whole world to choose from) for either realistic or subversive reasons.
Of course, there's potential for adult cliques as well, but that's now more a matter of society. And technically 'outgrows' the definition of clique. Golf Clubs rarely have only five or six members, and these rarely do nothing but "hang out at the mall, wearing their matching plus-fours, Argyl socks and tartan tam-o-shanters", or whatever cliché you want to attach to them.
No, I think it's more an exagerated trope. Although probably has a basis in fact (and more a basis in US educational system fact?). Whether the (eventual) writers of those trope-laden fictions were always "alone in High School" I would probably challenge as a stereotype, except that I'm betting that
most people considered themselves "alone" in that situation. Although that's mostly from my own experience (where I
know I was, but where I could I was "alone in a group", and assume that everyone was individual but desperately clinging onto whatever group would have them for an outward sign of belonging).
(Wow, 16 new replies on what was an empty-thread when I started. Doubtless other people have been much more succinct than I have.)[1] Or, like in "Only You Can Save Mankind" when the only grouping one can be part of is "the group of everyone that isn't already[2] in a group".
[2] Not "Russell's Clique"... "The group of all people who are
not in a group..."
[3] Assuming you subscribe to that, I know some people don't. But I won't proselytise.
[4] My personal experience is that I ended up house-sharing with a group of football(soccer)-obsessed louts who partied hard and long. Well, except for the 'stoner' in the upstairs room, who was only
partly obsessed with spherical pigs-bladders (but still joined in, and enjoyed a drink when "out with the lads", rather than when in his room with his Harem of glamorous[5] but somewhat spaced hanger-onerers). This due to desperation at not finding a place more suited to my own tastes, and snatching at this offer only a day
before one of the "head geeks" (more socially adept than I, but definitely part of the computer-set) got around to asking if I wanted to be part of
his house-sharing exercise. So instead of the remote hillside farmhouse that soon got itself a T-1 line (or whatever the equivalent wasm in that time and place) to service the local hacker (
not cracker!) community, I ended up in the seaside ex-Guest House with the louts who would regularly come home after the pubs had shut and were known to bash down the fire-door betwixt us and the next-door building (to the consternation of whoever lived there) and otherwise be antisocial. (Rather than
asocial, which is what I'd have much preferred.)
[5] TBH
most females were glamorous to me, at that age. And this age too, but I've gotten past the stage where they're too glamorous to be attainable and am now well into the stage where a large demographic of the glamorous is unattainable because it'd be
creepy to pursue them at my current age... Or worse.
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Topic: Did your school have Cliques? (Read 5987 times)