# Were you "popular"? What is "popular," anyway? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 21, 2005, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-you-popular-what-is-popular-anyway/291141 "2005-02-21T07:16:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monster)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-you-popular-what-is-popular-anyway/291141/41 "2005-02-23T02:06:43Z")
I think a lot of it has to do with the community you were in. I grew up in a poor to middle class community. Nobody had “money” or drove BMW’s to school. I was voted “Most Popular” in my senior class, and my family was far from having money. I was a cheerleader, but I never picked on anyone or was cruel. Most of the people in my school, I knew since at least 7th grade - and about 1/3 since kindergarten. I was also valedictorian of my class, so I was friendly with the “smart kids”. My high school only had about 400 people in it when I graduated, and I am glad because we didn’t have all the crap that lots of kids had to deal with. In my school, I think popular meant that you went to parties, were semi-attractive, participated in school activities, and were nice. ---
**Author:** ![Absolute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b2d939/32.png) [@Absolute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Absolute)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-you-popular-what-is-popular-anyway/291141/42 "2005-02-23T04:40:00Z")
I was never “popular”, because I’m not a sociable person to begin with, but I wasn’t made fun of either. Everyone in the multi-thousand student district knew who I was, because I volunteered my time to write a huge amount of custom software for the school that all the students and teachers used on a daily basis, and most of the kids who were assholes to everyone else seemed to respect me for that. I also showed up to school one day in a new BMW that I paid for myself, which shut up the remaining jerks. I remember once at lunch, I overheard some of the popular kids classifying the non-popular kids into categories: “nerd”, “geek”, “loser”, etc. Then they brought up my name. There was a brief pause, and a few of them said in unison: “boss”. I liked that. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![DoctorJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctorj/32/2904_2.png) [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-you-popular-what-is-popular-anyway/291141/43 "2005-02-23T05:47:51Z")
“Popular” was a pretty meaningless concept at my high school; we had 400 students and were the only high school in our little town, so we all knew each other since pretty much birth. I was friends with pretty much everybody, and I was generally well-liked, despite a penchant for arrogance. The girls were not, as a rule, into me, since I was overweight and geeky, but I also wasn’t trying very hard. I was not invited to the big wild parties, even though I would hang out with some of those same people at school; in talking about it later, a lot of them said they just never thought to tell me about it since I probably wouldn’t have been into it. There were two definite social groups in most classes; the best way I could describe it is the people who “fit in” and the people who didn’t. There was no sort of hierarchy or deliberate exclusion or hostility–just different circles. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-you-popular-what-is-popular-anyway/291141.md?page=2)