Strange tropes in modern media

[NickRowler]

I am someone who will check out what new animated shows are coming out, sometimes I might watch only the first episode just to understand what it is.

I noticed that in a lot of shows about middle or high school, there tends to be a girl (usually the “Popular Girl”), who is a TikTok or Instagram influencer and she is live streaming even at inappropriate times.

I’m an out of touch person in their 30s. Is this something that often happens in schools today? I know teenagers like to post videos, I am talking more of someone who brags about live streaming to 10k followers.

[cherrystark]

As another out-of-touch person in their 30s, I think it's more of a plot device than anything else, like when we were in high school - a person could send a text message to the entire student body. That never happened when I was going to school, but in stories, it's the fastest way to keep the story going. It seems like that's what happens with influencers in stories nowadays.

[NickRowler]

Some of the plots are strange too.

Like in the new Proud Family, Louder and Prouder, the MC becomes an influencer after making a drama channel and she tries to "cancel" other influencers. But then she gets caught in a scandal and she gets cancelled.

I get that it's a story about ego and abusing your power which I think it important lesson to teach kids. But the framing device is so odd.

I was trying to think of a similar story plots from older shows. I guess shows in the 2010s had plots about viral videos on YouTube and characters getting giant egos from it.

[darthmongoose]

You should try being a person from outside the US and watching these shows. I never had a clue what was real and what was a weird, outdated trope. When I started going online I had to ask people things like, "are the football team really that popular in school, and do they really walk around wearing those letter jackets? Are food fights a real thing? Are all the popular girls cheerleaders?" because in UK schools when I was a teenager, the sporty kids were a bunch of nerds or posh kids, and the "popular kids" (read: Kids who didn't get bullied because they bullied everyone else) hung out in the bushes, smoking and laughing at anyone who showed any enthusiasm about anything.

[cherrystark]

I remember those storylines or how they made it seem like cyberbullying meant that literally everyone online would hate you and that the abuse would translate into their real life. While bullying is always wrong, most people are pretty sympathetic to embarrassing moments and the school would probably step in if an entire hallway was covered with demeaning flyers about a student.

The one that made the least sense to me was in "He's All That". The influencer MC was canceled because of snot bubbles and became a school pariah. It never made sense because in today's age, she would have gotten major sympathy for breaking down on camera and her ex-BF would have been canceled for cheating. But they had to make the movie relevant, I guess?

[river121693]

I have 2 sibling in Highschool, and their social world definitely revolves around making or consuming tiktoks They do think of social media as a way to gain clout, but neither they nor their friends participate even close to the extent of these shows as far as I know. That said, we live in Houston. Teens in LA might be totally different.

Also, people who write these shows are probably out of touch 30 y/os too lol.

[NickRowler]

From my high school experience, the American Football team at the school were very unpopular mostly because weird kids would join it to look cool yet none of them could play football. I don’t remember people wearing letterman jackets. And usually kids wore their jerseys on days which had practice after school.

As for cheerleaders, I think the stereotype comes from the fact that most girls in cheerleading tend to be more involved in other school activities. A cheerleader was more likely to also be involved in sporting events, being involved in prep rallies, helping out at school dances, and maybe doing fundraisers. Most antisocial kids tend to be less involved in school events, thus the two might clash.

[cherrystark]

From my experience, a lot is overdramatized. The cheerleaders and jocks were "popular" but a lot of us had known each other since we were little, so they weren't seen as so "mysterious" and wonderful as they seem on TV. Other US high schools might be different, but we gossiped like everyone do but all big "drama" is more likely to come from your social group. I was more likely to be bullied by my school's Rachel Berry than the head cheerleader. I helped her with her homework when she needed it.

[IndigoShirtProd]

The funny thing about the whole high school hierarchy is that it's I'm pretty sure it was born out of American stereotypes from the 1950s that kinda got reshuffled.

I was so keenly aware of this in school, and noticed that the splits weren't down extracurricular lines, like sports or clubs, but down grade lines. Seniors and juniors, at least in my experience, were always more regarded as "popular" just because they had more time in the school. And then on top of that, people who came from the same elementary(primary) school and middle school (Jr high) tended to stay together. And thirdly, there was another degree of separation based on academics. We have an AP system here in the states we're kids can take advanced classes to prepare and further them in their higher educational career. So kids taking AP and pre-AP classes also ended up sticking together.

I mean, there was separation based on activity, but was pretty shallow. It's not like there were band geeks and football stars and they never spoke. A lot of of them were friends or were in both extracurricular activities and more. The only thing keeping people on the outside was being in Jr ROTC... yea that's about. Even the theater kids were smart so they had some degree of clout. But this is all my opinion.

do they really walk around wearing those letter jackets?

Yea they do. I know I did. At least in my high school, people who earned the jackets, wore the jackets. And Texans are sensitive to the cold, so it's great winter wear.

[LostKelp]

Speaking as an actual teenager - No. We don't talk about follower counts, most teenagers are not influencers, most don't even post to social media that often. Some people do the whole #blessed lifestyle blog and some are artists. But most of the time we just talk about our classes or movies or food.

But there is cyberbullying - I think one group of guys made a tier list for all the girls in our year. Which is a yikes.

Then again I don't have the biggest pool of evidence, I am an art/chemistry Nerd surrounded by gay people and the NZ equivalent of valedictorians. maybe the straights are more into social media. I wouldn't know. Also the NZ thing, maybe these things are true in America, I don't think that they are though.

[powerplantanimations]

The funny thing is I never understood that there's people who call these tropes outdated... I was punked by jocks lmao. They can get comedically aggressive which makes sense... stuff like football is tailor made for these people.

Cheerleaders has become an outdated concept in a lot of schools now. I mean, I think they still do it in College but in High School I think it caught on to the people in charge that yeh... that's creepy lmao. To make up for it, the sporty guys in my High School would just grab any girl as long as they're giving them sum sugar (probably the sleaziest in the school). According to my sister, they hot box in the bathroom lmao.

Food fights I have NO idea how that started. I sorta wanna joke about how that one.

I want to point out that I was in a STEM College Prep High School. Which shocks me that this type of behavior was even allowed. I was so naive I was like "OH BOY! THIS IS GOING TO BE WAY BETTER THAN THE OTHER SCHOOL! AFTER ALL! IT'S FULL OF NERDS LIKE ME! :B"

By the way is soccer (futbol) aggressive in the UK? Or are things still chill like you mentioned? Because OH MY GOD IT WAS HELL. The reason why I stopped doing sports until I was 19. The coaches here have drill sergeant mentalities.

@LostKelp People in my school are still obsessed with media and a lot of them are gay.

[darthmongoose]

By the way is soccer (futbol) aggressive in the UK? Or are things still chill like you mentioned? Because OH MY GOD IT WAS HELL. The reason why I stopped doing sports until I was 19. The coaches here have drill sergeant mentalities.

I don't really know what it's like now, but I imagine things are less violent than they were when I was a teenager generally, just because teachers need to be waaaaay more careful with how they work with health and safety regulations nowadays. Teachers used to get away with a lot more last century than now, and they also need a lot more training to even become teachers. The big angry teachers who screamed at kids who were all over the place when I was at school don't seem nearly so common now, and my teachers did a lot of things nobody would get away with these days.

Generally though, footie is the gentler of the "boy's sports" at school, more focused on skill. The scary, rough sport for tough macho kids is rugby. ...But it's complicated because Rugby is also the "posher" sport, so there are class dynamics in there too (because it's Britain, and class dynamics are like background radiation that touches everything but people don't like to talk about).

[abigaillmartin]

Even though I am part of the Gen Z generation I’ve never been into social media at all rather more like forums and wikis and watt pad and stuff. I am
Out of touch I suppose when it comes to those kind of things because I never cared. Even if I might have met someone who is an influencer I guess I wouldn’t know anyway.

I think there’s always going to be the traditional popular people wether social media dictates it or not.

[abigaillmartin]

Honestly as a person who went through high school in the USA yeah jocks and cheerleaders are just there doing their own thing. There were no cliques in my high school. I don’t believe in such things.

[abigaillmartin]

Also British secondary school is very different from American high school. Is the media trying to make the “American high school experience” the default?

It varies from culture to culture too.

The media needs to stop being American centric I don’t like it.

[abigaillmartin]

Food fights I have NO idea how that started. I sorta wanna joke about how that one.

If anything I had actual fights in the lunch room. Like literal punching, knives and kicking. And even yelling a screaming from girls in god forbid the sacred library. Maybe it’s a trope in these shows because I mainly see it in cartoons.

Also I’d love to have my characters get into a food fight! Wellington is a causality!

[abigaillmartin]

I see some of you guys have a British school experience. As an American who writes her stories in Britain I want to learn more about the British school system and life and experiences. I’ve done my research and of course had my cousins from England talk about it with me but I just want to know more.

[powerplantanimations]

I heard that rugby's growing in the United States due to the Olympics. Wonder if it's going to be like Football where a lot of poor kids use as a gateway to get into College... or maybe it's only in rich schools like the UK. With Rugby, what you said makes me want to take a deeper dive with it. Specifically since the UK finds that to be the posher/rougher sport. I remember my sister visiting the UK to play soccer against one of the rich teams and yeah... she felt some of dat class thing. I think she was also the only Mexican while everyone else on her team were from rich white schools which didn't help... but I'm not sure. Either way, yeah it'd be cool to compare the two.

As for the teacher thing, the US is DEF going through a similar thing. I didn't like teachers who screamed at me as a kid, but now I appreciate them... except for my Gym Teacher. What the Hell was his problem lmao...

[Legendofgenii]

@abigaillmartin UK here. Have you ever heard of the comedy show ‘The Inbetweeners’? The kids at my school were like that.

[cherrystark]

Another trope I don't understand a lot that I see used in high school aged stuff is everyone getting into Ivy-League schools. It's one thing if the character has been working and studying since they were six to get into a school with a full-ride scholarship, but you could have a slacker football player make it into Stanford without studying. People get into Harvard like it was the easiest thing in the world. From my high school, a lot of us got scholarships but they were $1-2K. A few got athletic scholarships but they were to state colleges and they STILL had high GPAs.