Basic Trope In High School, or junior high school, the popular kids are also the meanest, bullying the unpopular kids.
- Straight: Bob and Alice, two popular kids, bully the dorky Carol and Charlie.
- Exaggerated: Rich, handsome, athletic football captain and class president Big Jerk on Campus Bob and beautiful, seductive, slutty head cheerleader and homecoming queen Alpha Bitch Alice ruthlessly and relentlessly torment Carol the plain jane with dowdy clothes and Charlie the science nerd with glasses and braces, by injuring them, insulting them with cruel names, and embarrassing them in front of their classmates everyday.
- Downplayed:
- Bob and Alice don’t bully Carol and Charlie, they just snub them and act like they don’t exist.
- Justified:
- Popularity can corrupt. Once Bob and Alice become popular, they begin to look down on those who aren't as popular as they are.
- Bob and Alice used to be unpopular kids, until they become increasingly popular and they use their popularity to take a revenge against everyone else.
- Inverted:
- Bob, the Big Man on Campus, and Alice, the Class Princess, are actually nice.
- Carol and Charlie are the most unpopular kids because they're mean to everybody except themselves.
- Bob and Alice are evil, but instead of boosting their popularity, their meanness actually hurts their social life, making them unpopular with their schoolmates.
- Subverted: Bob and Alice are popular at school, but instead of being a Jerk Jock or an Alpha Bitch, they’re just a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who nice to everyone, even dorks like Carol and Charlie.
- Double Subverted:
- Bob and Alice are popular and nice...until someone becomes a threat to their power. Then they become evil and bully the person until that threat is extinguished.
- Bob and Alice's kindness is all an act to make people believe they're sweethearts, so their social reputation isn't ruined by their Jerkass actions.
- Bob and Alice hang out with Carol and Charlie to make them feel better about themselves.
- Parodied: In this school, being evil is considered as a cool and awesome thing. Even the teachers are Sadist Teacher too.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: The school doesn't have any kids who are popular.
- Enforced: "We need a believable bully for our protagonist. How about the popular kids?"
- Lampshaded: "Don't go anywhere near those people. They're popular and popular people will kill you."
- Invoked: Bob and Alice being badly ambitious to prevent themselves from losing their popularity.
- Exploited: Someone prevents Carol and Charlie from being social and popular fads so they can't be evil.
- Defied: The school staff takes action to teach children equality and acceptance to prevent them from letting popularity go to their heads.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Bob and Alice learn that their popularity will cost them everything. After crossing the line one times too many, they fail their classes, they are respectively kicked out of the football team and the cheerleading squad, the students eventually abandon them and side with Carol and Charlie, they're are expelled from school, and their parents punish them severely.
- Reconstructed:
- Then Danny, the New Transfer Student, and Erica, Alice's former Beta Bitch, become the new popular kids, thus, the Popularity Cycle continues, and Carol and Charlie get bullied again.
- Alternatively, when Carol and Charlie become more popular, these reputations also gives their power that goes to their head as well, and they have officially grown as bad as what they were treated before.
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