Goes Without Saying - popularity and being 'liked': she doesn't even go here

Episode Date: February 24, 2020

you can’t sit with us… jks you can. in this episode of Goes Without Saying, we (sephy & wing) explore popularity! does coolness equate to happiness? why are we all so desp to be popular? is it even worth being liked? has social media and the rise of influencers made us all obsessed with popularity? in this episode we talk about our own experiences with social cliques and argue about feminism and pretty privilege… speak your mind on our instagram! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello guys, welcome back to Higher Priestess. I'm Erin and I'm Persephone and we are here to restructure your self-perceptions, challenge yourself, question yourself, just make you an all-round Higher Priestess. It's the ultimate thing you can ask for. Does that sound good to you? Does it sound good you signed up? Have you joined the mailing list? I wish we had one, we'll set one up. Yeah, there really isn't a mailing list. But, enjoy this podcast for now. Yeah, we're working on it. So, if you've seen the title today's podcast is all about popularity i'm really excited for this one me too i'm excited for every single one i also notice that in every single podcast we say here's the thing i'm so excited for this one

but it's because we genuinely are we genuinely love this oh i can't wait yeah same so popularity well i might even start off with a little bit of you know a bit of a concept yeah yeah a bit of a concept bit of a theory uh this guy mitch prinstein love him psychologist mitchy mitch mitchy mitch yeah and he says that popularity can come in two forms status is one status popularity status And the other is likability. We've stolen my theory. Mitch, how dare this guy? I genuinely thought, okay, I've worked.

I've cracked popularity. I've cracked the code. Carry on, Mitch. We do this every damn day. We come up with something genius and then realise someone else came up with it 20 years ago. Outrageous. It's quite heartbreaking.

How dare this happen? At least we're along the right lines. Yeah, exactly. Well, anyway, so I think these two uh facets of popularity that mitch is proposing to us i think work either on a spectrum or as a dichotomy you could be really really likable and not have the status or you could have loads of status and obviously be a cunt yeah so let's unpack that well in my theory i've taken it a step further than this old little boy i have said that in childhood its popularity is based on likability it's who makes everyone laugh it's the class clown it's like childhood and then when you go through puberty

it becomes less about likability and more about power the idea of um coolness like confidence power influence and the people that are the most popular the coolest i guess that works into status and not necessarily the people that are the most liked yeah because usually if you picture the popular group or the popular group in like mainstream yeah fiction essentially mean girls yeah no one likes those bitches but i do also think you do get the status level popularity in childhood as well. Like in youth, like when you're like a real infant.

I think that can play out before. What is it, the naughty kid? Yeah. I guess, yeah. Or just someone with a big old reputation. Doesn't mean they're likable, but I know that they're popular. Kind of, they've got an older brother

that's like two years above them and they're both like getting in trouble all the time and like making everyone laugh and things like that. Are they popular though? Well, they've got status. They're funny. They're above them and they're both like getting in trouble all the time and like making everyone laugh well they've got status they're funny they're funny though they're like they're definitely intimidating yeah intimidation so it depends really exactly what you mean by popularity because then even i think we've both got this that we're both gonna say this from a biological perspective yeah biological theory, if you go way, way back, scroll back through history. Yeah, scroll back that timeline.

Scroll back through the timeline. We're getting this old pic. Right at the beginning of your feed when everything was grainy with the little vignette around the... Oh, white people still do that. People still do that vignette. It's not ideal. Yeah, and like sepia toned.

Never, if you're still posting in sepia, guys, delete your Instagram. It's over for you. Yeah, honestly, it's over for you it's yeah honestly it's done um way by way way way way back on the timeline if you were kicked out of the tribe you weren't the likable guy no and your posse said listen go get eaten by a boar yeah you're getting eaten alive like you're in trouble you need it's part of our survival is to be well liked and like protected by your herd yeah and when you don't

have that well another interesting thing within 40 minutes so your body has all of these dormant genes like recess whatever like dna yeah love it just you know they're just dormant they're just chilling out they're waiting it's gcse biology exactly they're waiting for their moment b7 i'd say everyone's b7 when you do like b1 b2 b3 i got you before b5 b6 and then b7 is when we go into the the helix i actually don't know where that is so these dormant genes are waiting around for their moment within 40 minutes of you receiving a pain a psychological pain for example been fired you've been dumped you've been insulted within 40 minutes all of these recessive dormant genes start waking up to protect you really yeah all your dna starts picking up like

i'm i'm using deans and gna interchangeably because i'm an anthropology and history graduate not a fucking scientist but you guys go i mean you've had a bad day you've had a for example if i insult you i don't know when that comes up, but pass reference. If I- That's out right now, that episode. Oh yeah, you're listening to it. Where, basically I said that Erin, I didn't say this,

there's something that we said, the worst thing that you could be called, the worst thing that Erin could be called is big fat lenses, because she wore glasses and didn't like them all of a sudden. That makes it sound really, can we cut that whole thing? I don't even like it.

We don't want to finish. It's like, I actually don't want to bring it up. Fuck. So you've had a bad day. You've had a bad day. And in particular, someone, for example, as soon as someone fires you, someone threatens you, someone insults you, you get dumped, you feel rejected. That dormant DNA is directly picking up as a response to trigger.

I mean, I guess it's your fight or flight. It's your body is working to keep you alive. keep you popular to keep you popular yeah because to be popular means that you can survive to be popular means that you are protected it kind of means it's like it's basically someone comes into a room says oh which one am i gonna kill it's like oh take the loser take that one yeah but it's not you're not gonna take the queen you're not taking beyonce out the room and killing her absolutely not but come on you might take the little yeah loser boy you're not going to take the queen. You're not taking Beyonce out of the room and killing her. Absolutely not. But come on, you might take the little loser boy. You're balling around with your herd in your tribe and an opposing tribe comes over and says,

we're going to kill you. Your alpha male is, or whoever, is going to protect you. If they like you. If they don't, sucks to be you. Honestly, it sucks. Good luck. Beheaded. Dwarves beheaded.

Dwarves beheaded. Survived. I also think going back to you saying about how popularity changes over time i definitely think with the introduction of here we go social media honestly let's take a shot every time we mention social media in the podcast and also take a shot every time that you steal my point which you just did it's disgusting because i feel like we're just so same page with popularity i think we're gonna get on to kind of how well i actually think we're not yeah i think really a bit anecdotal we'll see well it's like we say in an old podcast that we definitely have different ideas of cool

defo and it's that i we came to the bottom of it and it's that i kind of take i can be easily swayed and i kind of take everyone at face value and i'm not doing the digging of why their actions yeah yeah are appearing cool to me but i feel we'll get onto it but I think we'll get there yeah we'll get there well definitely I think with the introduction of social media obviously you can play into different parts of cool quote marks and also how the different groups that perceive cool differently like for some people anime is cool and you're the queen of the anime influencing world exactly and for some people it's like kind of just wearing the sherlock influencers i was gonna say like the fake tan like starbucks girls there's those influencers and there's the high priestesses exactly yeah there's a whole like mix of

the sherlock you know what it is it really is the like high school movie canteen that's where they sit yeah yeah and all the stuff you know exactly like i want to pop and rock and jam and break hip-hop is my passion honestly honestly yeah um and in social media obviously that's there for everyone to see or there for everyone to make a bit kind of what they will yeah and that's why for everyone to see or there for everyone to make a bit kind of what they will yeah and that's why i think popularity is changing as you say like with puberty and things like that especially with things like instagram and like the people that i know from the slightly younger generation so for example like i know maybe like a 14 year old girl

i mean they struggle over how many likes they're getting versus how many likes their friend is getting versus how many likes their boyfriend's ex is getting versus who's who remember when it was who's best friends with who on snapchat oh my god yeah and you could see yeah and you're streaked and people still do a streak now yeah it's very much a thing like with with the kids and no literally down with the youths the tiktokers i also think that's really interesting that now from our age and our perspective we can see we were saying this last time I saw you I find it really interesting that we can see the new generation find social media for the first time like the younger like if you're like 15 and younger

and how it's just completely changing yeah and also it's like never before have we been able to physically like tangibly measure popularity like this in numbers yeah yeah if that's what you regard as popularity you can measure it in a number yeah and i can literally say oh no but you have um you only got 200 likes on that but i got 250 so i'm actually cooler than you yeah but actually more people like me yeah and then it's like you will question whether that likability popularity is actually likability yeah just because it's a likable photo yeah doesn't mean that it has any likability in terms of popularity and it's not this is the thing your influence your coolness all of this stuff your power your status your

confidence i think it just comes so much down to confidence is nothing to do with how liked you are as a person it's actually not to do with how liked as a person you are it was a very popular guy but he was liked and hated at the same time yeah i mean so and then obviously that changes with time like it's not a physical thing there's nothing tangible really beyond confidence and even that can be questioned is there anything actually physical and tangible about cool or popularity i'm doing a quote marks when you take away the fact that it only relies on the perception of others and that is so vapid and superficial and subjective i think the

popularity or the search for popularity is all rooted in that you are putting more weight in the perception of others than your own perception of yourself because you just do so much shit to be cool in a school environment this is i did such not fucked up not i didn't like murder people oh yeah i did fucked up stuff to be in the group and i don't mean that i'm going around locking people in cages i'm just watching you i don't mean i'm going joe goldberg on them but i do mean that i would someone would laugh at this girl and i go yeah and that's not me that's i'm not that makes me feel bad in my own life definitely makes the girl feel bad it makes me feel bad in my own life because i go home going fuck fuck fuck that's

my perception myself but i'm not caring about that i'm caring about they thought yeah she's down this is she's down she's down she's down to bully yeah literally this is why i also think our perceptions of cool are different even now as 23 year old women outside of not just school but outside of education and i think obviously like oh okay so i'm getting i'm getting story time now yeah i love a chair this is the thing this is gonna get anecdotal because we have to go into our own perceptions of popularity and how that was played out within our the same but also very different school environments so if you know us from school i mean you're not welcome here you're not welcome if you're from my school because things are gonna get ugly were you popular in school was i my friends were popular i was always

in the popular group but i was on the i was only in the popular group because my friends were popular what made you not surely if your friends with popular group what separated you then from being popular how can you be in the popular group and you're not popular yeah i was always in the popular group then but do you think you were popular you're saying no oh it feels weird to no i don't think i was popular because i wasn't the one with the like snapchat oh i don't know i've always said this is weird because my narrative has always been i was in the popular group but i wasn't popular yeah because it's because you don't want to say oh guys i was popular well i was just about to say yeah i was pretty fucking popular or well there's more to it but i don't know because i okay so i really need to see i need to see someone else's view of my

school birds eye view of my school yeah which obviously then i mean here's the answer it's not a thing because it's so subjective someone could think you were really popular and someone else could think but i also think if you don't think you are unpopular then you're popular because i don't think you were unpopular so if you do think you were popular no if you don't think you were unpopular so i wouldn't say yeah so you do think you were popular no no it's not double negative if you don't think it's double negative but i'm going the other way no no don't go that way because it's not active it's like a passive feeling so i'm not actively thinking oh got you so i'm saying that i don't think i was

unpopular like i wasn't bullied yeah so that by default means you're more popular than the rest of you if you were unpopular you'd know about it and if you're in the middle you also know phil right got you you just you know if you're not in the'd know about it and if you're in the middle you also know phil right got you you just you know if you're not in the popular group and i all my friends were popular i was at the parties well that's what i find a bit hard to believe that all your friends are popular but you think you weren't popular that's a bit like do you understand what this is it's like i kind of get off the podcast like blowing someone else's like we need something should we explain the word yeah like that's google the definition because i don't think i don't think that can work because i also think people won't look people don't

look into groups with a fine-tooth comb they'll just see the click walking past i think popular group they're not looking going oh that one's in it and that one's not that one's in it and that one's not you just kind of dump people in their group don't question it and they're there then why don't i want to say i'm popular i was popular then because that means that there's some kind of like i think embarrassment yeah i think you prefer the story to sell of i was in the popular group but i wasn't really popular because i'm not really like that but you've just told us that you would go along with bullies to fit in with do you know what i mean like i'm kind of getting a bit lost i need sherlock like let's get to the bottom benedict cumberbatch, bring him in.

Don't, he's actually my worst actor. Definitely. I know that we've lost listeners from that, but I actually don't care. I think it's a bit scary, although I do, the only time I can suffer him is in Avengers. He's just private school boy 101. Whoa!

He is. And get out of my face, you and Eddie Redmayne, go hang out around Eton. Around Eton. Around Eton. Around that area. Just around the outskirts. Go find a nice little cafe around Eton and go hang out around there.

So why don't you want to say you're unpopular? Do you think there's a stigma there? I mean, wait, let me think. Is it kind of, is there stigma in adult life to hold onto popularity? Because popularity definitely changes in adulthood. I mean, everyone says, you've definitely heard this before once you leave school it doesn't matter if you're popular isn't it that's why it's like you don't

want to say you're popular because it's almost like it seems very futile and immature it's like the people that are popular at school are losers right well because mitch said this very interesting thing throw it back to him oh yeah my psychologist i was like who the fuck is mitch mitch informed me and he could inform all of you if you you know do a little google of him google me yeah mitch prinstein he says and i think this is something that we've all experienced or like overseen in our own lives from our small sample sizes that the people who had status in school in later in life are much more likely to not be able to hold a job not be able to hold a relationship more prone to depression more prone to depression more prone to disease

what and suffering yeah if you are not well going back to the biological thing as well if you have if you are one of those people who doesn't have just cut everything all of those little words i'm just throwing out there just cut them all yeah just cut them all i'm trying to think about how i would pose the question i pose the sentence people who don't have as many um like secure relationships are more likely to suffer with diseases why statistically why would that possibly relate well it has something to do i guess the natural disposition of if you have secure well it's true think about put it into practice in your mind someone who is very secure in their social life has a good you know home life family life they have a nice balance between work and play they can speak freely work and play it's like they're going to the park they're going down those slides but someone who has a very balanced life a balanced life where you know

they can open up to people they're very secure yeah your body is much more ready to fight off whatever is going to be thrown at it it's almost like your immune system is is built for that i love it if you are someone who is already suffering with god knows what on your own you're gonna find it a lot harder because your body no offense is already trying to find reasons to shut down no offense if you've got no loving relationships but it's true but you're more prone to disease it's like you will die yeah but yeah so i think that's why we think as adults there's like a little bit of not even shame but just a weird maybe perception about saying yeah i was popular in school because you don't

want to imply i had status and not likeability and i think actually in my experience going over to my anecdotes and i think our experiences maybe were quite similar then in that i was definitely in a group i think here's the difference i was definitely in the popular group some of the people that were really popular were not popular from likability they were popular from status and i definitely didn't have so well i would have had status but only from my likability because it was and that's not just me thinking do you yeah i'm really nice because little things like superlatives at the end of school yeah i was nominated i didn't win but i was nominated one against she beat me who actually later cheated on her boyfriend am i beeping that name not very nice of you nicola yeah um nominated for nicest girl whatever and i very much would have been

different to you in that if someone was laughing at the bully if someone if the bully was laughing at someone i just there was there was no way in hell i would have laughed i could but and that's not i'm not a fucking saint at all i'm not a saint and i don't obviously there's maybe someone will come forward and be like you fucking bitch you were mean to me in school but i actually think and it also speaking from people who i wasn't really friends with at school now who say like yeah you were always like nice to me you were always one of the nice ones in school but that was definitely where i got my status almost being the kind of defender that's not true though because you're a very pretty girl and i think that all of those things friendship groups and popular groups are all based on aesthetics right and i think that's part of

why it's quite not shameful because it's kind of like a huge privilege to be popular like i wouldn't ever change my experience you've stolen my point yeah it's a huge privilege yeah it's like yeah okay i'm at the parties i'm near the top of the food chain here it's a great place to be but also your relationships are in some way based on aesthetics 100 we fit together we fit as a squad together and we look good together and also this is how the boys are going to treat me do you want to be a part of that yeah the boys are going to fancy you the girls are going to want to look like you and also you won't feel um you'll feel confident to speak in a in a lesson well i definitely think along with i mean that's why i think more so i was on the likability scale rather than just like pure status because i wasn't doing anything I was not like overtly loud or I

didn't really challenge authority or anything like that I was very much like you know going along going with the motions but I definitely would have been recognized more as like a likable person rather than a status person but I think everyone would think oh yeah I'm probably on the likable no they wouldn't really yeah because I know people from school who know I definitely was a cunt in school and I was popular for it I was a cunt and i was nice though i mean i would yeah there were definitely in my most insecure kind of year seven year eight for sure i would kind of go along with a bit of the someone's laughing at someone i keep quiet i might then do a bit of a smirk like blah blah but definitely in my year nine ten like yeah yeah in sixth form i was so fucking done with

popularity well come on to it i was literally fucking i kind of backed out of the whole oh yeah the whole squad yeah um and the squad disbanded well the squad very much stayed together but me and a few jumped ship yeah yeah i think as you grow as a person and you're growing and you're seeing okay this world of popularity is very small or i'm the top of the food chain in a very small model you're kind of then you figure out your own morals and you kind of think okay i didn't really love that i laughed at that like i'm not gonna like you're definitely not a bad person not you but just one is not a bad person for feeding into that food chain and that hierarchy of popularity i think it would take an exceptional person with very extreme self-confidence

to know that you can stand up for what's right when you are getting the extreme privileges of you're going to the party that well i think that was what made me most insecure as a teenager i think that was what made me like allowed me that space to be that exceptional person quotes because i naturally had the disposition and the privileges of white privilege pretty privilege i was able to come in as the new girl yeah and very much like slowly but carefully assert my place within the group as someone that no matter where you are in the middle super unpopular top of the top of the range top of the range kid like top of the hierarchy kid you can't fault that i'm not nice yeah that was and i remember as well like joining oh you can fault me on nice

i joined a few different schools and i literally remember thinking to myself and i must have been about 10 when i moved and i thought all you have to do is because i was coming in new and i came in new a few times so maybe i um it was like about learning kind of like, oh, okay, well, I'll just navigate the best way to do this. And I think it is a bit of- Yeah, the politics of the school. Yeah, the politics of the school. And I also think it's a bit of a Libra thing

and definitely a Libra rising. Yeah, yeah. Is to almost like people please in a way that you know that everyone is comfortable around you so that you know that you're safe. Because I remember having this really particular thought when I was about 10 thinking, you just have to be nice to people and then they'll be nice to you obviously it's not the

reality that i learned later on but that was always my thing is just go in and be nice and that's it job done how naive you were how naive i was yeah because it didn't always work out that way but it made sure that i just wouldn't i would i just it just didn't happen for me like in that way i also think my mum was really like would always be like that's not right like you have to stand up for people i think because she always made sure that i was standing up for myself it's just the libra thing of like knowing what's right and wrong and like it actually like riles you like nothing else it's about yeah it's like i need to serve justice whether i'm a 13 year old girl in the middle of maths, I'm serving justice today. Everyone else can be serving looks.

I'm serving justice. I'm serving death. Justice lifestyle. And disease to those with no one. Thing is that was not me. I feel like that is very rare. Obviously I've been a cunt in my life. I'm not trying to sell a brand

that I was this really angelic person because that's obviously obviously not true but definitely if we're talking about Mitch's spectrum of likeability and status I was definitely nowhere near status in regards to when likeability and also a lot of that would have come down to the way that I looked and that's just that I think that's it you can I think almost you could afford to do that i could yeah because of privilege i definitely had a huge um like there was definitely a safety net around me a quite a large radius that i could go one way or the other and it would probably be all right just because i looked a certain way well i almost feel it's like because you were entering schools new it's almost like you know from the way you've been treated by others that you have the privilege of being pretty that's just and maybe the privilege of being new and exciting for a bit

you're like an exotic yeah for a while yeah so you come in and you know your top end anyway i did backfire on me once oh really what being an exotic fruit yeah because i turned up and the old muddy fruit the old like the kind of classic like banana or an apple the winter you know she's old news by now yeah yeah one of them who was kind of in the popular group also in like a subgroup of the popular group and she had full status and no likability no offense to her now she's definitely not listening and she's not i don't want to say she's not a princess just in case but anyway she's not she wasn't a princess at the time you introduced her as a muddy fruit yeah just like do you know what i mean like an old old, like bottom of the kind of...

Bottom of the pile. Bottom of the pile. Yeah, just the stand, or just, you know, just an apple. It's fine. Nothing wrong with it. We've been apples. An apple a day. Yeah.

Keeps the doctor away. Everyone was quite, well, I guess people were kind of excited by me, but she made it very clear that she didn't like me. And I went up to her and I said, why don't you like me? are crazy in a new school yeah oh you're nuts because she commented on one of my facebook posts or something but one of the boys i was 13 maybe at the time i think you've told me this have i yeah i think so no but i love it so well i'll tell you guys well yeah um if this is just a podcast of things me and you know everything else is presumed one of i don't know i was on when your facebook wall was kind of the liveliest place to be oh my god you know what i mean it's like 2009 maybe yeah and you wouldn't

reply and as a comment you would you would go over to their wall the weirdest format how funny is that you go all the way over type it out then they come back to you and it would be all over you're clogging up people's facebook feed anyway so i'd done a status but god knows what i could only imagine what the status was about really like x factor or something all of my snow day xd i once did one do you remember the show take me out yeah i did one and it was i put this on my status on a tuesday and i said oh my god take me out is on soon take me out it was on a saturday oh isn't that sad that's a sad day when you're that excited that's your existence when you're counting the days for take me out no

literally at that time such a peculiar time like strange in history anyway so i'd done a weird old status we can only imagine what it said and this guy one of the popular boys i would say commented on it and i think this was maybe before school had started everyone knew that i was going to be going oh god oh i'm so glad i never had to do that yeah it sounds bad well anyway so i um i did a little status he had commented on it we were having a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a laugh and a joke. Nice. And she had commented something mean. I actually really can't remember what it was,

but maybe like, I actually can't, I don't know, something like a bit of a dig maybe, or maybe she said it directly to him or something. I don't know. But essentially I kind of thought, who's this fucking bitch up in my space? Yeah. So I turned up.

Within the first week, I went up to her and I said, you've got an issue with me i would love to know what it is oh and she said and she was i mean she's aggressive she's confrontational she's loud and you marched over and she's definitely got status you've got an issue what do you think it is and i march over with my with my halo all the boys behind me um with my army of kind of boys behind me not really but it was just me and her and i said what's your issue and she said i just don't like you and i said is there any particular reason for that she was like well i just find you like i just don't like it i just find you like annoying or whatever i just find you annoying i just don't like you

and i was like that's really strange okay whatever you want yeah we were both kind of in the same in this popular group um obviously i just got there everyone was still being nice to me and she didn't like obviously now as a 23 year old girl i know for a fact you see erin me walking in and and fucking up your dynamic that you've set up and you think fuck her this intimidating gal well you see someone turn up new and it's like hang on i've been an apple all these years and you want to turn up like a pineapple well it's absolutely not no it's even more it's like she's had a dynamic with this guy for five years now that she's been building she's been sewing the scene she's actually likes this guy she's been next to him in maths laughing at him and blah blah blah you show

up he's now writing on your wall yeah and she's going what the fuck i put in five years of work yeah now you've shown well now there's just a more exciting brown haired girl it's not great is it sorry about it but anyway that was yeah that was i think a good example of like just how popular it's just so jarring i think when you're in it she was just so intimidated to have that be threatened and i was no threat in any way i was playing a very different role and much more subdued like yeah and i just didn't i didn't want her place at all and we were different but she thought oh fuck there's another pretty girl coming in who's gonna mix up my dynamic and i'm not keen on that because it's all about her survival yeah and we weren't friends until i would say like the end of year 11 when everyone starts getting a bit sentimental and

when the end of year 11 do you mean like the end of school when everyone starts mental in mind it stayed definitely did it stayed divided till the end go to the bitter end to the bitter end the divisions remained intact but that obviously doesn't mean that like she was a mean girl and i was an angel girl it's obviously like just popularity plays in in different ways like it's not do you know i mean i think it's very different i think it runs alongside morals and morality but it's not and sometimes it overpowers but i don't think it's totally there's no room for morality in the common structure of popularity in a school if you're trying to be popular you

kind of have to put your morals out the window oh well they do they go they naturally go because it is a lot based on desperation from the people that i know that put a lot of emphasis or used to put a lot of emphasis on popularity at school and i don't know any of these people anymore because as i said me and a few did a runner in in sixth form and we're just like yeah we can't even but it's people that need it they like actually need it and they can't they can't separate from they can't look outside of the system you know and it's like i could very much see i think throughout school yeah what's going on how this is being played how people are maneuvering social climbing and i used

to kind of outsource my friends quite a lot like i would be like here's my group i need to be in this group so i get to go to the parties and i get all the stuff but i also don't like these people so i'm gonna outsource a little bit but then what i would also do is i'd outsource someone from outside of school no outside of my group just so i'd look down the chain a bit maybe yeah or or kind of a cross version of the yeah got you horizontal horizontal but down on the hierarchy yeah outsource someone be great friends with them then they'd come in they'd get obsessed with the system of popularity they work out oh this is what you've got to do move on to the next and then it's like oh fuck sake now they're in it they can't see what we're doing okay another one and it's just i think it would be a thing of people

once you're in it you almost can't identify the game well this is what and just when you were saying that it really um triggered some thoughts for me in the sense that how we view cool and popular now because i am very much i think because i've had that foundation of security from all those different things that we've discussed i don't go into any scenario now trying to be popular and i think at the time i didn't really either because i knew it was kind of a given i knew that there was some security within the way that i looked and the way i'm like yeah do you know i mean just what i could get away with i knew that i'd be all right i had also i had the previous experience of it's kind of i mean if you know that you've been the manager somewhere you know you're not going in as the fucking like waitress no in your new job like you know you've established your role although

when i went on french exchange in year eight, this did actually, I was very shocked. I remember being incredibly, incredibly shocked. So I, as we've said, have always, as I said, was in the popular group but wasn't popular myself. Turns out we've done a big workout. I think you were actually popular. Turns out I was popular. Congratulations!

Oh my God! 15 years too late. I'm so happy to realise it's all I ever wanted. A piece for a Gretchen, really. Yeah, I'm breaking up to realise it's all I ever wanted a piece for a Gretchen reader I'm breaking up my crown guys but I very much knew my place went on French exchange and this is why it's so based on just the culture

everything and what's considered beautiful what's considered cool and what's considered aspirational and turns out everything I was serving was not not influential you've got the wrong end of the stick what's considered aspirational. And turns out everything I was serving was not influential, was not as- You've got the wrong end of the stick. In rural France, they didn't give it.

And also at the time I was very- We were like, no, no, no. That's when I know, no. We are no. They were very much shaking their head going no at me the whole time. But I was very much, it was like my at me the whole time but i was very much it was like my i would say i was in year eight year nine and this was a time when i was quite

into like vintage clothes oh cool kind of 50s diner skirt no no no it was more kind of 60s 70s kind of was my vibe that's quite strange like what would you wear i really like this like a little shift dress oh cute yeah i can show you something because i was quite into but it was all kind of from charity shop i was doing it kind of wrong like i had these like vivian westwood shoes i got for my birthday i said in my body image one that i was very obsessed with like vogue yeah yeah and it was very performative and it was very strange but i was obsessed with these vivian westwood shoes i got for my birthday and they were they smelt of strawberries and they were black kind of short wellies with a little like bow on them but like the bow was like plastic it was yeah yeah got it they were weird

and primark like ripped them off and i was like so angry i was like yeah i had these vivian wetswood ones but i wore them every single day without fail until they fell apart literally fell apart at fireworks event oh you need to go back remember remember the 5th of november the day the vivian butswood shoes broke i'm so gutted but so i turned up in france in my little essentially in your wellies short wellies the stunk of strawberries yeah walking around and i was wearing like a big like jumper and like a little it was like all kind of weird you know I used to have fishnet like fishnet it was like the whole thing so I turned up in France in the middle of france somewhere little village honestly they did not know what to make of me and i was used to being able to kind of pull this look off because my friends i think had

validated had kind of accepted me i was in that group and also when i say i didn't like the people in my group i still am the people that i'm still friends with you know showed up in little france rural france my outfit and i remember i was with a few other people and they were probably parallel and there was another guy that was i would say quite below i'm hoping he isn't because he's genuinely so sweet but he wasn't the coolest i remember and we were all parallel but he was a bit below not gonna lie he wasn't that cool but i think now he's he's doing all right he i remember the girls were obsessed with him i remember thinking why there's no one obsessed with me here like i'm kind of supposed to be the one i was waiting for my moment your moment

you're the exotic fruit yeah why am I being treated like an old melon down the back of the thing? Like, no, no. Let me be the Kiwi. Like, it's not happening, though. So I walked in. And I remember we were playing basketball, like, with the boys.

I was like, okay, I'm playing basketball. This is your moment. In my little outfit. Like, I've got this nailed. And he was, like, getting, like, He's getting shots. All in one. Shooting hoops.

Honestly, he was shooting hoops. And I was like, and the boys gave it to me. they're like right go on you do one obviously miss it was just like and in fact like usually it's like you can play the cute card but it's like it was like i was the weirdo that was a language barrier like the loser that missed the hoop not the cute girl that's like everyone's oh don't worry yeah it was just oh it just wasn't good and i remember laughing my head off because i have the innate confidence of when I'm going, I'm going back to something I like. But for that guy, it was like a sweet taste of,

he was probably Googling like how to move to France. How to maintain this popularity. But it was like for, in France, a little nerdy. I wonder if he picked up on that in the same way that you did. Do you think?

Definitely. He was loving it. He was absolutely loving it. Oh, it's a time of his life. No, I think. He's like got it etched on his like bedside counter like oh paris 2008 oh it was not paris near leon well that definitely goes back to the thing of like popularity changes over time because also it's just all about your perception

and i think go i definitely saw this play out at uni like as an adult in your adult life it's really weird because it is that hybrid of you're an adult or supposed like as an adult in your adult life it's really weird because it is that hybrid of you're an adult or supposed to be an adult but you're also in that education structure that just enforces competition and yeah clicks popularity right now we're not at uni that's what you keep saying yeah don't remind me god um but popularity is not visible because it's like wait you're not looking at how many people i'm texting you're not like no one's seeing it i'm not walking around with these people every day the groups have disbanded in my life yeah exactly but you can literally physically see it at uni you can the parties are in front of you it's in the library you can see the groups

you can just assume and fill in the blanks do you think people oh okay well you see a certain someone in the library that's all down to it's all about your perception they're selling a narrative i can't even tell though i don't think no i don't think you can tell i i would love to work out why my perception is wrong or is it's considered to be wrong by erin because i think i'm quite a good judge of um at uni we used to have this thing where if something happened, and not just with popular, just anything, anything plays out, an event, a situation,

a scenario, a conversation, and Persephone was the only one who saw it. It's very much like, well, that's a shame because I would love to have seen the reality of it for myself. Because I'm like, guys, did you see that? The tension.

Yeah, and everyone else is like, no, no, no, okay okay what actually happened was very clearly like a b and c but you're on an x y z i don't know i remember we had these people around to our house and i was like 100 it was these two friends and i was like she is in love with her ex-boyfriend 100 without a doubt she is in love with her ex-boyfriend and you were like no no no i think you've read it wrong because actually and it's like oh okay like or it's like actually you missed the key part when this happened yeah it's like you actually just what you zoned out when the crucial was said but i do this is the thing i kind of i'm quite good at putting together the pieces but the pieces are all slightly misplaced you're really good at creating a story i'm incredibly creative i'm a novelist you're an incredible creative you've got a great creative mind my grandma would say you've got a wonderful imagination you really do and i think it does

fuck me up slightly well isn't it me and your dad say that you've got a very skewed perception of the world just very particular in the way that you see things you've got a very unique image of the world yeah that's it and it's there's nothing wrong with that i want to know what it means but it's very hard to explain it's just i know that i know if i'm ever out and about with you and something is happening i i know what you're making of it oh my goodness he pushed her right over did you see him? oh my god I think a celebrity just walked past

my sister always does that where she's like oh my god I think that was Daniel Craig it's like no my brother swears he saw Daniel Craig in a car in a motorway and it wasn't well it's just like

I think maybe my whole family has it or like oh my god that was Miss a motorway and it wasn't well it's just like what the chance I think maybe my whole family has it or like cars and motorways that was Miss Newton but it would spice up the day it would and also it's like you kind of think it might have been there might have been your Miss Newton you haven't fact-checked but they looked a bit like Daniel harmless yeah Daniel Craig as well I definitely think now, like into the adult life or into the uni life, it definitely is evident, not just when someone's seeking popularity, but it almost is counterintuitive in that when you have that desperado,

you're trying to get your numbers, you're trying to get quantity over quality. That to me is like, you're very uncool. That's the most uncool thing yeah but i am very much fooled because i have seen there was this guy at uni that i used to throughout my entire three years at uni he kind of was like around and i was quite like oh he's quite cool i would always be like oh he's quite a cool guy like he had that kind of laid back kind of like he'd been traveling in india for like five years like five months

he's from india i've been traveling in india for the past 23 years no he's like oh my gap year my gap year and i was yeah he's disgusting but do you see what i mean guys like i can see i can see he's obviously disgusting person and he was like an hour late i was doing a presentation with him. He was an hour and a half late. That's not cool. No, no. He's not cool.

I know. Yeah, because the reality of that is absolutely, like he's kind of slobbing around. He's got no social life. He's got no friends. He's got nothing real in his life. He did say he was going to a barbecue later in the day. Yeah, but he's an absolute slob.

He probably hasn't had a shower in like three weeks. Yeah, but I don't think there's something about that. There was something about this vibe of this boy and I was like, okay, he's definitely trying incredibly hard. At something. At something.

But I'm kind of buying it. I can see the effort. More for you. I can see all the effort. I can see him trying. I can see him social climbing the whole thing. Maneuvering his look.

Like controlling the narrative of how people perceive him. But I'm quite liking'm curious i'm not curious i don't want to open the curtains and see all the effort that's like incredibly embarrassing but i'm liking the projection like of the laid-back guy like yeah okay i can just buy it for a bit and be like yeah you're quite hot no it's it's just like a bit too fickle. I also think at uni, like you can really feel the age, ages of people. So fucking much. And you can just feel,

and also the thing is, you can see who's mature and immature, but beyond that, and in adult life, I think this isn't just university. I think across all adult life, you can feel in whatever way it plays out, who was popular and secure in school.

And that I think is really telling. Yes. It's really telling because you look around, see the behaviors that someone might pick up if someone's super desperado for a crew all the time and is like i need this guy to like me i need this person to come here i need to be living with these people next year because then i'll get in on this thing and i need to go to this party even though i hate the people who are doing it blah blah yeah if you're just climbing it's because you've never felt the comfort of being at the top do you know what i mean you've almost felt it yeah you've had the taste you're almost like the guy that was in france for a week saw it yeah and was like oh wow

like these girls are loving me i want this and then you spend the rest of your life climbing and climbing like yeah trying to replicate that feeling yeah you want to be playing basketball again fake oh completely should we talk about how fake the top is but i have i have a friend who i went to school with and she was never ever in the cool group ever and she we openly talked about this and she was always saying that she had she had a very secure group of friends like genuine real friends they weren't based on aesthetics they were all genuine friends and they very much and she always talks about like oh well your group looked quite terrifying like we had like the scary people in in there too

intimidating yeah to a group that and i always say to her if you were in one of those conversations like of the vapid vapid conversations of oh my god it blah blah blah it's like yeah mate you're better off well that's the thing it's like one of those groups of people are genuine friends and the other groups aren't and i think it goes without saying who's who like but you get to go to the party and she was like oh yeah but you actually go to the party it's like yes but when you're at the party you have the good picture like yeah you get the pic and you might talk to the guy i remember someone saying this is at university someone was like and this isn't this is what i mean it's nothing on that person someone was like oh my god i used to look at that picture like of you guys although i don't think that's such a cool pic i would love to recreate this pic i just think

that's such a cool pic like you look i'm really jealous of that pic and i think that's such a thing especially with social media is you see people you see their picture and think that's so cool they look so good there their friendship looks so fun that whole night i wish i was there i really missed out and blah blah blah you create and it screams uncool it's probably the most uncool thing what's so awful about it is it's like you have filled in the narrative well because in that picture of me from first year or whatever that someone said i'm so jealous of that picture with people i'm not friends with any of them what i am but i'm not really friends with any of them, well I am, but I'm not really friends with many,

well not recreate, but she was like, I wish I had like a fun picture, that picture was just so cool. I'm really jealous of that. But I guess, yeah, that's the sort of how, that's how social media works. It tricks you into thinking, we all know this, it tricks you into thinking-

Everyone else is cool. That everyone's having a great time and you're not. Kind of like my friend that was saying, oh, well looking in on the popular group, it looks like you guys are having a great time and i'm here with my loser friends and we want to be in your group but it's like actually you've got a real friendship you've got a good friendship and also we're even from our cool group but us now in our adult lives looking in it's like well then the cool group is now like bella hadid do you know what i mean yeah it's about her name bella hadid it's so wrong is that her name is that yeah yeah that's her name

someone mentioned her i actually could not show you a picture i couldn't pick her out of a lineup in adult life i think popularity has just completely changed like i think it's just measured completely differently and i think yeah it's completely it's measured completely differently like overall in the sense that things are different now with socials and things like that but also it's just measured completely differently person to person literally and that's just it so you may as well just be cool for yourself and fuck what everybody else thinks because it's not real but you do get the privileges when you do fit to society's version you get the privileges yeah but the ultimate privilege i think is being able to live your own life for you none of these privileges

really none of the benefits of popularity to me compare to me just being myself that's the ultimate happiness absolutely exactly i'm also the biggest fuck you of popular yeah yeah absolutely absolutely i understand the draw that popularity has 100 that you get to be accepted by a large amount of people if we're not looking for connection acceptance and popularity um creates a fake version of that it feels and it feels very real and everyone else is sure thinking god well she's living the dream and you're thinking but those aren't the things yeah exactly but they're not the things ultimately that make you feel anything yeah exactly no

completely sad reality that's the tea and that's the tea on popularity guys it really is i hope this had everyone thinking about their own like childhood experiences and like popularity and youth and like you can laugh about the people on facebook who were cool in school but are now nowhere to be seen and if you've picked out like one specific pic that you're like oh god they just always i always used to look at that picture and think oh god they're living the dream it's like just know that took five tries to get that yeah and you'll have your own cool pic one day don't even worry about it no the pick it for you believe the pics you've got coming up you're gonna believe i think don't

do it for the pic exactly the pic is the least yeah if you're taking the pic you're not having the fun pics or it didn't happen no yeah no it's true if you have nothing if you had pics nothing happened yeah that's what i say that's what i said well there you go guys there you go you heard it here first thank you so so much for listening i really hope you guys enjoyed this one because i actually found it really really interesting i think it's interesting i always love asking people where they were how they view their group like and how they think that's changed stuff so go ask some people yeah definitely also leave us a rating if you're on apple leave us a review because we're just trying to be popular oh yeah yeah did you not know this is we're doing a podcast to get popular

we really need to get popular on apple to fix our algorithm we're trying to get everything in our favor we want want the privileges and popularity. Oh yeah, influencing. It is just popularity. I didn't even say that. That's a whole nother podcast. We're going to do one on influencers. Let's definitely do that. I love this.

But I really hope you guys enjoyed it. We had loads of fun recording. And leave us a rating. See you later, guys. See you later. Bye.