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One other thing I've noticed is a lot of the writers are younger. The ones writing these shows are in their mid 20s-early 30s a lot of the time. So they can draw from their own experiences and still be relevant easier than someone who is in their mid 30s-40s writing those movies in the past. They can draw on person experiences and social media.
wanna bet a little over 2 years ago all the girls in my class had hydro flasks and wore oversized T- shirts, pucca shell necklaces, birks and messy buns and would go around saying sksksksk and save the turtles now they are all e-girls
hey. junior in high school here. even though there’s people that could be called “ e-girls “ or “ soft girls “ and all that, people don’t hang out because of aesthetics. usually it’s just people you’re friends with or who you do extracurriculars with- like i hang with friends from theatre and tech but we all have different aesthetics and interests as well. but like, we’re friends because we like who we are and our humor. we have some similar interests but we also have our differences . the vibes are just good overall in school
Agree, I graduated last year, and I feel like it's down to finding ppl that get u. I had few freinds in highschool, not because I had an "aesthetic " diferente to my classmates , but because I just have a hard time finding ppl that I vibed with. It's not about what they like to do, it's more like if I felt comfortable voicing my thoughts and opinions to them or if I could just sit in silence with them without feeling uncomfortable.
Still feel like it only matters if you're attractive and get at least decent grades. Maybe participating in sports or other extra curricular activities. Nothing else means much outside of movies
Yup, an even tho e girls are popular or whatever on tiktok school still treats emos, goths, grunges, alts, punks, ect like shit. Im a grunge-alternative girl and I get bullied everyday even at summer camp 😂 people do shit like write “go die” on my locker and stuff . It doesn’t bother me, but I’ve seen some emos get real hurt abt it and I feel bad
I agree, cause usually if u're attractive get good grades and play a sport (cause sadly fit=attractive) then u're probably popular. Although, and this might just be my experience coming from a public school, I feel like in private schools e girls might not be very cool but like in my public school, being emo was cool and the popular kids were emo, so it probably comes down to the amount of money the ppl have. Correct me I I'm wrong.
@@phucbich7581 Also to quote a TH-cam comment: "My personal definition of an e-girl/boy is the kids who bullied the goth/emo kid, and then years later ask them for fashion advice"
I feel like the cool kids, cheer leaders, jocks, and nerds high school depictions were always out of touch. These high school movies were usually written by older people who have to try to remember what high school was like and need to fill in the gaps with the shallow glimpses they get from looking at their grandchild. The standard high school movies have always seemed like high budget fan fiction and not an accurate depiction of high school life.
As someone who was a teen in the 1980s, I can say that in my experience, the teen movies/shows of that era were stylized versions of our actual social lives. The cliques and their interactions were basically accurate - just heightened for narrative effect. Even in my rural parochial school, we had the stereotypical popular rich girls, jocks, geeks and nerds, and outcasts. I'm glad social structures and interactions have changed since then. It seems better now.
As a 'young' Gen X-er, I do feel like we had these kinds of cliques (jocks, cool kids, nerds) until I got to my performing arts high school in Manhattan in the mid-90s, which was like being dropped 20 years into the future (just super progressive and inclusive). But my other friends' high schools were the norm, not mine. The Hollywood depictions were played up but not totally foreign, in my opinion.
I’m 16 (also American) and I think the only high school movie that is close to realistic high school for me was Lady Bird. But maybe it’s actually like Euphoria for some people and I’m just a loser lol
Ladybird and Booksmart to me seem like the most realistic portrayals of highschool. I especially liked Timothée Chalamet's character in Ladybird, because it showed that the cool, deep, dreamy rebel, who we are used to see as the love interest in most teen movies, can actually be the biggest asshole in reality.
Yeah, same and I'm not even American. I went to a private and to a public school, and in public school the kids in larger friend groups were more "emo" and "edgy" while in the private school I went to, the "cool" kids got the best grades but they were also the sporty kids. I feel like, just like in lady bird, the things that are considered cool depend on how much money the ppl that go to these schools have. It might just be my experience though.
It's interesting that the creators felt like being "popular" was important when they were growing up. While I did recognize some of the cliques from mean girls/10 things (band nerds, theater freaks, athletes, FFA kids) when I was graduating in 2005 lots of the kids belonged to multiple groups & the homecoming king was a funny/smart guy from band who didn't play any spots. My graduating class had 500+ as long as you had your friend group it really didn't matter what everyone else though
i'm not from america, but my secondary school life was somewhat similar. everyone has their own cliques and friend groups, so no one really cares about being popular. it's more about who's nice, got good grades, and got good connections.
I feel that. I went to an arts high school and the top two students were a string player and a visual artist. Everyone had their own group or several groups. You obviously had the musical theater kids, the art kids, the band geeks, and the dance kids. And in each art division you had preppy folks, emo kids (me), metal heads, and just pm ppl into -insert whatever- it was nice
Wow literally same, down to the homecoming king being a funny band kid that wasn't in sports. If you hadn't listed a year that was 12 years before my graduating year, I'd have thought we went to the same school. Maybe it's something about having a large class. My high school had about 4,000 kids in total and my class was the biggest one they'd ever had. When there's just so many people in your class, you're more likely to find a lot of groups that fit even smaller groups within them. Like each large extra curricular activity had multiple groups of friends to choose from. Popularity wasn't a focus because there were always new people to meet. It was genuinely hard to know everyone.
It's highly regional too. Raised in San Diego and felt that my high school was exactly as you say. The star quarterback was also a lead star in the thespian club as just one example. I was an outcast and a varsity jock type. BUT. I moved to Kentucky the second half of junior year....and the "popular" and social hierarchy was very much alive and embedded in the student culture. I graduated high school in 2006.
americans really like to categorize people. it's crazy. dividing people into groups with specific characteristics in school is wild for my non-american mind. lol
Frr as i was watching this video i was trying to find what categories (like nerds, jocks ect ) are students put in my school and generally in my country. I couldnt think of any. We dont have any literal translation for any of those words either. We may have some social hierarchy at school but its not that divided. There are obviously plenty of bullies but its not the same as those portrayed in american movies. If i could try and categorize people in my school it would be just 'popular extroverted ppl'(who could be good or bad students) and shy or just not as noticable student with not as large social circle at school. They also can have good or bad grades it doesnt matter much. (Im in this group lol)
The groups in my high school growing up where mostly based on ppl that had shared interests/classes eg athletics, band, theater, art, skateboarding, FFA (farming), AP classes (advanced placement) but frequently these groups overlapped & ppl where in multiple groups. With over 500 kids in my graduating class (2005) the ppl who didn't share my interests never even made it on my radar. Where y'alls schools super small or did y'all all take the same things? It seems odd that y'all wouldn't develop different interests/ passions...
I think 21 Jump Street (2012) does a great job subverting the typical high school hierarchy. When they go back to high school, everything had changed from when they attended.
the part where dave franco was like "bro you don't care about the environment? that's fucked up" got me laughing so hard because my friends and i really said something like that during my secondary school years.
The teen tropes became a parody of itself. Shows like awkward and glee did a good job on subverting teen tropes. Sadie Saxton was the mean girl but she was also insecure.
Glee was great for the first 3 seasons when it played as a musical comedy. After they won regionals and a few of the main cast went off to college it started taking itself too seriously and went down hill. Season 4 was okay but after Cory died it really lost its direction and the songs got worse too. I think Awkward stayed pretty solid until the end and the time jump in season 5 was done very well.
All this hierarchy and “popular” vs “un popular kinds”, made school kind of bizarre. For years I kind of believed school workers that way, but no it was me thinking that, in reality school is waaaay more chill. _Nobody cares what you do_ all this gossip and drama is not real in school (at least here in my experience in Mexico) aside from some typical romance here and there. The only thing that seems to me kind of true is the prom thing in USA, is _such important party_ , here in Mexico is not that dramatic who you are going to prom with, we don’t even have “prom queen and king” (like… adults show off “I was prom queen”… who cares?) here is more like “oh, party, if my friends go I’ll go” and some couples taking the opportunity to go together.
The main reason prom is so big in the US is that it's the closest thing most kids here have to Quinceañeras or bar/bat mitzvas or other coming-of-age parties.
Lol. People aren't that one dimensional. This is what happens when you learn about what teenagers are like from the internet where everyone has a persona
Yeah its been like that for every generation. Its just the media, they puff stuff up for entertainment value. Everything before and after us will continue to do that it’s nothing new.
That meme scares me because, while I don't want to grow into another grumpy old man, I don't want to come off as this to younger kids. I want to be something like Stan Lee, the Cool Old Guy trope.
I feel like all these modern tropes are just all about aesthetics, appearance and performatism. Its rarely goes deeper than that, and never sticks around for too long either
Have American high schools ever been like what's portrayed on screen? This is something that really confused me because I've never spoken to a person my age (26), online or irl, who belonged to a "designated" group in high school. I always assumed the high school environment in movies and shows was an extremely exaggerated version of the writer's high school environment. I have no idea if the current high school environment is anything like what is portrayed on Tik Tok, but I really hope it isn't. It genuinely seems so exhausting and (ironically) extremely preformative and fake.
Honestly high school is so exaggerated on screen compared to real life. I just graduated this year and honestly it's very chill and pretty easy to avoid drama. The only thing that is stressful were my classes.
@@zurizuri1421 I couldn't have said it better myself. In the end you don't hang out with your friends because of their specific interests, hobbies or look, you just like their personality and get along with them.
Depends on the school you attended and where you lived. I've attended two types of high schools in the 2000s. Graduated in '08, so I'm sure it has changed. The first one was an all-black high school near the inner city of Chicago, Illinois, USA. There, you were made to feel like an outcast if you didn't act like everyone else. I used to hang-out with all of the black people who were deemed "white acting", and what was deemed "white acting" was anything that didn't seem to be what a typical black person was into, such as anime, rock music, gothic outfits, video games, reading, etc. We were called "lames". Other groups, like those with Autism or other neurological backgrounds, also hung out with us. The other groups that did clique off was based on the activities they were involved in, how attractive they were, and how well they fit into black culture (using the latest slang, embracing black humor, listening to the latest music, wearing the trendiest clothes in hip-hop, etc). The black students that were super involved in activities in the school stuck together because they knew each other and met each other through those activities. The rest of them liked to start drama and cause fights out of boredom and would get popularity points for beating someone up. These types might have also been in gangs outside of school. Most of the cliques were formed based on similar interests, even if no one realized cliques were even being formed. It was subconscious pride or tribal behavior. The other school I attended was a multi-ethnic school, filled with more diverse people. The cliques were more strongly like the ones I saw on TV, though no one went around stating what "trope" they were. Everyone who was on the cheerleading squad stuck together because they were all on the team together. That's how they met each other, and they hung out the most with each other. It was just that simple. We didn't have as many online communities back then, so who you hung out with at school was your squad. Those who weren't in an after-school activity at this school either struggled to make friends, unless they were friendly, extroverted, and talkative, or they hung out with the friends they grew up with. There was one group of white girls that formed a group based on the girls they grew up with in their neighborhood. They were racist, classist, homophobic, and all had bad orange tans. I remember one tried to make fun of my friend's hair, asking if she needed to borrow their shampoo because they could see her dandruff at the top. They even bit off a cookie and tried to hand it to her (because she never ate lunch, since hers was too early). Luckily, my friend laughed them off and ignored them, and I put them in their place. The only people who "felt" the effects of these "cliques" were the people who didn't have friends and wanted some. They are more than likely the type of people who would have grown up to write movies about the stupidity of cliques because they felt left outside of it or felt bullied because of where they were told to fit in.
my freshman and sophmore year in the first high school i went to here in Georgia was pretty much like a teen movie, everyone was divided into cliques- it was really noticable during lunch and i had a friend at every single table
Same. I'm from India too and now that reels are there instead of TikTok, I don't use those either. Also, I feel most Indian teenagers are getting hurt over things happening in America and don't really realise the blatant racism in their own country. This is just my opinion. Let me know if I'm missing something.
same, primarily because I have notice that TikTok is addictive just like Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. I'm currently trying not to become addictive with TH-cam, but gotta say that is kinda hard.
I feel like this is based entirely off of social media, NOT reality. I doubt the millennials making these videos truly understand what modern high school is like
Yeah that's what I was about to say. I feel like most of these tropes literally only exist online and on Tik Tok. My little sister is in early highschool and I haven't really seen anyone that would fit into a tik tok aesthetic at school functions or anything.
I am a millenial and i definately don't understand what modern high school is like but.. i'm willing to believe you when you say it's not tik tok lol. I volunteered and taught a guest class with junior high/high school student recently, . HONESTLY, the biggest difference is how much they all actually want good grades. Like actually worrying about college and careers as much as they do is the biggest difference I saw. Of course when I was in highschool the economy was good so we were all much more optimistic. Even the kids who shipped off to iraq after graduating seemed to feel they had a good deal at the time.
Different styles and cultures are more accepted now than ever. But I can safely say having worked in a high school environment for the last 6 years, the old school tropes are still in high demand. What I've learned in my time since being a teen is the more things change, the more they stay the same. Teen culture evolves, and yet is cyclical at the same time.
Are kids nicer to each other now? Or have they just moved on to new things to bully each other over? Like, I assume (and hope) kids don't get bullied anymore for being gay, but are there other things now instead?
@J. J. These days I'd describe things as more 50/50. Like there's definitely a bit of political polarization and everyone tends to hang with more likeminded people. The old teen tropes are more lose, they're still there but dated and people are friends with whoever unless it's a personal values thing. So i'd say if you have different religious beliefs or beliefs on cultural or political things or mental illness, the most strife is caused 👍 unless you have certain beliefs but don't force them on people 😊
@@j.j.3759 Everywhere is different. In general, I would say that society has moved the needle forward enough that it isn't just unanimously shamed to be gay. At the same time, you still have your cliques that'll judge. There's also whole communities that are still unaccepting. In my experience, male teens in general shame homosexuality at least on a minor level(myself included). But I've come to learn that most of that fades away with time and maturation (as it did for me). But really social progression is dependent on the community surrounding it. Teens still mostly mimick their parent's ideals at high school age. So it really reflects the county they grew up in.
I was in high school in Canada 2 years ago and it was definitely like 21 jump street for me. It was about people who could do it 'all'. Be caring, smart, part of clubs, and have lots of friends, go to parties, be young.
Super informative on white American teen culture. Doesn’t translate to Black & Latino culture. Pretty pressure and hyper masculinity/ aggression are WAY more dominant forced stereotypes for teens of color.
Ehhh most people are just like this online. Vsco girl trend died out in 2019 and id say more people are “alt” or indie than e girl/ boy. Im not sure how many hs tropes there are except popular vs kind of popular vs not popular
As someone who graduated this year, this isn’t very accurate to what high school is like nowadays lol. Most of the “troupes” or types of people the video named are just fashion/aesthetic influences lol
True. Only like, less than 10% of people in my highschool do tiktoks. Most of us are pretty chill but the sad thing is that people in the future will look at these videos amd think that's how everyone in our generation acted. But one thing that you can tell the future generations is that you graduated during a pandemic. Congrats girl!
Old movies = Bad, New movies = Good has been a running theme for The Take for a good while now, but this video might be the most explicit expression of the idea.
these were trends that were definitely really popular in 2019, but now with the pandemic things have changed. also these types of tropes tend to be more for performance than reality. basically i think high school is never portrayed correctly in movies and tv lmao
As a kid from the 80s, we didn't really have those tropes either. In my high school, the mean kids were on the academic team, and most of the athletic/cheerleader/popular kids were actually quite nice and well-liked.
I think people should know that when America was deciding colors to give to baby boys and girls, pink was initially considered for boys as it was a lighter shade of red, which is fairly universally seen as masculine, example:Aries/mars god of war. Also while the rest of the world has somewhat followed suite on light blue for boys and pink for girls for decades it was seen only as an American thing.
Before the 1920s to 1940s, pink was universally seen as the more masculine colour, and baby blue as more feminine. This kinda shows that colour preferences aren't an innate thing. We're taught that pink is for girls, from a super early age, so that's what we believe. But it's entirely a cultural phenomenon.
I read somewhere that it was because of the pink triangles used for gay men in 1940's Germany that the switch was made. I don't know if it's actually true, but it does make sense to me.
What this video doesn't talk about: 1 in 5 young people struggling with mental health. A future of unemployment or underemployment. Hell, even the relentlessness of cyberbullying or how we grew up with social media and it profited off of making us feel bad about ourselves. The fact that we don't want to stop climate change because it's trendy, but because we will live in a hellish landscape longer than you.
I hope Gen Z learns from us MIllennials. They will soon burnout if they keep trying to be everything to everyone. The problems are vast, complicated, and overwhelming. You can't do anything if you're trying to do it all.
Something that goes unmentioned here about the gym bro is this blooming culture of body positivity and genuine care for positive masculinity. Looking for advice and sharing progress is earnestly celebrated for all genders and body types by the typically-depicted-as-exclusionary gym bro these days, and that's really cool
I always thought the same 😂 Idk the extent to which these types of tropes exist outside the US but even then I’d assume it’s mostly an online thing 🤷🏾♀️
@@nananoodle5020 It is indeed an American channel that produces videos mainly about the American experience (which for me, as a non-American, is one of the major charms of this channel), but saying that TH-cam is an American platform is just ignorant😂 Although TH-cam is indeed owned by Americans, and was invented by Americans, it’s really such a popular and important platform in almost every country in the world, and it feels nonsensical to say that it’s an just an American platform. There are many people in my country who are addicted to TH-cam without even knowing English (because there is so much more content than just simply American - English content). Although our modern world is indeed very influenced by American culture, America is not the center of the world🤷♀️
Yeah. I see no difference between these tropes and the old. Just a new name and coat of paint. At both my high schools your last name/lineage is all that truly mattered. Finally, what is on screen (film, tik tok, etc) is not reality. A screen is a funhouse mirror to reality. Saying it indicates reality is like saying a melted pool of ice cream indicates the shape and size of the once frozen scoop. And then this video ends with two moms jumping back and forth between reality and just such a screen.
While I agree with you that TikTok is not reality, it definetly reflects today's reality a lot more closely than the High School experiences of older screenwriters which shape today's teen movies. And it's not exactly about how new the tropes are, It's more about little tweaks (the new coat of paint) to make them slightly more niche, and the new relationships and hierarchy between these tropes. They used to be few and separate. Now they are many and all mingle with each other, which reflects not reality itself but the diversity of identities that exists in reality.
as someone who’s a sophomore in highschool and only being in highschool during the whole pandemic it really changed how school itself and the “hierarchy” changed because there’s not really a thing like popularity anymore, since we mostly keep in our own groups within our classes
I’m glad I missed this version of being young/high school. Now young girls are expected to look and dress like they’re 25 year old models. Has anyone seen the prom videos on tik tok? These girls look like they’re going to the met gala and not a high school prom…..The pressure is insane.
Yeah I agree. It seems like there is a massive amount of pressure to behave and look like an adult and it's taking away their childhoods far too early. They have the vast majority of their life to be an adult they should enjoy being a kid while they still can. It is definitely sad to me.
I feel like MTV's Awkward. was, if a very small, part of this transition. It put teenagers in cringey, real situations and further explored how social media and reputation can influence your high school experience
If they're sexualizing themselves, isn't that more empowering than when popular movies sexualize 25-year-olds pretending to be teens? Sure there are creeps in the world, but I blame the creeps for that and not the teens who are expressing themselves however they choose. Forcing desexualization can be just as oppressive as forcing sexualization.
you remind me of people who say "i was born in the wrong decade" because "music nowadays sucks"... things are, at least in THIS way, getting BETTER, not worse. young people are more engaged with and influential of "the conversation" than literally EVER (and it does manifest as "sexualization" for some people , but they're in charge of their own instagram accounts and, frankly, should be allowed express themselves if they want!) Euphoria isn't "more sexualized" than Skins before it or Dawson's Creek before Skins. it's more _stylized_ , but it's not more messed up. teenagers have been "too sexualized" for a while. Britney was a lot younger than most of the really big kpop stars.
I don’t necessarily agree with this, I live in Ireland and I just finished secondary school(high school), people just hung out with people they got on well with, it wasn’t as stratified as this video makes it out to be.
Yet the video doesnt say it's for Americans. The video says it's about teens today and majority of teen stuff is from America so where do teens like myself from England or other countries go to look at teen culture, exactly America.
@@toomuchinformation Yes but Teens whether it be from Ireland or Australia are watching mostly the same tiktokers as American teens, the world does not revolve around America.
So today, you can discover and celebrate your uniqueness rather than trying to fit into cliques. Internet has made being a teenager more liberating and less conformist and I absolutely love that. Amazing Take!!🔥🔥
exactly like when i was in hs there was only cool people and uncool people, and now they can choose from a variety of aesthetics the one thats more true to their personality
Yes and no yes because almost all styles that exist are represented and no because now you're quickly ashamed and humiliated as a girl we w tell that we are different and we are called pick me and basically disrespected
As long as said teens don't become obsessed with the popularity of their non-conformity or garnering attention on social media... It's great to connect with other people over the random thing syou love as long as it stays pure.
In real life, in my experience, these cliques didn’t even matter. Most people were part of multiple groups or couldn’t be labeled. Today in real life, gen z only acts like these stereotypes online for their persona page ok tiktok. They do so because they like different “aesthetics” as a trend. There’s no more cliques the way we think of them in the 80s, it’s more about identifying with aesthetics, vibes, or certain online trends.
As someone who's 22, I wonder if what they're saying could be accurate because tik tok was not a thing when I was in high school. But I doubt it, because what Was depicting us even a couple of years ago in movies was way off from the actual regurgitated tropes that was our reality, so I can't imagine that highschoolers today feel like Euphoria and tik tok personalities are what they're surrounded by.
I'm a millennial, These already existed in my era just the media changed the name to make it seem separate from this generation and to become a trending topic. E-girl = emo (we all had social media, online gaming and emo style back then) Soft Girl = feminine girl (many people were like this) Visco girl = named after an App to help promote it, but generally a typical 12 year old girl. F Boy = player (we had loads of them on social media and offline)
Nah. I think there is a difference, just like punk and goth and emo had different "vibes." Rebellious vs. dark and brooding vs. undiagnosed mental illness vs. the internet aesthetic. Also, gender roles are challenged - soft boy isn't sissy boy, f boys are shamed in the name while players are not. What it comes down to for everything is that it's no longer a clique or hierarchy. Aesthetics are just aesthetics, and expression by these people changing their clothes for fun means it's no longer about creating a pre-packaged identity or social aggression has been replaced with compassion + health.
@@MissMiserize A lot of emo boys were basically soft boys. And before emo boys there were also some feminine tropes amongst male goths (such as the aristrocrat goths, who favoured frills and finery over ripped muscles & jeans, etc). During the Punk era there were also many punks who defied gender norms. Players were also shamed too; people might feel physically attracted to them, but nobody actually saw them as real relationship material (quite the opposite, this was the kind of guy you'd warn your friends about to avoid). The movies of the past makes everything seem a lot more cliquey than real life ever was. I do think that a lot of the tropes have largely just been repackaged over time (rather than evolved). Even the new tropes are heavily commercialized (every single one comes with its set look, lifestyle package and more that you can buy and subscribe into). There is more mainstream conversation now about certain things (gender, the environment, etc) but a lot of these topics and lifestyles were already being heavily discussed amongst alternative circles before they become more widely adopted by younger generations.
Hey, The Take: Could you please continue to put the media title and year on clips, even after you've shown it once? Many of these movies and series feature ensemble casts, so the average viewer may not be able to tell that the first clip is from the same title as the proceeding clips, as they often don't feature the same characters, environments, and etc. I would greatly appreciate this. 🙏🏻
I think I mostly disagree with this video but I love this content and really hope you keep making stuff like this! Love talking about teen tropes and the archetypes!
Tbh a lot of these aesthetics are just evolved or updated versions of the previous generation I’d say to wear whatever you want that makes you happy because there will be a time when it becomes a trend and goes out of it lol
I used to go to this school where you were only popular if you were a social media addict, always on TikTok, and if you had style just like everyone else. I don't have social media and I dress very eccentrically. Glad I'm going to a different school this year where I can actually make good friends! I ended up making a dramatic farewell last year thanking my haters for helping me discover how strong I am, and man, I felt so good!!!
It could be my experience, but I feel like not everything is down to a trope, it cause some ppl don't have the money to have an "aesthetic" or dress trendy, or simply don't want to, and some ppl just get by in highschool and feel like they don't belong anywhere, not because of tropes, maybe just because they feel like it's not their space. Some ppl just don't find a ton of friends in Highschool that understand them.
Yep. I didn't belong anywhere. But I made it through. I really wanted to be emo, but I wasn't allowed to and didn't have the funds to dress and look how I wanted. But I grew up and realized I don't have to look the part to like the music. Once I left hs I had actual genuine friends. They were different from me and shared some different interests too, because we weren't friends for that reason, we were friends because our personalities meshed and we enjoyed each other's company
I'm European and the hierarchy at high schools where I live is pretty nonexistent. People mostly hang out within their groups, and the most "popular" ones are therefore those who socialize and know the most people.
high school now in 2021 is very different than back in the early 2000s, back then high school was all like partying for the popular kids but being bullied for the so called "losers", im a freshman this year and honestly kids in high school are so nice they are so easy to talk to and its easy to make friends, the teachers are chill too, oh and ofc its not all about partying, you study a lot so im glad high school has changed somewhat bit :")
i love this channel and i’ve been an enthusiast of it for a while but i’m not the type of person that leaves comments, however this one has made me emotional, and proud of my generation. i was born in the year 2000 so my hs experience was still like the old ones until maybe my senior year, and seeing all these movies that’s come out after i graduated have been so important to me. my generation has truly changed the game on so many things it feels pretty surreal to see it play out in big things like movies and mainstream, largely recognized medie. thank u for making this video it has been delightful
Books are the best. I didn’t (and I still don’t) watch movies much, although I did read and watch a lot of kids tv - but not the trashy kids tv shows, the .....yeah the darker stuff, programs with either magic or sci-fi themes. Yeah, I never really got into the teen movies. And as for the other comment about “franchises”. I’ve only seen one and a half of the LOTR movies but I’ve read ALL of the books.
I like the discussion in the end. Movies from older generation might set the rules but it’s life online, in classroom and cafeteria define high school life today
I'm not saying that this video was missing a large piece, but there is a large piece of school life, that of bullying, which is still happening and even TikTok ain't helping with that.
Thank you! Thank you actual highschoolers and recent grads for voicing your opinions and weighing in on this topic that is super relevant to you!!! Most of you seem to be saying the same thing. That you hang out with who you vibe with and aesthetics and lifestyles don’t define your friend groups. That’s actually amazing!!! And means this video is kind of on point or at least that show is changing for the better. Honestly, we wouldn’t have defined it as articulately as you but I think a majority of Americans, regardless of their age would describe a similar high school experience. Especially in the past few decades. So your viewpoint is so relatable! However, we ourselves could not shake the grip cliques had on our social discourse. And I just have to say I can’t believe The Take left out Goths and Preps who have been a core “clique”, in media and real life, just like Jocks and Nerds for the better part of the last ~ 50 years. And of course there’s a bunch of other groupings that exist. And they really are and always were aesthetics. Anyway, the fact that the new or old aesthetics don’t define your socialization is freaking amazing!!!! Once again, analysis of your generation gives me hope for the future!!! It sucks that so many more “mature” adults exaggerate your gen’s negative qualities (it’s happened to every one of us) and make you and your trends/ characteristics out to be dumb, undesirable, and just somehow fundamentally flawed. Hey everyone in society, let’s do less of that and more of just chillin with each other and seeing things for how they actually are! The comments on this video, from this generation of teenagers has me so hopeful and happy!!!
What annoys me is the they think anyone who uses black with a color is a e-girl, like people who says dracula is a e-girl, or the hairs, i have half black half blonde hair but I'm not an e-girl and this annoys me 😡
To quote a TH-cam comment: "My personal definition of an e-girl/boy is the kids who bullied the goth/emo kid, and then years later ask them for fashion advice"
I find hope with the knowledge that teenagers are taking climate change more seriously, now. Back when I was in high school, I was among the few who cared, and started an ecological group to tackle school problems regarding pollution. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much commitment from either (most) students nor teachers. It wasn’t all bad though. We did manage to bring some inspirational workshops and some participation in activities, but I trust current teenagers will do better.
No one cared in my school either, then I literally chained myself to a tree to protect a local park from being turned into a CrossFit gym, it had legal grounds and I pushed to sue the developer based on the code of the environmental agency that protects areas within 0.5 miles of natural water sources. And I didn’t like to shower more than once every 3 days. Those were the days. Haha
@@fcv4616 Yes I did! And I also began a project to investigate how the government was covering a transnational beer company that is sucking up all the water in my home state in México. After a Law School professor and me went after them and leaked information to the media the news broke and the commissioner admitted that we will run out of water by 2030. Nothing happened though. I mean people panicked and all but the beer company is still going strong.
@@andreblackaller3560 We have a similar problem where I live too. Also, I live in Mexico too :-D One of the projects we tried to do before graduating was to make the school hire services from a rubbish pickup centre, instead of relying on the usual trash pick up regulated by the state. Part of the rubbish would be delivered to recycling centers in CA instead of being all sent to dump yards. Plus, we convinced the staff to install different rubbish cans to separate the litter, create some workshops, and other adaptations. Unfortunately, the school’s authority changed his mind in the middle of the process for nothing else but ego. When I told him that the school’s efforts would be certified depending on the reviews, he refused to have the school labeled as “dirty”, wasn’t willing to work hard to make the changes, and stopped our project midway. Classic moment when people want things to change, but expect others to do it so they don’t have to put in any effort.
No one cares now. I do care since I was 13 and most of teenagers literally don't care. People generally don't care about environment, regardless of generation. They will only care about it when it will be too late. Thanks to capitalism and ignorance.
I went to school in New York City (LES), and I never saw "popular kids" "nerdy kids" or any tropes portrayed in movies. Everyone just hang out with whoever had your lunch period. Any other new Yorker with a different experience?
I got to school in New York too tbh my school has so many students like nearly 4000 so there’s never really a group of people with a certain aesthetic I’ve seen girls and boys who wear the trendy clothes and stuffs but in reality everyone just sticks to their friends because there is way too many people to know or focus on no one really cares about what you wear
Oh, yeah, a Breakfast Club reboot for 2021. Five high school students spend Saturday detention tapping away on their phones, not uttering a word to each other.
In my country, no school has such defined groups, much less are there popular people. Either they are your friends or they are strangers and you do not care about their lives, also bullying is something little seen in the way it is seen in American movies, if you insult someone they will not remain silent, at the exit of the school is going to wait for you with all its friends to beat you up. So bullying is really strange
@@Missmagazinebura Not here, they may have a large group of friends, but those of other grades are not interested in their lives. In the movies it seems that the whole school likes 1 person, that could never happen
@@Joanbueller007 In my country neither, not like this, but bullying is still a thing here. Not everyone has friends to come and beat that bastard up. I had to rely on my little brothers friends once. :-D
@@Joanbueller007 XD don't worry, I'm okay now. And I'm happy with myself, including my residual akwardness. Thanks for your compassion, but teenage years are a bit of hell for a lot of people. Most of us make it out alive and up to better things. :)
As someone who lives in Kazakhstan. We always had a dress code, a uniform. And i always loved it. I loved wearing a blouse, a skirt and a jacket. But sometimes I wonder how would everyone dress if there wasn't a dress code. Cause I know I would dress the same.
This is insightful as always, but I want to confess to a weird feeling of mine. Weird to me, anyway. Sometimes when I watch videos on this kind of topic, I end up feeling down or depressed. The only thing I can think is that it makes me feel… old and irrelevant? Which I COMPLETELY understand is not the point and that it says a lot more about my own issues than anything else. I can’t help but think that if I am feeling that way after watching something like this that maybe not only are my feelings true, but maybe there’s something else going on with me. Why am I only looking at this through the lens of my own life? This has nothing to do with me. And there it is. This doesn’t have anything to do with me. So… yeah. Circular emotional thinking. I don’t really know that I want or expect and answer. Maybe just to know if I’m alone in this feeling.
you're not alone. im in my 30s and when i watch vids like this abt gen z not only i feel old and miserable, but i also start thinking how i felt in my teens and 20s. comparing to how gen z are portrayed on social media and in movies my life seems so boring. i feel like i lost all these years for nothing and missed lots of opportunities. well, that's a lie. you're comparing yourself w ppl who exist only on tv screen - and almost always their characters and way of life is extremely unrealistic - pretty, smart, outspoken, partying etc. or those ppl on social media you don't even know - they also have their own struggles and may feel lost, depressed, alienated. try not to compare yourself to them, it only makes you miserable and unsatisfied w your own life. you're alright, you're not boring or irrelevant.
I got to say as a gen z person currently in high school I can say that these archetypes mostly only exist on tiktok (however i'm not on the platform so what the hell do I know)
I've attended two types of high schools in the 2000s. Graduated in '08, so I'm sure it has changed. The first one was an all-black high school near the inner city of Chicago, Illinois, USA. There, you were made to feel like an outcast if you didn't act like everyone else. I used to hang-out with all of the black people who were deemed "white acting", and what was deemed "white acting" was anything that didn't seem to be what a typical black person was into, such as anime, rock music, gothic outfits, video games, reading, etc. We were called "lames". Other groups, like those with Autism or other neurological backgrounds, also hung out with us. The other groups that did clique off was based on the activities they were involved in, how attractive they were, and how well they fit into black culture (using the latest slang, embracing black humor, listening to the latest music, wearing the trendiest clothes in hip-hop, etc). The black students that were super involved in activities in the school stuck together because they knew each other and met each other through those activities. The rest of them liked to start drama and cause fights out of boredom and would get popularity points for beating someone up. These types might have also been in gangs outside of school. Most of the cliques were formed based on similar interests, even if no one realized cliques were even being formed. It was subconscious pride or tribal behavior. The other school I attended was a multi-ethnic school, filled with more diverse people. The cliques were more strongly like the ones I saw on TV, though no one went around stating what "trope" they were. Everyone who was on the cheerleading squad stuck together because they were all on the team together. That's how they met each other, and they hung out the most with each other. It was just that simple. We didn't have as many online communities back then, so who you hung out with at school was your squad. Those who weren't in an after-school activity at this school either struggled to make friends, unless they were friendly, extroverted, and talkative, or they hung out with the friends they grew up with. There was one group of white girls that formed a group based on the girls they grew up with in their neighborhood. They were racist, classist, homophobic, and all had bad orange tans. I remember one tried to make fun of my friend's hair, asking if she needed to borrow their shampoo because they could see her dandruff at the top. They even bit off a cookie and tried to hand it to her (because she never ate lunch, since hers was too early). Luckily, my friend laughed them off and ignored them, and I put them in their place. The only people who "felt" the effects of these "cliques" were the people who didn't have friends and wanted some. They are more than likely the type of people who would have grown up to write movies about the stupidity of cliques because they felt left outside of it or felt bullied because of where they were told to fit in.
As someone with a totally different background (I grew up on a different continent, after all), but the personal experience of not wanting to go where I was pressured to fit in, I wholeheartedly agree - it felt like bullying, and me and the others with similar experiences took to art forms we could perform alone. A lot of writers and authors are, for various reasons, the ones who sat alone at lunch or managed to have very few friends, barely ever got invited to the parties everyone went to and never got notifications about "everyone's welcome" events until after the fact. For a variety of reasons, people who do well with words on paper tend to not do so well with social structures in closed enviroments. Exceptions, of course, do exist in the thousands. :-) So, yeah, these cliques do look a lot more rigid from the outside than they look from the inside, and those tropes ignore the reality of peer pressure conflicting with personal agendas that can lead to a whole host of complex situations.
Kind’a sad that High School Musical was not referenced even once when it was a whole movie breaking free from your typical high school stereotypes and cliques and not sticking to you status quo.
In South Africa there wasn't much of these tropes around when I graduated high school in 2008, even though we watched all of those teen movies, shows and Disney. There were the well-known kids but they weren't thought of as popular/special and kids didn't seek out their company or approval. The athletic kids were also normal. The chess, math and tech kids hung out with the well-known or athletic kids - I was one of them, a chess & techie. I do think things are changing now in my country though. Kids have these trope aesthetics going on, probably because of better access to high speed internet and much more movies/shows around than before for them to watch.
The thing with this teens (from all times) is that they are so superficial. Like, Ruby Granger, who is not evrn a teen, she's not interested in knowledge, she's interested in appearing intelligent. For example, she reads 200 books a year, and most of them are short stories and children books, like she's only interested in the number of books... Same for all the asthetics: it's about the looks
I agree with the whole activism thing cus a bunch of kids online think they can change the world by saying wat causes u support. But it isn't like that teenagers need to understand that u can greatly benefit the world by focusing on ur most important cause and doin irl stuff for it. Then just posting vapid I support this stuff u should too on social media. This is coming from an 18 yr old btw.
@@uzma3758 completely agreed. It feels very fake after a while and it's not doing much unless you're actually someone with power (influencers, these days). Coming from a 16 year old.
Part of the blending of hierarchies, or types, I think comes FROM the parents, who grew up with popular/unpopular experience and are striving to teach their kids to be more thoughtful and accepting of others.
Okay Old white woman here. I was a Navy brat and went to 3 different high schools. There were definitely cliques in all of them, but I'm not sure the high school experience was accurately portrayed in media. Most of us just lived our lives, which included going to school. We had friends in and out of school. We had crushes who may or may not know we exist. We had friends from our classes, our clubs, our neighborhood, our churches, temples, and synagogues, our parents friends kids, etc. There were popular kids, sure, but we didn't build our lives around them. I'm not minimizing the effects of mean girls or bullies. There are those for whom these movies and tropes were a mirror of their lives. But I feel most high school kids just view it as one part of their lives. This isn't something new.
Senior year here. So during my highschool experience what i learned is that as long as you are open, speak and socialize with people you will equal to everyone
I went to high school from 2002 to 2006. I always thought about the fact that my high school life looked nothing like how high school life looked in even the most contemporary of teen movies. We didn't really have a popularity or clique problem at my school. Everyone just kinda did whatever they wanted and hung out with whoever they wanted. There was quite a bad race problem, though. That's another story. Looking back, though, if it had been a thing back then, I'd definitely be considered an e-girl. As it was, I was the "president" of anime club.
Skins (UK) was one of the earliest teen-centered shows doing what so many are now-- challenging tropes, friend groups composed of kids from every social group, etc. so shocked they didn't mention Skins on here! I'm in my mid-20's and I am struggling to understand teen identities today, major props to the producers of The Take for trying to unravel it for those of us past HS lol.
The up-side to Gen z being able to tell other Generations who they are through Tik Tok, as opposed to letting older generations spin narratives through movies, is that they get to shape their own narrative. The down-side is they will never have an objective identity, and it will be hard to define them when Generation Alpha comes into the mix. When we begin to shape our own narratives subjectively, we can only see how we personally feel, which makes us changeable and fickle or less defined. When an outsider gives an objective observation, we see how we come across to others, which forms the whole picture or summation. Both information is important when passing history over through time.
As an geriatric millennial (35) my school days preceeded the rise of the internet and social media and it wasn't until MySpace and FB in college that I finally started rapidly making friends and emerging out of my shell until everyone else caught up, graduated and now I'm feeling like a late bloomer. Haunted by dreams. I still have weekly dreams/nightmares full of all the sweaty regrets, wishes and ideas I never got to fulfill back then, like how easy it now feels to ask anyone i like out for lunch and not feel a hint of rejection bc I got to spend years trying to learn and understand social psychology, hierarchical structures, ways to be popular, groups to join, classes to take, parties to throw/attend etc. Its ALL ONLINE! But the paradox of knowledge is the more you know, the more you don't know. So while my dreams in this context feel haunting and frustrating bc of what we (think) we know as we're older or as all of human knowledge is available for a free download.. it makes me wonder what the future dreams of today's school kids will consist of and how much of those issues have modern solutions w various levels of effort required. Anyone care to share?
As a fellow geriatric, I feel you. I see kids in gifted classes, discalculia classes, teachers and social workers with at least a little understanding of gender topics, neurodiversity and a lot more relaxed approaches to learning strategies than I got to see when I grew up. I would have needed quite some of them, and about half of my rl problems today can be traced back to stuff that back than was "me acting up and not trying hard enough", while today it's aknowlegded - at least somewhat - that there are struggles and solutions for those. I hate thinking about what I missed out on simply on behalf of being born early. But than again I think of kids being labeled gifted, neurodivers, having gender issues to deal with in semi-public, even if they keep it passive online, and a young woman of 20 I recently met who apologized at the beginning of a friendly chat that she 'just wasn't any good at handling critizism', she'd always 'react defensively', and I shouldn't take that personally. I don't envy the kids any longer. At least I was allowed to close up or bitch back when people were unfair or disrespectful.
I wonder how many other Gen Z’ers feel detached from generational identity. I dislike the word “Zoomer” and our generation being seen conflated with TikTok, a commercial app or being called the “iGen” comes off as very obnoxious and off putting.
It feels like the "hello fellow kids!" meme. I can either be classified as gen-z or millennial based on who's classifying, I'm differently not like either 40 or 12-year-olds. People weren't so worried about age stereotypes before. It's become obnoxious marketing "cool' words no one thinks is cool.
All of this important and insightful education, and all I can think about is Lizzie McGuire saying a bare midriff + "hip huggers" (haven't heard that in a while) would be "so Oops I Did It Again". No, Lizzie. That was a red latex jumpsuit. You may be thinking I'm a Slave 4 U.
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More videos like this plsssss
One other thing I've noticed is a lot of the writers are younger. The ones writing these shows are in their mid 20s-early 30s a lot of the time. So they can draw from their own experiences and still be relevant easier than someone who is in their mid 30s-40s writing those movies in the past. They can draw on person experiences and social media.
Could you please do a video on the quiet kid trope, the angsty teen trope, and how LGBT+ characters in media are always almost female and never male.
Hello. I would like to write for you. I have some ideas. Who do I send them to?
I feel like most kids don’t act like this irl it’s usually just online
wanna bet a little over 2 years ago all the girls in my class had hydro flasks and wore oversized T- shirts, pucca shell necklaces, birks and messy buns and would go around saying sksksksk and save the turtles now they are all e-girls
Some do irl but it's usually the "cool kids" cuz shyer kids would be too shy at least where I live.
This whole video reads like adults trying to talk about "the kids these days" and trying to be "hip with the kids"
@@majlordag1889 yeah it was the very basic kids most of the time tying to act cool cuz they had no personality besides having airpods
ikr its so soo good that people are atleast having a space where they can be themselves w/o the societal pressure of being judged
hey. junior in high school here. even though there’s people that could be called “ e-girls “ or “ soft girls “ and all that, people don’t hang out because of aesthetics. usually it’s just people you’re friends with or who you do extracurriculars with- like i hang with friends from theatre and tech but we all have different aesthetics and interests as well. but like, we’re friends because we like who we are and our humor. we have some similar interests but we also have our differences . the vibes are just good overall in school
Agree, I graduated last year, and I feel like it's down to finding ppl that get u. I had few freinds in highschool, not because I had an "aesthetic " diferente to my classmates , but because I just have a hard time finding ppl that I vibed with. It's not about what they like to do, it's more like if I felt comfortable voicing my thoughts and opinions to them or if I could just sit in silence with them without feeling uncomfortable.
E-girls seem to me to be pound shop emos from the 00's who were in themselves pound shop goths.
@@lemsip207 emo actually derive from punk
Girl based on your profile picture we would 100% be friends irl
as an old lady it makes me happy and proud to see gen z out there changing attitudes mostly for the better
Still feel like it only matters if you're attractive and get at least decent grades. Maybe participating in sports or other extra curricular activities. Nothing else means much outside of movies
Yup, an even tho e girls are popular or whatever on tiktok school still treats emos, goths, grunges, alts, punks, ect like shit. Im a grunge-alternative girl and I get bullied everyday even at summer camp 😂 people do shit like write “go die” on my locker and stuff . It doesn’t bother me, but I’ve seen some emos get real hurt abt it and I feel bad
@@phucbich7581 Why is emo the most bullied out of alt subculture? I kind of feel bad for them.
I agree, cause usually if u're attractive get good grades and play a sport (cause sadly fit=attractive) then u're probably popular. Although, and this might just be my experience coming from a public school, I feel like in private schools e girls might not be very cool but like in my public school, being emo was cool and the popular kids were emo, so it probably comes down to the amount of money the ppl have. Correct me I I'm wrong.
@@phucbich7581 Also to quote a TH-cam comment: "My personal definition of an e-girl/boy is the kids who bullied the goth/emo kid, and then years later ask them for fashion advice"
@@phucbich7581 Bruh people actually say those things
I feel like the cool kids, cheer leaders, jocks, and nerds high school depictions were always out of touch. These high school movies were usually written by older people who have to try to remember what high school was like and need to fill in the gaps with the shallow glimpses they get from looking at their grandchild. The standard high school movies have always seemed like high budget fan fiction and not an accurate depiction of high school life.
Grandchild? More like child.
I agree because when mean girls came out our high school was did not have a "Queen B"
As someone who was a teen in the 1980s, I can say that in my experience, the teen movies/shows of that era were stylized versions of our actual social lives.
The cliques and their interactions were basically accurate - just heightened for narrative effect. Even in my rural parochial school, we had the stereotypical popular rich girls, jocks, geeks and nerds, and outcasts.
I'm glad social structures and interactions have changed since then. It seems better now.
As a 'young' Gen X-er, I do feel like we had these kinds of cliques (jocks, cool kids, nerds) until I got to my performing arts high school in Manhattan in the mid-90s, which was like being dropped 20 years into the future (just super progressive and inclusive). But my other friends' high schools were the norm, not mine. The Hollywood depictions were played up but not totally foreign, in my opinion.
My high school experience was exactly like napoleon dynamite
I’m 16 (also American) and I think the only high school movie that is close to realistic high school for me was Lady Bird. But maybe it’s actually like Euphoria for some people and I’m just a loser lol
Ladybird and Booksmart to me seem like the most realistic portrayals of highschool. I especially liked Timothée Chalamet's character in Ladybird, because it showed that the cool, deep, dreamy rebel, who we are used to see as the love interest in most teen movies, can actually be the biggest asshole in reality.
Yeah, same and I'm not even American. I went to a private and to a public school, and in public school the kids in larger friend groups were more "emo" and "edgy" while in the private school I went to, the "cool" kids got the best grades but they were also the sporty kids. I feel like, just like in lady bird, the things that are considered cool depend on how much money the ppl that go to these schools have. It might just be my experience though.
The most relatable movie for me was eight grade
@@carla6485 it was the same for in my experience too and I have been to 6 schools by now.
I relate to lexi in euphoria bc she’s the only one who just sits at home not getting any
Is it just me or I’ve never seen designated groups for every type of people. I feel like everyone is a combination of all these things.
Yeah. The whole video I just thought about how I don't perfectly fit into any of these groups
you should have been at my high school
In my high school too
true
It's interesting that the creators felt like being "popular" was important when they were growing up. While I did recognize some of the cliques from mean girls/10 things (band nerds, theater freaks, athletes, FFA kids) when I was graduating in 2005 lots of the kids belonged to multiple groups & the homecoming king was a funny/smart guy from band who didn't play any spots. My graduating class had 500+ as long as you had your friend group it really didn't matter what everyone else though
Not so much at my school.
i'm not from america, but my secondary school life was somewhat similar. everyone has their own cliques and friend groups, so no one really cares about being popular. it's more about who's nice, got good grades, and got good connections.
I feel that. I went to an arts high school and the top two students were a string player and a visual artist. Everyone had their own group or several groups. You obviously had the musical theater kids, the art kids, the band geeks, and the dance kids. And in each art division you had preppy folks, emo kids (me), metal heads, and just pm ppl into -insert whatever- it was nice
Wow literally same, down to the homecoming king being a funny band kid that wasn't in sports. If you hadn't listed a year that was 12 years before my graduating year, I'd have thought we went to the same school. Maybe it's something about having a large class. My high school had about 4,000 kids in total and my class was the biggest one they'd ever had. When there's just so many people in your class, you're more likely to find a lot of groups that fit even smaller groups within them. Like each large extra curricular activity had multiple groups of friends to choose from. Popularity wasn't a focus because there were always new people to meet. It was genuinely hard to know everyone.
It's highly regional too. Raised in San Diego and felt that my high school was exactly as you say. The star quarterback was also a lead star in the thespian club as just one example. I was an outcast and a varsity jock type. BUT. I moved to Kentucky the second half of junior year....and the "popular" and social hierarchy was very much alive and embedded in the student culture. I graduated high school in 2006.
americans really like to categorize people. it's crazy.
dividing people into groups with specific characteristics in school is wild for my non-american mind. lol
Frr as i was watching this video i was trying to find what categories (like nerds, jocks ect ) are students put in my school and generally in my country. I couldnt think of any. We dont have any literal translation for any of those words either. We may have some social hierarchy at school but its not that divided. There are obviously plenty of bullies but its not the same as those portrayed in american movies. If i could try and categorize people in my school it would be just 'popular extroverted ppl'(who could be good or bad students) and shy or just not as noticable student with not as large social circle at school. They also can have good or bad grades it doesnt matter much. (Im in this group lol)
Hell yeah
we don’t use these terms in school. The Take is just perpetuating these labels and tropes
Exactly!! In my country we don’t do that
The groups in my high school growing up where mostly based on ppl that had shared interests/classes eg athletics, band, theater, art, skateboarding, FFA (farming), AP classes (advanced placement) but frequently these groups overlapped & ppl where in multiple groups. With over 500 kids in my graduating class (2005) the ppl who didn't share my interests never even made it on my radar. Where y'alls schools super small or did y'all all take the same things? It seems odd that y'all wouldn't develop different interests/ passions...
I think 21 Jump Street (2012) does a great job subverting the typical high school hierarchy. When they go back to high school, everything had changed from when they attended.
Their school was different
I really liked that when I watched that, weird to think that 21 jump was about 10 yearsish+ ago.
the part where dave franco was like "bro you don't care about the environment? that's fucked up" got me laughing so hard because my friends and i really said something like that during my secondary school years.
The teen tropes became a parody of itself. Shows like awkward and glee did a good job on subverting teen tropes. Sadie Saxton was the mean girl but she was also insecure.
Basically simlar to the traditional ones but without the hierachy.
"You're welcome."
Glee was great for the first 3 seasons when it played as a musical comedy. After they won regionals and a few of the main cast went off to college it started taking itself too seriously and went down hill. Season 4 was okay but after Cory died it really lost its direction and the songs got worse too.
I think Awkward stayed pretty solid until the end and the time jump in season 5 was done very well.
All this hierarchy and “popular” vs “un popular kinds”, made school kind of bizarre. For years I kind of believed school workers that way, but no it was me thinking that, in reality school is waaaay more chill. _Nobody cares what you do_ all this gossip and drama is not real in school (at least here in my experience in Mexico) aside from some typical romance here and there.
The only thing that seems to me kind of true is the prom thing in USA, is _such important party_ , here in Mexico is not that dramatic who you are going to prom with, we don’t even have “prom queen and king” (like… adults show off “I was prom queen”… who cares?) here is more like “oh, party, if my friends go I’ll go” and some couples taking the opportunity to go together.
The main reason prom is so big in the US is that it's the closest thing most kids here have to Quinceañeras or bar/bat mitzvas or other coming-of-age parties.
Same. Mexican here too.
Lol. People aren't that one dimensional. This is what happens when you learn about what teenagers are like from the internet where everyone has a persona
Right? Since when did we take movie tropes and the internet as 100% fact of how people act all the time?
Ikr? I don't get this necessity of fitting people inside tropes, real people aren't netflix teen series characters lol
Yeah its been like that for every generation. Its just the media, they puff stuff up for entertainment value. Everything before and after us will continue to do that it’s nothing new.
Exactly
Every time The Take covers Gen Z it's with such rose colored glasses lol
3 things: YA novels turned into shows, k-pop, environmentalism
Ya novels have been big for a while
As someone who is a kpop fan and read YA novels, i felt called out
Wattpad fanfiction
Vampire fiction
@@anuvindat8419 NOOO PLS
@@anuvindat8419 bro that's just the tip of the iceberg
Watching fells like the Steve Buscemi ''How do you do fellow kids'' meme
That meme scares me because, while I don't want to grow into another grumpy old man, I don't want to come off as this to younger kids. I want to be something like Stan Lee, the Cool Old Guy trope.
Ikr😂😂
Dont forget the "music band" t-shirt
yessssss this video feels like your millennial aunt talking about tiktok
This video was more of an explainer to all the millennials and older as to what's going on with gen-z. We're clueless and I'm here to learn.
I feel like all these modern tropes are just all about aesthetics, appearance and performatism. Its rarely goes deeper than that, and never sticks around for too long either
Have American high schools ever been like what's portrayed on screen? This is something that really confused me because I've never spoken to a person my age (26), online or irl, who belonged to a "designated" group in high school. I always assumed the high school environment in movies and shows was an extremely exaggerated version of the writer's high school environment.
I have no idea if the current high school environment is anything like what is portrayed on Tik Tok, but I really hope it isn't. It genuinely seems so exhausting and (ironically) extremely preformative and fake.
Honestly high school is so exaggerated on screen compared to real life. I just graduated this year and honestly it's very chill and pretty easy to avoid drama. The only thing that is stressful were my classes.
@@zurizuri1421 I couldn't have said it better myself. In the end you don't hang out with your friends because of their specific interests, hobbies or look, you just like their personality and get along with them.
Depends on the school you attended and where you lived. I've attended two types of high schools in the 2000s. Graduated in '08, so I'm sure it has changed.
The first one was an all-black high school near the inner city of Chicago, Illinois, USA. There, you were made to feel like an outcast if you didn't act like everyone else. I used to hang-out with all of the black people who were deemed "white acting", and what was deemed "white acting" was anything that didn't seem to be what a typical black person was into, such as anime, rock music, gothic outfits, video games, reading, etc. We were called "lames". Other groups, like those with Autism or other neurological backgrounds, also hung out with us.
The other groups that did clique off was based on the activities they were involved in, how attractive they were, and how well they fit into black culture (using the latest slang, embracing black humor, listening to the latest music, wearing the trendiest clothes in hip-hop, etc). The black students that were super involved in activities in the school stuck together because they knew each other and met each other through those activities.
The rest of them liked to start drama and cause fights out of boredom and would get popularity points for beating someone up. These types might have also been in gangs outside of school.
Most of the cliques were formed based on similar interests, even if no one realized cliques were even being formed. It was subconscious pride or tribal behavior.
The other school I attended was a multi-ethnic school, filled with more diverse people. The cliques were more strongly like the ones I saw on TV, though no one went around stating what "trope" they were. Everyone who was on the cheerleading squad stuck together because they were all on the team together. That's how they met each other, and they hung out the most with each other. It was just that simple. We didn't have as many online communities back then, so who you hung out with at school was your squad. Those who weren't in an after-school activity at this school either struggled to make friends, unless they were friendly, extroverted, and talkative, or they hung out with the friends they grew up with. There was one group of white girls that formed a group based on the girls they grew up with in their neighborhood. They were racist, classist, homophobic, and all had bad orange tans. I remember one tried to make fun of my friend's hair, asking if she needed to borrow their shampoo because they could see her dandruff at the top. They even bit off a cookie and tried to hand it to her (because she never ate lunch, since hers was too early). Luckily, my friend laughed them off and ignored them, and I put them in their place.
The only people who "felt" the effects of these "cliques" were the people who didn't have friends and wanted some. They are more than likely the type of people who would have grown up to write movies about the stupidity of cliques because they felt left outside of it or felt bullied because of where they were told to fit in.
As a 27 year old. I agree. I do not recall cliques. There was popular and unpopular but that's about it. Someone "nerdy" could be popular to.
my freshman and sophmore year in the first high school i went to here in Georgia was pretty much like a teen movie, everyone was divided into cliques- it was really noticable during lunch and i had a friend at every single table
And here I am, a highschooler who has never been anywhere near TikTok.
Same. I'm from India too and now that reels are there instead of TikTok, I don't use those either. Also, I feel most Indian teenagers are getting hurt over things happening in America and don't really realise the blatant racism in their own country. This is just my opinion. Let me know if I'm missing something.
same, I don't have the app but I have seen some tiktoks on TH-cam and Pinterest before
same, primarily because I have notice that TikTok is addictive just like Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. I'm currently trying not to become addictive with TH-cam, but gotta say that is kinda hard.
Here I am 28 and never once cared about TikTok even as a teen. Lol
Way to go!
So proud of you guys
I feel like this is based entirely off of social media, NOT reality. I doubt the millennials making these videos truly understand what modern high school is like
Yeah that's what I was about to say. I feel like most of these tropes literally only exist online and on Tik Tok. My little sister is in early highschool and I haven't really seen anyone that would fit into a tik tok aesthetic at school functions or anything.
I am a millenial and i definately don't understand what modern high school is like but.. i'm willing to believe you when you say it's not tik tok lol.
I volunteered and taught a guest class with junior high/high school student recently, . HONESTLY, the biggest difference is how much they all actually want good grades. Like actually worrying about college and careers as much as they do is the biggest difference I saw. Of course when I was in highschool the economy was good so we were all much more optimistic. Even the kids who shipped off to iraq after graduating seemed to feel they had a good deal at the time.
Damn are millennials becoming the new baby boomers?
these are movie tropes, they’re more like ideas and concepts, not meant to depict how teenagers are in real life
@@Chris-rg6nm I don't know their age but,to me,they seem to be in their 20s.
Different styles and cultures are more accepted now than ever. But I can safely say having worked in a high school environment for the last 6 years, the old school tropes are still in high demand. What I've learned in my time since being a teen is the more things change, the more they stay the same. Teen culture evolves, and yet is cyclical at the same time.
Are kids nicer to each other now? Or have they just moved on to new things to bully each other over? Like, I assume (and hope) kids don't get bullied anymore for being gay, but are there other things now instead?
@J. J.
These days I'd describe things as more 50/50. Like there's definitely a bit of political polarization and everyone tends to hang with more likeminded people. The old teen tropes are more lose, they're still there but dated and people are friends with whoever unless it's a personal values thing. So i'd say if you have different religious beliefs or beliefs on cultural or political things or mental illness, the most strife is caused 👍 unless you have certain beliefs but don't force them on people 😊
@@j.j.3759 Everywhere is different. In general, I would say that society has moved the needle forward enough that it isn't just unanimously shamed to be gay. At the same time, you still have your cliques that'll judge. There's also whole communities that are still unaccepting. In my experience, male teens in general shame homosexuality at least on a minor level(myself included). But I've come to learn that most of that fades away with time and maturation (as it did for me). But really social progression is dependent on the community surrounding it. Teens still mostly mimick their parent's ideals at high school age. So it really reflects the county they grew up in.
I was in high school in Canada 2 years ago and it was definitely like 21 jump street for me. It was about people who could do it 'all'. Be caring, smart, part of clubs, and have lots of friends, go to parties, be young.
Super informative on white American teen culture. Doesn’t translate to Black & Latino culture. Pretty pressure and hyper masculinity/ aggression are WAY more dominant forced stereotypes for teens of color.
And colourism is a factor as well.
Exactly. I haven’t seen anything on black or Latino teen cliques and they do exists, at least they did when I was in school.
While hearing the different kinds of nerds, I realised that I was all of them in high school. Academic, theatre kid, fanboy and gamer. All me.
relatable.
Ehhh most people are just like this online. Vsco girl trend died out in 2019 and id say more people are “alt” or indie than e girl/ boy. Im not sure how many hs tropes there are except popular vs kind of popular vs not popular
As someone who graduated this year, this isn’t very accurate to what high school is like nowadays lol. Most of the “troupes” or types of people the video named are just fashion/aesthetic influences lol
True. Only like, less than 10% of people in my highschool do tiktoks.
Most of us are pretty chill but the sad thing is that people in the future will look at these videos amd think that's how everyone in our generation acted.
But one thing that you can tell the future generations is that you graduated during a pandemic. Congrats girl!
Agree, once she mentions academia I was like, isn't that more of an fashion aesthetic for most people?
Old movies = Bad, New movies = Good has been a running theme for The Take for a good while now, but this video might be the most explicit expression of the idea.
these were trends that were definitely really popular in 2019, but now with the pandemic things have changed. also these types of tropes tend to be more for performance than reality. basically i think high school is never portrayed correctly in movies and tv lmao
As a kid from the 80s, we didn't really have those tropes either. In my high school, the mean kids were on the academic team, and most of the athletic/cheerleader/popular kids were actually quite nice and well-liked.
I think people should know that when America was deciding colors to give to baby boys and girls, pink was initially considered for boys as it was a lighter shade of red, which is fairly universally seen as masculine, example:Aries/mars god of war. Also while the rest of the world has somewhat followed suite on light blue for boys and pink for girls for decades it was seen only as an American thing.
this pink for girls, blue for boys thing ain't come from america
It only started in England around 80-90s I think, both genders were equal before in terms of colours they could wear, mainly neutrals
Before the 1920s to 1940s, pink was universally seen as the more masculine colour, and baby blue as more feminine.
This kinda shows that colour preferences aren't an innate thing. We're taught that pink is for girls, from a super early age, so that's what we believe. But it's entirely a cultural phenomenon.
That's just not true xd
I read somewhere that it was because of the pink triangles used for gay men in 1940's Germany that the switch was made. I don't know if it's actually true, but it does make sense to me.
What this video doesn't talk about: 1 in 5 young people struggling with mental health. A future of unemployment or underemployment. Hell, even the relentlessness of cyberbullying or how we grew up with social media and it profited off of making us feel bad about ourselves. The fact that we don't want to stop climate change because it's trendy, but because we will live in a hellish landscape longer than you.
Gen z weren't the only ones who talked about social issues. You can curse Millenials all you want but they paved the way.
Yes, and I assure you, when the Boomers were in school, they *never* talked about social issues 🙄
@@NJGuy1973 My grandparents were too busy avoiding the Gulags... They should've rebelled though!!!!! 🙄🙄🙄
@@NJGuy1973 honest question, is this sarcasm or not?
I hope Gen Z learns from us MIllennials. They will soon burnout if they keep trying to be everything to everyone. The problems are vast, complicated, and overwhelming. You can't do anything if you're trying to do it all.
Gen Z weren't the first ones, but they are far more radical than millennials.
Something that goes unmentioned here about the gym bro is this blooming culture of body positivity and genuine care for positive masculinity. Looking for advice and sharing progress is earnestly celebrated for all genders and body types by the typically-depicted-as-exclusionary gym bro these days, and that's really cool
Not many kids in my area are like this, I kinda think this is mostly american gen-z 😅
I always thought the same 😂 Idk the extent to which these types of tropes exist outside the US but even then I’d assume it’s mostly an online thing 🤷🏾♀️
I am American, and I'm in high school right now but yeah I don't really see many kids like this.
Well this is an American channel on an American platform so....
@@nananoodle5020 It is indeed an American channel that produces videos mainly about the American experience (which for me, as a non-American, is one of the major charms of this channel), but saying that TH-cam is an American platform is just ignorant😂 Although TH-cam is indeed owned by Americans, and was invented by Americans, it’s really such a popular and important platform in almost every country in the world, and it feels nonsensical to say that it’s an just an American platform. There are many people in my country who are addicted to TH-cam without even knowing English (because there is so much more content than just simply American - English content). Although our modern world is indeed very influenced by American culture, America is not the center of the world🤷♀️
me a gen z who hasn't caught up with the trend : what the hell happen here
@@souvik43209 what's gen Y ?
@@GhostLights44 millenials
Ikrrrr I am so confused 😭✋
@@souvik43209 naw I just really don't care about internet culture 💀💀
@@tia4337 You don't need to.
Yeah. I see no difference between these tropes and the old. Just a new name and coat of paint. At both my high schools your last name/lineage is all that truly mattered. Finally, what is on screen (film, tik tok, etc) is not reality. A screen is a funhouse mirror to reality. Saying it indicates reality is like saying a melted pool of ice cream indicates the shape and size of the once frozen scoop. And then this video ends with two moms jumping back and forth between reality and just such a screen.
Not my school tho you stay safe
While I agree with you that TikTok is not reality, it definetly reflects today's reality a lot more closely than the High School experiences of older screenwriters which shape today's teen movies. And it's not exactly about how new the tropes are, It's more about little tweaks (the new coat of paint) to make them slightly more niche, and the new relationships and hierarchy between these tropes. They used to be few and separate. Now they are many and all mingle with each other, which reflects not reality itself but the diversity of identities that exists in reality.
You are absolutely correct!!
nice analogies
@@gabrielsouza8480 It's as much a reality of one's self as what you present in a job interview.
as someone who’s a sophomore in highschool and only being in highschool during the whole pandemic it really changed how school itself and the “hierarchy” changed because there’s not really a thing like popularity anymore, since we mostly keep in our own groups within our classes
I’m glad I missed this version of being young/high school. Now young girls are expected to look and dress like they’re 25 year old models. Has anyone seen the prom videos on tik tok? These girls look like they’re going to the met gala and not a high school prom…..The pressure is insane.
Social media exposes to people even their not around and that increases competition
Also activism. You are expected to be far more grown up then you should be, even if it's just at a performative level
Yeah I agree. It seems like there is a massive amount of pressure to behave and look like an adult and it's taking away their childhoods far too early. They have the vast majority of their life to be an adult they should enjoy being a kid while they still can. It is definitely sad to me.
Like the pressures always haven't been as high for teenage girls.
i definitely wont survive this generation's peer pressures. glad i was stuck in myspace/friendster days in my teens
I feel like MTV's Awkward. was, if a very small, part of this transition. It put teenagers in cringey, real situations and further explored how social media and reputation can influence your high school experience
Awkward is the only 2010s teen show that aged well
Teenagers nowadays are too sexualized because of social media. These new tropes can be problematic as well….
And they weren't sexualized in the 70s and 80s? Same Edge, Different Slant. Recognize.
If they're sexualizing themselves, isn't that more empowering than when popular movies sexualize 25-year-olds pretending to be teens? Sure there are creeps in the world, but I blame the creeps for that and not the teens who are expressing themselves however they choose. Forcing desexualization can be just as oppressive as forcing sexualization.
you remind me of people who say "i was born in the wrong decade" because "music nowadays sucks"... things are, at least in THIS way, getting BETTER, not worse. young people are more engaged with and influential of "the conversation" than literally EVER (and it does manifest as "sexualization" for some people , but they're in charge of their own instagram accounts and, frankly, should be allowed express themselves if they want!)
Euphoria isn't "more sexualized" than Skins before it or Dawson's Creek before Skins. it's more _stylized_ , but it's not more messed up.
teenagers have been "too sexualized" for a while. Britney was a lot younger than most of the really big kpop stars.
@@davidbjacobs3598 that’s not empowering!! They’re KIDS
Teenagers have been sexualized since the dawn of media because Hollywood is run by old pervy men who want to sleep with young bodies.
I don’t necessarily agree with this, I live in Ireland and I just finished secondary school(high school), people just hung out with people they got on well with, it wasn’t as stratified as this video makes it out to be.
But you're in Ireland. This is US centric video (and channel).
Your in Ireland this is for Americans
Yet the video doesnt say it's for Americans.
The video says it's about teens today and majority of teen stuff is from America so where do teens like myself from England or other countries go to look at teen culture, exactly America.
@@toomuchinformation Yes but Teens whether it be from Ireland or Australia are watching mostly the same tiktokers as American teens, the world does not revolve around America.
@@nathanc3404 No doubt they are, but it won't necessarily replicate itself in those ways in Australia/Ireland etc.
So today, you can discover and celebrate your uniqueness rather than trying to fit into cliques. Internet has made being a teenager more liberating and less conformist and I absolutely love that.
Amazing Take!!🔥🔥
exactly like when i was in hs there was only cool people and uncool people, and now they can choose from a variety of aesthetics the one thats more true to their personality
Yes and no yes because almost all styles that exist are represented and no because now you're quickly ashamed and humiliated as a girl we w tell that we are different and we are called pick me and basically disrespected
@@Chris-rg6nm here? No one but on the internet more and more women are called pick me just celebrate their uniqueness
The F boys don't go away when you hit your 20s and even 30s.
As long as said teens don't become obsessed with the popularity of their non-conformity or garnering attention on social media... It's great to connect with other people over the random thing syou love as long as it stays pure.
In real life, in my experience, these cliques didn’t even matter. Most people were part of multiple groups or couldn’t be labeled. Today in real life, gen z only acts like these stereotypes online for their persona page ok tiktok. They do so because they like different “aesthetics” as a trend. There’s no more cliques the way we think of them in the 80s, it’s more about identifying with aesthetics, vibes, or certain online trends.
Me too
Some people don’t even dress like that 24/7 lol
Me after watching this: I'm officially old
How old are you?
@@siobhanmcshanehill895 I'm under 30. But too old for tiktok
@@thirstyforlaundrydetergent9664 You must be Gen X.They're Gen Y
@@souvik43209 I'm a millennial
As someone who's 22, I wonder if what they're saying could be accurate because tik tok was not a thing when I was in high school. But I doubt it, because what Was depicting us even a couple of years ago in movies was way off from the actual regurgitated tropes that was our reality, so I can't imagine that highschoolers today feel like Euphoria and tik tok personalities are what they're surrounded by.
“Breaking down barriers” by hyper-creating groups and sub-groups and sub-groups within sub groups lol more classification.
I'm a millennial, These already existed in my era just the media changed the name to make it seem separate from this generation and to become a trending topic. E-girl = emo (we all had social media, online gaming and emo style back then) Soft Girl = feminine girl (many people were like this) Visco girl = named after an App to help promote it, but generally a typical 12 year old girl. F Boy = player (we had loads of them on social media and offline)
Nah. I think there is a difference, just like punk and goth and emo had different "vibes." Rebellious vs. dark and brooding vs. undiagnosed mental illness vs. the internet aesthetic. Also, gender roles are challenged - soft boy isn't sissy boy, f boys are shamed in the name while players are not.
What it comes down to for everything is that it's no longer a clique or hierarchy. Aesthetics are just aesthetics, and expression by these people changing their clothes for fun means it's no longer about creating a pre-packaged identity or social aggression has been replaced with compassion + health.
Exactly it’s basically the same beast wearing a different mask
@@MissMiserize A lot of emo boys were basically soft boys. And before emo boys there were also some feminine tropes amongst male goths (such as the aristrocrat goths, who favoured frills and finery over ripped muscles & jeans, etc). During the Punk era there were also many punks who defied gender norms.
Players were also shamed too; people might feel physically attracted to them, but nobody actually saw them as real relationship material (quite the opposite, this was the kind of guy you'd warn your friends about to avoid). The movies of the past makes everything seem a lot more cliquey than real life ever was.
I do think that a lot of the tropes have largely just been repackaged over time (rather than evolved). Even the new tropes are heavily commercialized (every single one comes with its set look, lifestyle package and more that you can buy and subscribe into). There is more mainstream conversation now about certain things (gender, the environment, etc) but a lot of these topics and lifestyles were already being heavily discussed amongst alternative circles before they become more widely adopted by younger generations.
Such an interesting video. Shows how much the teenage generations have evolved over the years.
Lol this is fake this is more social media persons everyone knows the drug dealers are the most popular
The thing that made the early John Hughes movies hit home with Teens is due to the fact that John Hughes was a High School teacher.
Hey, The Take:
Could you please continue to put the media title and year on clips, even after you've shown it once? Many of these movies and series feature ensemble casts, so the average viewer may not be able to tell that the first clip is from the same title as the proceeding clips, as they often don't feature the same characters, environments, and etc. I would greatly appreciate this. 🙏🏻
I think I mostly disagree with this video but I love this content and really hope you keep making stuff like this! Love talking about teen tropes and the archetypes!
Honestly all these tropes are already pretty dated, tropes & ‘aesthetics’ are changing so constantly.
Tbh a lot of these aesthetics are just evolved or updated versions of the previous generation I’d say to wear whatever you want that makes you happy because there will be a time when it becomes a trend and goes out of it lol
I used to go to this school where you were only popular if you were a social media addict, always on TikTok, and if you had style just like everyone else. I don't have social media and I dress very eccentrically. Glad I'm going to a different school this year where I can actually make good friends! I ended up making a dramatic farewell last year thanking my haters for helping me discover how strong I am, and man, I felt so good!!!
21 jump street is one of the first movies that reflected current teen culture! Glad you mentioned it.
It could be my experience, but I feel like not everything is down to a trope, it cause some ppl don't have the money to have an "aesthetic" or dress trendy, or simply don't want to, and some ppl just get by in highschool and feel like they don't belong anywhere, not because of tropes, maybe just because they feel like it's not their space. Some ppl just don't find a ton of friends in Highschool that understand them.
Yep. I didn't belong anywhere. But I made it through. I really wanted to be emo, but I wasn't allowed to and didn't have the funds to dress and look how I wanted. But I grew up and realized I don't have to look the part to like the music. Once I left hs I had actual genuine friends. They were different from me and shared some different interests too, because we weren't friends for that reason, we were friends because our personalities meshed and we enjoyed each other's company
I'm European and the hierarchy at high schools where I live is pretty nonexistent. People mostly hang out within their groups, and the most "popular" ones are therefore those who socialize and know the most people.
high school now in 2021 is very different than back in the early 2000s, back then high school was all like partying for the popular kids but being bullied for the so called "losers", im a freshman this year and honestly kids in high school are so nice they are so easy to talk to and its easy to make friends, the teachers are chill too, oh and ofc its not all about partying, you study a lot so im glad high school has changed somewhat bit :")
Me at 33 “I’m not even bothering learning about this BS” lol
i love this channel and i’ve been an enthusiast of it for a while but i’m not the type of person that leaves comments, however this one has made me emotional, and proud of my generation. i was born in the year 2000 so my hs experience was still like the old ones until maybe my senior year, and seeing all these movies that’s come out after i graduated have been so important to me. my generation has truly changed the game on so many things it feels pretty surreal to see it play out in big things like movies and mainstream, largely recognized medie. thank u for making this video it has been delightful
Maybe I’m just weird like this, but when I was a teenager I never really watched teen movies (I was all about LOTR and similar epic-histories).
It doesn’t mean you were weird, just means you were a nerd.
Yeah me I was on spy kidsw, scooby doo, alice in wonderland
No you were very abnormal. The hundreds of millions of dollars those franchises made came from nowhere.
Books are the best. I didn’t (and I still don’t) watch movies much, although I did read and watch a lot of kids tv - but not the trashy kids tv shows, the .....yeah the darker stuff, programs with either magic or sci-fi themes. Yeah, I never really got into the teen movies. And as for the other comment about “franchises”. I’ve only seen one and a half of the LOTR movies but I’ve read ALL of the books.
Sooo... Pick me, love me, choose me
I like the discussion in the end. Movies from older generation might set the rules but it’s life online, in classroom and cafeteria define high school life today
I'm not saying that this video was missing a large piece, but there is a large piece of school life, that of bullying, which is still happening and even TikTok ain't helping with that.
Thank you! Thank you actual highschoolers and recent grads for voicing your opinions and weighing in on this topic that is super relevant to you!!! Most of you seem to be saying the same thing. That you hang out with who you vibe with and aesthetics and lifestyles don’t define your friend groups. That’s actually amazing!!! And means this video is kind of on point or at least that show is changing for the better. Honestly, we wouldn’t have defined it as articulately as you but I think a majority of Americans, regardless of their age would describe a similar high school experience. Especially in the past few decades. So your viewpoint is so relatable! However, we ourselves could not shake the grip cliques had on our social discourse. And I just have to say I can’t believe The Take left out Goths and Preps who have been a core “clique”, in media and real life, just like Jocks and Nerds for the better part of the last ~ 50 years. And of course there’s a bunch of other groupings that exist. And they really are and always were aesthetics. Anyway, the fact that the new or old aesthetics don’t define your socialization is freaking amazing!!!! Once again, analysis of your generation gives me hope for the future!!! It sucks that so many more “mature” adults exaggerate your gen’s negative qualities (it’s happened to every one of us) and make you and your trends/ characteristics out to be dumb, undesirable, and just somehow fundamentally flawed. Hey everyone in society, let’s do less of that and more of just chillin with each other and seeing things for how they actually are! The comments on this video, from this generation of teenagers has me so hopeful and happy!!!
Is it just me that e-girls/boys evolved from emos, whom evolved from punks, whom evolved from goths?
Looks like it
What annoys me is the they think anyone who uses black with a color is a e-girl, like people who says dracula is a e-girl, or the hairs, i have half black half blonde hair but I'm not an e-girl and this annoys me 😡
To quote a TH-cam comment: "My personal definition of an e-girl/boy is the kids who bullied the goth/emo kid, and then years later ask them for fashion advice"
That’s basically what happened lol
I find hope with the knowledge that teenagers are taking climate change more seriously, now. Back when I was in high school, I was among the few who cared, and started an ecological group to tackle school problems regarding pollution. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much commitment from either (most) students nor teachers.
It wasn’t all bad though. We did manage to bring some inspirational workshops and some participation in activities, but I trust current teenagers will do better.
No one cared in my school either, then I literally chained myself to a tree to protect a local park from being turned into a CrossFit gym, it had legal grounds and I pushed to sue the developer based on the code of the environmental agency that protects areas within 0.5 miles of natural water sources. And I didn’t like to shower more than once every 3 days. Those were the days. Haha
@@andreblackaller3560 I commend you for your determination! Did you succeed?
@@fcv4616 Yes I did! And I also began a project to investigate how the government was covering a transnational beer company that is sucking up all the water in my home state in México. After a Law School professor and me went after them and leaked information to the media the news broke and the commissioner admitted that we will run out of water by 2030. Nothing happened though. I mean people panicked and all but the beer company is still going strong.
@@andreblackaller3560 We have a similar problem where I live too. Also, I live in Mexico too :-D
One of the projects we tried to do before graduating was to make the school hire services from a rubbish pickup centre, instead of relying on the usual trash pick up regulated by the state. Part of the rubbish would be delivered to recycling centers in CA instead of being all sent to dump yards. Plus, we convinced the staff to install different rubbish cans to separate the litter, create some workshops, and other adaptations. Unfortunately, the school’s authority changed his mind in the middle of the process for nothing else but ego. When I told him that the school’s efforts would be certified depending on the reviews, he refused to have the school labeled as “dirty”, wasn’t willing to work hard to make the changes, and stopped our project midway. Classic moment when people want things to change, but expect others to do it so they don’t have to put in any effort.
No one cares now. I do care since I was 13 and most of teenagers literally don't care.
People generally don't care about environment, regardless of generation. They will only care about it when it will be too late. Thanks to capitalism and ignorance.
I went to school in New York City (LES), and I never saw "popular kids" "nerdy kids" or any tropes portrayed in movies. Everyone just hang out with whoever had your lunch period. Any other new Yorker with a different experience?
I’m not from New York but in my entire life I went to 7 schools and had the same experience as yours
I got to school in New York too tbh my school has so many students like nearly 4000 so there’s never really a group of people with a certain aesthetic I’ve seen girls and boys who wear the trendy clothes and stuffs but in reality everyone just sticks to their friends because there is way too many people to know or focus on no one really cares about what you wear
I think the lines are far more blurred in most real schools everywhere
We need a Breakfast Club reboot with these modern teen tropes
Oh, yeah, a Breakfast Club reboot for 2021.
Five high school students spend Saturday detention tapping away on their phones, not uttering a word to each other.
@@NJGuy1973
Tell me, do you get all of your jokes from newspaper comics?
E-girl, soft girl, f boy, anime/ kpop guy, and hippie/beachy girl
In my country, no school has such defined groups, much less are there popular people. Either they are your friends or they are strangers and you do not care about their lives, also bullying is something little seen in the way it is seen in American movies, if you insult someone they will not remain silent, at the exit of the school is going to wait for you with all its friends to beat you up. So bullying is really strange
There are the rich girls who are popular
@@Missmagazinebura Not here, they may have a large group of friends, but those of other grades are not interested in their lives. In the movies it seems that the whole school likes 1 person, that could never happen
@@Joanbueller007 In my country neither, not like this, but bullying is still a thing here. Not everyone has friends to come and beat that bastard up. I had to rely on my little brothers friends once. :-D
@@annaboes8359 oh, that's so sad. Nobody deserve that
@@Joanbueller007 XD don't worry, I'm okay now. And I'm happy with myself, including my residual akwardness. Thanks for your compassion, but teenage years are a bit of hell for a lot of people. Most of us make it out alive and up to better things. :)
As someone who lives in Kazakhstan. We always had a dress code, a uniform. And i always loved it. I loved wearing a blouse, a skirt and a jacket. But sometimes I wonder how would everyone dress if there wasn't a dress code. Cause I know I would dress the same.
This is insightful as always, but I want to confess to a weird feeling of mine. Weird to me, anyway. Sometimes when I watch videos on this kind of topic, I end up feeling down or depressed. The only thing I can think is that it makes me feel… old and irrelevant? Which I COMPLETELY understand is not the point and that it says a lot more about my own issues than anything else. I can’t help but think that if I am feeling that way after watching something like this that maybe not only are my feelings true, but maybe there’s something else going on with me. Why am I only looking at this through the lens of my own life? This has nothing to do with me. And there it is. This doesn’t have anything to do with me. So… yeah. Circular emotional thinking. I don’t really know that I want or expect and answer. Maybe just to know if I’m alone in this feeling.
you're not alone. im in my 30s and when i watch vids like this abt gen z not only i feel old and miserable, but i also start thinking how i felt in my teens and 20s.
comparing to how gen z are portrayed on social media and in movies my life seems so boring. i feel like i lost all these years for nothing and missed lots of opportunities. well, that's a lie. you're comparing yourself w ppl who exist only on tv screen - and almost always their characters and way of life is extremely unrealistic - pretty, smart, outspoken, partying etc. or those ppl on social media you don't even know - they also have their own struggles and may feel lost, depressed, alienated.
try not to compare yourself to them, it only makes you miserable and unsatisfied w your own life. you're alright, you're not boring or irrelevant.
I got to say as a gen z person currently in high school I can say that these archetypes mostly only exist on tiktok (however i'm not on the platform so what the hell do I know)
Tiktok is notorious for spreading misinformation and this is no different
I've attended two types of high schools in the 2000s. Graduated in '08, so I'm sure it has changed.
The first one was an all-black high school near the inner city of Chicago, Illinois, USA. There, you were made to feel like an outcast if you didn't act like everyone else. I used to hang-out with all of the black people who were deemed "white acting", and what was deemed "white acting" was anything that didn't seem to be what a typical black person was into, such as anime, rock music, gothic outfits, video games, reading, etc. We were called "lames". Other groups, like those with Autism or other neurological backgrounds, also hung out with us.
The other groups that did clique off was based on the activities they were involved in, how attractive they were, and how well they fit into black culture (using the latest slang, embracing black humor, listening to the latest music, wearing the trendiest clothes in hip-hop, etc). The black students that were super involved in activities in the school stuck together because they knew each other and met each other through those activities.
The rest of them liked to start drama and cause fights out of boredom and would get popularity points for beating someone up. These types might have also been in gangs outside of school.
Most of the cliques were formed based on similar interests, even if no one realized cliques were even being formed. It was subconscious pride or tribal behavior.
The other school I attended was a multi-ethnic school, filled with more diverse people. The cliques were more strongly like the ones I saw on TV, though no one went around stating what "trope" they were. Everyone who was on the cheerleading squad stuck together because they were all on the team together. That's how they met each other, and they hung out the most with each other. It was just that simple. We didn't have as many online communities back then, so who you hung out with at school was your squad. Those who weren't in an after-school activity at this school either struggled to make friends, unless they were friendly, extroverted, and talkative, or they hung out with the friends they grew up with. There was one group of white girls that formed a group based on the girls they grew up with in their neighborhood. They were racist, classist, homophobic, and all had bad orange tans. I remember one tried to make fun of my friend's hair, asking if she needed to borrow their shampoo because they could see her dandruff at the top. They even bit off a cookie and tried to hand it to her (because she never ate lunch, since hers was too early). Luckily, my friend laughed them off and ignored them, and I put them in their place.
The only people who "felt" the effects of these "cliques" were the people who didn't have friends and wanted some. They are more than likely the type of people who would have grown up to write movies about the stupidity of cliques because they felt left outside of it or felt bullied because of where they were told to fit in.
As someone with a totally different background (I grew up on a different continent, after all), but the personal experience of not wanting to go where I was pressured to fit in, I wholeheartedly agree - it felt like bullying, and me and the others with similar experiences took to art forms we could perform alone. A lot of writers and authors are, for various reasons, the ones who sat alone at lunch or managed to have very few friends, barely ever got invited to the parties everyone went to and never got notifications about "everyone's welcome" events until after the fact. For a variety of reasons, people who do well with words on paper tend to not do so well with social structures in closed enviroments. Exceptions, of course, do exist in the thousands. :-) So, yeah, these cliques do look a lot more rigid from the outside than they look from the inside, and those tropes ignore the reality of peer pressure conflicting with personal agendas that can lead to a whole host of complex situations.
The more things change the more they remain the same.
Well it's official I am the flash when it comes to The Take
Seconded, congratulations on making the early squad! 🎊😎
Gen z does in fact remember a pre digital age. Millennials keep confusing us with their kids.
And forgetting that a lot of us did not grow up with the newest tech
Kind’a sad that High School Musical was not referenced even once when it was a whole movie breaking free from your typical high school stereotypes and cliques and not sticking to you status quo.
In South Africa there wasn't much of these tropes around when I graduated high school in 2008, even though we watched all of those teen movies, shows and Disney. There were the well-known kids but they weren't thought of as popular/special and kids didn't seek out their company or approval. The athletic kids were also normal. The chess, math and tech kids hung out with the well-known or athletic kids - I was one of them, a chess & techie. I do think things are changing now in my country though. Kids have these trope aesthetics going on, probably because of better access to high speed internet and much more movies/shows around than before for them to watch.
The thing with this teens (from all times) is that they are so superficial. Like, Ruby Granger, who is not evrn a teen, she's not interested in knowledge, she's interested in appearing intelligent. For example, she reads 200 books a year, and most of them are short stories and children books, like she's only interested in the number of books... Same for all the asthetics: it's about the looks
Don’t do my girl Ruby like that 😭 she inspired me to actually study
I agree with the whole activism thing cus a bunch of kids online think they can change the world by saying wat causes u support. But it isn't like that teenagers need to understand that u can greatly benefit the world by focusing on ur most important cause and doin irl stuff for it. Then just posting vapid I support this stuff u should too on social media. This is coming from an 18 yr old btw.
@@uzma3758 completely agreed. It feels very fake after a while and it's not doing much unless you're actually someone with power (influencers, these days). Coming from a 16 year old.
Always felt this Ruby Granger too superficial too
Part of the blending of hierarchies, or types, I think comes FROM the parents, who grew up with popular/unpopular experience and are striving to teach their kids to be more thoughtful and accepting of others.
These are all definitely online personas. I don’t think people really behave like this IRL.
I love this. Kids today are so inclusive and amazing
Coming from a kid, you are dead wrong
I went to high school during the age of hipsters and scene kids (early 2010s) it’s crazy how things could change so drastically in just one decade.
Mean Girls did for the teen movie genre what Scream did for the horror genre
You forgot the normal highschool student who isn't any of these or all of these at the same time...I.E REAL highschool XD
This channel should rename itself 'The Trope'.
Okay
Old white woman here. I was a Navy brat and went to 3 different high schools. There were definitely cliques in all of them, but I'm not sure the high school experience was accurately portrayed in media. Most of us just lived our lives, which included going to school. We had friends in and out of school. We had crushes who may or may not know we exist. We had friends from our classes, our clubs, our neighborhood, our churches, temples, and synagogues, our parents friends kids, etc. There were popular kids, sure, but we didn't build our lives around them.
I'm not minimizing the effects of mean girls or bullies. There are those for whom these movies and tropes were a mirror of their lives. But I feel most high school kids just view it as one part of their lives. This isn't something new.
Alternative title: “How to say you’re out of touch with today’s youth without actually saying it.”
Senior year here. So during my highschool experience what i learned is that as long as you are open, speak and socialize with people you will equal to everyone
I went to high school from 2002 to 2006. I always thought about the fact that my high school life looked nothing like how high school life looked in even the most contemporary of teen movies. We didn't really have a popularity or clique problem at my school. Everyone just kinda did whatever they wanted and hung out with whoever they wanted. There was quite a bad race problem, though. That's another story.
Looking back, though, if it had been a thing back then, I'd definitely be considered an e-girl. As it was, I was the "president" of anime club.
Skins (UK) was one of the earliest teen-centered shows doing what so many are now-- challenging tropes, friend groups composed of kids from every social group, etc. so shocked they didn't mention Skins on here!
I'm in my mid-20's and I am struggling to understand teen identities today, major props to the producers of The Take for trying to unravel it for those of us past HS lol.
The up-side to Gen z being able to tell other Generations who they are through Tik Tok, as opposed to letting older generations spin narratives through movies, is that they get to shape their own narrative. The down-side is they will never have an objective identity, and it will be hard to define them when Generation Alpha comes into the mix. When we begin to shape our own narratives subjectively, we can only see how we personally feel, which makes us changeable and fickle or less defined. When an outsider gives an objective observation, we see how we come across to others, which forms the whole picture or summation. Both information is important when passing history over through time.
I'm a gen z this video makes me feel like I'm not a human in the worst way possible
Like being an activist doesn't matter because the older generations will just make it into a cute little thing that those gen z's do.
As an geriatric millennial (35) my school days preceeded the rise of the internet and social media and it wasn't until MySpace and FB in college that I finally started rapidly making friends and emerging out of my shell until everyone else caught up, graduated and now I'm feeling like a late bloomer. Haunted by dreams.
I still have weekly dreams/nightmares full of all the sweaty regrets, wishes and ideas I never got to fulfill back then, like how easy it now feels to ask anyone i like out for lunch and not feel a hint of rejection bc I got to spend years trying to learn and understand social psychology, hierarchical structures, ways to be popular, groups to join, classes to take, parties to throw/attend etc. Its ALL ONLINE!
But the paradox of knowledge is the more you know, the more you don't know. So while my dreams in this context feel haunting and frustrating bc of what we (think) we know as we're older or as all of human knowledge is available for a free download.. it makes me wonder what the future dreams of today's school kids will consist of and how much of those issues have modern solutions w various levels of effort required.
Anyone care to share?
I remember MySpace and still use Facebook to talk to friends
I’m 30 and by my middle school years Internet was becoming a thing and not accepted by eveyone until my college years jaha
As a fellow geriatric, I feel you. I see kids in gifted classes, discalculia classes, teachers and social workers with at least a little understanding of gender topics, neurodiversity and a lot more relaxed approaches to learning strategies than I got to see when I grew up. I would have needed quite some of them, and about half of my rl problems today can be traced back to stuff that back than was "me acting up and not trying hard enough", while today it's aknowlegded - at least somewhat - that there are struggles and solutions for those. I hate thinking about what I missed out on simply on behalf of being born early. But than again I think of kids being labeled gifted, neurodivers, having gender issues to deal with in semi-public, even if they keep it passive online, and a young woman of 20 I recently met who apologized at the beginning of a friendly chat that she 'just wasn't any good at handling critizism', she'd always 'react defensively', and I shouldn't take that personally. I don't envy the kids any longer. At least I was allowed to close up or bitch back when people were unfair or disrespectful.
I've only ever "fit in" to one group: "You should probably go to rehab."
I wonder how many other Gen Z’ers feel detached from generational identity. I dislike the word “Zoomer” and our generation being seen conflated with TikTok, a commercial app or being called the “iGen” comes off as very obnoxious and off putting.
It feels like the "hello fellow kids!" meme. I can either be classified as gen-z or millennial based on who's classifying, I'm differently not like either 40 or 12-year-olds. People weren't so worried about age stereotypes before. It's become obnoxious marketing "cool' words no one thinks is cool.
i didn’t think i’d see cody and noel here, what a pleasant surprise
I always felt waaaaay out of the box and therefore lonely 😞.
All of this important and insightful education, and all I can think about is Lizzie McGuire saying a bare midriff + "hip huggers" (haven't heard that in a while) would be "so Oops I Did It Again". No, Lizzie. That was a red latex jumpsuit. You may be thinking I'm a Slave 4 U.
Wait wait...Gen Z actually have friends outside the internet!?????!!! 🤯
*insert steve buscemi "how do you do, fellow kids" meme*
I always wondered if those teen movies reflected real American high school. I enjoyed them but never found them very relatable.