High school is where you learn how hot you are (or aren't)

High school is where you learn your sexual-market value - how relatively attractive you are. It's where you learn whether you'll be beating them off with a stick, or whether you'll be stuck beating yourself off.

Eric and Dylan were in the latter category. They envied and loathed those who were in the former.

(Dylan, the boy who talked about love, continually lamented the fact that girls went for jock boys. And Eric moaned more than once about his inability to get any.)

God damn, is this a shame. Dylan was so, SO fucking beautiful and I stick by that opinion. Ditto with Eric.

The sad part is that high school doesn't mean shit.  

They had one month of school left to go!!!!!!! They could have just "sucked it up" and moved on with their lives.  

Everything changes after high school.  In high school I was an outcast, despite being attractive.  After high school I was a social butterfly with plenty of dates.  I feel sad for Eric and Dylan's limited ability to see that things would change down the road. But most teenagers are like this.

High school is such a blur. Most of what I remember of it is betraying everything I thought I believed in for the sake of getting it over with.

Getting it over with--in multiple senses of the world. I had goals, partially because of what I wanted, partially because of what I knew I had to do to maintain appearances, and thus keep myself out of the madhouse where I'd spent the tail-end of my middle school years. One of those goals was to get laid...because that's what normal people did in high school.

And I got laid. Whether I wanted to or not. I fell in with the resident hipster-progressive-rainbow-freelove clique, and like all well-socialized bonobos, it was impolite and improper not to give them what they wanted physically. Of course, they would never force me to do anything I didn't want to...but if I didn't make myself layable, or if I said I didn't want to, I could tell my membership in their group was on probation.

I guess I learned that I could be "hot" if I wanted to--all I had to do was abandon all ethics or self-respect and give everyone else what they wanted at the expense of what I wanted. I learned how to be manipulative on a level I will loathe myself for until the day I die.

It's not worth it. I wish I could impart every dimension of that experience into the heads of every highschooler who is angry about not getting laid, that it's not worth it. But it doesn't really end after high school either. The pressure to be married or dating, or hooking up with people, doesn't stop. It's mostly pressure to do these things for their own sake, as self-evidently good and right things, or as signs to other people that you are the "right kind" of person.

This is going to sound so pathetic, but I had nights when I secretly dissociated myself to sleep wishing I could've fallen in with the trenchcoat mafia instead of...those jerks who I fell in with instead, because at least the TCM didn't constantly shove their grooooovy promiscuity in each other's faces as a status game. (Or maybe some of them did, but Eric and Dylan didn't.)

The more attractive you are the higher your social status becomes, regardless of personality, gender, background, race. This is very apparent in high school. When I look around my school I see that the popular ones, and even the popular humble down to earth people are always more attractive than the others.

The girls in school always said that i am ugly and many others terrible things. once they told me that i am so ugly that i will never have a boyfriend.

i always think i am ugly because of that, no matter how much guys liked me. and now i had 3 boyfriends and my current relationship will be 9 years old in summer.

you can say "it´s only high school. get over it" but it isn´t that easy and that was the same with Eric and Dylan, I think. In the teenager time you are very vulnerable and influenceable. i wish they ignored all this and in college everything would be different for them.

in some ways i can understand Eric´s and Dylan´s frustration and rage. i will always remember the day when my classmate decided to put a dead rat on my chair. very funny, isn´t it. i hate them very much and if i would met the guy who did this, he should ran

Freezingmoon wrote:

The sad part is that high school doesn't mean shit.  

They had one month of school left to go!!!!!!! They could have just "sucked it up" and moved on with their lives.  

Everything changes after high school.  In high school I was an outcast, despite being attractive.  After high school I was a social butterfly with plenty of dates.  I feel sad for Eric and Dylan's limited ability to see that things would change down the road. But most teenagers are like this.

You got it. I was miserable in high school, I was depressed and I didn't really care if I woke up every morning and went there. I did okay grade wise but kids were just cruel to me and I really did feel like it would never end at the time. As soon as it was over though, I was free. I was never gonna see those people again. And you know what? I grew up and became a good person and a lot of those kids who picked on me turned out to be trouble as adults.

I was miserable in middle school. I was miserable in high school. I am still miserable today, and high school's been a while.

Seems like they might have not "gotten over it" either, like I did.

Just remember Elliot Rodger was 5 years out of high school, and still went on a shooting spree.

lol wrote:

I was miserable in middle school. I was miserable in high school. I am still miserable today, and high school's been a while.

Seems like they might have not "gotten over it" either, like I did.

Just remember Elliot Rodger was 5 years out of high school, and still went on a shooting spree.

Yes, but maybe they didn't know how to get over it. I mean you can't just expect life to get better if you don't make some changes in yourself. Elliot Rodger wrote about walking down the street and HOPING that a girl would walk up to him. Why not walk up to her? he didn't want to get out of his comfort zone and he just wanted people to do what he thought they should do. Life doesn't work like that unfortunately. I feel terrible that all of these boys did what they did but I was a tortured young person and I did anything I could to get away from it. (I am a recovering alcoholic now(my coping mechanism for a few years), but I am happier then I have ever been in my life)

FlyerFan wrote:

lol wrote:

I was miserable in middle school. I was miserable in high school. I am still miserable today, and high school's been a while.

Seems like they might have not "gotten over it" either, like I did.

Just remember Elliot Rodger was 5 years out of high school, and still went on a shooting spree.

Yes, but maybe they didn't know how to get over it. I mean you can't just expect life to get better if you don't make some changes in yourself. Elliot Rodger wrote about walking down the street and HOPING that a girl would walk up to him. Why not walk up to her? he didn't want to get out of his comfort zone and he just wanted people to do what he thought they should do. Life doesn't work like that unfortunately. I feel terrible that all of these boys did what they did but I was a tortured young person and I did anything I could to get away from it. (I am a recovering alcoholic now(my coping mechanism for a few years), but I am happier then I have ever been in my life)

I've looked into the Isla Vista Shootings for a while now. I read the entire reports, and no. Elliot Rodger DID try and speak to several women, and when they wouldn't even speak to him, or look at him there was one video where he started to cry (was unreleased).

And how about George Sodini?

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No matter how many changes I try to make, things stay the same. Every evening I am alone, and then go to bed alone. Young women were brutal when I was younger, now they aren’t as much, probably because they just see me just as another old man.

I see twenty something couples everywhere. I see a twenty something guy with a nice twentyish young women. I think those years slipped right by for me. Why should I continue another 20+ years alone? I will just work, come home, eat, maybe do something, then go to bed (alone) for the next day of the same thing. This is the Auschwitz Syndrome, to be in serious pain so long one thinks it is normal.

Quote :

I was invited to a picnic, and I went. An older woman there, out of the blue, asked if I liked high school. Then quickly asked if I was picked on very much. Intersting why she would ask that. But, thanks, I already know what the problem is, but a solution eludes me.

lol wrote:

FlyerFan wrote:

lol wrote:

I was miserable in middle school. I was miserable in high school. I am still miserable today, and high school's been a while.

Seems like they might have not "gotten over it" either, like I did.

Just remember Elliot Rodger was 5 years out of high school, and still went on a shooting spree.

Yes, but maybe they didn't know how to get over it. I mean you can't just expect life to get better if you don't make some changes in yourself. Elliot Rodger wrote about walking down the street and HOPING that a girl would walk up to him. Why not walk up to her? he didn't want to get out of his comfort zone and he just wanted people to do what he thought they should do. Life doesn't work like that unfortunately. I feel terrible that all of these boys did what they did but I was a tortured young person and I did anything I could to get away from it. (I am a recovering alcoholic now(my coping mechanism for a few years), but I am happier then I have ever been in my life)

I've looked into the Isla Vista Shootings for a while now. I read the entire reports, and no. Elliot Rodger DID try and speak to several women, and when they wouldn't even speak to him, or look at him there was one video where he started to cry (was unreleased).

I read his manifesto and it seemed like every time he had an opportunity he let it slip away, but that's just my take on things of course. I feel like he probably didn't know how to socialize and that's what frustrated him the most, but there is a whole other thread about him and that topic somewhere.