Cliques are the height of lameness and idiocy in any school across the nation. They infest schools like an outbreak of leprosy, and anyone who contracts the clique disease dies a mind-death and “falls off” the same plane of intelligence as their peers. The people who subscribe to notions of cliquedom are so utterly bereft of anything approaching human thought that they might as well be ruled clinically dead. They are, in essence, walking, talking Terri Schiavos. Was that joke in bad taste? I don’t think she really cares; she’s dead for real now. These people are the Clique Bitches, and they are your friends, your neighbors, and your children.

A clique is an exclusive little social group that membership in is determined by such profoundly personally defining things as the way you dress and the way you talk. I was going to be happy to just let cliques die off in the recesses of my mind as something retarded from highschool, but much to my eternal dismay they seem to have resurfaced in college. Cliques become even stupider as time goes on. When I was a lad we had the goths, the nerds, and the jocks/popular kids. Basically the jocks beat everyone else up before going on to work as lawn care professionals forever, the goths went on to become english majors, and the nerds went on to become Bill Gates. I don’t think we need to analyze that one too much to figure out who came out ahead. By the tail end of highschool it had gotten even stupider and more complex. We had the surfers, the skaters, the goths, the nerds, the freaks, the geeks (not to be confused with the nerds), the jocks, the stoners….dear God, it just goes on and fucking on. I preferred to just lump the group under one giant category of Total Ass-Sucking Morons. How it works is thus:

If you want to become a member of the surfers, you need to buy a bunch of Quiksilver shirts and cargo shorts. Then you need to pretend you actually surf all the time by throwing around words like “rip curl” and saying “dude” a lot. Then you grow out your hair. Congratulations, you are now a proud member of the dumbass surfing clique. You are now eligible to date the cheerleaders and the popular girls, provided they are in the mood to date such a headstrong rebel as yourself who is capable of such epic and daring feats as mindlessly conforming to the preconceived fashion notions of a pointless social group. If you want to be goth you need to wear black all the time, write bad poetry, and listen to Nine Inch Nails. You are now eligible to date other goths (this may appear horrifying, but goth chicks are usually hot, plus they put out) and your right hand. Congratulations, you all suck just as hard.

The hilarious thing about cliques to me was that it completely simplifies and trivializes a person’s sense of individuality. You must be a huge, boring ass loser if your personality is honestly so formulaic and dull that the phrase, “I am a skater” or, “I am a punk” completely describes every single thing that was, is, or ever will be you. I guess every single surfer person has identical political afflitiations, religious beliefs, taste in clothing, and taste in women, and every single goth person has the exact same manner of speaking, favorite TV shows, favorite NIN songs, favorite food, and loves Bauhaus records. Nevermind that you are an individual with your own unique thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. Nevermind that you have the potential to come up with new and original thoughts that nobody else has ever conceived of. You can describe yourself perfectly in one short word, and it is the epitome of everything you hope to be. Fucking. Pathetic. People always struggled to lump me into one group or the other, and got all pissed off when I refused to identify myself as a Douchebag Soldier in one of the many Cockmonger Clique Armies. This resulted in me not having many friends, but I’ll take a few friendships based on actual personal chemistry and similarity of beliefs over many friendships based on my fucking t-shirt any day. If that meant spending most of my Saturday nights at home by myself reading, listening to music, or playing videogames, that was fine, and continues to be fine by me.

Are people still seriously this boring and desperate for approval? I knew this shit was stupid back in junior high; I never expected it to last all the way to the university level. Yet, everyone else here adopts the exact same manner of speaking, dress, and action. If you are cool you go and get drunk every night, you wear brightly colored polos with the collar popped, and you say, “sup dawg” a lot. How fucking sad is that? In my job I see probably a thousand different people a day, and it’s beyond pitiful how many of them are exact duplicates of each other. Do they have no sense of pride? Is it honestly so morbidly terrifying to open yourself for judgement? Does anyone know why people suck so much? E-mail me, I’m honestly at a loss.