Being the popular kid in high school seems to be great: You have friends, you get invited to parties, and you effortlessly breeze through what's supposed to be the hardest years of your life just because everyone admires you. But being popular is much like being a celebrity: Everyone is watching your every move, and if you make a mistake, you fall hard—especially if you're a total jerk. From simple slip-ups to life-altering lies to calculated, conniving schemes, these people reveal the weird, sad, and terrible things that the popular kids did to make them go from cool to drool.
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#1 Not The Teacher's Pet
He was popular because he was a rebel that talked back to teachers and insulted them openly. He became an outcast because he made the teacher everyone loved cry.
#2 Don't Mess with Friends
He hooked up with two of his friend's girlfriends. They ditched him after that.
#3 Karma
This kid in middle school used to talk back to everyone. Everyone thought he was tough and could fight until one day, he started on a special needs kid. Nobody had ever actually seen the popular kid fight, he just was excellent at intimidation. The popular kid challenged him to a one-on-one fight and got his butt kicked by the special needs kid. The popular kid not only lost all of his influence but didn't even have the guts to come back to school for like a week. If I ever saw instant karma it would have had to have been on this day, because he was quiet as a mouse the rest of the years through high school.
#4 Hugs Not Drugs
Drugs. You're the cool kid in 9th grade if you're smoking grass all the time. You're not the cool kid in 12th grade if you're addicted to hard drugs.
#5 Terrible Idea
She was hired to dogsit for a neighbor when they went out of town. She decided to take advantage of the empty house and threw a party that got out of hand. The neighbor's daughter also went to the school and had to deal with a messed-up house. It was a pretty big deal and the popular girl never came back.
#6 Don't Lie About That
She was pretty and fairly popular. Near the end of the school year, she told everyone that she had cancer. We were approaching the end of 7th grade at the time and everyone knew: teachers, other parents, students in other grades, etc. It kind of united everyone who wasn't typically friends and that was kind of cool. Until one day (maybe a week or two in), a few of her friends went to visit her at her parent's house. They brought it up and discovered it was a hoax. She upset a lot of people and lost all of her friends after that. She gained new ones eventually, but what a weird and terrible thing to lie about.
#7 Self-Imposed Exile
I knew a girl and she was voted homecoming princess. Then, she just decided she didn't want to do it any more. I think she had a falling out with her friend group and she started dating a nerd. She lived her best life afterwards under the radar. So it was a self-imposed exile.
#8 That's Serious
The popular guy got caught with a bunch of serious illegal substances in the trunk of his car on school grounds. He was also over 18 as a senior. We never saw or heard about him after that, but I'm guessing it didn't go well for him.
#9 Should've Paid More Attention
Popularity messed with his mind and that made him lose sight of his grades. He barely graduated.
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#10 That'll Do It
He sent his girlfriend's private pictures to the whole school.
#11 She Bounced Back
There was a girl that was THE popular girl in school. She had all the friends and even put out an album; she was a total star locally. One day, we were taking standardized tests and she ran out of the room and didn't return. When we left the class, there was green diarrhea ALL over the floor just down the hall from the classroom. The poor girl didn’t make it to the bathroom in time. She didn’t return to school that school year and moved to another town completely after that. She married a famous NFL player and is one of those Instagram people now, so she bounced back from a terrible situation pretty well.
#12 Weird
He started dating this nerdy girl, then he stopped hanging out with his friends and started spending all of his time with her little brother and his middle school A/V club. Then, he kept hanging out with the little kids even after they broke up.
#13 Bad Injury
One of the popular kids was a proper decent guy and footballer. He developed a persistent knee injury which cut his youth playing career short. He developed a dependency on pain relief and became a terrible friend to people and to his girlfriend. Thankfully, she stuck with him, and with her help and persistence he got clean.
#14 The Great Vape Bust
There was this kid who was literally as dumb as a pile of rocks but he was popular. He vaped and stored ALL of his stock in his locker. When the school did their locker checks, vapes just come POURING out of this guy's locker. We were all kind of laughing. Anyway, he got called to the office and asked to explain. They offered to lighten his punishment if he could tell them who else might have vapes. Needless to say, this kid ended up ratting on a good 55 kids who all got suspended in the "Great Vape Bust of 2k19" at my school. No one bought from him again and no one really talked to him after that lol.
#15 Don't Talk Badly
The popular girl was talking badly about a sophomore's family so the sophomore kicked the popular girl's butt. The whole school ran over to watch. It was pretty funny, and she wasn't popular after that.
#16 This Seems Totally Unfair
When I was a kid, my best friend had a popular older sister who was on the varsity cheerleading team. A party got busted that the whole team was at. When it came out, the school kicked every girl off the squad and banned them from extracurriculars, but took no action against the boys from the football team that were at the same party. Her dad was a lawyer and sued the school over it on behalf of all the girls. They didn't even win but the rest of the school hated her for trying to get the football team in trouble.
#17 What Now?
He kept going on about being a "Golden God" and how we were all his "minions."
#18 A Lie With Consequence
This very popular, good-looking guy lied about having an affair with a female teacher whose husband was also a teacher at the school. Literally everyone hated him after the truth came out.
#19 Listen to Your Friends
She called other girls bad names because those girls were trying to tell her that her boyfriend was cheating on her...and they were right.
#20 Highschool Sweetheart Did It
He got with me. For real. He was the most popular kid and I was the most unpopular. He was still always popular, but less so after he started dating me. Now, we’ve been together for 10 years and married for a little over 8.
#21 Cheater, Cheater
He got caught cheating on an Econ final his senior year, and instead of taking responsibility, he dragged three other people down with him who had apparently had also cheated. All four got in trouble. Only that dude lost all his friends.
#22 King Bully
He got a bad haircut. He was teased for it and he threw a temper tantrum. He literally stormed out in the middle of class. He lost his spot as "king bully" after that.
#23 Now a Nerd
I was best friends with the most popular guy in school for a couple of years back in middle school. He was great. But the rest of the popular kids... Meh. They were all "cooler" than me in my opinion, but he saved me a seat at lunch every day at lunch. One day, I decided to sit with the nerdy kids who played magic. I never really got my popularity back after that. And I think I hurt my friend's feelings because he was never the same to me after that, either.
#24 Can't Let it Go
I’m pretty sure the popular kids in my school never left hometown and are now just populating house parties, trying to hook up with high school girls.
#25 Be Nice to Everyone
There was this good looking football jock who was very popular with the ladies. But one day, he got into a fight with a special needs kid. He, in turn, got decimated by the football team, so there was justice, but that dude spent 10th, 11th and 12th grade as an outcast and completely shunned.
#26 Poor Teacher
The popular guy spilled soapy water stuff from a cleaning bucket (possibly intentionally) and the chill teacher—you know, the one that didn't care about whether you played games in class or not—tripped and broke his right arm.
#27 Karma, I Guess?
Somebody catfished him and sent an inappropriate video of him to the entire school. I kind of felt bad for him but he was a mean popular kid.
#28 She Deserved Better
Not really outcasted, but a girl at my high school got cancer. A lot of people started avoiding her after word got out. It wasn't really that they were trying to be cruel or didn't feel bad for her, it was more that it was an awkward social situation they had no experience with and it was much easier to evade than to confront head-on. None of her close friends did this, fortunately, but lots of casual acquaintances did.
#29 Sounds Like a Nightmare
He upset one of the other popular guys, maybe by dating his ex-girlfriend? I can't remember exactly how, but every dude in school shut him out and he had no friends. It's kind of sad because he was a decent guy and they turned on him at the slightest provocation. But that's how things were in my class. My class was known for having the meanest, cruellest cliques. We had a few substitute teachers who refused to teach our class because we were so awful. I'm glad I moved schools, that place was a nightmare.
#30 What Was He Thinking?
He got an 8th-grade girl pregnant while he was a junior in high school. He eventually transferred out because everyone hated him so much.
#31 This Is Unfair
A girl in my middle school was really popular, but she was also super nice. I was a total outcast with a lot of problems, but she was the only person who ever treated me like a normal human being. She came out as bisexual and got bullied so badly she had to move schools.
#32 Time to Grow Up
Uh, well, everyone else grew up. He didn't and doesn't seem to want to. Now it's everyone else's fault 10 years later.
#33 His Fault
...she dated me. We were in speech and debate together. We both did impromptu and we would give each other random quotes and stupid cartoons to practice with. We spent a lot of time together because of it. We dated for about two days before people mocked her for it and she bailed on me HARD to keep her social status. She never socially recovered from the sin of liking one of the nerds. Thing is though, she then lost all her nerd friends too.
#34 Unpopular for a Good Reason
One of the popular kids started dating a girl from another school. She was friends with one of the kids he bullied. The bullied kid told the girl what her boyfriend did, so the girl threatened to break up with him if he didn't change his ways. He stopped socializing with the "cool" kids and started getting bullied by them. None of the other kids wanted to warm up to him. He was a loner at school but he made his girlfriend happy and he was happy.
#35 Popularity Doesn't Last
He graduated high school. Then, he turned into that 30-year-old dude that still hasn't gotten over high school.
#36 Didn't Think That One Through
The most popular kid showed up on the first day, and after only knowing what it's like to be the coolest kid in the small school, he tried to start a fight with some random kid—who was with 11 of his friends. I guess he wanted to take on 12 guys to show how cool and "top dog" he was to everyone. Those 12 guys ended up kicking his butt and then made fun of him for years. He wasn't cool anymore.
#37 He Needs to Clean His Act Up
Our senior year, this kid used to boast about smoking grass and drinking. One day, about halfway through the year, he showed up to first period (which was at 8 a.m.) art class, completely off his head. He passed out in class. He had loads of illegal substances in his backpack. He was taken away in an ambulance, and no one really ever heard from him again.
#38 He Deserved Better
The popular kid got hit by a train and had head trauma. Everyone cared about him until he got out of the hospital and he wasn’t the same mentally. All of the other popular kids mock him and blocked on social media.
#39 Poor Guy
There was a guy that was pretty popular. He got really tipsy at a party and totally didn't know where he was. He pulled down his pants, squatted, and used the floor as his bathroom. He moved away immediately. He was a senior...that was well over 25 years ago. Well, he friended me on Facebook a couple of months ago and I kind of recognized him...I racked my brain and I realized who it was. Poor guy.
#40 Brownie Laxatives
Well, the popular girl at my school tried to ruin the life of a really sweet girl because of boyfriend drama. When she realized people were standing up for the sweet girl instead, she lost her mind. She accused the other girl and her boyfriend of property damage, turning on anyone who didn’t “swear loyalty” to her and turning people against one another. It was a mess.
The nail in the coffin was when she confided in me and two others that she was planning to put laxatives in the pastries she baked for the class. Obviously, I let people know and she became completely ostracized. She left at the end of junior year, and senior year was the most chill year ever.
#41 This Is Awful
He broke the heart of a quiet girl in school. She was really soft-spoken but super nice to everyone—basically everyone's little sister. She was absolutely beloved by everyone in her year, and he was a year older. He was her first love and then he essentially abandoned her. She was devastated by it and it broke her for the rest of the time she was at school. She went right into her shell and barely spoke to anyone. When he started bragging about what he did, everyone hated him.
#42 That's Rude
There was a popular cheerleader at my school that was in a bad car wreck and she suffered severe brain damage. The day she came back to school, some of her friends—aka the popular kids—sat with her at lunch. Every day after that though, they sat on the other side of the cafeteria in their normal spot and she was with the other special needs students. They would walk past her without saying a word. As far as everyone knew, her entire group of friends completely abandoned her. I don't think she missed them though. She seemed to be very happy most of the time after the accident. Not so much before.
#43 Double Karma
It was quick and ruthless. The most popular guy in school was the "leader" of the popular clique, but he (and the rest of them) were terrible. One day, he sat down with a quiet kid at lunch who liked to sit by himself. He asked the quiet kid if he wanted a friend to eat with. This was an obvious attempt to get everyone to see how nice he was. The quiet kid then said to him, "God, you're an awful person." while getting up and moving to a different table. The whole school saw it. He wasn't popular after that.
#44 (Un)Popular
I remember in middle school the popular kid asked out the most unpopular girl. Then, he embarrassed her in front of everybody by breaking up with her and laughing in her face about how she could think it was real. It was really sad and I remember her being really into high school TV shows. I think she really wanted to be popular.
#45 Mean Girls
She tried to manipulate all her friends and pitted them against each other with a bunch of catty lies. She also wore her pageant sash and crown to school for like a week.
