Marketing supremo Seth Godin wrote today: “Any sufficiently overheated industry will eventually resemble high school…filled with insecurity, social climbing, backbiting, false friends, faux achievements, high drama and not much content. Much of this insecurity comes from a market that doesn’t make good judgments, that doesn’t understand how to reliably choose between alternatives. So it turns into a popularity contest.”
As Tom Hanks reportedly said, “Hollywood is like high school, but with money.” The internet, Godin says, is like high school but with a modem. And twitter… is high school but only 140 characters at a time.
As with high school, you ultimately win out when you keep your distance from irrelevant people. And do your own thing.
I was bullied mercilessly in high school. The “clique” found me weird (lived in country, big family, quite liked studing). I found them weird.