I would very much like to say that my high school experience was like yours, but I can't...
It's true that the reality wasn't the same as what we thought: The interaction was more web-like than pyramid-like. But at the same time, we all knew who was likely to end up in jail, who was on the short list of possible homecoming queens and kings, and who was able and willing to abuse whom.
Sometimes this was made quite blatant, by for example the designers of the school yearbook clustering groups of people together and giving them backhanded captions or fake "likely to succeed" awards. I hated every yearbook I appeared in. Recently a friend-of-a-friend of mine posted scans of our senior yearbook on Facebook, with drawings of dicks and asses and mean-spirited comments scribbled along every page. "What fun we had!" he declared. 25 years later and that document is still haunting me. (Also: Fuck Facebook.)
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It's true that the reality wasn't the same as what we thought: The interaction was more web-like than pyramid-like. But at the same time, we all knew who was likely to end up in jail, who was on the short list of possible homecoming queens and kings, and who was able and willing to abuse whom.
Sometimes this was made quite blatant, by for example the designers of the school yearbook clustering groups of people together and giving them backhanded captions or fake "likely to succeed" awards. I hated every yearbook I appeared in. Recently a friend-of-a-friend of mine posted scans of our senior yearbook on Facebook, with drawings of dicks and asses and mean-spirited comments scribbled along every page. "What fun we had!" he declared. 25 years later and that document is still haunting me. (Also: Fuck Facebook.)