Not in high school, but in middle school. I was reasonably popular in high school - had a decent group of friends, even if I wasn't in the "popular kids" crowd, and I was on good terms with most of the kids who were in the "popular kids" crowd. Occasionally see some of them, even.
In middle school, I was beaten up on a daily basis.
I think that a lot of this is an information cascade based on who the dominant kids are in your year. In my elementary/middle school district, the most dominant personality was a kid who I swear was a sociopath. He started tormenting everyone else in first grade. When we were 8 years old, we went on a field trip to an old historical house, and upon being shown the herb garden, his comment was "Is this where they keep the heroin?" My 3rd grade teacher mentioned privately that he thought this kid was mostly likely to end up in prison in 10 years. And sure enough, the last I heard of him, when I was about 17 years old and had long since moved to another school, was a notice in the paper that he had been arrested for assault and battery with a caribeaner.
My sister had no such problems, coming one year behind me, because there was no such person in her year. For her grade, the "cool" kids were all smart, diligent students, and so the culture of the class followed them. In mine, everybody kowtowed to this one sociopath because we were all afraid of what he'd do to us after school if we didn't.
The unfortunate thing is that it's all too easy for one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch, and school administration will all too often look the other way. If just one person with authority stands up and says "Look, this is not acceptable, quit threatening the other kids or don't come back to school," it stops. But a lot of teachers and administrators are so afraid of lawsuits that that rarely happens.
In middle school, I was beaten up on a daily basis.
I think that a lot of this is an information cascade based on who the dominant kids are in your year. In my elementary/middle school district, the most dominant personality was a kid who I swear was a sociopath. He started tormenting everyone else in first grade. When we were 8 years old, we went on a field trip to an old historical house, and upon being shown the herb garden, his comment was "Is this where they keep the heroin?" My 3rd grade teacher mentioned privately that he thought this kid was mostly likely to end up in prison in 10 years. And sure enough, the last I heard of him, when I was about 17 years old and had long since moved to another school, was a notice in the paper that he had been arrested for assault and battery with a caribeaner.
My sister had no such problems, coming one year behind me, because there was no such person in her year. For her grade, the "cool" kids were all smart, diligent students, and so the culture of the class followed them. In mine, everybody kowtowed to this one sociopath because we were all afraid of what he'd do to us after school if we didn't.
The unfortunate thing is that it's all too easy for one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch, and school administration will all too often look the other way. If just one person with authority stands up and says "Look, this is not acceptable, quit threatening the other kids or don't come back to school," it stops. But a lot of teachers and administrators are so afraid of lawsuits that that rarely happens.