EPT
Friendship groups mimic the society we grow up in, it is not just issues of race and segregation it is up to personal choice. In multicultural Australia we do not suffer from such cultural and social differences as some countries, i.e. the black/white race relations in the United States, or the native Africans away from the South African Afrikaner people. So in today’s society, we do not expect such radical differences in the way people interact with each other, based on race alone. So I believe that friendship groups really do copycat the society in which we live – issues of race, attractiveness, what you weigh and what kind of person you are dictate and become the catalyst for what kind of friends you can ever have.
For example, the stereotypical archetypes pertaining to characters in American high school films – we see the lewd and feisty jocks, coupled with the acting ‘slightly too innocent – with a look of absolute lust in their eyes’ cheerleaders who play an obsequious yet slightly ‘off put’ role as the objects of lust for teenage males. The jocks of course end up sleeping with half the cheerleaders, often all of them will have had sex with the same one at least once – this causes much hilarity and distances the jocks and cheerleaders ever further from all seriousness, but they provide most of the erotic, or risqué viewing. The social groups that the cheerleaders and jocks fit into are thus; shallow, horny and oft-times below par in whatever intellect that they possess. They will of course be beautiful - that is their just reward for being a group of misogynistic hypocrites forever – they all hate each other, but they all love each other – yet they are all harlots in a world of non sequitur; this gives justification to their beauty, otherwise…what would they really have? - Ugly offspring.
So they have beauty and they have the same mindset, thus no one from other archetypal friendships found in American high school films will ever allowed to be in their group. It is not blatantly screamed out in reality as it may be in the films, but in reality the same divisions exist even if they are not spoken aloud. The films may propagate and reinforce this image more and more, at a subtle subconscious level. This will be effective in the long term however, as a mass cumulative effect will slowly create diverse social segregation at a ‘cold war’ level. No one would strike, but it would grip everyone in a non-verbally segregated society – that would be scary I think.
That is why, no matter how integrated society becomes at a cultural level, you will always see some division no matter how small. Yet as it mimics society on a cultural level, it also mimics society at another dimension – the widened dimension of the seriousness and shallowness of people; based on overflowing bank accounts, good looks, respected (wealthy) families and social grooming (white culture). Racial groups will stick with each other, language and familial cultural differences will always play a massive part in this. It is the reason people bond together; similarities – both racial and in compliance with our deeply encoded social ‘code’ “Stick with your own kind.” So I propose the notion that, we can never really achieve a full level of unity until the entire world has become mixed of race and culture has been abolished by the blending of too many cultures with one another.
But my thought does not include thought this far into the future. I simply mean that society and friendship groups really are the same thing – friendship groups are an ersatz of society itself.
On a more shallow level, attractive girls stick with attractive girls, at some levels there will be an unattractive or overweight girl – and people will look in amazement and think ‘how did she get into that group of friends?’ the truth behind this is probably: - she is a friend of necessity. By that I mean that she is the unattractive twin or the niece of a favourite uncle who just showers ‘his true little angel’ with gifts – his true little angel being the attractive girl in the group of other attractive girls. So to keep this status the unattractive ‘misfit’ girl will be included in the group for personal gain alone.
Sometimes girls at the top tier will become bored. When they need some entertainment to satisfy their craving for laugher, where else can they look? – Down the hierarchy. They will look down and select a girl who is seen as more of a social outcast and look for the most intrepid of these social outcasts in social situations. Some outcasts will be loud and confident in certain social endeavours or situations; this is because they have bravado, gained from learning not to care what anyone thinks anymore - because they are already at the bottom of the social hierarchy. It is these small eccentricities which form certain friendships, yet they can decay away fast when a new elitist value is exuded by the unspoken ‘leader’ and the older friend follow suit – leaving the weakest link in the chain behind and rejoining the original group with a new set of elitist values - All unspoken of course.
This is why I believe social peer groups, whilst they can intermingle, they will always be separate in their own way – think of it as big changeable circles, and some will trickle into the other for a short time. Think of them as water droplets, sometimes smaller droplets of water run into another and join to form a bigger droplet of water. Yet think of it as water droplets that can reverse this process and become unjoined at any time. The social groups will act in this way – like droplets of water joining up and splitting up in a seemingly random way.
