Talk:Adolescent clique

Strange picture

That picture seems really odd: surely there is something better? Turnstep 19:00, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

I'm removing it. It's illogical. --Sn0wflake 23:07, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Social Groups and World Events

Studying world history spanning the centuries it becomes noticeable that more often than not the wrong people become the leaders. There are exceptions, of course, Ghandi being one of them.

Ghandi is not without criticism

If leaders are people who are driven by the need for acceptance, and are willing to exact pain and suffering upon those who do not meet their personal needs, then it is likely that those people should not be leaders.

Rather, those people who excel in a craft, or science, or any given human endeavor, should be taught leadership and allowed to practice it.

Cliques (or gangs in many instances) become a defining force for individuals. The leaders of cliques often become the leaders of countries, transnational corporations, and social institutions worldwide, and because of that cliques are social objects that should be thoroughly studied. The manipulation of clique behavior might better serve societal goals if that behavior is integrated into social systems rather than peripheral to them.

Clique behavior has been integrated to some degree in the more formalized activities and events such as sports programs and debate teams. The observation is that in these activities the team and program goals define the social behavior and social stratification within the group.

It may be interesting to find that less formal activities, such as water cooler discussions and power lunches, assign disproportionate meaning to unstructured behavior, and so allow a greater possibility of unhealthy social outcomes.

Related:

Interpersonal Configurations and Cliques

Populars and other cliques

Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment

Xmo1 12:11, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Pariahs/outcasts

Not a big issue, but I don't like the inconsistent terminology used for outcast. early in the article the term ``pariah" is used while it is later replaced in favor of ``outcast".

Feminist Bias

This Article dosent say anything about boys cliques or even list common cliques. someone please clean this up.

• Well first of all, it wouldn't be feminist bias because that would imply that this article is biased for/against feminists, depending on how one looks at it. Anyways, cliques are simply more common in females. Cliques exist in males but not to as much of an extent. --72.226.224.251 17:55, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I can assure you that this article is not only feminist biased but also toward the juvenile. Cliques exist in the adult world and can be male, female or mixed. For example, attractive confident queen bee greatly influences male leaders for example. Also I think there are more than two roles - coming from two groups, insiders and outsiders. This article only describes two. --Dixx 22:09, 7 May 2006 (UTC)Dixx.

I took out the part that mentions that it's thought to be more prominent among women, and politics. Replaced politics with workplace. added nearly to a generalization that said, "...all cliques have some sort of power structure" Also removed "Thus, it is inaccurate to describe all social groups of teenagers as cliques, as often said groups do not have any particular power structure." Looked up a defintion of clique in a dictionary, it's simply an exclusive group of friends, often with a common factor, such as purpose or belief. (ie a bunch of goths, or with a nod to Hunter's little known "Freak Hallway", a bunch of "freaks")

Pronunciation

Is the pronunication written supposed to be read as a homophone of the word "click"? Although I am aware of this pronunication (which I think is particularly common in America), I believe the more classical pronunciation is somewhat like "cleek". (This agrees with its origin as a French loanword.)

I do not know what phonetic standard Wikipedia recommends for writing out pronunciations, but perhaps both should be included at least for the sake of comparison. Could someone else knowledgeable in these matters update the pronunciation?

Unfortunately, I don't know how to code IPA (but who does, anyway? Esperanto-speakers?). I think it would probably be sufficient to say that some Americans say pronounce the word "click" to rhyme with "stick", and everybody else says "cleek", to rhyme with "peek". 32.97.110.142 23:09, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Bad Article

The person who wrote this watched "Mean Girls" one too many times.

thats exactly what I was thinking. Not neccesarily a bad article, but the wrong type of tone. However I don't have the slightest clue how to fix it so I shouldn't complain. Bawolff 07:00, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree. I think all the "queen bee" stuff needs to be reworked - I don't think real-life cliques are as structured as this article explains. I just can't figure how to reword it myself.

I would like to see more of an evolutionary / psychological definition without any sort of moral standpoint to it. This article seems to want to talk about clique as the preconception of a clique, than to talk about clique as what it actually may be. Cliques seem to be nearly universal in our youth culture so how could they just be chalked up to kids being 'bad'? Phonemic IPA should be in /'s.

I agree with the "Mean Girls" statement, immensely. Having glasses and a watch doesn't make a person smart, preps are hated by many people, goths, emos, skaters, and many others are omitted completely(as far as secondary school cliques go), and jocks aren't all powerful. Also, being a nerd doesn't mean you're lonely, or undesirable in any way, being one myself, I know, I have quite a few friends, of both genders...it's not difficult, or a stretch of the imagination. Just basic misunderstanding of the entire clique concept is shown in this article, making a simple friendship with similarities(such as rich preps or black clad goths) seem like some kind of fraternity or occult initiation process.

I definitely agree that this article needs to be reworked. One sentence that really jumped out at me was "Cliques may also be a source of distraction from studies, both for clique members and for the outcasts they victimize." Doesn't seem very NPOV to me. Not all cliques "victimize" non-members. This article seems like it was written by someone who had a bad time at high school and is now trying to make cliques seem like a malevolent presence. --Sidhebolg 07:07, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

political cliques

Uh, cliques are also military alliances formed within warlords. Elle _{vécut heureuse} ^{à jamais} (Be eudaimonic!) 01:44, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah...I heard that before. Hmp ;). --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 06:48, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Problems with this article

1. American centric
2. Youth centric
3. Female centric
4. Human centric (Yes, cliqueish behavior can be seen in animals)
5. Where are the references??? (I didn't see a single one)
6. Reads like it was written by a teenager
7. Pro & Con list

I re-worked the intro, and made the pro & con list look less like a pro & con list, but the article still needs a lot of work. I thought I'd leave a note here so people have my ideas to work with. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 18:23, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Since this has been tagged for clean-up forever and had so many problems I have now cut about half the content from the article; reducing it to a stub and "see also" section. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 17:25, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

A Mess

Decided to lose half the article about the ridiculous game called 'bully' as it is irrelevant. Also, i removed the family clique information as it was ungrounded and technically a clique concerns only unrelated peoples 'with common interests' as the article states.