He was popular in the most annoying way possible. Not because he was kind or genuinely funny, but because he had money, nice shoes, a car his parents paid for, and a group of people who laughed at everything he said. He acted like everyone outside his little circle was beneath them. If someone worked after school, he made jokes about it.
If someone handed out flyers for extra cash, he’d laugh. If someone worked at a fast food place, he’d act like they’d already failed at life, even though we were all just teenagers. There was this one girl in our year who used to help her aunt promote a small salon on weekends. Sometimes she stood near the mall entrance and handed out flyers.
She was quiet, sweet, and honestly just trying to help her family. He saw her once and would not let it go. For weeks, he called her Flyer Girl like it was the funniest thing in the world. He’d pretend to hand invisible flyers to people whenever she walked past.
His friends would laugh, and she would just keep her head down and walk faster. Looking back, it was so unnecessary. She wasn’t hurting anyone. She was working harder than most of us.
But back then, he made people feel like having a job was embarrassing, like helping your family was something to be ashamed of. Fast forward a few years after graduation. Life did what life does. His parents split up.
The money stopped coming in like before. From what I heard, he dropped out of college after one semester. People said he struggled for a while because he had never really learned how to humble himself or work for anything. He was used to being the guy everyone looked at, not the guy asking strangers to please take one paper.
Then one day, that same girl saw him outside a grocery store. He was wearing a company shirt, standing under the sun, handing out flyers for some promo thing. She said she almost didn’t recognize him at first because he looked so tired. Not just physically tired, but embarrassed.
Like every person who walked past without taking a flyer made him smaller. I know this sounds like a movie plot, but it’s a hundred percent true. She didn’t do anything dramatic. She didn’t laugh at him.
She didn’t gather friends around to embarrass him the way he used to embarrass her. She just walked up, took one flyer from his hand, looked him in the eye, and said, “Hope your day gets better. ”
And yeah, that Flyer Girl is my wife. Be careful who you laugh at, because life has a funny way of switching roles.
The dumbest way popular kids destroyed their lives wasn’t always some huge dramatic crime or scandal. Sometimes it was the way they made people think being accepted by them was worth becoming a worse person. I can say that because in middle school, I was one of those people who fell for it. I wasn’t popular at first.
I had my own friends, people I actually liked, people who trusted me. Then the popular kid suddenly decided I was cool enough to hang around them, and I let it go straight to my head. I started thinking I was above the friends I used to have. I didn’t beat anyone up or anything like that, but I laughed at people.
I made fun of people. I treated some of my old friends like they were embarrassing just because the cool group had decided they were at the time. I probably would have said I was just joking or trying to fit in. Honestly, I was emotionally stunted, self-absorbed, and not really seeing other people as actual people with feelings.
I wanted approval so badly that I was willing to hurt people who had never done anything to me. The stupidest part is that the popular kids didn’t even care about me that much. I was just happy to be invited, so I copied their attitude and acted like it made me important. Then I grew up.
And when I say I felt horrible, I mean it stayed with me. Years later, when MySpace and Facebook made it possible to find people again, I looked up some of the kids I had hurt. I didn’t message them right away because I knew I didn’t deserve an easy apology moment. I spent almost a year trying to find the right words.
Not because I wanted forgiveness, but because I wanted to admit that what I did was wrong without making it about me. I was prepared for them to tell me off. And honestly, they would have had every right. Some of them forgave me.
Some even became friendly with me again. But forgiveness didn’t magically make me feel better. If anything, it made me feel worse sometimes, because they were kinder to me than I had been to them. So yeah, the dumbest way the popular kids destroyed lives was by convincing a bunch of insecure kids that cruelty was a personality.
Some of us carried that guilt for years. I’m a completely different person now, but I still remember the people I hurt just because I wanted to feel cool for five minutes. I got the opportunity to confront my old bully face to face. He didn’t even remember my name.
He was a complete mess and looked like someone dragged him out from under a submerged train wreck. But this was the guy who chose me at random one day to come slug me in the face to make his friends laugh. He was over a head and a half taller than me, so I did absolutely nothing. For the next two years, he and his friends would wait outside the school so they could walk behind me and make me relive that day, either verbally or at random times physically.
When I confronted him, he had no idea who I was and gave me one of those, “Whatever I did, I’m sorry. ” Which just made me angrier. It was said in a very dismissive tone, and I was just too built up. I slapped him in the face in a crowded food line.
I told him I was going to follow him home and make him relive this day every day for years. Then maybe he’d remember. He looked terrified, though, so I left. Honestly, I don’t know how I would have handled it if he had actually remembered me.
My situation would have gone completely different if he had. My girlfriend’s daughter was in a similar situation at school, getting pestered by a mentally disordered boy. He repeatedly touched her inappropriately despite being told to stop. They were both ten, and after repeated conversations with the principal and teacher, nothing was done.
This boy, while mentally challenged, was allowed to stay in class while he pestered many of the girls. I believe the school didn’t want to get sued via the Americans with Disabilities Act, so they did nothing. Finally, I told my stepdaughter to stand up for herself. She refused at first, saying she didn’t want to hurt anyone.
After some convincing and further harassment on the boy’s part, she punched him in the nose, injuring it as I instructed her to do. He never touched her again. As someone who was bullied in high school, I’m glad it happened because I know how bad it feels and I know it needs to be dealt with, not bottled up inside. I know it would destroy my stepkids if that behavior were allowed to continue.
The dumbest way the popular kids destroyed their lives, at least from what I saw, was by thinking being feared was the same thing as being respected. I was very fortunate to have never been bullied. I was always fairly popular, had a lot of older friends, but I was also pretty shy, so I never really had that loud popular kid personality. I wasn’t the type to run the school or act like everyone should worship me.
I just kind of knew people, got along with people, and somehow ended up in that group. But when I saw kids bullying others, I would speak up. Sometimes I even got into fights over it because it just seemed wrong on every level. Sure, some kids did weird things, some dressed funny, some were awkward.
Some had hobbies that other people thought were embarrassing. So what? Looking back, I dressed funny, too. Most of us did.
We just didn’t know it yet. The thing I learned about bullies, especially the popular ones, is that a lot of them had serious issues at home. The two I knew very well both had fathers who hurt them, their siblings, and their moms. I don’t mean normal, strict parenting.
I mean missing school because of visible injuries or because things at home got that bad. It doesn’t excuse what they did, not even a little. But it did help me understand why some of them were so irrationally mean. They had no power at home, so they came to school and tried to feel powerful there.
That’s the dumb part. They thought picking on weaker kids made them look cool, but all it really did was make everyone remember them as cruel. Some of them grew up and tried to apologize later, but not everyone got over it. And honestly, why should they?
Being hurt by someone when you’re young sticks with you. My wife went through something similar with her father. He contacted her for the first time in twenty years a few months ago. She forgave him, but she also told him she would never have a relationship with him.
She hasn’t gotten over what happened, and I don’t think she ever fully will. Forgiveness doesn’t mean access. A few years back, I was the assistant manager of my karate studio. It was a slow, quiet day when in walked Paul, my old bully from public school.
I wasn’t sure at first. It had been a long time and it was hard to tell. I didn’t say anything. Paul was interested in joining the dojo, and I showed him around, discussed pricing, everything.
I didn’t treat him any differently than I would any other potential client. At the end of the tour, Paul decided to join our dojo. We sat down in the office and filled out the paperwork. When he wrote his name on the application, I knew for sure that this was indeed my old bully.
The guy who used to torment me every single weekday. I still didn’t say anything until after he prepaid me for an entire year’s membership. As I walked out the door, I smiled. “I’m really looking forward to training with you.
”
“Thanks. Me, too,” Paul said. “You don’t recognize me, do you? ”
“Uh, no.
Should I? ”
“Yes. We went to school together, grade three through eight. You bullied me every day and made my life miserable.
Can’t wait to see you in class. ”
Paul went white. He walked out without another word and never walked back in. He willingly threw away a year’s membership payment, almost five hundred dollars, rather than have to be in the same class with me.
I found that to be the most cathartic, healing, and downright pleasing outcome possible. Look, if this happened in middle school and early high school, you were all what, eleven to fourteen? I’m not saying what they did was okay, because it wasn’t. Kids can be cruel in ways that stick with you for a long time.
But it also sounds like you spent years being angry at a child whose remarks you say you didn’t internalize. I was bullied in middle school and early high school, too. I was the gay girl, so you can imagine the kind of things people said. It sucked.
I cried about it. I got angry about it. And for a while, I carried that with me. But the older I got, the more I realized middle school was basically just a bunch of insecure kids trying to survive and taking it out on each other.
Some were worse than others, sure, but most of us probably hurt someone’s feelings at some point without even realizing how deeply it landed. So if one of my old bullies reached out to me now with a real apology, I think I’d actually be touched. I’d probably want to meet them for coffee, hear them out, and maybe even shake their hand. Not because what they did was harmless, but because it takes something to grow up, look back, and admit you were awful to someone.
That’s kind of the dumbest part about the popular kids back then. A lot of them thought being mean made them powerful, but years later, they’re just adults carrying shame over how they treated people. Some of the people they hurt moved on. Some didn’t.
But either way, those little middle school power trips weren’t worth it. In my school, one of the popular guys built his whole personality around making other people feel small. He wasn’t the smartest or the funniest, but he had enough people around him laughing that he thought everything he said was gold. If someone dressed different, he had a comment.
If someone was quiet, he made them a target. If someone tried to stand up for themselves, he’d make the whole group laugh at them until they gave up. There was this one kid he picked on constantly. Nothing huge in a single moment, but every day was something.
Comments in the hallway, jokes during lunch, little public humiliations that everyone pretended weren’t that serious. And because he was popular, people laughed along. Nobody wanted to be next, so they let it happen. Years later, that popular guy tried to apologize.
He sent this long message saying he had grown up, that he regretted how he acted, that he was sorry for what he did. Maybe he meant it. Maybe he really did feel bad. But by then, the damage had already lived in the other person for years.
Accepting it or not, it probably won’t make much of a difference to the bully. For him, the value is in making the apology, not your reaction to it. If you really want to make your point, you should tell him your story properly. Everything that affected you.
But that’s risky. And what would be the point anyway? It depends on whether you want to relive all that and get involved with the guy again. But one thing’s clear from your reaction: that stuff is still on you.
I had a lot of bad stuff I held on to from school, and you’ve just got to find some way to work it out and let it go, because it poisons your life until you do. Part of that means eventually forgiving all the people involved. I don’t mean going and telling them or anything, but letting go of the hate. Otherwise, you just keep all that nasty crap inside you, and it keeps resurfacing and polluting your happiness.
For years after high school, I used to lie in bed replaying horrible situations in my head, reexperiencing all the emotional trauma. But eventually I worked through a lot of that stuff. Once I dealt with it, those memories and people no longer brought up any reaction in me. That’s when I realized I’d forgiven them all and liberated myself from all the garbage.
I never talked to anyone about it, and I think I wasted a lot of my life carrying all that baggage around. Maybe not therapy, but even just a friend. So I guess the dumbest way he destroyed his life was that he traded being a decent person for a few years of popularity. He became the guy people remembered for being cruel.
Even if he apologized, that was still the version of him people carried around in their memories. Being popular in school meant nothing after graduation. But the damage he caused lasted way longer than his little crowd did. One of the popular kids from my school ended up reaching out years later to apologize to someone he used to torment.
Back then, he was one of those guys who thought being cruel made him funny. He had a crowd around him. People laughed when he made jokes at someone else’s expense. And because he was popular, nobody really called him out.
He probably thought it was harmless because school popularity makes some people feel untouchable. But years later, he wasn’t that kid anymore. He was an adult looking back at what he did and realizing he hurt someone badly. That’s the dumbest way a lot of popular kids destroyed their lives.
They traded being decent for attention, then had to grow up with a memory of who they were. You don’t have to forgive him if you don’t feel it. You don’t have to give him some emotional reward just because he finally feels bad. But it’s worth understanding that your answer could have real weight.
If this guy is struggling with his past and needs some small absolution to keep becoming a better person, rejecting him harshly could push him backward. But if he’s still the same arrogant person and only wants to clear his conscience, forgiving him too easily could let him walk away thinking you fixed it. My advice is to tone it down a lot. Don’t lie and say you forgive him if you don’t, but don’t spit all your anger at him either.
There’s no need. If you truly don’t care anymore, let the message sound like that. Make it simple. Make it neutral.
Tell him you received the apology, that what happened affected you, and that you hope he treats people better now. You don’t owe him warmth, but you also don’t have to give the old version of him more power over your peace. I’d like to add the point of view of a mean kid. I was such a brat in elementary and middle school.
I would make fun of people and say such mean things to them, picking out certain kids to really bully. I realized in high school that I had been a really terrible kid, and shortly after, I ran into a girl I had bullied. When I saw the look on her face when she saw me, it was a huge reality check. I knew I had been mean, but she looked so angry and terrified when she saw me.
I walked right up to her and told her I was really glad I had run into her because I wanted to apologize for being such a terrible person. I told her I was really sorry and really regretted how I treated her. Her attitude toward me completely changed. She smiled really big and said thank you, and that she really appreciated me saying that.
I never saw her after that, but I’m still really glad I did it. Maybe I did it because I’m inherently selfish, but I honestly think my main motivation was realizing that I had really hurt her and that even though apologizing can’t make those bad experiences disappear, it can still make a real difference in how you move on with your life. There was this popular guy in my school who thought being cruel was the same as being funny. He had the usual group around him, the kind who laughed at anything he said because nobody wanted to be the next target.
It wasn’t even interesting, honestly. He just had enough confidence and enough people backing him up that he could make someone’s day miserable and everyone would pretend it was a joke. He picked on one kid for years. Not every second of the day, but enough that everyone knew.
Little comments in the hallway, laughing at what he wore, making up weird rumors about him, calling him out in front of people just to get a reaction. And because he was one of the popular kids, people brushed it off like, that’s just how he is. Then school ended and real life happened. The popular guy didn’t become some big success story.
He went from being the center of attention to just another adult with a job, bills, and a lot of old behavior following him around. The kid he used to pick on actually did pretty well for himself, and people started remembering the popular guy less as cool and more as that guy who was awful to people for no reason. Years later, he messaged the kid he tormented and apologized. From what I heard, it wasn’t some quick “sorry if I hurt you” thing.
It was a real apology. He said he had been a horrible kid, that he was insecure, that he regretted how he treated people, and that he understood if the guy never wanted to answer. And honestly, that’s probably the crappiest thing that could happen to anyone. Not because one apology ruined him, but because he wasted the years where everyone thought he was cool becoming someone he would later be ashamed of.
All that popularity meant nothing after graduation. Nobody cared who sat at what lunch table anymore. But the way he made people feel, that stayed. The other guy didn’t owe him forgiveness.
He could accept it, ignore it, or tell him off, and all of those would have been fair. But I remember thinking, damn, what a stupid trade. He got a few laughs in school and paid for it years later with guilt, shame, and a reputation he could never fully erase. There was this popular girl in my school who was genuinely cruel.
Not just mean girl in a movie cruel, but the kind of person who knew exactly what would hurt you and said it loud enough for everyone to hear. She had this group of friends who followed her around like backup dancers, laughing at everything she said. And because she was pretty and social and teachers liked her parents, she got away with it. She got away with a lot.
Her favorite thing was humiliating people publicly. If someone wore the same shoes too often, she pointed it out. If someone’s family didn’t have money, she made little comments about it. If a quiet kid had a crush, she made sure everyone knew and laughed about it.
She once printed out screenshots of a girl’s private messages and passed them around at lunch. The girl cried in the bathroom for the rest of the day, and the popular girl acted like it was hilarious. The dumb part was she thought none of it would matter after school. She thought popularity was permanent.
She thought everyone would either forget or still be scared of her. Years later, she started trying to build this whole girl boss, women supporting women image online. She was posting motivational quotes, talking about kindness, confidence, and how women need to lift each other up. People from school saw it and were like, “Eh, not you.
” And one of the girls she used to torment posted a very calm comment under one of her videos. Nothing dramatic, nothing messy. Just, “Interesting to see you talk about kindness now. Still remember when you printed my private messages and passed them around school.
”
That was it. That one comment opened the door. Other people started replying with their own stories. Not rumors, not lies, just very specific memories.
What she said, what she did, who she targeted. The whole perfect online image started cracking because too many people remembered the same version of her. She tried to play victim at first, saying people were obsessed with the past and trying to ruin her life. But the problem was she had built her entire brand on being kind and empowering.
Once people realized she had been the exact opposite, nobody wanted to hear the speeches anymore. Local businesses she was working with quietly dropped her. A few clients followed. Her engagement tanked because every post about healing had people asking if she had apologized to the people she hurt.
There was this popular girl in my school who was rich, spoiled, and honestly just a full brat. Not like, oh, she’s dramatic, but in the kind of way where she really believed everyone else was below her. She had the newest phone before anyone else. Expensive bags, branded shoes, and she made sure everybody noticed.
If someone wore the same jacket too much, she had something to say. If someone brought a packed lunch, she would make a face. If someone couldn’t afford to join a school trip, she’d laugh and say things like, “Why even come to the school then? ”
She was mean, but because she had money and was pretty and always had a little group around her, people acted like it was just confidence.
She was an only child, too, and both of her parents spoiled her so bad. They gave her anything she wanted, even when she was rude to them in front of people. I remember seeing her snap at her mom once because the driver picked her up in the wrong car. Instead of correcting her, her mom just apologized.
That was the kind of life she had. No consequences, no humility, no idea what it felt like to actually work for something. She grew up thinking money was permanent and people were disposable. After graduation, most of us went our own ways.
But every now and then, people would hear updates about her. At first, she was still living the same flashy life. Trips, parties, expensive clothes, posting like she was some celebrity. People started saying she was always at the casino.
At first, it sounded like just rich entertainment, like she had money to waste and wanted to look grown. But nah, it got worse. She wasn’t just going for fun anymore. She was there all the time, chasing losses, borrowing from people, selling stuff, and acting like she was still fine.
Both her parents passed away, and since she was the only child, everything went to her. The house, savings, jewelry, business shares, whatever they had left. For most people, that would have been enough to be set up for life if they were careful. But she treated it like the money could never end.
She kept going back to the casino. Kept telling herself she could win it back. Kept spending like she was still the spoiled girl who could just ask mommy and daddy to fix it. Little by little, it all disappeared.
The nice car was gone, then the jewelry, and the house had issues. Then people said she was staying with random relatives because she didn’t have anywhere stable anymore. The saddest part was when she finally had nothing left, she didn’t have real friends around her. The popular group from school was gone.
The people she used to impress with money didn’t care anymore. The people she used to treat badly definitely weren’t rushing to help her. I don’t say this like I’m happy it happened, because honestly, it’s sad. But it was also one of those moments where you realize being popular in school means nothing if your whole personality was money and cruelty.
She had everything handed to her and somehow ended up with nothing because nobody ever taught her limits, gratitude, or how to treat people like they mattered. She spent years acting like money made her untouchable, only to learn the hard way that it can disappear faster than real friends do.