How I think the reputation system works in my school
School. School's pretty boring, at least I'd say so. The work can be pretty easy for me, I don't know about you, though. Anyways, there's one thing that either keeps people up at school or makes people feel horrible at school. Reputation. We all know the three categories of popularity (CP) in a class, even if we never thought about it. Popular, unpopular, and neutral. Popularity is determined by what you do with your friends, how many people you hang out with, and your "role". Roles are not determined by personalities, because if that were the case, everything would be even more complicated! There are roles that can go with all three CPs and ones that can only be put into one or two of them. I'll list all of the ones that can traverse between CPs.Â
Liked, nerds, intimidating, background person, annoying, teacher's pet, and special.
Liked people can traverse through all CPs even though it is rare that they can be unpopular. That could happen through an event with a very popular person, or if they did something with a very unpopular person. Those events would have the unpopular/popular person to have specific roles though. The popular person would have to be one (or more) of these roles; liked, special, or lucky. The unpopular person would most likely be in the annoying role, but could just be in the unlucky role.
Nerds can also traverse through all CPs. They could be unpopular by how they use their role (annoying), they might also be in the unlucky role, or they could have the teacher's pet role and use that badly as well. They could blend in, having a few friends, thus turning neutral. They could get 'popular' by letting others cheat off of them, specifically popular people. They could also have the lucky role.
Intimidating people could scare people away, so that means they're unpopular. This could also lead to popularity since this does not connect to their personality fully. If a popular person that doesn't have the annoying role or the background role gets dared to talk to them or something, their personality could fix their low reputation. People could also just enjoy having someone intimidating as their friend, which would be connected to the lucky role. People enjoying having someone intimidating as their friend could also lead to the neutral CP if you don't have the lucky role since that brings your chances to popularity higher.
Background people can be either neutral or popular. Being a background person when you are unpopular means you have no friends whatsoever, which is the outcast role (and most likely the unlucky role). Being a background person in neutral means you're in a friend group, but no one really notices you or talks to you. Same thing for being a popular one, but with either more friend groups or a very popular friend group, which is less likely.
Annoying people can either be unpopular or popular. You can already tell how they can be unpopular, but how can they be popular? Bribing is how. Let's say there are some really popular girls who like slime. An annoying person has tons, and will let them play with the slime only if they can hang out together. You might be thinking "How does that make them popular? The popular people don't enjoy the annoying's person company!" That doesn't matter. Have you forgotten what I said in the introduction? Popularity is determined by what you do with your friends, how many people you hang out with, and your "role". The annoying person hangs out with a lot of people, and since they most likely don't have friends, they make it up by hanging out with popular people.
Teacher's pets will usually be either neutral or unpopular. There are rare instances where they are popular, though. They'll usually have the lucky role if they are. Now, they can be neutral by not using their role as a huge advantage. If they make it obvious they're using it as an advantage, teachers (and definitely students) will notice. If a teacher notices, their role is taken away, since it has to do with how the teacher thinks of them. When students notice, the teacher's pet will have a very high chance of unpopularity.
Special people can be any of the CPs. By special, I mean there's something different about them physically. That could also mean that have the intimidating role, which would lower their chances of popularity. This could get others to talk to them more because they're interested, but the chance of that happening goes down every grade. Being neutral gets more and more likely every grade, though.
Now that we're done with those simple roles, I have to say one more thing before I get onto the unpopular CP roles. How these roles affect you depends on your personality, likes, dislikes, and other's personality, likes, and dislikes. For the "certain-CP-only" roles, personalities just affect how severe the role affects you, negatively or positively. The neutral CP roles would always be people who have some friends, but not enough or the right ones, so there is no need for neutral roles since the traversing roles already have them. So here are the unpopular CP roles.
Outcast, unlucky, faker, creep (rare), and crybaby.
Outcasts are just people who don't have any friends or anyone to hang out with. People disliking/hating them is optional, they usually have the unlucky role as well.
Unlucky people are people who just got unpopular quickly for no reason, or just no one liked them for some reason they can't control. (Can be related to the special role)
Fakers usually have the annoying role as well. They try to get attention by being someone they aren't. They could copy some popular person's looks, copy their behaviour, etc. Depending on who they think is popular, they might try to act like someone with the intimidating role, which is very common with these people. If they have the crybaby role, their reputation will drop even lower.
Creeps are people who are obsessed with someone that is in the school. Following students and staring at them from afar is really common with them, but to get the creep role they need to creep the creep victim.
The Crybaby role is simple, they cry easily. But that isn't all that can ruin their reputation! Crybabies can lower their reputation even more by using it to their advantage. How so? They can make up something that happened, and the teacher/adult will believe it since the student is crying.
Just to let you know, roles can mix! Crybabies can mix with some popular role then the person would be somewhere near neutral. Everything balances out. Now for the popular CP roles!
Creep victim, lucky, careful, and funny.
Creep victims get to tell their friends about the creep, and the friends tell their friends, and so on. This gets people to know who the creep and the creep victim is. They'll probably try to hang out with the creep victim to see if it's real. (Tips for any creep victims that get in this situation: Act how your friend acts to the new person if you want to be extra popular)
Lucky people are basically the opposite of unlucky. You might have noticed how lucky is added to a way to get popularity a ton, but it's not easy to get that role. Well, it is, but only if you're actually lucky. Luck isn't something you can control. Let's take the unlucky role, you can always try to gain some popularity. Being unlucky doesn't mean an automatic game over, that just means extra work. Being lucky though, that's way less work. You'd have to try to do something bad to make yourself unpopular if you have that role because chances are that you'll have that role for some time.
Careful people are like fakers, but less idiotic. Careful people actually make it less obvious on what they're doing and they try to find things like this to help them make it. Careful people will either succeed or make people feel pity if they don't. If they don't succeed, people will probably know how low their self-esteem is, and will try to help them.
Funny people attract people to them by their humour (which also adds some charm). Many people will want to befriend them. Funny people are also funny because they know when to stop too. Many careful people tend to try to act like they have this role because they know how successful it is.
