40 Ways In Which Popular School Kids Seriously Messed Up

Being popular in school may sound like the plot of a movie, but it’s based on real kids in real schools. These kids are usually lucky because everyone knows them or about them, and most people want to be their friends. People always seem to go out of their way to make popular kids happy, and they usually have that cool factor about them that draws instant respect. However, if an individual isn’t able to maintain an authentic personality, these perks usually dry up pretty quickly.

Recently, an interesting discussion on Reddit sprang up when someone asked folks to recall the moment one of their former popular classmates shattered their reputation and lost their appeal. These kids had everything going for them until they made a series of decisions that destroyed their lives altogether, as you can see in the gallery below.

A small note of warning, some of these stories can make you feel uncomfortable due to the sensitive topics they cover.

#1 He teased my best friend for being built like a Mac truck. She picked him up and put him up side down in the garbage can. He lost any coolness he had.

#2 I stood up for the teacher with (at the time) terminal cancer when everyone was teasing/bullying her (cancer made her a bit more positive, live life to fullest-y and she was pretty “childish”-actually great for elementary school children but my class was one degree away from feral at the time). I was no longer popular. She was super nice and by some miracle beat the cancer.

#3 He accidentally stabbed and blinded (in one eye) the nicest kid in the school by throwing a stick at him. The kid that was blinded grew up to be super successful and is now married, with a baby on the way.

#4 She made fun of a girl with cancer. Made a joke like, “Why don’t you ask your mom to buy you a wig; I can see your scalp”, and overnight, she was the least liked person in school, and 100% deserved it.

#5 In seventh grade going into eighth, a really popular girl was running for class president. A really dorky, awkward, but completely harmless and generally very happy girl decided to run against her, but everyone just thought she was being weird and had no chance of winning. The popular girl ran a smear campaign in middle school. She spread a bunch of bulls**t about this happy little wallflower that absolutely nobody disliked. Not only did the dorky girl win the election, but the popular girl was shunned because she showed what an awful person she was.

#6 I was realatively “popular” (I was in JV basketball, marching band, mathletes, and track and pretty much made friends with everyone) until my best friend at the time claimed I pushed her down the stairs and caused her to have surgery on both legs. Thing is, I was at my grandmother’s funeral in another state the entire week she claimed it happened.

While the teachers kept us apart and understood my side, none of the others really believed me. Except the Anime club. They believed me. Go weebs.

#7 He punched the autistic kid then proceeded to get jumped by every single guy that saw him in school for the next week until his parents had him switch schools.

#8 He nearly caused the s*icide of a girl in his year. He was popular but a massive a**hole and would pick on a girl (she was lovely and was only bullied for her weight). He started an online hate campaign against her in the final year of school, and she tried to kill herself because of it. She mentioned his name in a note she left, and he was named and shamed in front of the whole school and ended up going to a youth offenders facility for it. She didn’t die and now has a lovely shop in a coastal city with her husband.

#9 The popular kid lost his popularity in a pretty epic way. During a party, someone found a group chat where he was talking cr*p about everyone. They projected the screenshots on a big TV, and everyone saw his true colors. He tried to explain, but no one believed him. From then on, people valued those who were sincere and genuine. It was a brutal reminder that popularity built on lies doesn’t last.

#10 When he was caught taking up skirt photos of girls in school and sending them to his friends. His popularity went from Hero to zero is a split second.

#11 I came out as trans and some people were happy for me others if they didn’t agree they didn’t say anything. One day in the cafeteria he decided it would be funny to push me over and call me names in front of half the school. It was not funny and people realized how much of prick he was.

#12 One of the kids at our school lived with his grandma cause his parents died. d******d and a group of his mates started harassing the old lady whenever she came to pick him up, principle was reported this and they ended up getting expelled all together.

#13 The popular guy was caught hiding in the girl’s locker rooms when we were about 11/12. Apparently, he was caught filming them getting changed. No one spoke to him after that and he was ‘asked to leave’ and moved schools. Also, I’m pretty sure the police got involved, but I don’t think they did anything.

#14 On the last day of school, if I remember correctly, one of the well-liked class clown types played a fake seizure prank in a certain teacher’s class. He didn’t realize she’d had a student literally die in her arms the previous year, and she had a panic attack, thinking it was happening again. The people who knew about her history quickly spread the word, and everyone s**t on him for it. He denies it happened to this day, but I was in the room when it happened. I remember being afraid for him, then growing annoyed and silently angry when he started laughing while she began to cry.

#15 This football player was at a party — also in attendance was a kid nicknamed ‘Beans’ who everyone knew and loved. The football player tried to get Beans to try some party drug or other. Beans, being a good kid, declined. The football player did not like this answer and spiked Beans’ drink. Beans had a bad reaction to this drug. He died.

The entire town banded together to raise money for the family, and 15 years later, someone put up a memorial billboard (probably on his birthday or the anniversary of his death). I honestly don’t know who did it; I wasn’t part of that social circle. I do know he was absolutely ostracized and had to transfer schools.

#16 Well, he k*lled three people, so yeah. … He was only in jail long enough for his mommy and daddy to post bail. He served zero time.I’m from a small southern town. His family has lived there for generations; they’re rich as fuck, and he and his brothers have always been assholes.

He got wasted and high on suboxone at a party we were at over winter recess (we were in high school, mind you). He up and decided to take his new jeep with four other people and go down dirt roads on the riverside.

He ramped off a ditch — the first girl got ejected and died instantly. The other girl and the guy in the backseat got pinned and crushed under the car. He and his friend also got thrown from the car but made it out with a broken arm and concussions. Originally, he was only charged with one death, but the two people in the backseat did end up dying from complications due to the crash.

Guess what we got…one small article about a crash involving teenagers and a dumb empty chair with a picture and balloons at our graduation. No one ever mentioned the drugs or the fact he got another DUI charge that was dropped when we were juniors and that he was sent away to rehab in CA. Now he lives in Toronto and found God, so yayyyy, I guess we’re all supposed to forgive him now.

#17 He was chatting up my much younger sister (her 12 him 17) and a few months later someone in the class brought it back up so he picked a fight with me. I have barely any muscle but what I found out that day is I have one hell of a right arm.

#18 He robbed a 7-Eleven with daddy’s nickel-plated 357 while wearing his varsity jacket (first name on front, last name on back) at the start of his junior year. I’m guessing he was VERY popular in prison, too.

#19 Popular girl in junior high, got outed & in a bunch of trouble when she accused a couple guys of stalking her. One guy lived a block away from her so she told everyone at school that he was a creep & was looking in her window at night.

Unfortunately for her, the guy she accused of peeping on her was out of town during the time she said everything happened. He had mountains of proof & she had absolutely nothing to back up what she was saying. She & her family got into big trouble for a false police report & since her dad was still active duty military, they got booted out of base housing & she got moved to another middle school.

#20 He threw a bottle of pee at a teacher for $60 our first year. She cried and left the school. His last name started with a P, so everyone called him Peeman or Pi*sboy, and even the teachers called our graduating class the ‘Pee Bottle Class.’ I hope it was worth the $60 he didn’t need.

#21 A high school jock … got drunk at the graduation party and groped a girl. His girlfriend got understandably pissed and told him to take her home. The drunk d**khead wrapped his car around a light pole, and his girlfriend got k*lled.

After that, he spent about nine years in prison for DUI and manslaughter. (I think he got a reduction for good behavior, but I’m not sure.) He got out expecting everyone to be his friend again and everything to be like it was. Nobody wanted anything to do with him. Everyone hated his guts. Last I heard, he moved across the country to work in the mines. Turns out assaulting a girl and then k*lling another kinda makes you a piece of s**t human being.

#22 She started a fight with another popular girl over something petty. The other popular girl, unbeknownst to us all, practiced martial arts and delivered with one hand the most beautiful, graceful punch that I have ever had the pleasure of seeing while pulling out a chunk of hair with the other. The other girl was suspended and skyrocketed higher than ever while the popular girl who started the fight became little more than a laughing stock with a temporary bald spot.

#23 This super popular girl tricked one of the shy nerdy kids into thinking she liked him, got a d**k pic, and sent it to a big group chat. She got in trouble but cried her way out of it; a month later, though, she transferred schools.

Once we figured out she had transferred, we told the people at that school what she did. Funnily enough, the kid she victimized got a lot of support over this. He came out of his shell and became pretty popular, so at least there’s some good that came out of this.

#24 He pulled a prank so bad that the girl had an epileptic attack and was sent to the hospital; she hit her head really bad when she fell. … The girl participated in a class discussion where teachers asked about our biggest fears; she said hers was grasshoppers. Then at recess, this really popular shty kid found a really big grasshopper in the schoolyard and put it in her pencil case. In the middle of the next period, when the girl picked her case, she screamed and tried to run. But she stumbled and fell headfirst to the floor. The dumb asshole was laughing all the time. He didn’t get any punishment; they couldn’t prove anything. … Anyway, the fker was socially excluded after that.

#25 He was king of the roost from sixth grade into high school. Then he was caught standing on a bathroom sink at a public swimming pool, looking through a ventilation hole into the women’s bathroom where one of our female classmates was changing…while pleasuring himself. … He had to move 1200 miles to Wyoming to escape his new reputation.

#26 Having a set of keys given to him by the school (wtf, I know) because he was one of the really popular kids, then using those keys to break into the school and steal $30kAUD of woodworking/metalworking tools.

#27 There was one kid in my class who was the son of our math teacher. He was crazy popular because he was able to help everyone out with their homework for that class; turns out he was actually snooping through his dad’s notes to get the answers.

The teacher naturally got super suspicious after a while, so he deliberately made a fake answer sheet. Of course, the kid grabbed it and noted it all down.

It was full of wrong answers so blatant that anyone who even slightly paid attention in class would know they were way off base. The kid handed out the answers anyway, and in an instant made about half the class bomb, and his popularity dropped like a rock as they all accused him of deliberately making them fail. They moved him to another class and they never had an incident of cheating again.

#28 In elementary school, so popularity was already sort of a nebulous concept, but one boy got pantsed at recess and was found to be wearing diapers.

Pretty sure he was incontinent, which has got to be a rough f*****g road for a little kid, especially since he didn’t seem to have any other noticeable disabilities.

#29 This one girl posted something racist on Snapchat and ended up getting suspended for it. This was followed by her parents attempting to sue the district for slander. The case was thrown out almost instantly. The whole situation was honestly really petty.

#30 She got pregnant at 17 and the father could have been one of two guys, both of whom were boyfriends of her close friends and neither of whom wanted anything more to do with her. My school actually had really good sex education and we knew about contraception from the age of about 11, plus this was the UK where contraception is free and easy to get, so she couldn’t blame ignorance or lack of resources. She tried for the woe-is-me act and nobody wanted to be around her any more.

Edit: Since a lot of people are talking about double standards, I’ll add that both potential fathers were also ostracized after that. They’d cheated on their girlfriends, both of whom were well liked, and had been stupid enough to not even use contraception when they also couldn’t plead ignorance or lack of access. As for the girl in question, she wasn’t ostracized for having sex or even for getting pregnant, really – the primary reason was that she’d slept with her close friends’ boyfriends and, again, not even used protection. Plus when she went around looking for sympathy afterwards rather than just accepting that she’d done something wrong, that made it so much worse. She tried to claim it was all her friends’ fault for being bad girlfriends, and if they weren’t, their boyfriends wouldn’t have been interested in her.

#31 When i was in primary school the popular kid thought it would be funny to flush the class pet (a hamster called nibbles) down the toilet. All the kids thought the hamster would have died, he quickly became known as the kid who killed a hamster. He ended up changing schools for another reason.

Btw the hamster survived, I don’t know how pipes work but i heard the caretaker eventually found him. The school still gave nibbles away after that.

If you were wondering about the kid, he had bad adhd or something like that, he was transferred to a school that specialised in kids with behavioral problems, he has a stable job as a bookmaker but that’s all I know about him.

Also although we were told nibbles survived, we never saw him again, all we know is that he was given away to a random family. There is a possibility the teacher made that up (as another redditor pointed out) and nibbles actually did perish and they just didn’t want to upset us.

#32 He thought it would be cool to bring a loaded bb gun to school and got the cops called on him by another student.

#33 There was a really pretty girl that was quite popular in my high school, she was a bit snobby to people and sorta rude – I recall one time she threw a textbook at my groin because I was leaning back in my desk and thought it was funny (I guess it kinda was thinking back). She also liked to make fun of the fact that I was Mexican on more than one occasion.

Anyways, she gained significant weight our Junior/Senior year in high school, and I guess a lot of the popular kids decided to disown her for it. I never actually heard anything, but I recall her sitting all alone at lunch one day. Not my best moment, but I walked by her, pointed, and plainly said “you earned this”.

#34 Well, after he planted a pipe bomb in some kid’s locker for looking at the girl he liked wrong, everything just went downhill from there.

#35 He sexually a**aulted one of the most liked girls in the school, and after legal action took place, and he came back to school, nobody spoke to him, nobody acknowledged him.

He played soccer, and so the school let him stay, for some f*****g reason. If they wouldn’t give him justice, we all decided to, ourselves.

#36 Made fun of the mute kid for being mute. Said it she was ‘Faking it’ and that it ‘wasn’t possible for her to be that way’. He definitely didn’t get away with that.

#37 He threw a watermelon at a black kid’s house.

#38 Everyone else graduated.

#39 My partner likes to tell the story of how she became the unpopular kid at school.

She was about 6/7, so Primary 2 here in the UK, and a trend kicked off in her class of eating dog biscuits. All the kids were stealing dog biscuits from home and eating them at break time. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a dog, and just had to eat normal human biscuits at school. She was ostracized every break time for it.

Peer-pressure is weird sometimes.

#40 Started straight up lying to teachers to get people in trouble. Don’t know how he thought that was gonna work out.

Shanilou Perera

Shanilou has always loved reading and learning about the world we live in. While she enjoys fictional books and stories just as much, since childhood she was especially fascinated by encyclopaedias and strangely enough, self-help books. As a kid, she spent most of her time consuming as much knowledge as she could get her hands on and could always be found at the library. Now, she still enjoys finding out about all the amazing things that surround us in our day-to-day lives and is blessed to be able to write about them to share with the whole world as a profession.