Ah, high school. The iconic wellspring of youthful hope and ambition.
The age-old pantheon of crisp young minds, eagerly absorbing all the tools they need to take on this cruel world of ours and make it their own.
An awe-inspiring showcase of America's future, basking in taxpayer-funded temples of fluorescent lighting and cinder block walls.
But unfortunately, every batch of bright-eyed leaders of tomorrow has its share of rotten apples. Reddit user u/K2TsU- recently asked their fellow redditors to share stories about the most disturbing things the popular kids at their schools did.
Literally thousands of stories were shared. Here are just 33 of them.
1. "Our teacher had a severe peanut allergy and the popular guy in my class rubbed peanut butter on her classroom doorknob — on the bottom so she wouldn't see it until she'd already touched it. She had to go to the ER, but the family of the guy that did it donated a LOT of money to the school so nothing really happened. I think he got suspended for only two or three days."
2. "One popular kid had a small handheld pump used for blowing up balloons. He shoved the nozzle up his butt, pumping air as it was up there. He then proceeded to pull it out and push all the air out, resulting in the loudest, most unbelievable fart you’d ever hear, all while in the middle of class."
3. "Someone cut the straps on the extremely poor kid's backpack, so he had to carry it around for the rest of the school year because his family couldn't afford a new one."
4. "He convinced a girl who had a crush on him that he was in love with her. Dated her for two years, showered her with love. Three days before prom, he arranged a 'proposal' at a party and let a friend slip up that he was going to do so. Instead, he publicly humiliated her in front of everyone by announcing he would never marry her because her privates smelled awful (to put mildly, he gave her no such honor). It was talked about the rest of the year, boasted as the 'best prank of the year.' We never saw her again."
5. "A popular kid faked his grandma's death on TikTok and followed with a video of him 'resurrecting' her through the power of God."
6. "When I was in middle school, I got invited over to the popular kid’s house to hang out. Like him, the rest of his friends were all ultrarich and looking for thrills. There wasn’t any booze or cigarettes, so the popular kid decided to take a dump on a glass plate and microwave it, in his own microwave. Worst idea ever. His house smelled so bad after that."
"To cover up the smell, he decided to make microwave popcorn. That just made it smell worse because he overcooked the popcorn and burnt it. Just imagine the smell. I still gag thinking about it. These rich kids then spent hours fanning the kitchen with silver serving trays and spraying his parent’s expensive cologne and perfume to cover up the burnt popcorn and poop smell. They were all idiots. His dad was so pissed. They had to throw away the microwave. Everything that you put in there came out smelling like shit. That was the last time I hung out with those morons. I didn’t care if they were popular."
7. "One kid showed us that he could pee in a desk. His own desk."
8. "A popular girl and her parents embezzled money out of the student council fund. It was a few thousand dollars."
9. "Popular girls on the bus used to take out their used tampons and try to sneak them in people's backpacks or hoodies. It was gross."
10. "In sixth grade, a popular girl made individually labeled chocolates for everyone in the class and put what we guessed at the time was bleach or rat poison in those of the children she didn’t like. It burned if you touched your tongue to it. Her mother was good friends with our teacher."
12. "The popular girls from my older cousin’s school shoved sardines in every crevice of her car that they could fit them. The car was unusable and her parents couldn’t afford to buy her a new one. The girls were caught on camera and the faculty knew who they were, but did nothing to help my cousin."
13. "In fifth grade, the popular boy ran around telling us he had a condom and asked if anyone wanted to see it. He proceeded to show just about everyone he ran into. He was wearing it...all day, because he didn't really know how it worked."
14. "He would poop in such a way that he would make a 'poop marker' out of his own poop and toilet paper. He would then draw and write things in all of the boys bathrooms. He got caught and suspended."
"He then did it after graduation interning at an accounting firm his dad was a partner at. He had to leave our town because that just followed him everywhere. I would like to add that the quality of his 'poop pen' must have been incredible as it looked like his drawings and graffiti were done with a brown Jiffy marker. It was perfect with crisp lines and even weight."
15. "A popular kid came to school with blackface makeup on 'in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.' He never came to school again after that."
16. "Kept a moldy sandwich in a locker in our classroom and refused to throw it away under any circumstances. He called it 'El Mucegaito,' and from time to time, he unlocked it so the unlucky ones who happened to be nearby could get a whiff. Later on, a bottle of his own precious piss joined the club. A full meal."
17. "One popular kid I knew loved to 'corner' the less athletic kids on the team in the large group shower by urinating at them, forcing them into a corner and seeing how close he could get the stream to them without touching before they lost their balance."
19. "Hooked up with my mom at my graduation party."
20. "In middle school, the popular kid brought in naked Polaroids of his mom and let us photocopy them. So weird…."
21. "The varsity football team made the first-years shove carrots up their asses in the locker room as hazing. There were subsequent lawsuits."
22. "Walked over to the 'cool girls table' in the middle of lunch and slowly vomited an entire intact peeled banana onto the hottest one's plate while they all just watched in stunned silence, and then he just walked away. What a fucking legend. Still haven't forgotten twentysomething years later."
23. "One of them called a bomb threat to get the day off for a friend's birthday. We did get the day off, but please do NOT do this."
24. "Made out with his cousin in the middle of the hallway between classes, neither teacher nor student batting an eye at the sight."
26. "My cousin informed me of this one: The popular kid had been selling photos of his sister sleeping, getting out of the shower, dressing, etc. to his buddies."
27. "When I was in middle school, I got made fun of a lot by the popular girls since I was super dorky. For my birthday, I asked my mom for some popular girl clothes, hoping it would help me fit in, which I remember being an Abercrombie outfit and a purse with an initial on it."
"This outfit was very different from my oversize cargo shirt and big T-shirt look so when I went to school the next week, all of the popular girls were shocked. So upset that four of the girls held me down in the girls bathroom and cut my outfit off of me while pulling my hair, kicking me, etc. I eventually had to leave the bathroom with no clothes (wrapped paper towels and clothes shreds around me). The school didn’t do anything besides talk to the girls and even blamed me for it. My mom threatened to sue and eventually one girl got suspended."
28. "The three most popular dudes in my grade sat behind me in computer lab. They were kind of shuffling around and chuckling quietly, which got my attention. They were putting their fingers under their foreskins and comparing the smell to see who had the smelliest cock. I wish I was making this up."
30. "One girl wanted to be the prom queen so badly, she banged the teacher who was in charge of the counting. Seriously. This was 1985 and it was an open secret; she was 18, he wasn't married, and no one said a thing. Now she's a teacher in the district."
31. "My senior year of high school, the popular kid knocked up four girls in one semester…on purpose. Like, he convinced these teenagers that having his child was how they would get ahead in life…so thanks for that, MTV’s Teen Mom, I guess?"
32. "Nudes of his older sister went around and his parents found them saved on HIS phone. Complained about it at lunch like he was caught smoking cigarettes."
33. "In high school, the by far most popular kid across all four grades accidentally leaked a video of him getting intimate with his dog… Fast-forward two weeks later and I’m sure he was working toward that proud title at his new school."
Did your school have a popular kid whose actions were particularly memorable (in all the wrong ways)? Share your story in the comments!
StopBullying.gov is an organization that provides resources to prevent harassment and bullying against children. Stomp Out Bullying offers a free and confidential chat line here.