Nothing remotely like that went on in any school I went to. Sure there might have been the occasional fight and whatnot, but there was no class warfare or social stratification. That stuff is only endemic in Hollywood, and might possibly be perceived to the extent that it is, because of all the spoiled rotten kids who have had nothing but praise and affirmation growing up until they run into peers who are under absolutely no compunction about letting them know they are not attracted to/impressed by mommy's little darling. As for the absurd trope of set cliques and conscious maintenance of a caste system? Nothing I ever observed remotely resembled everything like that.

And don't try any of that "Well you were on top, so of course you think that." I was a literary-bent type. I never played organized sports (and I went to a school that has a nationally ranked football program, and won the state championship for soccer at least once while I attended - sports were a big deal there, but the jocks were not privileged, nor bullies nor preening egotists), I was small for my age and my family was one of the poorest in the school. I had friends across the racial and economic spectrum in that school, and none of us were any sort of "superstars" or anything that would remotely fit into the non-picked-on types as shown on television.

Yeah, the self-absorbed drama queens who can't get over their childhood ineptitude and shortcomings.

I take it from that absurdly incoherent and ungrammatical sentence that you would not fall into the intellectually inclined/literature segment of the population, yet you seem to be denying any inclusion in the "sports inclined" either. I was in the middle of the pack academically and was small and slow for my age. I had no athletic inclinations nor played any organized sports. Yet somehow, I never was stuffed into a locker by the football team or made a butt of open public humor or anything like that. And yes, I read lots of science fiction at the time. Who the hell defines himself with a narrow range of interests like these absurd high school students on the screen? I had a friend who was one of the more popular kids in the school and was in the drama club. There were football players who did well in class (and none of them were barely-passing dummies, because you needed to maintain a C average to participate in sports or other extracurricular after-school activities). We had a school talent show every year and no one was made fun of for participating or singled out as losers or villified as geeks or untouchables.

I guess it must have been that old Catholic intolerance at work.