I didn't write this, but that doesn't make the contents of said essay less relevant. The described mentality of the "popular" would go greatdistance to explaining behavioural motivations in OS and religious zealots, not just high school kids.

As for the postulates in the author's timeline... well, ninth grade was when my septum was forcibly deviated by the class bully. I didn't have a home computer or regular access to computing resources, so it's no wonder I was big into video games (Nintendo and SNES), tabletop gaming, and other assorted forms of escapism.

In the long run, the ethics become a bit more obvious- a lot of the "popular kids" from high school are wasting their lives in minimum wage jobs, already have kids, or are generally living the sorts of lives that leave them with the dim realization that the best is over and done with. Corroborating this, the allegedly "most popular kid in the class" later attempted suicide in college- largely in part due to the percieved isolation. Local conjecture was that he coulnd't handle being nobody.

Teenagers now are useless, except as cheap labor in industries like fast food, which evolved to exploit precisely this fact. In almost any other kind of work, they'd be a net loss. But they're also too young to be left unsupervised. Someone has to watch over them, and the most efficient way to do this is to collect them together in one place. Then a few adults can watch all of them.
If you stop there, what you're describing is literally a prison, albeit a part-time one. The problem is, many schools practically do stop there. The stated purpose of schools is to educate the kids. But there is no external pressure to do this well. And so most schools do such a bad job of teaching that the kids don't really take it seriously-- not even the smart kids. Much of the time we were all, students and teachers both, just going through the motions.

This is, for me, a lot of the underlying foundation of what LOC basically is. Everything else I've worked towards plotting deals largely with political stinkiness I've been exposed to since leaving high school, based on the escapist concepts put forth during the time I was there. However, my experience seems to be slightly aberrant from that of the average man, having managed to pull a Punk Rock "FUCK YOU ALL! I WIN!!!" victory out of what had, until my senior year, been a very annoying losing proposition. A lot of the skills and perceptions were nothing more than hunches, operating as a basic notion of "this is how it could/should" work in a social situation- playing the field like you'd play a chess board, so to speak, with it being overtly clear to the players that I wouldn't piss on their teeth if their gums were on fire. The heirarchial social system as described in the essay linked above had put me at the bottom, and I'd be damned if I was going to assent to their "system" without kicking, screaming, and taking as many of them down with me as I could.

In the end, I won by skipping around it, so to speak. Cut out the middle ground of the popular kids and became friends and associates with anyone worth talking to- which happened to be one or two of the "cool kids", several of the "nerds", and most importantly, several of the teachers and the administrative structure. Not out of any real desire to bend the machine so much as out of a real, solid desire to use my time efficiently and spend it with people who were interesting enough to merit it. And you're not going to get that in a group of 17 year old basketball players.

Favoring noblesse oblige over Victorian courtroom antics that were outmoded when the Pyramids were on the drafting tables is one thing- the strugle to actually live by that decision when your lot in it is mandatory serfdome with the great unwashed of adolescence is quite another- a mix of distraction in the school network, gaming, reading and sponging up anything of structure and depth against the seething anger and dissent at being distracted from my enjoyment of these "distractions" by a bunch of shitheads who likely have yet to learn that interest and value are relative things, not absolutes to be dictated by a minority of running-in-place conformists.

The mentality isn't unique, but in a resources-restricted situation in which anyone of a similar mindset is either of the "keep your head down and don't cause problems" mindset or not even close to intellectual peerdom, it seems such. Consequently, the perception becomes, after a fashion, self-propelling. Mobbed by an army of venemous sheep, what are your options?

Simple. Figure out what you're good at and elliminate anything that gets in your way. Do it a few times and you get some measure of privacy. Take to the command structure and shift your peer group, cutting out the middle- nobody fucks with you when the guy that runs your AD&D game is the high school vice principal. Readjust the situation and take control of your environment- bend the rules by proof of skill, talent, and if anything, dedication and intelligence by having the guts to ask, rather than conform and take the schedule they've shoved down your throat.

The message of LOC is one of forcing the world to adapt to you by changing how you're forced to adapt to the world. Society isn't going away- but the means with which it treats us in our formative years is, fortunately, temporary. The system is a weak lattice of fecal matter, but brute strength will leave you trapped inside of it- on the fly adjustment of perceptions, goals, and execution got me through the whole mess... not to mention the eventual realization that the high school heirarchy of governmentally mandated babysitting and all that comes with it is an obstacle, not the enemy.

I fought the system. And I fucking won, by figuring out how to use it, rather than taking it as it was forced on me. I beat the machine for my own goals- and much like the next stage of education, the Art Institute... it's not the institution, the system, or the heirarchy- you're not going to get anywhere unless you start bending the structure to build your path in the direction you intend to go.

The system is a tool to be used. It just so happens to be populated by a bunch of tools who are conditioned to see using you as part of the natural order of things. If you just keep your head down, try to conform, and wait for it to end, you're doing it wrong.