Allure of the Mean Friend

中等之友的吸引力

This American Life

2025-07-28

1 小时 1 分钟
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What is it about them, our mean friends? They treat us poorly, they don't call us back, they cancel plans at the last minute, and yet we keep coming back for more. Popular bullies exist in business, politics — everywhere. How do they stay so popular? Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: We hear kids recorded at Chicago's Navy Pier and at a public swimming pool discussing their mean friends. And Ira Glass interviews Lillie Allison, 15, about the pretty, popular girls who were her best friends—until they cast her out. (5 minutes)Act One: Jonathan Goldstein interrogates the girls, now grown up, who terrorized him and his classmates years ago in school—and finds they can be just as scary as ever. (18 minutes)Act Two: We conduct an experiment to test whether being nice actually pays by equipping two waitresses with hidden microphones to record their interactions. Each waitress is instructed to be super friendly with half of their tables while remaining aloof with the other half. We then compare the tips to see which approach was more profitable. (10 minutes)Act Three: A case study in every word from a friend meaning its opposite. (4 minutes)Act Four: An excerpt of Bernard Cooper's story about the bill he got from his own father, for the entire cost of his childhood. Actor Josh Hamilton reads. (19 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org This American Life privacy policy. Learn more about sponsor message choices.
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  • In a way, the story is always the same.

  • There was this kid.

  • She was mean.

  • She was popular.

  • It's such a fixture of childhood.

  • You can just walk up to a kid on the sidewalk or at a public pool, and they'll tell you.

  • The popularist is this girl.

  • She's in my grade.

  • She's really mean, and she has a lot of friends.

  • I wanted to play with her, and then she had no friends, so she said yeah.

  • The other day I wanted to play with her again and her friends were there and she said, get lost.

  • Sometimes she be being mean to my sister and I don't like that.

  • She always telling somebody what they can and can't do.

  • She act like she the boss of people.

  • She real boss.

  • She thinks she got the rhythm in her gear.

  • I'm mostly the popular one in my class, but I have a lot of other popular friends.

  • This boy in my class, he liked me.

  • Every time he would come by me, I would tell him to get out of my way.

  • Everybody says that he's like the nerdiest boy in our class.