This is an article(?) that I wrote a little while ago and that's been sitting on my old website (darkcheese.org.uk) for ages now:

I'm sure many people just go about their lives at school without thinking about it much. Probably you included. But, one rainy afternoon, when I was so immensely bored, I had a think. And I came up with the theory of time/space dependent youth sub-cultures.

Stage 1 - Origin dependent groups

It works like this. When large numbers of people are placed in a new environment, such as secondary school, they first hold on to any previous friendships. Thus groups (not sub-cultures) form based primarily on where people originated from. For example, people from the same primary school gather in groups. I call this stage one. It is not yet a sub-culture, but rather a conglomeration of possibly incompatible people who simply originated from the same place, and therefore are not strangers to each other. Generally the friendships found in these groups remain for at least a short while as sub-cultures form, but often they can be split apart.

Stage 2 - Lesson/activity sub-cultures

The first form of sub-culture is the lesson/activity based sub-culture. Friendships are made between people sitting near each other in lessons or activities which are either boring enough to stimulate conversation in order to desperately try to make the activity bearable or that are interesting enough to provoke 'proper' discussions. Thus friendships form based on shared lessons, and the first sub-cultures form. These are often affected by the previous stage (origin dependent groups) because when classes have a free seating play these groups will affect seating choices. As an example, person A and person B came from the same school and therefore were part of an origin dependent group. They then sat next to each other in a lesson and met person C and D because the lesson was boring and the teacher bad, so they could talk freely. Thus persons A, B, C and D form a lesson/activity sub-culture.

Gradually these will merge with groups of similar personalities, and thus the next stage will occur....

Stage 3 - Area/personality sub-cultures

Finally the most stable sub-cultures from. These are larger groups of people (perhaps 30, although maybe only 10 people) who possibly via friends of friends, and who all have compatible interests and personalities. Generally most people's close friends will be from their a/p sub-culture. An interesting thing to observe is the relationships between sub-cultures. For example, two nearby sub-cultures that have different 'ethics' (in quotes because it's not really the right word, but it will have to do) can be almost rivals with joking violence (ie throwing food etc) happen regularly. Sometimes two sub-cultures in completely different areas become interchangeable for many people, with regular movement between groups.

Within the sub-cultures you often also find distinct but overlapping groups of people. These are often characterised only by location differences of a couple of meters. Normally the groups are all friends, although often there are people that don't know each other because they are at opposite ends of the 'spectrum' of groups.

An exception - Loners with friends

'Loners with friends' as I will call them, choose not to associate themselves with any sub-cultures, instead mostly residing in places of work such as the school Library. However, they still have friends but they are mostly associated with lessons (see stage 2).

Conclusion

I must be really bored. But it's still quite an interesting thing to think about, if you're like me.