Popular Is Dumb/Playing With
Basic Trope: The popular kids are usually not the brightest.
- Straight: A popular character who is Book Dumb.
- Exaggerated: A popular character who is Too Dumb to Live.
- Justified: A popular character is Obfuscating Stupidity to avoid being called a nerd.
- Popular culture has a tendency to emphasize image over substance, to value appearance over ability, and to overvalue some talents and undervalue others. It's not that being popular makes a person dumb, but that being dumb is no barrier to popularity, while being seen as "nerdy" is.
- Inverted: A popular character is also a straight-A student.
- Subverted: A popular character is seemingly unable to get good grades, but still manages to score an A on the important test.
- Double Subverted: However, it later turns out that he cheated.
- Parodied: A character says or does something stupid, and becomes instantly popular because of it.
- The grades a school gives its students are dependent on how popular they are. Hated by all? Straight A's. Beloved? F.
- Deconstructed: A popular character fails the year multiple times, and ultimately doesn't finish his education.
- A society that exalts the Jerk Jock and the Brainless Beauty at the expense of Nerds and the like leads to a Crapsack World run by the worst and most incompetent elements, who proceed to run things into the ground.
- Reconstructed: However, his charisma gets him a successful job despite not having a degree.
- Zig Zagged: A Jerk Jock who is seemingly dumb scores an A on the important test, but he's framed for cheating, except it was set up by the kids he bullied in the past, which he finds out through his hidden intelligence, but it was actually his smart friend who discovered it, and it turns out he really did cheat on that test.
- Averted: The popular characters are as smart as the non-popular characters.
- Enforced: The popular characters are made dumb so that non-popular viewers can feel superior.
- Lampshaded: "Our football team sure is dim this year."
- Invoked: A Chessmaster decides to use the popular characters, since they're the easiest to fool.
- Defied: A popular character spends all night learning trivia to avoid being seen as dumb.
- Discussed: The characters see a dumb character, and talk about how he'll likely become popular.
- Conversed: The characters talk about a popular and dumb character from the show they watched last night.
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