0588: "Pep Rally"

[Regularjoe]

I guess I can relate to this comic, never being really big on team spirit.

However, I totally think this joke is missing a punchline. All the build up, then nothing.

[Trold]

Is it only my school that makes pep fests mandatory? Like, they put teachers on all the exits to make sure you don't just leave and go home?

They were mandatory (Montgomery County, MD) back when I was in HS. It was hard to enforce since they were outside and sneaking off on the way to the football field wasn't too hard, but they did their best to make sure you showed up.

And it felt super-bizarre back then, too. I and my friends tended to applaud for the various teams mentioned, but (at least for me) only because we had other friends on those teams.

[Ghona]

Ahh, junior high pep rallies. If I recall correctly, the punishment for not having all your homework turned in up-to-date by that point was missing them and being stuck in In School Suspension for the two-hour duration.

Oddly enough, after the first time I always "forgot" to turn in something, and happened to have brought a couple of books. Talking, you see, was prohibited, making it a nice, quiet, place to sit and read.

[nico]

Wow... not being American (I'm Italian) I had to look up on Wikipedia what a Pep Rally was... amazing...
I guess if anything like that would have taken place in my high school essentially nobody would have shown up.

I think it's a cultural difference which shows up also in other little things. I remember having a similar feeling when, visiting the USA for the first time, I noticed that a good number of houses had American flags hanging out of their door/window...something that would never happen in Italy, apart maybe the day after the soccer World Cup... but that doesn't really count.

[aleflamedyud]

Thread Creation winner!

I don't mind the Americanised comics, but I think the humour is lot on me. Do people actually listen to scantilyclad underage girls telling them that their collective educational grouping is superior to others?

Those aren't just any scantily-clad underage girls; they're often the easiest ones in the entire school.

This post had objectionable content.
Enough prickery from you, thank you. Statistically speaking, stop being a dick. User warned.

And yeah, all of this was actually true in my high school area. I wish I had never come to possess first-hand experience of Middle America.

Sounds a lot like nationalism and/or patriotism, doesn't it?

Why does everyone keep saying this? Did your high school have its own language and blood lines? Fight any wars? Self-govern democratically? Win its independence from the neighboring school district by blood, sweat, and tears? Control the flow of people from neighboring school districts in? Run its own infrastructure?

Or is it just Bad Analogy to Make Internet People Feel Enlightened Day? 'Cuz to me it looks like the only similarities between nations and high schools are that they both educate their children and have sports teams. And I'm not so sure about high schools educating children.

It's 3 AM, and I'm digging that ban-hole even deeper. Whatev.

[Ronfar]

Does anyone truly miss High School?

I miss my high school friends and many of the activities I participated in. (I don't miss schoolwork and getting up early, though.) Somehow, seemingly by accident, I ended up popular - many people seemed to think that I was some kind of super-genius who was going to be the next Bill Gates. It was a small school in a small town, and, although it had recognizable social cliques, many people ended up filling more than one of the conventional social "roles." For example, most of the cheerleaders - and even many of the football players - were in honors classes and tended to be college-bound students who were participating in many other extracurricular activities as well.

Socially, college didn't work out for me nearly as well... I hated college the way many nerds hated high school.

----

And, yes, our school had mandatory pep rallies, and yes, they were impressive displays of tribalism at its most ridiculous. Our town is proud of its high school football team, though, and for good reason. It wins. A lot. Furthermore, our town's Wikipedia page lists four NFL players who graduated from our high school - and our town is less than three square miles in area!

[sje46]

Those aren't just any scantily-clad underage girls; they're often the easiest ones in the entire school.

Yes, I'm about to be banned for misogyny, but before gmalviuks's hammer falls, I stand by my words: statistically speaking, cheerleaders are ho-bags. And by God, this isn't misogyny because their being ho-bags has more to do with their being cheerleaders than with being women. I mean, the football team are man-whores, but I can't call the cheerleaders hos?

And yeah, all of this was actually true in my high school area. I wish I had never come to possess first-hand experience of Middle America.

Oh God.
Do you have a source on the statistics?
Also, let's say you are right, and that 80% of cheerleaders are promiscuous, as opposed to say, 40% every other girl. Are they promiscuous because they are cheerleaders? Should you stereotype and say that all cheerleaders are promiscuous? I'm sure you agree that not all of them are, but you are still attributing it to them. Black people commit more crimes than white people, statistically. But are you willing to say "black people are criminals"?
And if a significant amount of them have a lot of sex, is this a bad thing? I mean, sure they are probably a little too young to be having a lot of sex, but is having a lot of responsible sex necessarily a bad thing? If not, then why call them "hos" (which is defined simply as a promiscuous person, but has a negative connotation)?
Your anectdotal biased view of high school may not be the best way to approach these matters.
I agree with you that everyone else sounds very paranoid about the whole orwellian connection here. Frankly, it all sounds like sour grapes to me.

[Blokey]

Sounds a lot like nationalism and/or patriotism, doesn't it?

Why does everyone keep saying this? Did your high school have its own language and blood lines? Fight any wars? Self-govern democratically? Win its independence from the neighboring school district by blood, sweat, and tears? Control the flow of people from neighboring school districts in? Run its own infrastructure?

What they likely meant was that the default setting of students was expected to be pride in their school sports team / the school itself, and that, for most people on this site, who feel words should be used consistently, pride is something people should feel about their own self-abilities, something they have had causal influence over. Not just something to be thrown at a couple of guys from your class who're kicking spherical objects into another teams net. The sports folk should obviously feel pride in their abilities, the people who support them and want them to do well can go ahead and be proud of them, but forcing your students to stay in a particular place and show support for something most of them likely don't care about? Yes, I can see why people would draw parallels to nationalism and/or patriotism.

In short, Ian Anderson said it best in 'Wind-Up':

How do you dare tell me that I'm my Father's son
when that was just an accident of Birth?
I'd rather look around me - compose a better song
`cause that's the honest measure of my worth.

[guyy]

I agree with you that everyone else sounds very paranoid about the whole orwellian connection here. Frankly, it all sounds like sour grapes to me.

Then you have clearly never been to a typical high-school rally. They would be just bizarre spectacles of tribal hatred, except for the fact that instead of springing up on their own, they are created by a separate group of administrators. And they really do at least pretend to force you to go (I eventually realized they couldn't really stop me if I refused to go); why? Given how screwed up our schools are, it seems pretty likely they want to prevent too many people from noticing...even if that's not what they're trying to do, it sure works well.

['; DROP DATABASE;--]

Ha, it's true. I went to high school in a small town with only one high school, so we were divided into two groups by last name. It never made much sense to me.

[sje46]

I agree with you that everyone else sounds very paranoid about the whole orwellian connection here. Frankly, it all sounds like sour grapes to me.

Then you have clearly never been to a typical high-school rally. They would be just bizarre spectacles of tribal hatred, except for the fact that instead of springing up on their own, they are created by a separate group of administrators. And they really do at least pretend to force you to go (I eventually realized they couldn't really stop me if I refused to go); why? Given how screwed up our schools are, it seems pretty likely they want to prevent too many people from noticing...even if that's not what they're trying to do, it sure works well.

I went to a public 9-12 school in America with 3,400 students, all of which had to be packed into the gymnasium, separated by class. My school had a great deal of school spirit, especially since our teams were so good due to having so many good students to choose from. And the cheerleaders and twirlers were the best in the state. People had that stupid facepaint on their faces, and on senior-administrator switch day (on which the pep rally is always held), there was a long-standing tradition of the seniors going to studies and asking for the Freshmen to come along with them, and they would make them do embarrassing things like sing "I'm a little teapot" and dance, and write "Frosh" on their foreheads. This practice, however, was being heavily cracked down on when I went there. Then there was the chanting "Go home freshman go home". Stuff like that. But honestly, all that wasn't really that bad, as the freshmen could've very easily just said "no" and walked away with no punishment. But yeah, our pep rallies are not ordinary, but simply bigger. Worse than the things you had. But no one had any hate. No one wanted to punch those cowardly Londonderriers. Because all it is is a stupid sports rally. Nothing else. No hate. Just mindless pride.
Don't be so cynical.

[Kalos]

I agree with you that everyone else sounds very paranoid about the whole orwellian connection here. Frankly, it all sounds like sour grapes to me.

Then you have clearly never been to a typical high-school rally. They would be just bizarre spectacles of tribal hatred, except for the fact that instead of springing up on their own, they are created by a separate group of administrators. And they really do at least pretend to force you to go (I eventually realized they couldn't really stop me if I refused to go); why? Given how screwed up our schools are, it seems pretty likely they want to prevent too many people from noticing...even if that's not what they're trying to do, it sure works well.

Dear God, please tell me you're not being serious here. Pep Rallies are not, and have never been about blind regional hatred. I don't know what the hell you're actually going to, but around here, they were more about school spirit and rather unrelated silliness than any sort of putting down of the other team. Our "rival" school may have got mentioned once or twice per pep rally, (being that our High School had a consistent chance at the state title on a yearly basis, it was just "that other rich school that also has a chance) but in the actual school-sanctioned events, there wasn't any cult like chanting or putting down of the other teams. And other than by the tinfoil hat brigade or drama queens (or drama kings, I'll be progressive here), there was 0 outcry against the students by the school administration, unless they got shot down after trying to be "edgy" (usually an outright violation of the rules) or they just didn't get into the class they wanted.

Seriously, did you actually go to high school or just watch the Saved by the Bell box set?

[Interactive Civilian]

Sounds a lot like nationalism and/or patriotism, doesn't it?

Why does everyone keep saying this?

Since you went ahead and quoted me, I'll explain myself. First to respond directly to your questions with questions of my own.

Did your high school have its own language and blood lines?

Does bloodline inherently make country better than another? Does language?

Fight any wars?

Does fighting wars inherently make one country better than another?

Self-govern democratically?

Does democracy inherently make one country better than another (and before you blindly answer yes, think about the limitations on government in the US constitution which are specifically there to limit the tyranny of the masses)

Win its independence from the neighboring school district by blood, sweat, and tears?

Does winning one's independence (vs. say being granted it or otherwise claiming it without a fight) inherently make one country better than another?

Control the flow of people from neighboring school districts in?

Does having a strict immigration policy inherently make one country better than another?

Run its own infrastructure?

Are there any countries that are entirely self-sufficient, and are they inherently better than any others?

Now, to respond to your original question, it resembles nationalism and so-called "patriotism" because it encourages blindly following your leaders and believing that your group is better than the other group without question. You see it on the high school scale with pep-rallies, you see it at the national level. Ask someone from the USA if it is the best country in the world, and they will more than likely say yes. Ask them to explain exactly why and give examples, and you'll find many have never given it any thought. It's the same kind of attitude.

In the comic, the difference between school districts and having pride in one over the other is Zip Codes. In the bigger world, it is imaginary lines drawn on a map. The mentality is the same. Only the scale is different.

On a slight digression, this is why I don't like the Olympics. It should be about the athletes, not which country they come from. IMHO.

[Final Warrior]

So glad I'm graduating in a week and a half. I utterly despise pep rallies... not only do they make no sense, but at my school, attendance is mandatory, so they're also a waste of my academic time. (Well, alternatively, I can opt to go to a study hall, which is what I usually do... I'd rather sit around and do nothing for an hour instead of sit out on the bleachers to listen to a bunch of propaganda.)

Not to mention, our pep rallies are idiotic beyond comprehension.

Granted, at the last one, an acquaintance of mine performed a slam poetry reading that was beyond stellar. The rest of the pep rally (under the disguise of an assembly, so I couldn't opt out) tanked harder than Nazi Germany. I spent most of that wasted hour of my life yelling negative comments.

-- Griffinhart

PS. Not sure if it was noted before, but "Why are we doing this, rally, again?" has an extraneous comma.

[Xbehave]

<INSERT SCHOOL NAME> fsck yeah!

Something tells me the people that ran/enjoyed the pep rallies are probably the same people that belive that kind of stuff.

However, I totally think this joke is missing a punchline. All the build up, then nothing.

I'm starting to suspect that Randel is no longer American, he has spent too long on the internet and his humor has evolved (an unamerican thing to do ), so as i keep finding his comics funnier and funnier, im seeing more and more people asking for a punchline.

[Domovoi]

However, I totally think this joke is missing a punchline. All the build up, then nothing.

I'm starting to suspect that Randel is no longer American, he has spent too long on the internet and his humor has evolved (an unamerican thing to do ), so as i keep finding his comics funnier and funnier, im seeing more and more people asking for a punchline.

Except, of course, that Monty Python's brand of comedy worked without punchlines, and this comic doesn't. Nice way to shoehorn some sort of vague criticism of American humour into your post, by the way.

[sje46]

A comic doesn't need a punchline to be good.
Also, Interactive Citizen stereotypes americans as stupid, conformist, misinformed people. I still can't get over the stupidity of that post.

[Rathum]

I actually liked pep rallies. We had half days and they were far more enjoyable than every other assembly combined. Keep in mind that I went to a Catholic all male school.

Probably the most memorable thing that happened during high school was at a pep rally during my sophomore year. The cheerleaders (our school's squad was made up of students from other, usually all girls, schools) were doing their routine when a girl, going to the associated dance with a guy in my class, misses her landing and lands hard on her knees. Everyone in the gym was cringing because she hit so hard when another cheerleader comes flipping down the floor and kicks her right in the face. This knocks her unconscious and everyone just sits there in shock for a few seconds before the sports trainer comes out to check on her and an ambulance was called.

Then we all got to sit and wait awkwardly for an hour or so while the ambulance came and they made sure it was alright to move her. She ended up with 2 broken legs and a concussion and the guy had no one to go with to the dance.

[Domovoi]

A comic doesn't need a punchline to be good.

Correct. This one, however, does, because it isn't good as it is.

[sliverstorm]

IMHO, pep rallies aren't inherently evil. I never enjoyed them, and the only time I had any 'school spirit' was when I participated in the sequence of skits my class performed during 'spirit week'. I was really only there because I had fun performing.

Anyway, I figure they don't have to be a bad thing- no one accuses sports teams of these sorts of things, right? High school sports teams are determined just as arbitrarily (by zip code) but being competitive is a good thing, and brings the group together. This doesn't work so well today in a large high school, but in one of the smaller ones, or 40-50 years ago, perhaps the school is/was a much more tightly-knit unit, and that team-community feeling pervades/d. So long as we're not talking bigotry and 'we're better than them', *team* spirit can be a good thing.

[bwan]

We don't have pep rallies in England but that doesn't mean that we don't enjoy school rivalries. Rivalries are fun and we always considered the school in the next town (3 miles away) our rivals and therefore worse. It's a good source of banter and none of it is really meant, especially seeing as though most people had friends in those schools seeing as though a lot of people in one school would be from the other town, including myself.

That, and the other school, the one in my town, was an all-boys school whereas ours was mixed, making for top quality banter.

But it's all in good fun. One of my best mates went to the all boy's school and when we played them at rugby I was blindside-flanker and he was the mirror to my position in the scrum so with our free hands we'd slap each other in the face while waiting for the ball. It's all light-hearted fun, usually because their team was so much better than ours that it wasn't that competitive, but by god did we let them know it when we won

So you don't have to gather in one place before a match and shout about it, especially if you're not in the team or don't give a toss, but there's nothing wrong with a good bit of sporting rivalry. All in good fun.

And to me the punchline was the cheerleader's posture in the last panel... no one else?

[534n]

Our school does a Pep Rally each year, and about 98% of kids go to it. The rest of us go to the cafeteria and hang out. This past year the chaperones left so we had a gigantic brawl.

[DarkRat]

meh. I expected a towelday comic

[Chfan]

I don't think my high school even has pep rallies. I mean, once they had some band kids go throughout the school and just blare music down the hallways, so there might have been one then, but i didn'y go to it, so obviously it's not mandatory here. Thank God...

[SirMustapha]

[biting satirist]
Gee Willikers kidney! The comic talked about kidneys! Kidneys are so awesome, I have two of them! GET OUT OF MY HEAD, RANDALL
[/biting satirist]

The lack of pep rallies is one thing that lets me believe the latin-american education system is not as rotten as we think it is.
Of course this comic would resonate a lot more if I lived... IN AMERICA, but I still think it was brilliant anyway. Yeah, it might lack a punchline, but are those really necessary? I always thought xkcd was really good at this kind of blunt, dry humour.

[Midna]

I had one when I was in high school. I never really enjoyed them until I was part of band (well, technically, color guard). We only did them once a year and we went to a private, catholic high school. We had a "spirit stick", and they would have the different classes (Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior) "compete" to get the stick.

It was so stupid, really. Everyone shouting "we want stick! we want stick!" like cavemen, pounding on the bleachers, was enough to give me a headache. Which is why I was grateful that color guard just got to twirl their flags around behind the band and not listen to that.

This comic made me smile, though. We had one school that legitimately hated us. We won a game there, and they threw rocks at our team, and our band. One kid had to go to the hospital, he got hit in the head. We weren't allowed to cheer too much after scoring, and the band had to leave the game early with a police escort for our protection.

Wonder what they did at their pep rallies?

[cypk]

Never really understood pep rallys..
The only one's who benefit were the folks who were into that kind of stuff (sports)
In my school, they would literally end class 15-20min early just so that they could have a quick pep rally the day of any home or district football game. Those pep rallys where loud...

[Meagen]

Actually, the first thing this brought to mind was not jingoism, but console wars. Granted, people don't have as much of a vested interest in their high school than an expensive entertainment system, but it's still the same spirit of "convince people the one they have is the BEST ONE EVAR so they feel better about owning it/going there".

[phillipsjk]

I live in Canada and only had the misfortune of going to one pep rally during my 3 years of high school. I forget if it was mandatory, but I found it pointless and creepy as well.
This is the first comic where I am tempted to say "Get out of my Head!": except, I have not thought about Pep rallies in years.

[lordparadise]

I'm registering just to tell Randall, "Thank you."

Pep rallies are definitely Orwellian channeling of hatred, except my school's athletics are so terrible that we would be mocked for considering ourselves better than any of our "rivals." So instead the four classes just yell at each other. "Spirit Week" is the only week that people in our school ever get into fights. It gets so bad that the administration always threaten to cancel Pep Rally, but never go through with it. So once a year I miss a study and am forced to go into the gym with everybody else in the entire school, listen to ten-second clips of popular songs and watch people who have no reason to be proud run around and hug each other.

I have one pep rally left for my entire life. Except this time I'm a senior, so I have to barge into the gym, run a lap around, and start randomly hugging people. I'll just wear my DHARMA Initiative jumpsuit and convince people it shows spirit.

I don't get the whole regional "spirit" thing, whether with schools or professional sports teams. It displays a remarkable lack of independent thought.

[alitheiapsis]

I get so sick and tired of pep rallies that I've invented a variety of ways to get me out of them, or at least have some fun with them (without having my mom pick me up beforehand, because math club usually meets on Fridays, which is also when pep rallies are).

One pep rally per year is always after homecoming carnival, so I volunteer to help clean up after that, and get to miss the first part. Also it earns me and my friends points with the teacher in charge of it. Freshman year, I always brought books to the pep rallies, and sat there and read instead of standing up and yelling unintelligibly. It was actually great fun.

This year, however, my bf started making some awesome signs for each rally. Once, it was a "[citation needed]" sign, which I thought was particularly clever. The other time, he wrote out 2011 in binary and had a sign that said "Go class of [binary I don't feel like looking up]!". It's just our way of fighting against the inanity of pep rallies (you can't even HEAR anything because the people who designed the acoustics were stupid, and each sound echoes ridiculously, rendering it incomprehensible!).

[Vanguard]

I only enjoyed my pep ralley's because I love watching step/break dancing. Which they did in my schools.

[phider2]

I've never really liked pep rallies. I'm in the band, so I have to go (it's not mandatory for everyone), but usually I bring a gameboy and/or graphing calculator. I guess I still have school spirit; I like going to the football games and such, but I've just never liked the whole yelling a lot part. (The other thing I never got was when we do "Whose house? OUR HOUSE!" at away games..)

[GodShapedBullet]

Is there some George Orwell book where people gather two or three times a year and yell about how they are going to win sporting events? And you don't have to cheer, you don't have to do anything and you can sit with your friends feeling self-satisfied because you are above all this? Because I've only read Animal Farm and 1984, and neither of them remind me at all of pep rallies.

Is it a shame that you have to go to events where they attempt to jazz you up about activities you don't really care about? Yes. Is it a shame that your own club's activities go unnoticed by the school while they obsess over the sports teams? Sure. Is it Orwellian? Not in my faintest estimation.

[EnderSword]

I never heard any other school mentioned at our Pep rallies except our own.

It was my job to organize them in my Senior Year (Class prez), it tended to follow a little bit of a script. Usually Band playing followed by the introduction of members of all our teams. (not individually, but the team would run in as a group)

I'd talk a little, Principal would talk a little, usually pull of some silly type of stunt...one year a pie in the principal's face from an unassuming looking girl, another year I had someone in a Yeti cosutme attack our mascot because of a widely known inside joke.

Then Cheerleader's would do their routine, which did include some 'Cheering' but was really more the competitive cheerleading flips and pyramids and gymnastics stuff.
I'm biased since many of them were in my close group of friends, but I'd say they weren't on average very easy at all, even if you were on the Hockey team (No Football team, but I'm Canadian, so Hockey is the equivalent)
I'd say there were likely a larger percentage of virgins on our Cheerleading team than amongst girls in the band, or general school population.

I understand High School was bad for a lot of people, but for another group it was perfectly fine and that group thinks the first group is just really cynical and mean. Or you justl ike saying 'Orwellian'

I liked the comic though, but also liked my scantily clad friends.

[Jourdy289]

Ahh, the advantages of homeschooling...

Agreed.

[Jourdy289]

On a slight digression, this is why I don't like the Olympics. It should be about the athletes, not which country they come from. IMHO.

Also agreed.

[Trombonastics]

While it's great that some of you didn't have Orwellian pep rallies, the ones that we were forced to go to in high school were much along those lines. Actually, the "Two Minutes' Hate" in 1984 is quite an accurate description of what happened during pep rallies. After the inferiority of our rival school was fully established, a sycophantic worship of the players on the football team began. And we finished by chanting the letters of our school for several minutes. It freaked me out.

I managed to get out of all of the pep rallies my senior year because our rival high school had an orchestra that met at the same time pep rallies would occur, and they needed a principal trombone player. It felt great blowing off a pep rally to enhance the quality of an ensemble at our rival high school.

[pjvandehaar]

Nobody else used these to leave and play L4D in their car?(yeah, that means I'm still in highschool...)
I do really want to ruin one now. At a school of 300 people, my friends could definitely start a mob rushing the exit.

[N>L]

Was I the only person who had to read this comic four or five times before realizing that he was talking about a porch and not a Magic: The Gathering deck in the second panel?