What is a clique and why is it bad?

[ciphergoth]

(friends-only, not filtered)

Have you ever been accused of being part of a clique? Were you? Were you or the other "clique" members doing something unethical, and if so what? Have you seen others behave like a clique in a way that was unethical? What was it about their behaviour that was unethical?

Everyone has preferences about what sort of people they want to be friends with. There's a good chance your friends have preferences more similar to yours than a random member of the population. Thus a circle of friends can form of people whose preferences have common elements.

If you'd like to hang out with that circle, but you don't fit the common preferences, you may feel they are excluding you, and behaving like a clique. This isn't necessarily so; it's an inevitable part of friendship groups forming that not everyone can join.

So what makes a clique different from any other circle of friends? I tried the dictionary without much enlightenment.

My first guess is that you become a clique when being part of the circle makes you feel so special that you don't want *anyone* new to join, no matter how close they are to the sort of people you might like to know, because that reduces the feeling of specialness. However, if the membership of your group can grow as well as shrink, it's less likely to be a clique.

My second guess is that if you're in a situation of forced contact with others, such as a school or workplace, a clique is a group within that forced contact group who get daily or near-daily opportunities to make it clear to outsiders, in a way they cannot avoid, that they are not part of the clique. Thus, if we start to see LiveJournal as a forced-contact situation, we will start to perceive every circle of friends as a clique; it's important to remember that there are a million people on LJ and we each have the power to choose whose journals we read.

It's possible I'm missing something. Please enlighten me!

PS first day of work today, I may not get back to this LJ for a while.

Comments

[tempaccount99]

i think it's because it's only used to refer to other groups. i doubt anyone sees themselves as being in a clique - the term "friends" is normally appropriate. it's a point of view thing.

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

I have seen people behave unethically as a clique. It's usually when the group of friends is part of something that's supposed to be open - like a BiCon organising team or a local group. Giving favour to people based on their relationship to the clique would be unethical, as would running special clique only social events unless you make it clear that they're not part of the open group...

[winterthing.livejournal.com]

I'd tend to say that 'clique' is a subjective term, that essentially is just another way of referring to a close group of friends. There are positives (support, emotional closeness, often shared values) and negatives (can seem closed off to others, insular, put certain social expectations on each other) about all close friendship groups, and the word 'clique' tends to be a way of describing these groups which emphasises the negative.

[countess-sophia.livejournal.com]

I'd say the features that differentiate a clique from a very close group of friends is looking down on those who are not members of the group and behaving rudely, arrogantly or worse to non-members, or being perceived to. A clique is basically defined by how obnoxious the group makes itself to others. People rarely see themselves as being members of a clique...

Ob Movie: Heathers

Soph xx

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

I'd agree with all that. And it may be why you can only really call a group a clique if it's a subset of a larger group, either of friends, or at school or work etc.

[djm4]

People rarely see themselves as being members of a clique...

An awkward fact that, whle true, often in my experience leads to people crying 'See! You don't think you're a clique, so that proves you are!' Which is not an accusation that it's at all easy to refute, so I tend not to get too stressed about it.

[duranorak.livejournal.com]

People rarely see themselves as being members of a clique...

But it does happen. At school particularly, people were proud of it and there was even a group that had badges made. I can't imagine many places where it might get as much out of hand as at an all-girls' school, though...But it was fairly harmless, I guess.

E.
x

[djm4]

I'd say the features that differentiate a clique from a very close group of friends is looking down on those who are not members of the group and behaving rudely, arrogantly or worse to non-members, or being perceived to.

I have two problems with this, althought they're a bit nitpicky and I think broadly you're right.

The first is that the 'looking down on' should be being done simply because the other people are not part of the clique, not for any other reason. I'm a rude and arrogant sod a lot of the time, and there are several people outside my circle of friends who I can be pretty rude about because, basically, I think they're shits. I'm rude about them because I think they're shits, and they're not in my circle of friends because I think they're shits, but I don't actually look down on them because they're not in my circle of friends. I don't actually think my circle of friends is a clique, although I accept that others disagree.

Secondly, while I do care how people perceive me and will sometimes go out of my way to change how I appear to alter that perception (not for nothing am I termed 'Chameleon Man', you know), there are limits to what I can do about how people perceive me and my friends. So I don't accept that simply being perceived to be rude, arrogant or the like is sufficient to identify a clique.

Which could be perceived as being pretty rude and arrogant, I suppose, but there you are...

[jhg.livejournal.com]

Quite right.

I myself have felt, rightly or wrongly, quite uncomfortable by lack of appropriate behaviour towards new people on previous occasions.


J

[nickys.livejournal.com]

I think the defining thing about a clique is that it is unwelcoming.

There are certainly cliques I've met where ethical considerations such as fairness, not to mention purely practical considerations such as people's abilities are disregarded in favour of clique hierarchy.
Our second year at a certain re-enactment even run by a lady of legendary cliquiness was a classic case of clique over talent - we'd escaped the politics by being too far North to be called upon to take sides, so we were still invited to do the show, but many of the other mature, talented people who had been there the year before had been replaced by younger yes-men, whose sole historical craft related talent appeared to be finger-braiding.
Now, bringing in a couple of youngsters and letting them learn other skills on the job would have been a good idea, but bringing in loads of them, simply on the basis that they didn't argue when randomly bossed around, was not good for either them or the event as a whole.

Thoughts

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

A clique is a closed (and usually stagnant) social grouping that rejects new members without consideration of merit (and frequently for the pleasure of so doing).

A "circle of friends" is a fluid and inherently unbordered entity into which anyone compatible with the group and unlikely to harm it may be invited.

A "community" (LJ's concept of 'closed communities' is an oxymoron IMNSHO) is a group into which anyone may invite themselves, but will not, by doing so, neccessarily become part of any "circle of friends" or "clique" therein - but may gain greater opportunities to become so.

[zotz]

It's another of those irregular nouns. I see my friends, you hang around with that crowd, he's in a clique.

HTH.

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

I like this one. I've never thought of myself as being part of a 'clique' - a social group, yes, but those groups have always been open to more 'members'. But I've viewed others (usually complete strangers) as seeming to form a clique, and known that most of my friends are also members of differing social groups to me but never thought of them as being cliquey, just that they have aspects of themselves in common with that group that they don't have with me.

Sometimes these groups gain names, usually derived from geographical location or (nowadays anyway) a maillist/LJ community/etc. It's a convenient way to reference a certain group of people, but I don't feel the name means the group has become a clique - as I said in my experience the group membership is fluid and welcoming, as long as you fit more or less into the social norms for that group.

But then maybe I've just never been one of the Cool Kids :)

There were cliques in high school - kids who were cool to be seen around and those who weren't, but I think most of my adult friends (and the groups they form) have grown beyond that.

[lucybond.livejournal.com]

I have some experience of this.

At school, I ended up friends with a girl, because we were both bottom of the pecking-order. But we only had a few things in common, & her mother used to do things like bring her to my house, all day every day during the summer holidays, & it began to put a real strain on our friendship. We were just thrown together, really.

Over the years, I became more 'accepted' by the other girls, while she was still left out, & finally, in lower sixth, I was hanging about with the 'cool' girls who hardly spoke to her, & I stopped spending time with her altogether.

At first, I stuck up for her if the others teased her, but later I know I really just said nothing & moved on. Eventually they grew out of teasing her.

In one sense, I feel bad for ditching my friend, but in another sense, I know we no longer had anything in common, & nothing much to say to eachother by the time I ended up in the 'clique'.

And as I was a complete social outcast in the school for so many years, I was pretty fucking glad that now anyone would talk to me, despite being rather a 'class clown' now, instead of 'class freak'.

Cliques. Horrid. But it happens, at least among children. Among adults, I find it mildly disturbing.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

A clique is usually a group which defines itself by excluding others rather than what the group has in common. This may be connotation rather than a definition.

The insularity of a clique can lead to cronyism and favouritism more easily than a more loosely-knit group, but I don't think that favouritism or denigration of people outside the clique are inherent in cliques.

[keirf.livejournal.com]

A clique is a maximally connected subgroup.

[booklectica]

I am perhaps unusual in that I am a member of a group of friends that describes itself as 'the clique'. However, this has usually meant that it is selective in who it allows to join, rather than banning anyone new at all. (I joined well after it had become 'the clique', for example.) These days most of them are actually quite friendly and mainly bitch about each other. :)

tuppence

[ajva.livejournal.com]

There is another element to this, of course. The word clique is overused as an insult, IMHO.

It has often seemed to me that the accusation of 'cliquishness' is regularly levelled at groups by excludees who wish to blame other people's arrogance for their inability to make friends and keep them, rather than having to face up to their own objectionableness.

The perceived moral superiority is usually on the side of the plaintiff, since exclusion which cannot be overtly justified (short of saying something like: "but you suck pears out of Satan's cock and besides your pits stink enough to make a Polar Bear hurl and nobody likes spending time with you because you'd irritate the hell out of the underworld" - none of which can obviously be stated in polite company, whether it be true or not) cannot be acceptable. Thus, this prompts well-meaning people who like to come down on the side of 'the people' to take up arms against the oppressors. i.e. the clique.

Which may in actual fact just be a bunch of pals trying to have a quiet party with people they enjoy being with. Nothing wrong with that.

In fact, I would argue that the difficulty in pinning down exactly what a clique is *is* due precisely to this political complication. It is one of those words which is used to manipulate, and is therefore (perhaps) quite difficult to define in absolute terms.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

I think the dividing line between a clique and a group of friends is to do with how often the individual members interact with other people not in the group and if they feel they have the right to veto each other's friends or not.

However, a group that may not actually be a clique but tends to react to some new people in a 'oooh, shinny new thing' way while being ambivalent to most other people can appear to be such a thing from the outside.

Work cliques are a little different because they can have such a direct impact on people's career. No one is forced to be friends with anyone just to be 'fair' but if you only go to the pub with your friends at work and then you discuss work things or even make work decisions while you are there, then it could be a problem.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

The way I test if a group of people can be described as a clique: watch a stranger walk over to them in a social event and ask if they can join them because they don't know anyone else there and this group look nice.

If the response is:
1) "Of course", and the group includes the newcomer in the conversation
2) "I'm sorry, we're having a rather personal discussion but we wouldn't mind if you came to sit with us next time"
Then the group is notaclique.

If the response is:
1) "No, you're ugly/look dull/don't have the right expression on your face"
2) "Of course" and then turn away from the newcomer and talk in quiet voices about things the newcomer has no hope in hell of understanding
Then the group is a clique.

In such a situation I will usually determine which group of people I want to get to know by using this test.

[booklectica]

What kind of social event? If a stranger in a London pub did this, there's no way I'd want to talk to them no matter what they looked/sounded like. And I'm not good at new people anyway, so I'm much more likely to talk to existing friends.

I don't think the behaviour you describe is necessarily cliquey - people should have the right not to talk to random strangers if they don't want to. Or indeed, not to talk to anyone if they do't want to.

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

I think you are accused of forming a clique C within some larger set S when there is suspicion that the trust level within C is higher than that in S in a way that's unexpected given the published rules, traditions, etc, of S.

Essentially I think the objection is with misleading people about trust relationships. Personally I would't class this as outright unethical, but barely. I would regard it as highly rude.

Pavlos

[lilithmagna.livejournal.com]

And how would the answer differ if we were discussing a claque?

[lizw.livejournal.com]

"Claque" is a word I only came across for the first time quite recently, but as I understand it, it means a group that is centred on one person - sort of like a personal fanclub - with the connotation that the "fans" are being paid or doing it for some other personal advantage rather than because they actually like the focal person. For instance, Voltaire used to pay a claque to applaud and shout praise during performances of his plays.

[lilithmagna.livejournal.com]

Yes-have a feeling it may simply be a percursor to clique. It has connotations of a quasi political body or faction though, but in the context of a court setting or similar (i.e. a conmtext where the circle of power implied by a clique really had serious reprecussion- thus being a member of the wrong claque might equate to belonging to a proscribed party if things went pear shaped). Could be qrong though.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

asrana just asked me what I thought a clique was, and pointed me at this thread. I answered "I'd say that a clique is a group that is closed to new people on principle, or that goes out of its way to let people know that they aren't part of the group", before coming over here to read your post, and was then amused to find that we seemed to have picked out the same two criteria.

I quite like feanelwa's test, too.