You are not popular. I get it. I lived it. I used to be just like you, a worthless wretch who had no friends and could not get a girl to save his life. A loser. A loner. The truth hurts, does it not? But I found a way to improve my condition. And if you have even a tenth of the swag I have (which is doubtful at best), then you can too.
The first step to becoming popular is to talk about superficial things. And by superficial, I mean the most boring, inconsequential topics you may ever talk about. Say goodbye to conversations about current events or the theory of relativity, and say hello to conversations about Snooki’s pregnancy. No more conversations about who you should vote for in the next election. That matters too much in the real world. Popular kids like me talk about who has the most swag, not who will lead the country better. When you talk with other popular kids, small talk is king. The less the other person actually cares about what you have to say, the better a conversation topic it is. And do not pay attention to what the other person says, because all that matters is what you have to say. An exception can be made if they bring up topics like Snooki’s pregnancy. Then you can listen, because I mean, who wouldn’t want to hear about Snooki’s pregnancy? Remember, as a general rule of thumb, the less a topic matters in the real world, the more it should be brought up in conversations.
There is an advanced conversation technique that should only be used by the best of the best. It is much more common among popular girls, but it can occur among the popular crowd of both genders. It is called gossip. Gossip is when you tell an embarrassing or incriminating story about someone behind their back. The story can be either fake or true, their really is no difference as far as I am concerned. It works wonderfully either way. Gossip is a great way for the popular crowd to truly bond at the expense of others, and the more embarrassing the rumor, the more you can bond. Laughing at the expense of others has been a bonding ritual of the popular for generations.
Another key to becoming popular, and one I really enjoy, is exclusion. Exclusion is when you subtly prevent those who are unpopular from joining the popular ranks. While you might still talk to those less popular in passing, you never invite them to parties or to just hang out. There are a variety of different exclusionary techniques that you can use. You can blatantly advertise your parties, so that the excludees are well aware of their exclusion. The depressed, deflated look on their face when they hear about “that awesome party last night” is totally priceless. You can also choose to keep your parties a secret. The losers will fall into an even deeper, more hilarious depression when they realize parties have been going on that no one even bothered to mention to them. These techniques barely scratch the surface of what you can do. Exclusion is an art, and it is imperative to try all the different styles to see which one you like the best. Trust me, when you see the pain and loneliness you have caused, it will be well worth it.
The last step in becoming popular is to abandon all of your old friends. You cannot be seen hanging around with losers like them anymore. All that they did for you in the past, all of their support, all of their love, means absolutely nothing now that you are popular. You do not need them, but you do need swag. Your newfound swag will take you to places you can never even imagine - the wildest parties, the hardest drugs, the dumbest decisions. The best, most full life you can ever have. And your old loser friends cannot be a part of it. Treat them like any other unpopular. Exclude them. Gossip about them. They are not your friends anymore, and the look of suffering they give when you treat them like crap should give you the utmost satisfaction. Take pleasure in it. Revel in it. Only then can you truly be popular.
If you manage to follow these steps correctly (which is, again, doubtful at best), then there is only one more piece of information that you need to know to become popular. It is the key to truly unlocking your swag potential. In order for you to do all that I have outlined above, you need to start talking to popular kids, and making friends with them. The key to becoming friends with popular kids is to already be popular. And remember, you have to make friends with popular kids in order to become popular. If you have even a tenth of my swag (which is still doubtful at best), I am sure you will be able to handle this, and become popular just like me.

It's not bad, but it comes across a bit as someone bitter from being on the wrong side of it. Not saying you are, just telling you my interpretation.

"The last step in becoming popular is to abandon all of your old friends."
fail.

abandoning your friends will never make you popular. if this cool crowd thinks they are such losers then just spend time with the cool crowd on some nights and time with your old friends on other nights. if being popular is all you care about then lie to the cool people and say you only hang out with those guys to use them for some reason, they do your homework for you or something. but abandoning friends will never make you popular. its like saying how to get great employees for your company, first of all fire all your loser staff! it is suicide and the opposite of what you should be doing.

@blankflag: Did you not read where I said this essay was satire?

oh... well to be honest i didnt read that, or the entire essay. i have an extremely short attention span and just skim anything longer than a few hundred words.

"It's not bad, but it comes across a bit as someone bitter from being on the wrong side of it. Not saying you are, just telling you my interpretation"
I agree with Mapu. Perception is projection and rather than satire it sounds like a dig at popular people.
There is a technique that I call '3rd person perspective' (Iknow there is a different name for it) but using this would put you in the mind of a 'popular person' and by viewing it from their perspective you could parody the thoughts/characteristics of that person.
Imagine the sacrifices you make to be popular, it might be much tougher job than you could ever imagine. I think this is a subject you could have some real fun with, what about adding a top 10 tips on how to be Mr Popular or the day in the life of Mr Popular or 5 nightmares that popular people have or you could parody Dale Carneagies 'How to Make Friends and Influence People' but in a school setting.
Just saying.....

at the end of the day what it takes to be popular is exactly the same thing that you need to be successful. the ability to bend over and give up all your principles. the people who do really well in academics can figure out what the teacher likes and give the teacher what he wants in the way he wants it. and the people who are the best at networking can figure out what people want and give it to them in the way they want it. the media gets away with lying to people because they give people garbage but they select only the garbage they think the people are ready to hear and deliver it in a way that people want to hear it. if you really want to be popular you will talk about snooki with some people and international politics with others, depending on what each person is into.

Yeah, I couldn't get through the first two paragraphs either, and I have to read this kind of shit all the time.
ps: "even a tenth of the swag I have" ???

Try 'How Not to be Popular.' Then you might score.

People don't say "swag" anymore. They say "surf party USA".

"We have a project in my english class where we have to write 7 essays on a particular topic." ffs!
"I showed to my English teacher, but when she was in the middle of the second paragraph she said it was really good but she didn't want to finish it so she wouldn't spoil it for herself when I finally turned it in."
Don't you get the inference? She's letting you down gently.

There is a difference between satire/sarcasm and just saying the opposite of what you mean.

I think you read too much shit on this forum and it negatively affects your style. This is more of a heavy-handed troll attempt than a satire. Of course, there will always be morons who can't spot the difference (hence why some magazines like to invite "guest writers" outside of their target demographic that write "controversial" crap to fire the readers up) but that doesn't make the piece better. For morons, you come off as magnamious prick and for those who get what you are trying to accomplish, it still doesn't have much redeeming qualities since it isn't really funny or innovative (no one ever used Jersey Shore caricatures, right). If you made the examples of popular behaviour more wacky and over-the-top asshollish, it would be more interesting than your descriptive approach.

@Timur: She said she loved it and thinks I am a great writer. She wasn't "letting me down gently".

@Ulytau: I'm pretty sure I can't get much more "over-the-top asshollish" than this....

Your teacher allows you to write formal essays in first person?

CM, what level of class is this for? And if the purpose of this essay is to express the feelings of a person who has suffered from being excluded, you nailed it. I actually like it a lot. I do have one rewrite-level suggestion: The last paragraph needs some work--You say "finally" but then "having swag" and "abandoning your friends" kind of gets mixed up. I would separate those two by dealing with one at a time, and you really do need to define swag or find another way to state it. In fact I think you have three body points after your "finally": abandon friends, have swag, and make friends with popular kids. Also, in opposition to some of the other players' comments, I think you could make it a little more in-your-face than it already is by making the conclusion more dramatic and poignant in the end. Make people see how hopeless it is and feel really sorry for the unpopular person this is purportedly written to (but by inference written by). After that, resubmit it, send me an IM, and we can see if there are any last-minute touch-ups.

This isn't an essay, it's just a bunch of rambling nonsense. It's not really even satire. What is it a satire of? This is just you projecting how you perceive "popular" people to be. You're not being satirical, you're just being douchey.

I actually like it as-is, but that's probably because I am more partial to out-right attacks on those assholes... If you are really going for satire, listen to what the others are saying. If you just want to go on an all out rant against popular people, than you are doing it right!

You should be making some kind of point in your essay, and the only point I got out of it is that you hate the way popular people act. That really isn't a point that you want to base an entire paper on, and your teacher probably missed that problem because she didn't read the entire paper, just the beginning. She probably expected, like I did, that all of it would lead to some entertaining or intelligent conclusion.

It seems to be a very standard, trite collection of complaints about popular people.

The irony, of course, is that while you attempt to paint popular people as these shallow, vain worthless people, you examine them with a shallow, self-important, judgmental eye, thus casting yourself in an equally despicable light.

Anyone reading this, "satire" or not, clearly walks away with the feeling that the author is incredibly bitter; most likely one that has been rejected from the group and is lashing out.

As for the actual construction of the essay - the concluding paragraph needs a little work, but the introduction and body do their job - introduce a topic and then provide three supporting arguments, though the "arguments" are weak at best, with no examples. Since it is intended to parody, instead of saying "do this and this will happen", you should make up real like example; "We all remember the famous snubbing of Prissy Jones, which vaulter Glamorous Gene to the lofty ranks of..." whatever...you know what i mean, make up some example to support your argument and then you might actually achieve the humor you are seeking.

Needs work. Curious what grade this is for.

This is terrible. It's like one of the awful Cracked.com articles that slip through when the good writers haven't finished their lists yet. The part about parties is especially absurd. Kids are damned if they let people know about parties, damned if they keep them private. I guess a party's only OK if Conservative Man is invited. If you're not embarrassed to have written this piece of angsty garbage yet, Conservative Man, you will be in a few short years. You want to be popular and well liked? Stop being a whiny, bitter little boy and start being a person people actually would like to spend time with. It's not really that hard and it's the only way you'll have a happy life once imaginary high school time ends.

@gunfighter: She says to not do it in general but at times it can work. I think this is one of those times. And plus,a different one of the seven essays has to be a narrative, and obviously there is nothing wrong with first person in that.

@mujus: It is for AP English 3

@abge:It is a satire of how popular kids act. It is not projecting how I consider popular kids to be considering I don't even think most popular kids act like that.

@invictus: Looks like somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

@CM ... if that's a satire, you need to make it more obvious. I can see the baseline for what you're going for but I can't get any further than that.

It's not satire, Conservative Man. It's bitching.

@invictus: You are just spewing bile. Stop it. @ CM: It's effective on three levels: The first two levels are that it's written as self-expression using sarcasm to reveal real hurt underneath. The third level is that you are doing it as an exercise, putting yourself in those shoes, and I think that shows too. I think it works, but if it's an AP class, you might need to beef it up. Did the teacher give you any examples to go by? Disclaimer--I have to admit that I don't like writing sarcasm myself, and had a bad experience with it in high school when I got all clever and copied one of Mark Twain's stories--Not the words, but I worked hard to keep exactly the same sentence structure, I substituted every noun phrase in Twain for a noun phrase in my own paper, every verb phrase with a verb phrase, every adjective, phrase, and clause with one of my own on my own topic. It was rampant plagiarism, but I was only doing it because the counselor wouldn't let me out of the class and I wanted to show her that the teacher was requiring us to copy Twain. I got an A, showed the counselor as support for my claim; she showed the teacher, an elderly woman who cried that she had missed something so obvious, and I felt very bad. I did get transferred to a different teacher, but it wasn't worth the pain it caused my poor old teacher.

I will not stop it. He's written a bad and un-salvageable essay on a ridiculous topic. He should start over on a new topic rather than move around the deck chairs on the Titanic and still get a bad grade.

Invictus would be a great elementary school teacher...

"@abge:It is a satire of how popular kids act. It is not projecting how I consider popular kids to be considering I don't even think most popular kids act like that."

You keep saying that, but it doesn't make it true. I'm not trying to be a dick, btw, I'm just giving my opinion on what I read.

Your paper comes across as someone who got turned down by the "popular" kids and is now bitter. In no way is it a satire, you're just making fun of a group of people.

I believe this has already been suggested, but if you want to salvage this paper, I'd suggest you reframe it from "giving advice" to "being popular is so hard". You can then make over-the-top parodies of popular people without just sounding like a curmudgeon.

@Bo - Invictus isn't criticizing a grade school paper. He is criticizing an *advanced placement* high school essay, which means it should be college-level work. Given that, generally speaking, writing for public consumption should be targeted at a 7th or 8th grade writing level, this essay should be a shining example of writing, and it falls hideously short of that.