30 Times People Trusted They’d Get Their Way Just Because They Outnumbered The Opposing Side
My high school graduation was in sweltering muggy heat during the areas largest cicada swarm in living memory. And because we were the children of upper middle class snobs, senators, and lobbyists, they had a ton of guest speakers and theatrics that was six hours long in our stadium. So there we all were, bugs as large as an entire thumb landing on us every other minute, dying in the swamp heat of the DC area under full sun in cheap vinyl gowns.
Erroneously, they gave us our diplomas three hours into it.
During this disaster, the usual pranks were done, including a few beach balls (all popped and confiscated), bubbles (confiscated), and confetti (confiscated). The valedictorian, sensing the vibe of the crowd, gave a very, very short speech.
"Fellow classmates, you didn't come here to hear me talk, so I won't. Happy graduation!" And he got off the stage. The principal, not a well liked woman, forced him back on to give the speech. "It's hot up here," he said. "But what are they gonna do? You already got your diplomas. Go home."
"WE GRADUATED!" someone shouted and tossed his cap.
"YAAAY" said a few more people, and tossed their caps.
Parents, confused and sweltering in the sun, started to get up. That was the tipping point, and suddenly EVERYONE tossed their caps. Parents came down from the stands, grateful it ended, but our principal got on stage, and did that nervous aggressive laugh, "OKAY. SIMMER DOWN NOW. WE STILL HAVE A WHILE TO GO AND SOME GUEST SPEAKERS... OKAY... IT'S NOT OVER...RETURN TO YOUR SEATS... OKAY I'M SER--", and someone cut off her mic.
No one could stop us. Even the teachers who tried to corral us back failed because we out numbered them 40 to 1.
We ended it on our terms.
So I went to an alternative high school for kids with behavioral disorders and emotional disturbances. We were all complete s**ts to the teacher and to each other because that's just what happens when you stick a bunch of troubled teens together.
Anyway, on Fridays we had art. EVERYONE f*****g loved art. Art was the one place we could express ourselves, the teacher treated us like human beings and not future addicts or criminals, in general it was the one thing that brought everyone together.
....And then one day our teacher told us we wouldn't be having art because they decided that it was important to do a team building class instead.
Well, this is a group of kids who have done things like punch cacti in half, thrown chairs, dented walls, attacked others with shivs, etc. And if you're wondering, I was the resident desk thrower. IDK I just hulked out when I was upset.
So we're pissed because it's our art. And we don't wanna do a stupid team building exercise but we'll lose privileges if we're not in the class (privileges is stuff like being able to pee by yourself, being able to walk around without a teacher, better food, etc.) so we all had a moment and this silent agreement came to all of us.
For that entire period no matter what the teachers did all we did was sit there and stare straight ahead. No emotions. No actions. No fidgeting. Nothing. Just eerie staring. Our teacher was an ex prison guard and it even freaked him out.
And since they couldn't afford to demote all of us privilege-wise or send us all to the ISS room (Basically a bare room where you sit guarded by a teacher one day) we didn't get in trouble.
And next week art was back in session.
So yeah. Don't f**k with our art.
Didn’t go to alternative school but art was my favorite class. In the mid 90s I learned how to weave baskets, how to do batiking, stained glass, how to throw pottery and many more activities. It breaks my heart that kids today don’t get to learn how awesome it feels to make something with your own hands.
One of my classmates in high school lost his dad very suddenly. He showed up and told us all, to make us understand why he wasn't there.
We asked the teachers if we could go to the memorial to support him, and we were told we couldn't. We would be marked as absent that day, and it would count into out absence for the year (we were not allowed to be absent for more than 10% of the time unless we wanted to be kicked out).
We went anyway. The whole class.
We were afterwards told by the school that since the whole class went, and the teachers knew why, they decided not to let it count. And we were there to support our classmate.
Why TF would you forbid a class to go to a classmate's dad's funeral? Same thing happened to a guy to my class when we were 17, we didn't have to ask, the school fixed it for us to be there !
Living in Chicago, they blocked off a bridge for filming The Dark Knight Batman movie. A crowd started forming, mostly from people who need to cross the bridge. We are all on foot, going around is a big hassle, and city folks don't like when streets get blocked.
Finally, some guy shouts "They can't stop us all!" and on cue, we all hopped the barriers and poured into the movie set. Christopher Nolan and all the security can't stop grumpy city pedestrians from going where they want.
This was when I was in 8th grade
My school has a really strict dress code + a uniform but one day they went too far,they said WHITE SOCKS ONLY we decided to get the 2 grades above us and below us to wear black socks that day,we had over 400 people wearing black socks for a week straight until the school decided to remove the rule
In high school they passed a rule where you could no longer wear shorts to school. So first day of school we organized to have 150 plus to wear shorts thinking they couldn’t send us all home, well they did.
I shared this story on another thread, but it definitely fits.
Halloween costumes were banned at my high school because of some idiots like 10 years before that dressed up and used it as an excuse to hide their face while they vandalized the school.
My senior year more than half of the class decided that we would still dress up and march into the school together in the morning. We all knew we would be punished right away, but it didn't matter. I stayed up all night making a suit of armor out of metallic duct tape and carboard, along with a broomstick horse to ride. Here is a picture that ended up in the yearbook
The next day we all gathered in the parking and waited for everyone to show up. People went all out and there were a lot of amazing costumes, and after about 20 minutes of waiting we started our march in. The deans had learned of our plan and were waiting for us right as we entered. They started pulling people aside in groups and taking student IDs to hand out detentions.
In my group there was one guy dressed up as an ATM and when the dean asked for his ID he started making ATM noises and then slipped the ID out through the slot where you would put your debit card in. It was one of the funniest things and I was so jealous that my costume was not as clever as his. Even though having so many of us participate was pretty awesome, his costume just made that whole event for me.
Back in highschool, there was a really big budget cut for extracurricular activities in the entire district. several sports teams and clubs were cancelled. A lot of students needed those for their college applications and things. different protests happened at other schools, but our school did an every period walk out. Halfway through every class, all the students would get up and leave(the whole school took part, 2500+ students). The same would happen in the next period. We did this for a month and a half. if you wanted to remove a big portion of what made school important, we would too. the budget was reinstated shortly after lol. other schools would pick a day to not show up. Others had teacher hold the clubs, regardless of budget or not. Good times.
Had a professor try to justify thinking that being gay was a choice as part of a health class. Entire class got up and left and went straight to the department head. She finished out the semester and I have no idea whether or not she got fired. That entire class was a hot mess but an easy A.
I went to a public school and we had a religious thing once a month. Random christians would come talk about God through music or comedy ect. One time they passed out hundreds of tiny bibles to all students. This was just before recess so teachers are everywhere. One student decided to light his bible on fire and chuck it at another student who returned the favor. The teachers came for both of them but somewhere in the frey, someone yelled "BIBLE FIGHT!!!!!" it was pandemonium. Bibles were flying everywhere, kids were making wasps out of the pages, if held right, you could slap students with the leather covers. It was so chaotic that the teachers had to retreat and school was let out for the day. There was an assembly the next day to encourage students to rat out the delinquents which didn't work because nearly everyone was involved. They never handed anything out after that.
If you want religious freedom, you get religious freedom, including throwing unwanted Bibles about.
In 7th grade, the whole school was directed into the cafeteria as soon as we entered the doors in the morning. It was before school started, and no one was allowed to go to their lockers or even the bathroom. The kids eating breakfast hadn't finished yet. We're not given an explanation, just packed like sardines with 500 other people. Eventually, the principle gets up on stage (yeah, idk) with a mic and starts saying the morning announcements, exactly as we had heard every morning for the last year and a half. He doesn't get through them, though, because he's bombarded with questions about wtf's going on. He angrily explains that we're going to hold the morning announcements in the cafeteria before school from now on, "because he said so", and that anyone caught leaving the cafeteria will get detention and maybe suspended. Our response to this? Well, remember the kids who couldn't eat their breakfast in peace? They'd been sharing their breakfast with the rest of us, passing milk and stuff through the crowd. And we, ammo in hand, started the most packed but manic food fight I've ever been in. We got milk twelve feet up a wall. Kids' hair was soaked, but no one gave a s**t. We were ushered out of the cafeteria and into our classrooms as fast as 500 kids can move. We were told that we'd be punished, but since it was so crowded, they couldn't figure out who had thrown something, and in the end, no one was punished. We never had to do announcements in the cafeteria again, either.
Not me, but I witnessed a true rebel a week ago.
Every year I go to an outdoor festival with my partner and her family. Average age of about 50 as the acts are oldies like CCR and Billy Idol. 9am the express tickets are allowed in and that’s when there’s a sea of Boomers running to get the shade. I’m the sprinter every year and I fly by them all with blankets to get the best spot. 10am the GA are allowed in and I like to watch thousands of people rush through the gates. This year for some reason the gates were open but security weren’t letting people through and they were getting irritated. Then like a warrior, a man in his 50’s with a straw hat and glasses on a chain stands up. Folds his deck chair and turns to the crowd.
“THEY CAN’T STOP ALL OF US!”
He turned and ran, followed by the entire crowd as they cheered and yelled and pushed passed security who couldn’t do anything. It was a pure wonder to behold, like the army of Rohan descending down the hill from the East in The Two Towers
I’d follow that man into battle anywhere.
We never went through with it but at one point we had 30 guys willing to wear dresses to protest the absurd list of rules that women were expected to follow for a dress code. For reference, there were at least fifteen rules for girls and only two for boys.
My engineering class instigated the single largest snowball fight the city has ever encountered. Thousands of university students involved. When the cops showed up, everyone ran into the forest for several hours.
It was all a distraction so another team could move The Cannon.
There was a cannon in the main courtyard, pointed at the Deans office window. It had been filled with concrete to prevent it from firing (again), and all told, weighed about 9000 lbs IIRC.
Now, a cannon is a very special thing to engineers, as the first engineers basically calculated artillery trajectories, which incidentally is why you have Civil engineers... to differentiate them from the military engineers who came first.
So, the engineering students decided that such a monument belonged in front of the engineering Faculty.
So, the plan:
1 Start a snowball fight, distract all campus and city police
2 Use a Hydraulic jack to lift the cannon off it's mount, and then slide it onto a waiting cart, built to be able to roll the cannon
3 Use 50 students and a lot of rope to pull the cannon over to the Engineering building
4 Remove the wheels, and now it is once again, a 9000 lb cannon.
It worked. Flawlessly. The campus police didn't even realize anything was happening until the cannon had been moved, and the school didn't want to pay a crane service to move it back, so it stayed in place.
However, our arch-rivals the aggies (Agricultural Diploma students) didn't like this, and decided that "Anything the engineers could do, they could do better". So they hooked up a 4x4 pickup truck to the cannon, (and the stand, which no longer had wheels, as they had been built to be removable) and attempted to tow it back to the courtyard.
They took the transmission out of the first truck, and the second, and the third, before the gave up on dragging it across the stone walkway, doing substantial damage.
The university was now forced to pay for the crane to replace the cannon, and repair the walkway. An anonymous donation did show up to cover the costs the school incurred, after an invoice happened to be slipped under the door of the engineering society office.
Damned Aggies.
I once heard of a school that had a cannon on the grounds that was from some historic battle and was half buried. One morning there is no cannon to be seen, just a big hole in the ground and pile of dirt. Everyone freaked and a huge hunt was underway to find who had stolen the cannon. After a week or so of getting nowhere an anonymous note arrived "Look under the pile of dirt"
A very much loved teacher passed away and we wanted to watch them plant her memorial tree on school grounds.
But given we where all kids with issues (special needs school.) they where concerned we couldn’t handle it or something.
So I (class president at the time still don’t know how the f**k I got elected.) told the class “follow me if they give you c**p I’ll take the fall.”.
When they tried to call me out on it I pointed out according to the rule book it’s only skipping class if we leave school grounds which we hadn’t. So we didn’t get trouble. But hey they couldn’t have got us all in detention anyway.
In 5th grade they banned tag for some reason so I orchestrated a game of tag that all of the 5th grade would join in on. Everyone joined and it was perfect because it was the very last day until we had to stay inside because of The rain.
My complex of townhouses has a new HOA manager who keeps putting passive aggressive notes on everybody's doors about parking issues and not having guests over and threats of towing. Tonight we had a superbowl party, arranged parking with neighbors who were also having superbowl parties, and everyone parked where the HOA said they'd tow. Nobody got towed. Check and mate dumb HOA manager.
Our french teacher was an horrible person. He had one state of emotion, and that was pissed off. One day, he litteraly kicked a girl out of our classroom.
The school board picked it up, but he denied it. Even though our entire class saw what happened, he only got a warning.
So, when he passed through the lunchhall on one faithfull day, a small group of kids started booing him. He did not pay mind to it. He had some business to take care off behind the front dest that faces the lunchhall.
More kids started booing him until every
one got up from their seats, started booing and throwing stuff at him. Must have been terrifying to see aprox 600 people booing you. He quit shortly after.
I used to have an internship at the most r******d company ever. They had more than 14 interns and max 3 actual employees present at any given day. They would not be able to keep the place running without interns.
One day, the owner of the company (A huge b***h) told us she was gonna change the working times from 9-5 to 10-6, nobody agreed to that change though. Our contract that she also signed stated 2 things;
-The company will provide us with an internship for 5 days a week from 9 to 5.
-The company can end the internship at any time without notice
She used the latter of the 2 points as a way of saying: "If you don't comply with our new rules we kick you out."
The next week, we all arrived at 9am, but there was nobody there. We waited until 9:50am, when the owner arrived. She didn't ask us any questions and opened the door. At 5pm, we left, all of us. The owner was threatening to end all of our internships. But of course we knew she couldn't do that and we left.
From that moment, we had days from 10 - 5, instead of 9 - 5 or 10 -6, which was the best result possible.
When I was 8, my mom went to the hospital with my dad so she could give birth to my final little brother. There's 4 of us, 11, 8, 6, and 3 iirc. Naturally, they get these ladies from church to watch us for the evening.
Our parents had a relatively lax bedtime for us at the time, which was like 9:15. However, when 8 o'clock rolled around, the ladies decided it was time to put us to bed. We tried telling them that we had another hour before bed, but they wouldn't listen. They actually convinced us that our parents were coming home soon, so we should suprise them by pretending to be asleep.
We all thought it was kind of lame but, being at the age we were, we fell for it. We go through our routine and get in bed about 8:10. Since we weren't used to going to bed at this hour, we were all lying in bed dejectedly, trying not to think about all the play we were missing out on (or at least, I was. We all slept in the same room but it was dark.)
It was then as I was lying in bed, thinking about my life decisions, that I realized we'd been bambozooled. I shot up and said something along the lines of,"Guys! They tricked us!! Let's go get em!"
I leapt out of bed, my siblings behind me, and we ran through the house making the obnoxious noises children our age made. The one lady was actually on the phone with dad, telling him we were asleep, when we erupted from the bedroom hollering joyously. Her face fell with disappointment, but she didn't try to force us back to bed.
The bedtime rebellion.
I was in show choir, and we ended each school year with a big concert, performing our show for the last time. I was getting kind of emotional for my senior year show, as it was the last time I’d ever be in show choir.
well, the week before the show, a bunch of us were getting half-off apps at Applebee’s (a regular hangout for post-rehearsal cheap treats). the conversation shifted over to Super Troopers, and we started thinking of hilarious moments in our show where we could Meow instead of sing the words. like which soloists could sneak it in, where could we all sing it together, etc.
Sunday show arrives. the set started, I was tearing up already, and our soloist starts out... “a dream is a wish your heart MEOWS.”
this is what happened by the end of our set
it was the most fun ever. it was totally worth our choreographer throwing a fit and threatening not to work with us again, our band director getting all high and mighty that it wasn’t appropriate, and our choir director’s wife coming to class the next day to yell at us for about 10 minutes.
My middle school tried to ban yoga pants so all of the girls came together and wore yoga pants.
Living in the dorms in high school, we had quiet time in the evenings where we would sit in the canteen and do homework in complete silence. It was strictly regulated by professors who patrolled around the canteen.
I don't know how it started, but someone began to make a distinctive noise with their mouth closed, like "Mmmmmm? Mmmmmm! " which first raised up in tone like a question, then down. Then repeated again and again, like a wave.
Soon we all joined in and it became nearly deafening in the echoey canteen. The professors couldn't tell who was or wasn't doing it from a distance because everyone's heads were bent down and mouths were closed. If a professor approached your section you fell silent, but once they left you joined again.
It drove the professors nuts.
We did this for many nights– someone would start and people would join in, or if no-one joined, then they would fall silent. So you'd just hear the occasional "Mmmmmm?"
Fun times.
A school had a policy where we were had to give our phones to the school for "inspections" because somebody had sent my friend a video of him, and another student making babies. so the whole school decided to change there phone background to our school logo, but written under is "this is b******t" since it was a person as the logo, we put a red nose, and clown hair on it, and our masterpiece was complete. the school saw this as "inappropriate" and said that any kid with this background on there phone was to be sent to the dean's office. over 500 kids were sent to the office, and then the school spent a week trying to find the madlad who spray painted "this is b******t" under the school name. soon there were posters of the "this is b******t" logo everywhere. then the school announced that they would stop checking students phones after a kid said he was going to call his lawyer, and dialed his dad, i guess checking kids phones, and scrolling through all there messages is a big no no.
The time I gathered every other guild leader in my game server and then worked together to overthrow the top guild and shared the loot. They may have plenty of cash to throw but they sure as hell can't stop 60 pairs of hands from being faster than them when they only have 22.
I prevented a guild war in the MMPG Muddog. Much later I learned that the guy who hosted the game was so fed up with the antagonism that had the war gone forward, he was going to pull the plug. I virtually saved a virtual reality.
Not really a rule but still funny
We have a Band Teacher who is everyone's favorite and everyday while he is walking to get his lunch and dump his tray we applaud for no apparent reason
One day we had a new Linch Monitor let's call her Mrs. Evan's, she tried to make us stop, which just made us louder , then the Band teacher set down his tray and clapped louder than any of us. She quit the next day.
Our school banned everything red so all of my grade brought everyything we owned that was red and they stopped enforcing the rule.
Back in 5th grade, we had a lunch-aid who I’ll call Bob. Bob was chill, down-to-earth, and nice, so we all liked him.
Fast forward to 6th grade, and Bob had disappeared.
In his place, was a stern, mean, and probably depressed Gen Xer.
This girl wouldn’t let us go outside for recess until everyone in the room stopped talking, and even her voice made her sound like someone you’d like to punch.
One day, when she forced us all back into the cafeteria after we wouldn’t shut up when we were already lined up to go outside, something happened.
“WE WANT BOB! WE WANT BOB!”
It didn’t matter if you were the quiet kid or a Kyle, a Not Like Others Girls girl or a Stacy, a gamer or a jock. If you were in that crowd, chances are you were chanting, too.
All of us got lectured by the vice principal after that, and I saw our new lunch-aid crying while confiding in another staff member at least twice.
Alright so i went to a co-op, which is kinda like a school for homeschoolers. anyway, onto the story.
so we had a study hall for studying (the name might suggest) and a study hall for talking. one day, they randomly take away the talking hall, and we are all shoved into the small room that was the "study" study hall. we are all outraged, so we devoloped a plan. i was the tech geek of the group, and found out that there was a bluetooth (very early for the time) speaker open for anyone to connect to, but the co-op didn't think any students would connect to it. they were wrong. so we devoloped a plan by which i would play a song of the group's choice, and when it reached a certain lyric, we would all scream like s**t was raining from the sky. so the next week we get there, and i play it during student break time. the song was "All star" and when it reached "hey now, you're an all star" we all screamed as loud as we could! (keep in mind all star was blasting full volume) and everytime it reached that lyric, we would try to scream again. the teachers told everyone to shut up or we would all get a three hour "detention." one of the proudest moments of my teenage years....
Management changed and we didn't like the new rules being imposed on us. We walked out all at once.
The management scheduled a meeting about dresscode at work. So at the meeting everyone was dressed as over the top gala as possible. Wedding suits, glitter, boa's, high heels. It was glorious and it caused so much stirr admiring each others outfits that the subject wasn't even discussed at the meeting or ever again.
Reading some of these I'm immensely glad my junior-year observation and senior-year practicum convinced me not to be a cog in the wheels of the US public school system.
I can't believe some Pandas are actually paying for "premium". It's like a label that tells us you're gullible
The management scheduled a meeting about dresscode at work. So at the meeting everyone was dressed as over the top gala as possible. Wedding suits, glitter, boa's, high heels. It was glorious and it caused so much stirr admiring each others outfits that the subject wasn't even discussed at the meeting or ever again.
Reading some of these I'm immensely glad my junior-year observation and senior-year practicum convinced me not to be a cog in the wheels of the US public school system.
I can't believe some Pandas are actually paying for "premium". It's like a label that tells us you're gullible