Do cliquey people know they’re being cliquey?

[fourelementary]

that really…

When people leave other people out and say, arrange small group acitivities within a larger group setting… do you think they realise they’re being cliquey or do you think they just assume other people could ask/join/arrange their own thing?

Childs sports team, mums used to stand about and watch and chat. Now a few of them go for walks together both during team time but also in own time and post about it on FB. Group chat never mentions “hey were thinking of meeting for a walk at x or y- all welcome”…so it’s only those few.

I’ve seen it at other groups and yet never knowingly been in the clique- but maybe if I was, I wouldn’t genuinely notice and would assume I was acting normally…

Hope this question makes sense…

Yes I think they do, but I agree with PPs that what you describe isn’t cliquey.
I think it’s when people get together and purposely exclude other people for whatever reason.

Given they are posting about it on fb I would say yes, they know they're being qliquey.

Absolutely no need for such twattishness.

I have been accused of being cliquey, but I'm not sure what it means.At work, I'm pleasant and friendly with everyone. If something is work related, I'll include everyone, buy of it's lunch or some other social thing outside of work, I'll invite my friends. Surely that's normal?

The same with a club I belong to. If I organise something for the club, everyone's invited. Sometimes I'll go and do the thing with a group of friends from the club. Is that not allowed?

With school mums I often felt I was the outsider - I was working so didn't know them as well as others, if they arranged things without me wasn't that just to be expected?

TBH I often think the people levelling the accusations should step up and organise some things themselves.

On MN clique is often used to mean a group of friends.
If you want a clique of your own, ask someone to meet for a coffee or a walk.

I don't think thats cliquey - I have a group of 'Mum friends' from the school run, at parties for example we will sit and talk in a group but within the same space as the other parents and will involve others in the conversations. There are another group of Mums who will sit in a group away from everyone and its made clear from their body language its a closed group. They don't speak to or engage with anyone outside of their group - that to me is a clique

I don't think that's cliquey unless people have asked if they can join the walk at the training ground and been rebuffed. It's a good initiative, walking is great for health and less boring if you have someone to chat to. If you want to walk with them during training, say so. If what you actually want is for them to be morally obliged to stand by the pitch and keep you company instead of walking, well there is no such moral obligation.

What they get up to in their own time away from training is their own business. It would be very difficult to make friends if you are not allowed to meet up with people outside of the environment that you first met them in.

Some know. I once heard a couple of acquaintances refer to PLU. I’d not heard that before (or since). They explained it was People Like Us, meaning similar to them not that people liked them. I didn’t.

Really? I don’t really use fb, but if I go on it and happen to see some mums from my DD’s school have gone for a walk or something I wouldn’t think “how cliquey not to invite me. What twats!” I wouldn’t generally give it a second thought, but if I did, I’d just think that they were friends who’d met up.

You can't post about anything you do with your friends unless you've invited every aquaintance?

What’s cliquey about that?

If I see on social media that people I know have done something together, I’m not sufficiently insecure to whinge about being excluded. People have friendships and social interactions that don’t need to involve everyone.

If they never posted about their social lives would you say they know what they did was cliquey and they are trying to hide it?

There's easier ways to share photos privately- eg by WhatsApp.

In that case why ever put anything on FB? I mean I don't very often, but I don't think a trip out with friends is something that needs to be private.

No, it’s a social class term. Can mean ‘X is lovely, if you overlook him dropping his hs” or ‘New as anything, showed up at Eton with brand new everything in in Louis Vuitton suitcases’.

See also NQOS (Not Quite Our Sort), MIF (Milk In First), HKLP (Holds Knife Like Pen) etc.

But why is it private if I went out with some friends, having rashly failed to invite everyone else I’ve ever met?

Additionally, sometimes when groups get too big, the original purpose gets lost or the activity gets a bit shit- at the moment there are three of them, they go for a walk while then kids are training- simple. If they throw it open to the wider group, suddenly there are 10 people walking, two of whom bring younger kids who walk at a snails pace, someone forgot their boots so can we walk on the road this week, someone else is running late so can you wait 15 mins for me and it goes on and on? Keeping it small keeps it simple.

As a school mum I have lots of mums to friendly with and maybe go for a coffee with / sit in the park cafe etc. I also have mum friends who make me properly belly laugh and who I feel I can be my authentic self with at all times. Some events are a wider invite and some are just about us real friends whose mutual love and support has gone beyond where our kids go to school or who their friends are.

I’m part of one particular clique, I know it’s a clique and I admit that, no, we don’t want anyone else to join us.

It’s a once a week meet up, it started organically a bit like the group the OP is talking about. It became a regular thing, it’s a perfect group of 8 people, we all get along wonderfully, the dynamic is spot on, from past experience any more people joining us makes it cumbersome - it’s happened before where people have asked to join us and after being involved for a few weeks, now that day doesn’t work for them any more so can we do a different day, or can we make it an hour later, or can they bring their DP or their kids along, or can we try a dog friendly venue, blah blah blah.

So we just keep to to the 8 of us.

Must be a regional variation

It just sounds like a group of parents from the sports team get on and are now a group of friends. That's not cliquey and they don't have to invite everyone they know to everything they do.

I dont understand what the difference between a clique and a group of friends is. And I don't care.
People are allowed to choose who to be friends with and who not to be friends with.

I think the thing is something can be both a clique and a group of friends but a group of friends isn't always a clique. So moving away from definitions which aren't that helpful, I would say of course it's OK to be friends with who you want to be, and to meet up for walks and coffees and whatever else you want to do with who you want to. It's OK to feel you have enough friends (or indeed to have no friends and be ok with that) and no desire to connect on a deeper level with acquaintances you see at activities or at the school gate and will never be on more than nodding terms with. However what would I say is not Ok and can be quite rude and unkind is to pointedly exclude certain people whilst currently at the school gate or the sidelines of the activity or whatever it is. So for instance having animated happy laughs and discussions with you school-gate best mate, but to go totally silent and terse or just give one word answers when someone else comes over to say hello. Or to talk loudly and excitedly about how excited you are to go for lunch with the other football mums!!! while you're watching the match but only some mums are invited and welcome to come. Particularly galling if you post a lot on public social media where you know the excluded people will see it and to caption your pics 'all the lovely mums from Little Town Junior FC' or whatever when it's by no means all the mums at all, just the ones you like. Like I say, no problem to only be friends with some people, or for deeper friendships to form with some people compared to others, not a problem to post whatever pics you like to your own friendship groups but when in a public place would it kill you just to be equally polite and nice to everyone rather than needing to make it completely plain and the obvious you only like some people? To just have a neutral chat with the other mums that you don't like that much before going off for coffee or a walk with your bestie where you can be just the two of you to your heart's content. Or if you're going to publicly brand your friendship group as the 'football mums' maybe sometimes asking all the football mums if they'd like to join in. Like I say not saying you all have to adopt every single person you meet as your bosum pal for ever, or even make any very proactive attempt at building friendships if you don't want to, but just to not actively and pointedly exclude any one person or group of people. Obviously sometimes people are just genuinely oblivious to someone feeling left out and sometimes people complain about being left out when they've never made the slightest effort to join in and that can't be helped but I do think a lot of the time people are just so delighted to be on the inside of the clique and insecure about themselves they definitely don't want to bring others in, they do know at some level they aren't behaving very nicely but they'd rather that than risk getting booted out of the clique themselves... And so bad behaviour through the ages continues...

As a PP suggested, ask if you can join them.

Their response will tell you if they are a clique (don’t want others) or just people who were chatting one day, got on well and suggested a walk next time.

I wouldn’t call that ‘cliquish’. You’re a group of friends doing something that suits you on a regular basis, and not looking for new ‘recruits’, which have, historically, led to changes that don’t suit the original kernel of 8.

I sometimes think Mners appear to think ‘cliquish’ any behaviour that doesn’t involve any group of friends with their eyes out on stalks for any indication someone else might want to join them, or advertising any activity to the entire school/workplace/town.

They can not want others because they get on well and it's a nice manageable number as it is.

It's only cliquey if they exclude other people while in their presence - ignoring people, refusing to engage in conversation or friendly contact, etc.

In schools they call them friendship groups and they can be quite stable collections of friends. I don't kow why they become cliques when women have friends as adults.

Is a book group a clique? a cycling group? a subsection of the PTA who go to the pub after?

But where on Facebook are they posting it? On their own page, or does the sports club a have a Facebook page?