true story

When I was a kid, there was this guy of whom everyone was afraid. Several of us decided to try to become friends with this guy in order to feel more confident that he wouldn't beat us up. This guy, by reputation, seemed so angry and distant that it was difficult and scary to try to talk to him. So instead, we tried to learn what he liked and disliked from a few other folks who were also trying to befriend this guy for their own safety.
This guy was assumed to have been responsible for so much unpleasantry and to have been so controlling and hot tempered, that we wanted to be sure we didn't do anything to upset him.
When we felt we had a pretty good idea of what kept him stable, we pretty much spent all our energy avoiding the things that made him mad. This served a couple purposes. Namely, we didn't have to actually do friend things with him – we didn't have to talk or hang. We were very careful because we knew that although we thought we were friends, he'd still beat us up if we made him mad.
Of course, our efforts to behave this way were noticed by everyone. The irony here is that it was our effort rather than our behavior that caught people's attention. It was as if they could tell that we were just trying to appease him. It furthered the harsh reputation of our friend, and it became our own identifying factor.

What none of us realized was that this guy was nothing like we thought him to be. He was attractive, so he seemed unapproachable to most of us. He was strong, so we assumed him tough. His reputation preceded our knowledge of him, and because we were intimidated, we never got to know him and his reputation prevailed. People who came along after us knew of him through us and so his reputation remained.
Ironically, our association with him didn't cause us to be seen as powerful like him, because it was evident why we were associated. So we were viewed as weak, manipulated, fearful, and pitiful.
So other folks, resolved not to be like us, just decided to take their chances with the guy and take their lumps if it came to that.
Now and then someone would show up at school bruised or with a black eye. They never said so, but we knew that our friend had done it. Instead of hurting for these bruised and broken people, we talked about them amongst ourselves and thought little of them for refusing to behave like us. In fact, we worked so hard at it that we were nearly angry with them for ignoring it. Our anger caused us to feel that they deserved their bruises and we began to wish bruises on people who behaved differently than us, but seemed to be doing ok anyway. We knew their lumps would eventually come. Some of them even seemed to get preferential treatment despite the fact that they behaved differently than us. This caused anger toward not only these other people but also to our friend who seemed to be terribly unfair to those of us who worked so hard to please him. But since we didn’t know him very well, we didn’t feel comfortable approaching him with our feelings.
Eventually, we got kind of fed up and quit thinking about him altogether. Out of habit, we continued to behave in pretty much the same way we’d been accustomed and so were still identified in association with him, but we really weren’t motivated by him at all. Really we just enjoyed being different, so we just pretty much kept to ourselves and enjoyed camaraderie amongst our like-minded friends.