Welcome to PowerPlay. Please enter the following information to join the competition.
Full Name
Grade Level
You will be able to make changes to your profile in the future if necessary.
Thank you for your cooperation. Your PowerPlay experience will begin shortly.
...
Rules of the Game
1. Points and Rankings: Each student is assigned a score based on peer ratings. Every interaction may earn you up to five stars from classmates. Ratings are anonymous with no explanation required. One star may be given as easily as five. Compliments, favors, and successful social maneuvers may increase your points. Negative behaviors such as gossip, exclusion, or social missteps may decrease your points. Rankings are updated automatically in real-time. Everyone's position will be visible, but exact scores of others may remain hidden.
2. Observation Matters: You do not need to act to be rated. Your behavior is constantly observed, intentionally or not. Actions you don't notice may still affect your score. PowerPlay tracks interactions beyond your awareness. Timing, tone, and audience all influence point calculations. Subtlety is rewarded.
3. Alliances and Rivalries: Friendship, loyalty, and influence over others may increase your points. Betrayal or broken promises may decrease your points. The system monitors indirect influence. What your friends and enemies do may affect your ranking as well.
4. Social Dynamics: Every student's behavior is part of the hierarchy. Participation is automatic. No one is exempt. Pay attention, as small actions may create ripples. One misstep may start a chain reaction that reshapes relationships.
5. Notifications: You may choose to receive alerts for ranking changes. Ignoring notifications may result in unexpected outcomes. The system does not distinguish between mistakes and intent. Only results matter.
6. Termination Policy: Accounts cannot be deleted. Scores and histories are permanent. Leaving the school or graduating does not remove you from the system. Your influence and data will remain, regardless of your preferences.
7. General Guidelines: Observe carefully, act strategically, and be mindful of appearances. PowerPlay is designed to reveal patterns and truths about social interactions. Whether you succeed or fail, the consequences are yours to bear, alone. The game will continue, with or without you.
...
Current Ranking: Unknown
Peers Rated: None
___
My name is Verity. And I am a monster.
We all are.
It all started inside an unimportant tenth grade classroom, inside a red brick building, in a small and unnoticed corner of the busy, bustling city of New York. And all because of Evercrest Academy for girls.
I had grown up there. Evercrest ran from kindergarten to twelfth grade, and I was quite fortunate to have entered during the highly-selective kindergarten period. I was part of a grade of around 60 students, all girls, and as far as I could put it, we were all friends. Grudges did not last past the hour, pranks were not taken personally, and mistakes were not reasons to laugh. To put it simply, there had been no hierarchy.
In middle school, which began in fifth grade, though I have no idea how little schooling one could have possibly had to not know the difference, things began to change. Friendgroups and cliques had begun to solidify, leaving a sum of unwanted students feeling rather left out. The popular kids hung out with the popular kids, the athletes hung out with the athletes, and the smart ones kept to themselves. If someone could not be easily classified into one of the three groups, they were branded an outcast, and shunned from all societal gatherings.
Oh, sure, the teachers tried to do something about it, but in the end, there was no real way to remedy the issue. And so, the outcasts began leaving. First, it was just one kid, bullied for not being the brightest of the bunch. Then students began leaving in hordes.
By the end of eighth grade, we had amassed about five new kids who had joined the grade throughout the course of middle school, and we had lost about the same amount.
By the beginning of ninth grade, we had lost almost 15 of the original 60 in kindergarten group, and about five late comers who just could not take the pressure. And so, Evercrest gave us 15 more.
And it was then that I realized I had grown bored of my life. It was so easy, really, to see someone apply the wrong shade of lipstick in the bathroom and watch as they received awkward comments and back-handed compliments as they sauntered back into class. Then the next day, nobody, not even her supposed "friends" would sit with her at lunch. They would all make up some excuse about "getting coffee" or "speaking to a teacher" and strand the girl all alone, waiting in the lunchline, and waiting for her friends to like her again.
It happened every moment of every day.
There was no point in making a big deal out of it.
It was just how things were.
And I had been fine living out my life on the sidelines, uninvolved with the massive ton of drama swimming through the ranks of the popular kids and athletes. I had my small group of friends, and that was enough. I was satisfied.
But now I was bored. It had been the same mistakes, actions, and fashion statements all throughout middle school. One would think that these people would learn to avoid wearing bright-red lipstick because it washed them out, or sporting orange highlighter shoes because it was just downright ugly, but they never learned. It was as if my entire world needed stimulation.
Evercrest was becoming mundane.
But one day, an app known as PowerPlay suddenly appeared. An unknown, anonymous phone number dropped the link into the Evercrest group chat, and everything blew up from there. PowerPlay was designed to track the popularity and hierarchical data of every student in the high school division at Evercrest Academy. Each student had their own account to monitor their personal rankings, do daily quests to receive higher point values, and upvote or downvote their peers based on their actions, habits, or just appearances alone.
And the most human thing about it was that someone could hit you with a one-star simply because they were having a bad day and your existence just happened to piss them off.
By the beginning of tenth grade, every student, regardless of age, grade, or societal position, had signed up for the app.
Days later, people began noticing something odd. There was a mysterious user with a glitched-out name and profile, with their number of points on private mode. And this person was always at the very top of the ranking chart. Nobody seemed to know just who this person could be, and nobody was even close to capable enough to approach this mysterious user enough to overtake them.
___
"I don't know why everyone's getting so freaked out about this new app thing."
I was at lunch with my friends: Allegra, Citrine, Sonia, and Ione. All of them were sophomores like me, except Ione, who was a junior, and supposedly the "mom" of the friend group.
"I think it's kinda interesting," Ione said, responding to Sonia's statement. "I wonder who made it. Honestly, it's insane. I have no idea who would have the time and effort to do something like this."
I shrugged. "People always say that. It's never as hard as they think."
Citrine took a large bite of her sandwich. "It's probably going to be one of those 'do it or get bullied' kind of things. I would assume the 'safe zone' should be the top 60 percent, the popular kids will probably monopolize their votes to keep themselves in the top 30, the bottom 40 are likely going to have less respect, with the exception of the bottom ten percent, since they're definitely going to get 'special treatment.'"
"What do you mean by 'special treatment?'" Allegra asked, half-heartedly scrolling through BLs to read.
"It means they're the ones who're going to get bullied. Like bullied-bullied."
Ione shushed them. "Don't talk with your mouth full, Citrine. Even if we can understand you, that's still impolite. And Allegra, can you please stop reading BL during lunch when we're supposed to be hanging out?"
"Fine," Allegra said, reluctantly shutting her computer and sliding it back into her bag. "But let's talk about this whole PowerPlay thing. What should we do about it?"
Citrine finished chewing and swallowing, unfinished sandwich sitting dejectedly on her plate. "We should keep ourselves in the top 60 percent to avoid any attention, good or bad. Since there are about 240 students in all of the high school division at Evercrest, assuming the data is limited to our division only, we should keep ourselves above rank—"
"—144." Sonia was deep in thought.
"I'd say something between 130 and 140 should keep us out of trouble," Allegra said, stealing a pepper out of Citrine's sandwich.
"Wha—hey!"
I shook my head. "Closer to 135. The thresholds tend to stabilize there."
"That sounds reasonable," Ione piped up, subtly trying to break up the dogfight that was about to happen between Citirine and Allegra if she didn't intervene. "Maintaining our ranks shouldn't be too hard, right?"
"I wouldn't be so sure about that." I smiled. "I heard Chroa's rank fell by 20 just because she accidentally hit Lua with a banana this morning."
The sandwich scuffle paused.
"Really?" Allegra gasped, eyes wide. "That's crazy!"
I smiled. "Mostly because so many people were in the hallway when it happened. The more people who saw, the more people who probably rated Chroa one star."
Ione slumped back into her chair. "Ugh. This is gonna be hard. My talent is, like, pissing people off really easily."
"I'm sure it's gonna be fine." Citrine patted the junior on the back.
A mischievous thought flashed through my mind. "You know, I don't think it's gonna be all that hard to keep your rankings the same."
"And how might we go about doing that?" Sonia asked, examining the strand of blond hair she had miraculously managed to uncover from the depths of her clam chowder.
"I think what Verity means is that we're just not very hate-able people." Citrine shrugged. "And even if we make some enemies, they're gonna come running back to us all 'help me with my homework' or 'can you explain this concept to me' eventually. As long as we capitalize on those moments, and minimize our 'pissing people off,' we should be able to hang in the rank 135 range."
"None of you want to climb higher?" I raised an eyebrow.
They all shook their heads.
Citrine took another bite of her sandwich. "I, for one, was not made to be the queen bee of Evercrest. Or anywhere else. It's way too stressful."
"Me too," Allegra agreed, after a moment of thought.
Sonia rolled her eyes. "It's not like popularity's gonna get them anywhere in life."
"Yeah. All anyone cares about these days is whether or not you're useful. Or rich. Well, I suppose being rich is also useful in many ways."
"God, Citrine!" Allegra tossed a napkin at her friend's face. "What did Ione say about talking with your mouth full? And what did I say yesterday about not being so pesssimistic?"
I turned to the last member of the group. "What about you, Ione? What do you think?"
"Well, I mean, I would like to be famous someday, but..."
"But?"
"I don't think the people at Evercrest deserve to tell me what I'm worth."
I nodded. "So that settles it. We'll do our best to keep ourselves in our little 'safe zone' and avoid as much drama as we can."
Sonia gave a thumbs-up. Ione and Allegra cheered.
Citrine raised her hand. "I would just like to note that we are currently ranked 120, 131, 132, 138, and 147." She held up her phone. On it was displayed the PowerPlay ranking screen. I was in 120th, Citrine was 131st, Allegra was 132th, Sonia was 138th, and Ione? Well, she was in 147th. "I think you're a little too well-known, Verity."
Ione sighed. "At least I'm not at rock bottom yet."
Citrine cracked her knuckles. "Allegra, Sonia, and I are in the range we want to be in, but Ione, you need to find a way to move up. We could probably throw a bunch of five-stars at you to give you a boost. That should be enough. And Verity, you've got to stop helping those preppy girls do their math homework."
"What? I like math, and if I don't do their homework for them, we're all gonna have to deal with dumb questions at the beginning of math class!"
"They're still gonna ask like 50 more over the course of the class," Sonia said, chewing on a nail.
I sighed. "Fine. No more homework help."
Citrine clapped her hands gleefully. "Great. Now to commence our five-star bombing session on Ione's account."
By the end of the day, we had managed to move Ione up to 140th place. Meanwhile, it turned out that simply refusing to do people's homework anymore was enough to get be down-voted to 130th. It only took a few hours for the ratings to adjust.
It's so easy to make people turn on you.