The Psychology of Teen Fights

A few weeks ago some teens planned to fight in front of the library. To plan a fight in junior high you must do three things:

1. Pick someone bad and cool to fight with to up your status
2. Make sure everyone in school knows where and when you're going to fight
3. Make sure everyone coming to the fight has video capabilities on their cellphones in order to post the fight up on YouTube

Usually the places picked are very public such as malls, public parks or in front of libraries. These are places where you won't even get one punch in before the fight is broken up by an adult. I have thought about why the teens pick such public places like the library to stage their fights and then I realized that they WANT to get caught. They are really having these fights for show. They want to prove they're big and bad without getting hurt. The teens that really want to do damage pick different locales for their fights and they don't want anyone to bring their cellphone cameras.