but i think i've figured out the reason for it. it's because one bad egg can ruin things dramatically. it's sort of related to what i was talking about before regarding being able to escape from the bad things quicker in college.
simply put, if you have a bad person who monopolizes the conversation or even just periodically interjects irrelevancies or non sequiturs, it really casts a damper over everything. one problem with the sensitivity of today is that we've taken the anti-prejudice prejudice too far, to the point where we should be nice and inclusive to everyone regardless of their own idiosyncratic foibles which hurt everyone around them (in the less harsh but no less relevant sense of reducing their happiness.) so you end up with these groups of people that would be fantastic except for one person.
in a sense, i guess what i'm saying is that good group social interaction is categorized by the absence of a bad egg. with that many people, being interesting is less important for an individual, since you have to fill less time; what is important, however, is that you not say the wrong thing, since you're hurting a lot more people by doing so. as the number of people gets bigger, the emphasis shifts from being unique to not being unique. i think this is why the popular kids are seen as vapid; it's because when you're running with the crowd as opposed to being a relative loner, the risk/reward scale shifts to encourage not being unique. i'm not sure whether it's just behavior or thought also, but there's no reason to have unique thoughts if you're not in a position to appreciate them, so i think it's both.
the bad egg theory comes up all the time. i think the breaking point is around 5 or 6; if you have a group of 5 or 6 people, the chance of having a bad egg becomes large, but more importantly it becomes harder with the morals of today to reject someone from the group. people who are in groups of 5 or 6 naturally come to care about other people's happiness more, and so the potential intruder's happiness becomes more important and they get admitted despite the larger cost of doing so. more to the point, if you do reject someone, then everyone else in your group is going to start to worry about you rejecting them since you don't have the tight dyadic bonds -- essentially, since they don't occupy a unique spot in your life, and are replaceable.
this is because of the fact that being a member of a group of this size does not require uniqueness. the only way a group like this can stay together is if people aren't worrying about being ditched, and since they in particular share the qualities that keep them in the group (nonuniqueness) with 90% of the population, in order to assuage those fears it's necessary to not ditch anyone. which leads to the inclusion of the bad egg.