Is it just me or is there a new trend?

Remember all those teen movies & novels where the best thing one could do to ensure a place at the top of their high school's social hierarchy would be to dye their hair blond, buy an argyle vest, & start over-using the word "like"? Now it seems as though the cliche has finally run its course. At my school, at least (& at all the other schools in my area), nobody cares about the "preps": the cheerleaders, the girls wearing Abercrombie, or the guys in varsity jackets. The REAL popular kids are the ones who wear extreme makeup, go to shows, use online slang like "BROOT4L", & randomly worship dinosaurs or Hello Kitty. There's been so much backlash against the former group that everyone looks up to the latter because it's "unique", which is ironic since the "scene" culture itself is becoming so mainstream. Does anyone else get the gist of what I'm saying? I'm writing a YA story with tension between different cliques as one of the themes, so if I take what's going on in my area & ume it's going on everywhere, it would screw up the plot. Please don't lend me your input if you're just going to tell me that "labels are for soup cans" =].