Spot on. I've since forgotten about this, but at that age I do remember caring way too much about being liked and what others thought.
It was not that I was so vain - it just seemed like a reality to me. Reality seemed to be, you have to be cool like these guys / that guy / whoever or else you will never have a girlfriend and never have sex and die alone.
In hindsight, that's stupid, idiotic even. But back then that was my life. And it's still like that for teens now. Explains why I can talk to a teen and they seem like perfectly reasonable people, except 10 minutes later they go off and do something unimaginably stupid.
Maybe it's a sort of random mutation of our social genetic makeup - teens must do stupid, senseless stuff, and some, randomly, discover something great (while lots of others just embarrass or injure themselves).
I was probably like that once, even though I think I wasn't. I remember everyone around me being concerned with being "liked."
More importantly, Mean Girls and Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Wonder Years all seem that way.
Who know with kids, they make no sense in any generation. :)