It’s a high school reunion and the class of 92 are in the gym hall mingling.
The high school bullies come across Alfred, the former awkward class nerd now tech billionaire dressed impeccably with a supermodel on his arm.
The bullies are stunned and can’t deal with this status change so instead of applauding his transformation they decide to try and embarrass Alfred in front of his date by reminding him of all his past failures.
They remind him of the time he wet himself, the time he fell over his own feet in P.E. and when he accidentally called their teacher Mum.
Alfred chuckles at these memories, says it’s nice to see them and leads his date elsewhere. Which only annoys the former bullies even more.
Why didn’t they simply applaud Alfred? He’s clearly come a long way.
I think that in order to congratulate Alfred on his achievements the bullies would have to admit to themselves that Alfred became a better person than them and this would be a serious status change in their relationship.
Alfred was someone they could look down on, someone they could favourably compare themselves to and be glad they weren’t him.
So when they saw Alfred clearly better off than themselves they decided to try and reclaim the status they were familiar with by belittling and attempting to put him down. Because it was easier to do than recognizing they had no excuse for becoming better as well.
Thomas Duggan 