Meanness = Prominence?

Undoubtedly, being mean has a correlation to prominence.
Being mean by gossiping, talking behind people's backs in a malicious and unreasonable manner can make you formidable, respected out of fear.

Being mean gives you that high, a rush of adrenaline, comparable to the slightly insane and blood-thirsty look on a stereotypical murder's wretched face.  We all know being mean and degrading others others make oneself feel better, but other factors tie into it. People are mean sometimes for the laughs. The laughter originated from hyperbole, the clear-cut incisions into the victim, the black and white labels attached to them, and a generous amount of presumptuousness. People shouldn't assume things if they don't know the whole truth. And no one  for god's sakes, knows the whole truth!

Meanness just feeds one's own ego. It's selfish and insolent. And of course, people who are self-important rise to the top in the prominence scale. People who make others laugh rise, and so do the ones that have fun, by poking fun at others. Being mean bestows control.

I know many of my own friends and others who are mean and are prominent. Respectively, I know many people who aren't mean and aren't prominent. Or at least not mean in a malicious way, without any consideration to the other person.

The problem with being mean is the division. Especially in girls when she don't like somebody but treats her as any other person, later gossiping about that girl audibly and being seemingly unaware of how the victim is within earshot. Then the girl say don't tell nobody else and if someone do, they need to tell them not to tell nobody, and sooner or later, someone gone slip up. Creates so many scandals. The way girls be mean remind me of them white ladies, like Ms. Hilly, whose name alone elicits applause, being bitches to that outcast Ms. Skeeter in 'The Help', only toned down. But who know what they be when they grown. And them black maids, they helpless, overhearing their mistress talking with her friends, heard it through the grapevine, tell they black friends. And when a negro slip up and a white lady find out, she be telling a white man, and someone gone get shot.