> Is it possible that I'm just unlucky and received the bad deal of high school friendships, or is this something that happens to everyone and isn't all that important?

It happens to everyone. High school is a terrible social time. You either get caught in stupid feuds like this, or you're stuck without any friends at all. Neither is important. By the time they graduate and hit college or the real world, the lifestyle change is a slap in the face that tends to snap most people out of all that. More important things to care about come into focus. You know somebody is developmentally challenged if they're out of high school but still treating their social relationships as if they were still there.

It's tough to say if you'll even continue to be active friends with these people once you're out. Sometimes people retain friendships from high school, but most just disappear. A lot depends on life circumstances: if you go away to college or move to take a job, obviously you're not going to be around them anymore, and if you don't, maybe of them will. In my experience, friendships made either earlier or later in life tend to be stronger. Earlier, and you've got all that history. Later, friendships are more likely forged out of something stronger than the alliances formed in high school mostly so you don't get voted off the island.

If you can't tell, I don't really look back on the high school social scene with fondness. Almost everything else I liked, but that part just stinks. I don't think you find a lot of people that do look back on that with fondness, though. Hang in there.