You know what? Even as an exaggeration and a satire, it felt extremely real to me.
High schoolers don't see their existance as this down and dirty, lameass thing.
To them, it is epic. ****ing epic. The stuff of Beowulf, the stuff that odes are written about.
The prom? Not just a falsely sentimental tradition, but a night to remember for a lifetime.
Graduation? A grand end, an apocalypse.
That lame bush party you had last week? The thing that all of existence has been building up to. Literally the climax of reality. Everything after it pales.
That's why, despite the overexaggeration of the thing, it just rings more emotionally true to me than anything else. Huge riots in the halls might seem impossibly cartoonish... but it's just how we saw it, sorry.