Why Nerds Are Unpopular

AccordionGuy writes "Paul Graham, who's known for his writings on Lisp and other Lisp-like languages as well as his essays on combatting spam has taken a bit of a detour from his usual topics. His latest essay is one that's a little more personal and that we can all relate to: Why Nerds Are Unpopular . It's a lengthy but engaging writeup of that chamber of horrors we call high school and why being smarter than the average bear is more of a liability than an asset during that stage in life. It's food for thought for those of us who've already been there, done that and been stuffed into lockers by the football team and it should give some hope to those who are going through it right now."

Re:What ??? Impopular, me ???? No way.... linux ro

Dude, bullies at school don't have shit on you. Chances are, you're making double what they're making by the time you're 25. Your skin will clear up (if it hasn't already), your shoulders will fill out, and you'll get cooler glasses or contacts.

Just do yourself a favor, and talk to a counsellor (or "shrink" if you want to call it that) about your experiences in high school. That way, it won't bother you, and the bullies will have truly lost.

Re:What ??? Impopular, me ???? No way.... linux ro

Hi from one of your bullies.

Your self-delusion and arrogance are what cause people to beat up on you.

it's their fault for not being as smart as me - in a way I felt sorry for them;

I hope people continue beating you up for being such a prick.

It's not us nerds who have the problem - we use Linux because it's better.

Oh? You speak for all nerds. Right... I use FreeBSD, and I'm a nerd. I have never been beat up at school, because I'm not an arrogant asshole like you. I do have a girlfriend, and guess what? I didn't meet her at a LUG, she isn't even into computers. Maybe because I don't make my whole life revolve around my computer. There's nothing wrong with having a desire to learn about computers, but the second you start saying "I feel sorry for others who aren't as smart as me", you have ventured into what psychologists call "state of mind", which is the disconnect from reality that most geeks sadly live in.

Get in touch with reality, linux is not the end-all be-all of operating systems. It does some things well, some things poorly. The same is true for all operating systems. I know I'm coming off as a troll, but seriously. Read this through and think about it. No one likes an arrogant asshole.

The Simpsons already solved this...

Lisa Simpson found that it was a pheromone that caused people to beat up nerds! (This effect, of course, could easily be neutralized by spraying said bully with vinegar).

Re:I think it can be better summed up by..

I was a member of the other group mentioned in the article- a stoner. So I don't really remember many of the conversation I had. Just that they were hilarious. Actually, everything got hilarious.

It does hurt.

When I was popular, I had people wanting to kick my ass, people who were jealous of me and I didnt even know who they are, I had rumors being spread about me for no reason, I had people talking behind my back constantly. Whats the point of all this political bullshit?

The more popular you become the harder it is to determine who your friends are.

There is no correspondence between intelligence and social ineptitude. I've known as many popular smart people as I've known unpopular smart people. Infact, most of the unpopular smart people I knew scored lower on their SAT than the popular. I realize that this is a rough estimate and that SAT scores do not directly relate to intelligence; perhaps it was just coincidence, but still an interesting statistic, none the less.

I judge intelligence not just by how well you do on tests in school, but how you live your life. If you are getting into trouble, and you are doing stupid things outside the classroom I dont give a damn if you get all As, you are stupid. IF you are doing good in life, if you dont get all As so what? You make up for it by how you live.

Alot of smart people are smart but dont know how to be social, thats because they focused too much on academics, then you have people who dont focus on academics enough, but most people focus on neither, they do a half assed job at academics and at living, these are your average people in school, you know the popular ones.

Its easy to be popular, just try to be as average as possible, but have a unique sense of humor. Dress like everyone else, act like everyone else, be stupid like everyone else, and dont have a personality, instead change your personality based on who you are around, be a nerd with the nerds, be a thug with the thugs, be an athelete with the atheletes, this is how you become popular.

But being popular only makes you hated, everyone knows you, including ignorant people who may get jealous of you, this is the downside to being popular, the other downside is no one in any of these groups actually knows you and none of them gives a damn about you, you are just a person who walks around from group to group talking to different people every day, you have no real friends.

This sucks because when you are upset, sad, or need someone to talk to about personal stuff no one is there for you, none of them will want to hear what you have to say, in fact they will most likely share it with the world if you do tell them just so they can get a laugh.

Re:Ill tell you.

> Because nerds dont WANT to be popular. What advantage is there to being popular? I mean really? The more popular you are the more people hate you. You have no advantage or incentive to want to be popular. Nerds dont seek popularity because there is no value in it.

It's a hard concept to communicate, too - that you don't want to be popular, because you don't see "popularity" as anything worth having.

I was a nerd/geek at the "D" table. My most fucked-up high school memory was when a girl from the "C" table who demonstrated she was deliberately faking wrong answers on the tests to lower her grades, lest she end up at the "D" table) confided suicidal thoughts to me.

As I recall, my response (what the fuck, any statute of limitations has long since past, it was long ago that it probably was legally OK for students to just deal with shit like this amongst themselves, and hey, I was a minor and therefore too dumb to know what I was doing :) was something like this:

"You went through the trouble of making two sets of answers - one for me to read, and the ones you ansewred on the multiple choice test - so I could know you weren't bullshitting me. Fine - we'll compare answers when we get the tests back, and then talk."

(After the marks came back, and her "real" answers were almost 100% right, and her actual score was in the 70% range)

"OK, you weren't bullshitting. You told me you were thinking of wasting yourself because nobody liked you when you were smarter than they were, and you asked me how I put up with it. Well, OK, no bullshit - I don't care who likes me and who doesn't. I stopped giving a shit what the rest of 'em think back in public school, because every time they insult me for showing 'em up in class, it just proves I'm better than they are. "

"Not different, BETTER. I don't wanna be like them. If being what they are means being like them, I wanna be as much unlike them as I can be."

"Now finally, this suicide stuff. Life sucks for me, too. So I'll see your test answers, and if you're not bullshitting me, I'm gonna do what I think is 'wrong' thing - I'm not gonna rat you out like our parents and guidance idiots have all told us to. If you wanted to get ratted out, you picked the wrong nerd, and you'll have to find someone else. But in return, you're going to do what you think is 'wrong' -- you're not gonna off yourself for the crime of being smarter than the rest of the fucking morons in this class, no matter how badly you want to - because IT'S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO DO."

"You wanted to know how I dealt with it, there it is - you're the one who's gonna have to choose whether to live or not. I can't stop you either way, but I choose to live because I don't wanna give them the satisfaction of knowing they beat me."

I have no idea what happened to her; other than that she kept her end of the bargain. I didn't know her that well to begin with and we never really spoke after that; all I know is that she didn't off herself in the remaining four years of high school and graduated with "B+" grades just sufficient to get her into university, though she was probably capable of "A"s.

On my darker days, I like to think I did something good. It's reasonable to presume that if she survived high school, she survived university, and found her way to cubicle-bound conformity along with the rest of us.

On my lighter days, I reflect back on the "better" part of the rant and realize that that going to university is a wonderful cure for nerd megalomania. Nothing like sitting in a room with 130 people and being told "Most of you were A+ students in high school. That ends here. You're still just as smart as you were six months ago, but you're in a room of people, all of whom who are also just as smart as you were six months ago, or they wouldn't be here." in your first Calculus class, and then having the prof prove it to (all of) you, over and over and over and over again :)

Re:Ill tell you.

Well, I dont know if i agree that you get stronger by being hurt. I think it damages you, and weakens you while making you appear stronger. By being numb it weakens you in other ways which you wont understand until you grow older, by numb i'm saying emotionally numb.

Re:Ill tell you.

when a girl from the "C" table who demonstrated she was deliberately faking wrong answers on the tests to lower her grades, lest she end up at the "D" table

This has always been far too common in young girls - it is un-cool to be smart/look smart/act smart. Schools have struggled with this for years, and have improved greatly in some areas like more sports for girls, and special programs to get them involved in technology. Unfortunately a lot of parents still don't get it though, and the trend for the most part continues.

I don't care who likes me and who doesn't.

It seems everybody says that in high school. But as much as the need to talk themselves out of caring what others think, deep down they always do. It's possible your family support was much greater than hers. All too often, the parents again, it is not too important that the girl gets educated properly, hey she's just going to marry someone who is.

If being what they are means being like them, I wanna be as much unlike them as I can be.

Good for you, to think that way in high school. I myself tried, but I think I was 25 before I actually got it.. On a side note, I raised a daughter, and watched her tank through high school, even though I knew better. But I spent a lot of time reminding her of her strengths, and that she would leave all of these so-called friends in the dust. It does help - the family support. She is all A's now, and very career driven. She is indeed, leaving her friends in the dust.

I like to think I did something good.

I'm thinking you did something very good. If only every high school girl - and boy for that matter - could be given that lecture by a peer - there would be a lot less confused teenagers mulling about.

Re:Ill tell you.

I went to a very mixed high school, so I had the wannabe thugs and the snobby high class kids to deal with. I came from a middle-high class family in the middle of the town making friends with the A, B, C, and D table (I think I was C freshman and sophmore year, and B my junior and senior year).

I was a geek, I spent from 2:30pm until 12am on my computer doing stupid shit everyday. I was in the honors classes because the standard classes were too easy, however I never did my homework because of the computer and my grades suffered. In high school I wrote various Windows programs, became a consultant for a reputable web hosting company, and had more friends than my older sister had when she was in HS. She was head of the cheerleading squad, student body president, all AP courses girl that everyone wanted to get with. I never used the 'I am her brother' method to gain popularity.

The fact that I was a geek was what made me popular in my school. Freshman year, yea I used to get teased (but held my own if anyone tried to bully me). Sophomore year I bought a blazing fast 2x CD burner right after we got our trial cable modem (I was able to pull 10mbit with that thing.. those were the days) and proceeded to hit IRC for the latest music albums. I figured I didn't get to go to the mall often enough to buy music so I'd download the CD off of IRC and make my own cover using cdnow.com's cd cover and various artist images on the internet. The next day I walked in with Mase's new cd a day before it was supposed to come out. Everyone was shocked when I said I made the cd myself. For my sophomore and junior year of high school I sold bootleg cds to e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e.. even my principal. When Nas came out with I Am, I had a bookbag full of 40 bootlegged copies and sold them all in one day... in essence I bought my friends.

Senior year I realized how stupid it was to steal music (I was the only kid in my school that argued against napster) and used my free time to write games and programs. I didn't expect to really talk to many people that year, but everyone still hung out and partied with me. Everyone, including the high class snobs and thugged out football players told me that they expect me to do something or be somewhere big after college.

The day I left high school will probably be the saddest day of my life because so many people liked me for who I was. A geek.

-dk

Re:Ill tell you.

What advantage is there to being popular? I mean really?

What point has life without friendship and social relations? I know I won't give a flying fuck about all the software I've written when I'm sixty and retired - or when I'm 85 and dead!

I would much rather be out on the town partying with friends than sitting in a darkened room figuring out why libDV is miscompiling - don't you people understand? When you are gone, none of this will matter, and the best you can hope for is that you will have left some happy memories for those that survive you.

Please, for your own sake, try and enjoy your lives before they are over, and before the best years of your lives fly past. Of course, if you do prefer debugging programs to the stuff people do together in the flesh, the laughter and socialising and romance, then go for it. It's not for me, or anyone else to tell you otherwise.

But don't refuse to see the value of popularity, and never think it's beyond your grasp - I would say that 90% of 'nerds' could become paragons of friendliness and popularity if they just came out of their shells! Don't change your clothes, don't take up a sport, don't join a gang, just be yourself, smile at people and learn to listen!

I will stop ranting here, but I should point out that the essential lack of intrinsic value in most computing work these days outside of the research and some OSS community projects is what has lent me to switching from an IT career to a teaching one ( including teaching IT at university ). Computing is just a means to a result. Don't forget that.

Just some thoughts.

Re:Ill tell you.

There are two versions of "popular". The first is the one you are talking about: You are liked and respected by your peers, and vice versa. People desire interaction with you and vice versa. Nothing wrong with that, we all want that.

The other kind of popular is what you get in high school, which is exemplified by the other 5-rated comment in this thread. The one where social interaction is turned into some sort of twisted game whose players value "winning" higher than their self-esteem, their health, and their future. That is what geeks refuse to be part of, and I don't blame them at all.

Re:Jealousy

When I was in high-school, I was probably in Class 'C' in terms of popularity. I was smart enough and could manage the dorkiest of behaviors that would have landed me in the 'D' group, but was smart enough to actively hide those behaviors. The fact that I'm 6'1" and looked like I belonged on the football team even though I never played sports was probably a mitigating factor. I was still, however, the recipient of much derision and abuse. Strangely, to this day, ten years later, I remember many of the names and faces of the people who were responsible for the abuse.

A few weeks ago, I went to a new-year's party with my wife. One of her cooworkers happend to be married to one of those indviduals. I recognized him immediately and had to stifle thoughts of beating him senseless.

We got to chatting. He 'knew' me from somewhere but couldn't place me. I eventually led him around to where he remembered me. Then he asked what I did for a living. I'm a computer professional for a large financial company with my title on a placard. I explained the nature of my company's business and exactly what my job responsibilities were.

He cut glass for a living.

I smiled, and laughed. I told him that sounded like interesting work.

What do you do for fun? he asked me. I write, draw, paint [furinkan.net] and play the occaisional computer game. Geeky stuff. Nerdy stuff.

He coached a YMCA football team. He couldn't play football anymore himself since he tore a tendon his last year of high school.

"You must really like kids," I said.

"Not really."

It was petty and cruel, but I grinned like a jackal the rest of the evening. Payback is best served 10 years later.

Re:Jealousy

You just supplied an excellent example of the reasons why high school kids beat you up. You're condscending, and for some reason you're convinced that working as a corporate drone for a finance company is somehow "better" than cutting glass. Since you're both going to die within 70 years, I don't see it, myself. Sure, you wouldn't enjoy cutting glass, but I'm damn sure he wouldn't enjoy being a programmer for The Man. How presumtuous, to assume that you've somehow got the better deal.

Re:Pfft

"I knew a guy in high school that was well known for liking Star Wars a little too much....We found out that day that he was a really talented artist."

Ah yes, the Star Wars nerd heh. I'm impressed he could make a 'figurine' sized scuplture of anybody with kneadable eraser. It's very hard to scuplt with that stuff, it's not like clay.

My class had the little brother nerd. When I was a senior, one of my classmates had a little brother that was a freshmen. He was this wirey little guy with glasses. We rode the same bus to school. I remember that because one day he pissed off somebody on the bus. I didn't catch what happend, other than they cornered him after getting to school.

I should probably explain here that I went to a college-prep magnet school. It was invite only. Fighting was instant expulsion, and you were sent to a public school. Nobody wanted any part of that. That probably saved him from getting beaten.

I was a friend of this little dude's sister, so I followed the group to make sure he was okay. I knew they weren't going to thump him, but I wanted to make sure nothing real serious happened. Unfortunately, this kid wasn't very bright. Whatever it was they were mad about, he was stupid enough to argue with them about it instead of just apologizing and moving on. (he wasn't protesting his innocence, just his right to do whatever he did or some bs) He actually got them riled up enough that the leader yanked his glasses right off his face and started to twist them. The expression on that guy's face after he bent the glasses was priceless.

It wasn't long before this incident that Lens Crafters was running a special on a type of glasses made from 'memory metal' that would spring back into place after being bent. Heh this kid was one of the first to have that! So when they twisted his glasses they sprang right back into shape! Oh man, that was so funny to watch, the look on this guy's face when the glasses just sprung right back. There were people in the group, mad at him, that found that funny. (Most of them wore glasses..) I believe that actually defused the situation. A conversation was sparked about what kind of glasses those were, and the group dispersed.

Damn that kid was lucky.

Helpful?

It's a lengthy but engaging writeup of that chamber of horrors we call high school and why being smarter than the average bear is more of a liability than an asset during that stage in life. It's food for thought for those of us who've already been there, done that and been stuffed into lockers by the football team and it should give some hope to those who are going through it right now.

And I'm sure its going to do nothing but reinforce lots of negative stereotypes and Katz-style whining.

I'm a nerd - I'm a computer professional - I was an athlete in high school and I'm still active today.

People need to take a little bit of responsibility for their own lives rather than chalking everything up to "well, I'm going to get picked on because everyone else in the world is so much stupider than me."

--saint

Re:Helpful?

wait a minute... i have to take responsibility because the football team stuffed me into a locker? that sort of "blaming the victim" mentatlity has lead to some serious backlash [disastercenter.com] in the past.

Re:Helpful?

Learning to comunicate is one thing.. having to dodge jerks is quite another.

By my final year of highschool I had mastered the social structure enough to avoid most of the problems but even then a simple thing like playing chess was considered asking for trouble.

I can't count the number of times I had to hunt around the school floors for bits of my magnetic chess board because some idiot couldn't stand the fact that we were doing something they couldn't get and found boring and felt an extreme need to interupt the game by knocking the board over.

I was not arrogent I treated others well, bathed regularly, used deoderant and dressed neatly. I really don't understand why I as the nerd should have to take any of the blame whatsoever.

Re:Helpful?

• I seem to recall that the people who took the most shit in high school were always the whiny, elitist, "I'm-smarter-than-you" types.

You are really a piece of work.

First, you prejudge the article without reading it [slashdot.org].

You know, where you say:

And I'm sure its going to do nothing but reinforce lots of negative stereotypes and Katz-style whining.

Now, you blame the victims for being whiny, elitist, "smarter-than-you" types.

I don't know, maybe my experience was odd. When I was in High School, the nerds stayed as far away from the types who might pick on them as possible, but were accosted anyway.

What I seem to recall is that those who inflicted violence on nerds were also those who told sexist jokes, treated women as objects and had the least tolerance for the mentally handicapped. How's that for a generalization? I think it's an honest portrayal, though.

In any case, I fail to see how someone's whiny, elitist, "smarter-than-you" attitude could ever justify physical abuse.

• Provoking a bear twice my size by poking it with a stick doesn't make me a victim when it mauls me. It makes me a fool who should have watched what he was doing.

We're not talking about bears or other wild animals here. We're talking about physically abusive people.

In the adult world, someone who responds to perceived slights with violence is not excused away.

Give us an example of what these abusive nerds were doing to provoke these poor jocks? Oh my gosh, did they whine? Did they act smart in Science class? Well then, they had it coming to them!

No wonder we have such trouble with education these days. Anyone who acts 'elite' is targetted for violence.

I suppose when a woman gets beaten by her husband, you would want to check the wife to make sure she wasn't being whiny. She might have it coming to her, right? At least, that's how you remember it? The wives who got beaten usually are asking for it?

Re:Helpful?

It seems the kids who get picked on the most are those who think quietly to themselves, "They are all stupider than I!"

Oh, yeah? In my school, disabled kids got picked on. Foriegn kids got picked on. Kids that weren't very athletic, or bright, or rich got picked on. Kids with bad skin, or greasy hair, or a birthmark got picked on. Did these things really not happen at your high school, or are you just pretending they didn't?

Re:Helpful?

People need to take a little bit of responsibility for their own lives rather than chalking everything up to "well, I'm going to get picked on because everyone else in the world is so much stupider than me."

As far as the "Why Nerds are Unpopular" link goes, I mostly agree.

On the other hand, the "stuffed into lockers" link, goofy though it is, makes a good point. In the adult world, you're liked more or you're liked less. But, if every day when you come home from work, a pack of more socially elevated adults beat you up, gave you a black eye or bloody nose, stole your money and shredded your papers, society doesn't consider that boys will be boys fun. Those people would go to prison.

It's not obvious to me why that's something a seventh grader should be expected to suck up and blamed if he can't deal with it.

Re:Helpful?

American society is blatantly anti-intellectual. Most academic institutions prize athletic ability over intellect even despite the fact that they are meant to foster the latter. People in general don't like to made to feel inferior.

The essay was wrong in one important aspect. There is an administration imposed heirarchy in high schools. This is based on athletic performance and petty contests of us vs. them. School administrations invest considerably time and energy in promoting the whole athletic bread and circuses.

That said, it doesn't really matter that people end up being cast out. That is not such a bad thing. The problem is the ensuing abuse that often manifests itself in violence.

You should not blame victims for being forced to attend what really is a glorified prison with all of the beatings and occasional killings that implies.

Re:Helpful?

Everybody needs to learn that the goal of society is to get the best out of every member and to make life better for every member. Every member. Society is not improved by aligning oursleves into subgroups bent on damaging or disparaging members of another group.

In practice, this means the obvious: People shouldn't abuse nerds. But it does also mean the less obvious. Nerds shouldn't belittle stupid people who are bigger than they are.

I actually learned this in college: "Do not get into political arguments with drunk football players." Call it Schwarz's Law. The truth is, it is easy to get along with people. We would all do better if we could just learn to shut up when we want to say or do something hurtful or angry. Yes, "jocks" can be brutes, but there is a smug and confrontational brand of "intellect" that enjoys rubbing other's ignorance in their faces. This is a kind of "nerd brutishness." You can be an intellectual brute. In the mind of the knowledgeable person, all s/he is doing is stating facts. But the superior physical strength of the brute is just a fact as well. How can the brute be blamed and the "nerd" remain blameless?

I'm not saying that any assault is EVER justified. I am just saying that if the "nerd" were a truly smart person, s/he would realize that certain behaviors provoke and that those behaviors can be managed. In fact, it is possible to enlist a mass of people to your own side through the application of skills in human relations.

I remember in adolescence, however, believing that this compromised my "individuality." I remained separate and I had a truly miserable experience. And it is not like my stand helped me in adulthood. In fact, it was not until I began to learn:
1) Not to correct people just because I knew they were wrong.
2) Not to criticize
3) Not to order people around
That I began to succeed. The only way to get someone to do something is to make them want to do it. Does telling people they are wrong, or telling people they are stupid, or telling people to do things make them want to do it? No. It makes them defensive, angry, and resentful.

Now, to anyone struggling with these issues in school now: Yes, you are smart. Yes, you do know things, and you are excited that you know things. I'm not telling you to change anything about yourself. However, if you will just ask yourself a few questions before you speak, I hope you may make your life easier and you might enjoy yourself more.

How would I feel if I were this person?
Is this person going to be better for what I am about to say?
Am I lifting this person up, or am I trying to raise myself by lowering this person?

The brutes should ask themselves these same questions. In fact, we would all be better off if we did. In fact, I should probably have asked myself them before I wrote this! As I said, I'm new to this way of thinking myself. But if you are young and having trouble getting along, please, I ask you to think about this now and not to wait. Of course, everyone else should be thoughtful of your feelings too, but your behavior is the ony one under your direct control. And when you begin to select what you do and say in such a way as to lift other people, you will find that they give you what you want.

Will what I say or do help this person to be their best?

Alternate subject:

"Why people with social problems lean towards academics"

Whether they excel at them or not is an entirely different matter. Enough people on the site have said it... there are plenty of people out there who were dumb and unpopular. I knew of many people who were intelligent and popular too.

I know... imagine that... academnically-smart, creative, athletic and popular people?

I've got a bunch of uber-geeks sitting near me right now. They're fully grown. Wow they're awful. I cringe when they eat their soup with their mouth open. I cringe when they loudly complain on the phone about the arrangement of books in bookstores. Their body-odour wafts over here from time to time. I feel like yelling sometimes, "if you would just stop sputtering spitballs, farting in my cubicle, talking about your superior intellect, RPG characters and fantastic technical skills, you might have a better job and more friends." Unix admins... ugh. These guys don't even like eachother.

They only bug me so much because I don't tell them to f-off and let me get my work done. People in that state get lonely and just want somebody to talk to... so they cling.

It's inhuman for me to tell them go get lost, and it is in poor taste. So I put up with them. Some of them are not too bad, they're just not used to the local culture... others are born-and-raised locals, dumb as bricks, no matter how smart they tell me they are.

What kind of idiot walks into your cubicle, reads your screen, tells you about the latest miniatures they painted, farts, and just stands there?

Re:Helpful?

It's funny, you sound like you where one of the bullies. You should really take some time to actually comprehend this essay, because it's amazingly accurate.

I'm the son of an Air Force colonel which meant that I moved every two years.. so during the most trying social years of my life I move 4 times. This worked out great for me, becaues it meant that I got to re-try the social thing until I got it right.. and when I did, I found that I didn't like the person I had to be.

When I started I was a reader.. avid reader. I built things and really tried to excel in my studies. I jumped out (intellectually) to a really big lead over most of my classmates by the time I reached 7th grade... but socially I was inept and completely miserable.

By my senior year of high school I was a starting point guard, had a large number of friends, and plenty of attention from the girls. To reach that point I had traded reading and math for clothes, a bad attitude, and the occasional bought of bullying. It was funny, but as that senior year came to a close I was more unhappy than I had ever been before.

This climb up the social ladder was really eye opening. The pear analogy used in the article is really good.. When your at the bottom you think everyone but you is popular.. In fact, almost no one is truly popular. Some are just better at stepping on the heads of others. It was always an interesting game to watch. You would see little skirmishes between two kids as they attempted to climb over each other to improve their social rank. It wasn't that one or the other had more (or less) in the way of social skills.. but someone always had to lose and the loser wasn't determined by anything other than someone elses ability to manipulate public opinion. These kids didn't 'bring it on themselves', they where simply victims of someone trying to climb up the social ladder.

The funny thing was, at the top you generally didn't find head-stompers, but people who where genuinely likeable people with some visible skill, look, or something otherwise outstanding about them. It was funny to me when I realized that those people in the middle always jockeying for position could never REACH the top, no matter how much they tried.

It wasn't until college that I found the way out of the stupid game. In college I made a commitment to simply be me.. In the swirl of confusion that is the first few months of college I found that people really liked me.. for being me. I stopped being someone else, found real friendship in a fraternity (1869), met my future wife, and otherwise had a great time...

The one thing I will disagree with in this article is that others around the world don't experience this at all. The Katz pieces about 'the hellmouth' certainly proves otherwise. I spent my 9th grade year in an Italian secondary school in Vicenza. The same social hiearchy (replace Football player with Futbol player and your done) existed with the same trials and tribulations. That only fundamental difference was that kids seemed to spend less time with each other, simply because their families demanded more of their time. When they where together en masse, however, it sure seemed like any other school I went to... everyone just spoke a different language.

Embarressing

It sucks still being stuffed in the lockers byt the football team, particularly because I'm the principal of the high school.

elitism...

nerds feel it necessary to lord their supposedly superior intellect over others... they do it in their inner circles as well. This is the reason they get stuffed in lockers... You may have a bigger brain, but they got bigger arms... And don't give me that innocence crap, you KNOW you're guilty of looking down your nose at whomever because you thought you were smarter than they....

Re:elitism...

I agree. I think that, while there is often a strong one-way correlation between nerds and smart people, the inverse is not necessarily true.

Some of the smartest people in my high school were NOT nerds. True, they didn't take some of the ridiculous college math courses that we nerds did. However they did get straight-As and took AP courses in the natural sciences, history, calculus, languages, etc. They were usually involved in some kind of varsity sport that had a low jock-factor (like tennis or soccer). While they were popular, they seemed to float above the social hierarchy, never taking part in the beatings or humiliation but never exactly seeking a nerd with whom to hang out. They generally got ridiculous scores on their SATs and went on to the Ivy League.

They were popular because they weren't pretentious, they were self-confident, and they knew how to talk to somebody without scaring or boring the shit out of them. Which none of us geeks quite had a handle on yet . . .

Not always unpopular

It was the cse at our school, like all other schools, that the Geeks were singled out for "special" attention. However, that attention was infrequently hostile, and if you had the wit to deal with it (a decent put-down, offer people help in classes if they asked for it, laugh at their jokes if necessary, etc.) you soon got the respect and the social acceptence that came with it.

Essentially, merely "being Geeky" was not enough to attract hostility, even from the footballers, but it was poor social skills aggravated by what the "geek" percieved as persecution.

Simply laughing it all off is usually the best way to deal with it.

It's like your parents used to say (shyeah! like /they/ knew) "Ignore them and they'll soon get bored."

i'm not even trying to be an ass here....

but if i had a quarter for every 'popular' kid from my HS class that later served me my meals at Uno's, Bennigans, etc., I'd be one handspring treo richer.

and yes, if you haven't guessed yet, i'm a nerd ;) .

Re:dishwasher?

What if you washed the dishes in the restaraunt and were still a geek? I've had every job you can imagine; construction, fast food, office boy, factory...but I wouldn't say that made me stupid or less intelligent. It was what I could handle while working my way through college.

I also disagree with the article about what defines a geek, it's not brains or interests, it's how your rated by the opposite sex. It's not looks it's personality.

In my case, If I'm interested in things that GIRLS think are corney, then I am a geek. Jocks can call you a geek, but only a women can certify your geek status by laughing at your pathetic attempts to hook up with them. This carries over into adult life as well, which is why geeks don't go to clubs(at least I don't).

Looks will not get you geek status either, it is ALL about how you dress and behave. Ugly guys who dress fly and act confident always have chicks, so they cannot be geeks. I'm good looking enough to approach women with confidence, but after about 5 mintues of talking, the women realize I'm a geek and leave...that, and I have no game.

So even though I have been out of school for over 10 years, I am still a geek because I cannot attract the opposite sex because my personality is that of geek.

There is no hope is the point of the article I think.

US only phenomenon?

I'm curious if this happens all over the world or only in the states.

Can anyone who grew up outside of the US comment?

Re:US only phenomenon?

You raise an interesting question. I can only speak for Sweden which is where I was born, grew up and live.

The distinction between "nerds" and "normal people" definitely exists outside the US -- and is perhaps universal. Most people of basic school age don't spend a large portion of their free time in front of their computers coding. I think this intense focus on one particular area is where "nerds" were different from other people in their age groups.

However, and I think this is an important point, in many countries high school is a kind of trade school. In Sweden, compulsory school stops at age 15 or so. Nearly all students then proceed to a volunteer school, gymnasiet, selecting one out of 20 or so three-year education programs which suits their interests. Programs included, among many others:

The vehicle program: students were tought how to repair cars and other vehicles (and sometimes to drive them, with driving lessons and sometimes a license funded by the school).

The nursing program: students were taught skills needed to work jobs at retirement homes and other institutions that care for people.

The individual program: students that lacked motivation and sufficient grades were given a chance to catch up, aiming to apply for a regular program later on.

The electronics program: students were given basic skills in handing electronics, and got jobs such as being electricians or electronics repairmen.

The social sciences program: students received additional heavy education in history, geography and other social sciences, and got jobs that may include working for their local government carrying out investigations or other matters. People in this program sometimes would continue to college to develop additional additional skills.

The natural sciences program: students were given a very solid ground (complementing that which they had received in earlier years) in mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, material computational skills, electronics skills and computer skills. This program was largely theoretically oriented and was not meant to lead to a job directly, but provided the foundation for students to continue to college and become engineers and scientists.

This particular specialization relatively early also explains why Sweden (and other European) college degrees are shorter in terms of years than equivalent US degreees -- the basics in the profession or study of choice were already taught in high school, so college was even more specialized.

With that said however, I should point out that this specialized programs all included a relatively broad range of subjects -- but with a certain very heavy focus. The natural sciences program for example would include five maths courses, while most other programs would only have one or two. The social sciences program on the other hand would have more history and related issues than other programs. And many programs had courses shared by no other education program.

This early specialization means that nerds separate from their schoolmates aged 15 or 16 and join other people in the natural sciences program (usually) who have the same inclination for programming, maths or science. They find "equals" and the risk of being rejected is significantly reduced, if not entirely eliminated.

I did not find that my early interest in programming (which ignited around 11 or 12 years of age) caused any significant problems. Many classmates at the time were interested in gaming or the occasional programming on the C64, C128 (and later the Amiga) and joined me in technical discussions or to seek assistance. In gymnasiet, everyone around me were interested in science and technology and frequently engaged in more or less serious discussions on the topic.

As someone already pointed out, the concept of "jocks" also is alien to European school systems. People who engaged in sports did so on their own free time, it was not something the school got involved in (other than providing the normal gym classes).

True dat.

I'm writing this post from a locker now.

Paul Graham is wrong

It's because of his lisp.

Re:People like to be ignorant

I'll bite.

People like knowing things. They love aqcuiring new knowledge, and learning about things. I've explained many things to 'bev' from accounting, and she understands them ok as long as I explain in terms she can understand. If you tell her "Your TCP/IP protocol couldn't interface with the samba server, But I found out that you mis-configured your network settings, so I set up DHCP to connect to the correct DNS server and now everything works ok". Of course she's gonna gloss over.

Everyone has their area of expertise. I'm sure bev could go off about the Financial reports and tax law so fast I would be flat on my ass, but she still takes the time to slowly explain things to me so I can understand them. Do the same for them. You'd be surprised. Just because we have knowledge 3 levels above someone, doesn't mean we have to speak to them 3 levels above their understanding.

sheesh

Plenty cool

You are plenty cool when they realize you are smart enough to run a methlab.

You know what you call 'em now?

Comedian Paul Rodriguez:

You remember those kids in school who you called Nerds?
You know what you call 'em now?

BOSS!

Big assumption

Most of us think that the reason we were so unpopular was that we were smarter than everyone else. It's much more likely that we were/are unpopular because we're socially inept. Hint: acting like you're smarter than everyone else is socially inept.

Re:Big assumption

Sometimes, people just decide they don't like you and work to make the six years of junior/senior high hellish.

Just before junior high I moved to a new school. I knew I was smart, but I also knew that I wasn't alone. There were a lot of smart people at my school. It was the other smart kids (girls) who picked on me. I don't think I was any more socially inept than your average 12 year old girl, but I did march to the beat of a different drummer. And that, more than anything else, is what gets you singled out at that age. Oh, and the girls can be so much worse than the boys. Sure, I never got put in a locker, but the psychological tourture is worse.

Fast-forward a decade or so... I'm well-adjusted, well-employed, and most of all, happy. Some how I managed to get through high school without changing to their beat. In fact, I pride my self in my (increasing) geekiness. And they have gone on to live their cookie cutter lives, attending the same colleges as everyone else, finding the same jobs and dating the same kind of men. Not the life I would have wanted.

I guess the moral here, for those of you still trying to get through it, is find a few like mind people to be friends with and stick together. Some day you'll end up in an interesting job, knowing interesting people and that will make the struggle worth it.

Re:Not as Smart as You Think You Are

The smarter bears washed on occasion, and learned to carry on a conversation.

I think the problem is that "smart" the way it is mostly defined is "booksmart" and that is nothing that really just happens, anybody can be booksmart if they just put their mind to it.

I guess the big problem still is that people never really defined intelligence in the first place and this "The more intelligent people like us" makes me wanna puke mainly because this elitist thinking is why people do despise us as well, heck who wants to feel dumb? No one, and who wants to feel weak? Exactly no one again.

A little bit less telling yourself how great you are and a bit more admitting that even YOU are not perfect (despite your high IQ) would go a long way I would guess.

Of course that's all academic my HS time was hell as well.

Re:Well, where to begin

I don't know about all of that. I wasn't unpopular by any means in highschool, and I remember there being plenty of really smart kids that came to all of the parties and stuff. In fact, the top 5 or 6 students of my class (you know, those 5 or 6 girls and guys that are always class president, straight A students without even trying) were very popular. I used to see at least one of them every weekend when I was out. These people, even though they were extremely bright (one, a guy named Scott I think, even works at IBM as a programmer now, so his pal told me the other day) and "geeky" found it easy to integrate socially.

The real geeks were not the extremely bright, but rather the extremely akward. The punk rockers, the goth kids, the vampires (who were usually also homosexual), the over-excited white guy that acted black but had no black friends, the "only thing I'm good at is sports" guy, the group of fat girls that tried to dress provactively, the surfer wannabes, the skater wannabes, et cetera. Most of the geeks weren't very bright at all, and certaingly weren't elitist.

I don't quite agree: the school DOES matter

I think his point in the article was pretty accurate.

Summary for those who haven't read it: American public schools tend to be little more than prisons, with large classes and indifferent teachers, where the kids are more or less left alone to create their own sub-societies (with all the "Lord of the Flies" cruelty that ensues). The nerdy types aren't totally expending their efforts on popularity (unlike most others), so they end up on the bottom of the heap.

This describes the public junior high school I went to perfectly. Education was really a joke there; the main thing was to keep us little darlings under lock and key for some hours while our parents worked, and if we learned something, so much the better (if we didn't, oh well). I got pretty badly picked on, partly for nerdiness (I was taking college-level math at the time) and partly for just being very different (I had just moved from rural Virginia to urban Minnesota).

Before my 9th grade year, I toured the public high school that I was supposed to go to, and immediately my radar told me that I would probably not make it out of that place alive (or at least with all my bones intact). Football stuff everywhere, with glassy-eyed teachers who really didn't give a damn. The other school I could have gone to had just become the first in Minnesota with metal detectors and had a rep for open gang warfare.

I begged my parents to pay for a private school. Somehow, they scraped the money together through loands and so on. (Thank God for my parents.) The first I went to, a boarding school near my parents' home, was a disaster (buncha spoiled rich kids whose parents had dumped them there and never visited them -- Lord of the Flies, Mercedes Edition).

The next year I went to a small, recently founded K-12 private school, where my class was all of 25 students, and where the teachers were all basically rebels from another private school who where determined to make a better school. The kinds of things described in the article just didn't happen there -- the teachers actually gave a sh*t about us, and we didn't feel like we were in some kind of penal colony.

A lot of the reason the school was better was the small class size (harder to have a crushing pyramid hierarchy when you've only got a small number of students) and the teachers actually got involved like *teachers* and not *wardens*.

Another reason is we didn't have jocks. We didn't have a football team, though we did have soccer. And the school's pride and joy was its Quiz Bowl team (hey! I was on it! State Champs in 1989!). Those who had high SAT, PSAT and ACH scores were also publicly praised by the school director (who, by the way, spent lunchtime serving the students corn so he could personally chat with each and every one). So knowledge and nerdiness was actually rewarded, and there was actually positive contact between staff and students.

Sadly, since then the school has grown dramatically (their reputation spread like wildfire, and soon they had huge demand for the school), and the director retired, so I tend to wonder if it has fallen to the same problems as other large schools. But it can be done -- a school in America where nerds are actually valued. I just am very grateful my parents scraped together the money for the place -- otherwise I probably would have spent more time in lockers than in classrooms...

The school, by the way, was Mounds Park Academy [moundsparkacademy.org], if anyone's interested.

At any rate, even though I tend to be leftish politically, I think the above is a pretty good argument for school vouchers. The public school system in America is so screwed that the only solution is to nuke it flat with vouchers, and let the parents and students sort it out through the market.

Cheers,

Ethelred [grantham.de]

Bullying

Jokes aside though - a very serious matter. Kids get bullied a lot as early as primary/secondary school and often it haunts them in high school as well. I used to do volunteer work for a charitable trust that was campaigning for teenage suicide prevention. It's pretty unbeleivable how many teens end their lives because they just can't take it anymore. And don't give me this bullshit about those that pull through and "become stronger". Some maybe do, but others still receive a pretty vicious mental trauma. Who knows how will this unnecessary abuse will reflect on their adulthood ?

Re:Bullying

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger" I always wished Nietzsche was alive today so that I could break his legs and see how much stronger that made him.

It depends on how you define "nerd"

If you define it as "someone who works in a science related field" then this is hogwash.

Or if you define it as someone who is physically inept, weak, socially maladjusted, and the antithesis of just about everything that makes someone "normal"... why wouldn't nerds be despised and picked on?

I mean, we are all adults here, right? We all know that people are prone to dislike what is significantly different (especially if it proves to not be "better"). And they are willing to take action if that person is weaker than them. Humans have one of the most aggressive social dominance instinct of all animals (psychologists believing because we lack "killing" implements such as claws or rending maws). Life isn't handholding and fairness and rainbows.

Big fish eats small fish. Not a revelation. To try and reorder it as something else (nerds being "feared" for their "super intelligence") is just childish revisionism.

Popular?

Sure I'm popular - I have tons of Fans! Does that mean I'm not a Nerd?

Nerd != Smart

It's a lengthy but engaging writeup of that chamber of horrors we call high school and why being smarter than the average bear is more of a liability than an asset during that stage in life.

Sorry, but I call BS.

1. Being a nerd doesn't mean you are smart. I knew plenty of dumbass nerds.

2. Being smart doesn't mean you are a nerd. I knew straight A students who were all around athletes and in the "cool" crowd.

3. Being a nerd (or smart) doesn't mean you can't be athletic. See #2.

4. High school is a traumatic time for pretty much everyone, not just the smart/nerdy people. And I use "traumatic" lightly, because I realize that high school was not that big of a deal. (I hope everyone else realizes that) It was just another period in my life.

Re:Nerd != Smart

Right on the money. I'm sorry, but if you don't shower and wear Pokemon t-shirts, you are going to be intimate with the inner workings of public toiletry.

To all you high-schoolers reading this: use basic grooming standards! (do not use your friends as a standard).

Re:Nerd != Smart

Hear hear! I was #1 whiner/complainer in high school. The popular kids do this and that blah blah blah. And I was right, it does suck to be a geek or a nerd in high school. But high school is tough for everyone. My girlfriend was a popular kid in high school...and her stories make me really glad I wasn't. The fact is that when you are 16 your hormones make you crazy...everything is the end of the world. Every insult is a life ending moment. Every crush is the one true love that could change the earth.

The great thing about being a geek/nerd in high school is that you end up being protected from all that. Thankfully the emotional rollercoaster took place for me in my head, and my only real response was to listen to Pinkerton real loud. I could have instead been popular and given the oppurtunity to drink my problems away, to get some random girl pregnant because my chemical addled brain thought I was in love. I could have had the choice to turn a low self esteem compensation into a fatal drunk driving accident instead of just playing the cymbals louder.

I think that nerdiness protected me from myself by keeping me locked in a reletivley pointless and banal experience, that still managed to feel earthshattering at the time. High school is tough. Its is going to be awful for everyone (basically). If you are still in high school I would make your goal to get out alive, don't take things too seriously and try not caring about the popular kids. They are just as stupid as you are. Some of them will end up not growing up and going nowhere. Other might end up actually growing up and being just normal people...or maybe even your friends.

Re: Obligatory Simpsons reference

Marge, try to understand. There are two kinds of college students: jocks and nerds. As a jock, it is my duty to give nerds a hard time.

The lazy version

For those to lazy to read the article, the salient points appear to be:

1) There is a correlation between being smart and being unpopular.

2) The reason it's hard to be smart AND popular is that being popular takes up mental bandwidth that most smart people would rather use "making great things" (rockets and computers are used as examples). "Few smart kids can spare the attention that popularity requires."

3) The reason "popular" kids persecute "nerds" is that, in general, pushing others down lifts you up and makes you feel better. Also, persecuting nerds is a kind of bonding process for "popular" kids. "...nothing brings people closer than a common enemy".

4) Things are different when you leave high school. In fact "nerds collect in certain places and form their own societies where intelligence is the most important thing." (e.g., university).

That seems to be mainly it. Interesting reading... it matches up with my experience of high school. Certainly the worst time of my life (so far).

grib.

The Nerd Myth

Allow me to take this opportunity to state that the whole nerd mythology is a load of crap. The stereotype of the smart but bullied science nerd is no more accurate than the universe of other racial, sexual, whateverual stereotypes out there.

Speaking as a former member of the bottom rung of the high school social ladder, here's how things were in my high school:

• The jocks weren't stupid: both of our valedictorians were jocks
• The popular kids weren't all jerks: in fact many of them were popular because they were, gasp, nice people who happened to have mastered the baffling rules of high school social life
• Many of the unpopular kids were jerks: in fact, some of the worst bullies I had the misfortune of knowing were roundly disliked.
• Let's not forget the artsy types: forget the artsy girl in the paint-splattered overalls and square glasses who catches the quarterback's eye. The kids I knew who excelled in the arts also excelled in social life and in other endeavors.
• Mix-n-Match: In fact, there were almost no patterns. There were smart/popular/nice people, stupid/popular/nice people, smart/popular/jerks... pick one from each menu and I could probably remember an example. I'll admit there were a few general rules (I never knew an unpopular football player) but generally it all boiled down to how well you could handle yourself in the tough social situations.

It's all just stereotypes, folks. The many complaints we have here in /. about how society perceives technology and technologists are largely based on these stereotypes.

Re:It happens for more reasons than just nerdiness

omg - t0quer and i lived the same life.

Most of the time, when i was under 5 foot tall thru my freshman year of HS, but even worse in Jr High (7-8th grades) i was mercilessly picked on.

The most typical things for the normal kids to do to me - the kid in the highest math and science clases - as well as in the band were...

-pushing me into the uniral while using it.. and i don't mean a shove on the shoulder - i mean pushed in full force as i pissed on myself with my feet off the ground
-throwing wet toilet paper (dirty, sometimes) at me when using the urinal
-flattening my tires on my bike
-stealing my bike and putting it in a tree or on top of a storage shed
-p.e., as you can imagine, was the best. generally pushing me into trees, down hills (lot oa hills on the runs) and i would have to do my best to outrun the jocks when we'd do the long runs in the "hidden" areas - where the teacher couldn't see us from where he was.

but the most common were name calling and slapping me on the back of the head... all .. the... time...

teachers didn't care. Even when i finally got permission to keep my bike in the school's office, they still didn't listen when i told them.

In high school, it wasn't AS bad... but it was still there, but that was mostly because i holed up in the band room every minute i wasn't in class.... that really helped a lot.

but there were the times that big guys would come to band practice on the field, waiting for a break and the teacher gone... i had to hit one guy once with my trumpet to get him away from me.

but i can honestly say that i OFTEN thought about shooting the bullies. I wanted to, but didn't, because i knew i'd be in trouble. I spent a lot of time daydreaming in easy classes about it, though.

Like t0quer, i am now married to a wondeful woman, who's not only hot, but very athletic (but 5'2"... so she never got too far in sports seriously) and really wonderful.

i no longer dream of shooting them... i do wish that there was a way i could help these kids out tho, today... i'm concidering setting up a free service for kids like this to give them hidden cameras, hidden mikes... and then setting them up with lawyers to sue the fucking losers that do this to kids like i was... and have the proof...

if you weren't one of these kids - you have no fscking idea what its like to be one.. the daily mental. but oftentimes, the constant physical beatings or abuse (almost never enough to cause serious injury, unfortunately) is something to really behold.

I also feel for and i really really do understand and don't blame kids like Kip Kinkle... that shot the kids that were constantly harassing him, both physically and mentally. I don't blame him even a little because i can see his life.. i lived it...

no one helps you
no one believes you
everyone gives you fucking useless advice like "just ignore them" or "just avoid them"

if that's all the help you give a kid like this - then no shit - of COURSE he's going to go around shooting his bullies! He SHOULD! He has no other recourse.

if you've ever told a kid this about a bully - you're part of the fucking problem... because YOU didn't help... these kids don't need advice.. they need to know that they aren't going to get their asses kicked at school by the inbred loser kids tomorrow. They need to know that school isn't just where they get beat up every day.

If you're an adult - you have to DO... ACT... PERFORM MECHANICAL action to fix the hell that this little geek is living in.

i do know that my life duing those 4-5 years really did shape me.. i joined the military because i wanted to help people that couldn't help themselves, even though i'm not big enough to do it as a soldier - i did it as a nerd (engineer on classified space programs).

Now, i'm hoping to help kids like me.. by actually helping them. Today... where they are now.

don't EVER take lightly what a small kid tells you about what's going on in school. You really really don't understand unless you've been one.

You guys are SO missing the point...

Half the replies on here are whining from folks about how "elitist" nerds are. NONE of you even think to ask how that attitude a) may have been adopted by nerds or b) if that's just yet-another social stigma populated by anti-nerds (ya know, like, way back in, like, high school?)

Nerds weren't just the smart guys who used computers. They were kids in band (yes, I was) or theater. They were ANYone who liked to learn, and not all of them were "unbathed savages" as one particular must-have-been-a-jock pointed out.

So many people on here are JUST like the adults of today: so EAGER to blame the problem on the victim. How many of you actually understand the point? How many of you went through the hell that is 7th, 8th, and 9th grade? No, the blame OBVIOUSLY must be that smart kids don't bathe. That's it.

News. I bathed, I wasn't particularly socially unsmart, I was actually somewhat big (180 in 9th grade, and that wasn't fat). But I got crap too. Sure, after 7th grade no one had any guts to actually fight me (it helps when you're four inches taller than everyone), but the hierarchy was clear. And I wasn't alone.

So, instead of modern day American society, where it must ALWAYS be the minority person's fault, or the woman's fault, etc., why don't we OWN UP to the problem and try to fix it, rather than shove it under the carpet and pretend it doesn't really happen like so many American adults of today?

Ciao!

one of my few regrets from HS

I wasn't exactly popular, and in fact was a pretty big-time nerd. However I still picked on the kids 'nerdier' than me because I was too immature and insecure and just plain ignorant to know what I was doing was the same exact thing that all the 'cool' people were doing to me.

That's it. Not missing out on 'prom night', not missing out on beer and sex and all that (which came in the dozens later). The only thing I look back on and regret are the few times when I snapped and put down people who I felt were even 'lower' than me. God, I hope they are kicking ass out in the real world and I hope they don't give me a second thought.

What a bunch of BS...

No, you were not unpopular because you were smarter than everyone else. If it makes you feel good to think that, then fine, keep lying to yourself. There were many other reasons... Maybe because you didn't try to be social, maybe you smelled funny, maybe you shunned things like physical activity all together, maybe you came to school each day looking like a dork. I don't know but there are thousands of reasons you may have been unpopular.

Slashdot and some of its readers seem to enjoy to perpetuate the myth that all athletes and popular people in high school are dumb while the unpopular people are for the most part misunderstood and are getting the short end of the stick.

Being liked isn't tough. For the most part if you just follow three rules you aren't going to be shunned.

1) Personal hygene. If you smell like feet, and your greasy hair doesn't look like it's been washed in days, people aren't going to like you. Shower daily. Wear deodorant. Brush your teeth. Comb your hair. Wear clean clothes.

2) At least try to be social. People don't like people who don't talk or won't look them in the eyes. Smile, say hi to people you may not even know. When you talk to someone look at them.

3) Maybe try to have similar intrests... If you shun everything most people like, you aren't going to have anything at all in common with anyone are you? I'm not saying you have to become a rabid sports fan, or become glued to watching whatever TV shows kids these days watched... But a little effort to have some of the same interests of your peers goes a long way.

These three rules not only work in high school they also work in real life.

It's a lot simpler than that.

The reason for the bullying in school as opposed to out in the "real world" has nothing to do with maturity. The reason bullying stops after people leave high school is that high school is the last place where you are actually forced to spend time with people you don't have anything in common with. After you "get out" you no longer have to spend time with people you don't like just because they are geographically nearby and living in the same school district. And it goes both ways - the bullies are no longer forced to spend time with the people they don't like, and so their anger toward these people fades too.

I suspect that if you took about 1,000 random adults, and forced them into a program where they have to spend 7 hours a day in the same building, doing the same activities with each other, for four years straight, that even among the "mature" adult population you'd see bullying problems resurface. And NO I'm not talking about working in an office or a factory, because that's not a random sampling of adults.

OH MY GOD

I can't believe this made Slashdot, I really can't belive it. Well, now that I think about it, I can belive it. I'm just dissapointed.

I saw the article on another site, metafilter, I think. and I thought it was idiotic. Basically a winy "People didn't like me because I wasn't smart." rant, with absolutely no scientific grounding whatsoever.

Really, it's just excuse making. "nerds" don't want to believe they aren't popular because they lack social skills, but because they are feared for their intelligence.

It's just not true, there are smart people who are social, and *ghasp* there are smart people who play sports, believe it or not. There were also outcasts who were idiots.

I have a simple rule that applies to just about any kind of argument, especially sociological things like this. Show me real data, or shut the fuck up. An anecdote from a biased, self-serving viewpoint is not data.

personal experiences

I don't think being smart and getting good grades in school are really mutually inclusive. The way the school system works, you can get good grades just by working hard and having a good memory for example, you don't really need to be all that smart. OTOH, smart people don't have to be all that interested in studying or even necessarily good at it. I personally partially lost interest at some point in senior high (the equivalent of it here) and junior high wasn't challenging or interesting at all.

I agree that we shouldn't be so self-centered as to think we are the smart ones and be so quick to classify people as intelligent and dumb. I should know as to a certain degree I used to think that way back in high school but while not everyone who is "smart" is bound to be a nerd and unpopular, I do think that Paul Graham's observations do have some value.

I was unpopular back in high school, a nerd (still am I guess, but definitely not the same kind of nerd). I can think of at least one reason for it.

I didn't really care about what I looked like. I had many interests and used to think it was not important. I just wore what I had and didn't go into shopping sprees to find cool clothes. Nerds usually have glasses too, I don't think it's because they've looked at the screen too much. They just don't look good and that is not good for popularity. Only later did I start to realize that I needed to dress well in order to gain more acceptance but it was too late then. Many nerds and other individuals concerned with everything else but how they look also do this in their adolescence too, of course. But as Graham points out, it isn't really a problem anymore. My father was one of those people, however, and my lack of interest possibly was partly due to him as well.

I've decided that I will try to dress my children better and educate them about it when they reach that part of their life. Probably not the most important thing on your checklist for raising children but something I'd like to get right for my offspring. :)

Mentoring?

I think one of the things I noticed most in the article by Graham was that kids don't realise that the world they're in doesn't matter. When I was in middle school, there was a programmer at my church who was willing to take a few hours a couple of days out of his busy week and sit down and teach me programming basics. It was working with him, and seeing people respecting him that helped me look past the ridicule I recieved at school and instead focused on the sheer joy I recieved from programming.

It seems to me that what we really need is some sort of nerd mentoring. I'm in college right now, and it'd be ideal for me to go out and find a middle school kid who fits the nerd profile and help them learn to program. That self-confidence that is born from knowing you have valuable life skills is something that any preteen could use.

Nerds need to reroll their character

It's not the 18 INT that gets you stuffed into a locker, it's the 9 Charisma.

Hell, I went to art school and we even had nerds

although, everybody was very sensitive to their needs.

But even better:

"And if teenagers respected adults more, adults also had more use for teenagers. After a couple years' training, an apprentice could be a real help. Even the newest apprentice could be made to carry messages or sweep the workshop.

Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers. They would be in the way in an office. So they drop them off at school on their way to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were going away for the weekend."

I don't think this point can be underemphasized. We think nothing of having a free *intern* in the office. Why couldn't a fourteen-year-old come into the office and hang around and ask questions? In some companies, it would be totally looked down upon. Frankly, in mine, I would consider it to be a boon to a parent's productivity -- and make them feel much better when they can tell the little jerk to go make copies.

I just generally agree with Mr. Graham's views that our education system is generally like a prison system. Kids need to be out in the world exploring. The two main reasons I got through high school unscathed was because I was surrounded by beautiful countryside to play around in and when I went off to art school, I went to a place where my talents were appreciated for what they were. Everyone in my high school had a fairly mutual respect for one another and I think that stemmed from the faculty repeatedly telling us that we were special. Most of my friends thought that the computer skills I had inherited from my nerd Dad were "totally awesome. You know about this internet stuff?" It was practically science fiction to some of them.

I guess I'm just trying to say here that I was really blessed in my experience and I wish all kids could have that. There is something wrong with the system and we all need to focus on that. Really I think that what Paul Graham is saying, what it boils down to, is that children are the only reason society exists.
_________________________________________

Here's a solution...

...at least for your kids. Home school. It's safe and legal in all 50 states. No, your kids will not end up "unsocial". They will likely recoil in horror at stories like the ones here, though, becaues they won't believe that people really treat one another like that. They you'll show them how the holocaust, Sri Lanka, passed-down child abuse, and many other examples demonstrate that ordinary people in bad situations often choose to become extremely cruel.

But anyway--yes, your kids will have to be more important to you than the money or "fulfillment" that would theoretically come from both parents working.

And don't assume home schooling is the same all-day affair as regular school. You can cover a regular day in about two hours. If you want to. Unschooling is a very viable option (harder in the more Nazi-esque states, but still doable).

Search on "Growing Without Schooling" at google for more on that. Read "Learning all the time" or "how children fail" by John Holt. Read "The teenage liberation Handbook"

Graham says apprenticing isn't economically viable now, but he certainly doesn't prove it. People do apprentice at a lot of different things. True, it's nt the default, but that doesn't mean you can't or that it's not available.

If you want to save the world, start by saving your own family. Then you have allies to help you save the world later. Well, that's what I'm guessing. But I need to get off this thing and go play with my kids :).

There is not even an honest need for school

The article says "Teenagers now are useless, except as cheap labor in industries like fast food"

but:

- if there weren't a minimum wage law making low-employables merely unemployable

- if there weren't age related employment bans and/or social-services snooping

- if there weren't irreducible minimum red tape and tax burden making every employee cost, even if they are a volunteer

- if young people were not forced en masse into "education" whether they were willing to learn or not

...then would teenagers still be useless? All these things were not present so recently as the earlier half of the 20th century, and there was no "teenaged hormone madness" back then.

How many jobs REALLY NEED a college degree to actually DO the job? (Rather than merely as a "is more intelligent than a goldfish" checklist item, to winnow the resume pile.) How many of those could not be instead learned apprentice-style, working up from office coffee-maker and gofer?

Not vastly many. As demonstrated by the fact that many college dropouts go on to become successful earners, once they've conned their way into their first job.

Truly, school is not merely a prison, but the very need for it to be there in the first place is a socially (and governmentally) constructed fiction.

Oh, and as to the badness of letting teenagers run around at liberty: observe the ruin and havoc created by homeschoolers. (What, there isn't any? How surprising.)

Thinking back to my nerdy high school days

Hmmm...the article made me think some, but the posts made me think more (a first for /. ? :)

Yeah...I wasn't the most handsome, well-dressed, social person. I liked D&D, Sci-fi, computers, Broadway musicals, Heavy Metal and books. I didn't care about fashion (once I got out of the 8th grade - parachute pants, camo, etc... :) I didn't care about who talked to who. I was in the Band. The sport I did was Fencing - not exactly mainstream. But I had my group of friends - mostly people from Fencing and Band...like types.

I started to think about the different groups of people and who I didn't get along with, etc... From what comes to mind there were

jocks - got along with them for the most part. Was on track and x-country for a year. Sure...there were insults, but nothing worse than what my office mate and I exchange in good humor. Not the kinda people I'd normally hang out with, but not advesaries

burnouts/dirtbags - The people who wore flannel, smoked, drove old cars that were always being worked on, pissed off at the world, long hair, short skirts, etc... Didn't know that many of them, of the ones I knew, didn't have a problem with them...I liked metal and Led Zeppelin, so I had some common ground. Not to sound condescending, but seems more of them had severe family issues at home - I did not (we lived in a mountain town about an hour out of NYC) so their issues were not mine.

Freaks - (thinking of Freaks and Geeks) Here are the people that liked the Cure and Depeche Mode before it was cool to. The early adopters of piercings, punk haircuts, etc. Different - usually the more artsy type. Knew quite abit of them (hell...small mountain town - not many to begin with - half were on the fencing team) Cool smart people - just sometimes tried too had to be different just to be different.

Preps - These were usually the more popular ones, and as another post mentioned, there was a reason...they tended to try to be nice to other people. Sure...they didn't call you on a friday night to come hang out with them, but they were at least nice enough. Usually the ones more involved with things like yearbooks and stuff. Knew my fair share of them - no problems there.

"The Others" - I don't know what to call these. They are the people who weren't quite gone enough or whatever to be a burnout. They weren't quite ambitious enough to be a prep and be involved. They weren't unique enough to be a freak and geek. These are the ones that were full of themselves...usually didn't do that good in class, didn't play sports, didn't do anything extracurricular, seemed to almost be the ones that couldn't be placed into any other group. Always talking about who was gonna kick whose ass, one of the ones I know in this group kept stealling the neighboors car to go joyriding. Grown up bullies? Rotten apples? I don't know quite how to describe them.

This is the only group I can think back that gave me grief in high school The ones as others mentioned would be the first to try and tear you down if you knew the answer to something in class, if they gave you a smart ass remark and you responded they would then launch into more "oh yeah..fucking dork." as their most advanced retort.

These are the ones that as best as I can tell are some still working the same jobs they had in high school or in management positions at a fast food chain, etc... Basically out of the limited sampling of people from all the groups that I know what they are doing now, this is usually the group that has done the least with their life.

To summarize :
As a geek there was only a small subset of the students in the various groups that made my life somewhat of a hell...and it wasn't that bad now that I think of it (depressing back then though!) I'm sure others have had it better or worse, but as someone else said, it's what you make of it. After high school, all that bullshit didn't matter - I think that's what seperated the freaks and geeks from the rest - they kinda knew that even though they may take some crap, all the stuff the others worry over doesn't matter. Get to college and there are small cliques like high school - but most of them seemed to be those trying to hang on to their glory days and by the end of freshmen year, most of them are gone anyway.

Now I'm married, own a house, have two kids, friends with all the neighboors from all walks of life, make a shitload of money and people sometimes envy the fact that I work with computers...go figure.

And out of all those years, I have just one regret - that one girl I was good friends with that I never asked out. Talking to her years later, turns out I should have, etc... Cest la vie.

An analysis

To understand the majority of motivations of a secondary student we must look at primitive man. What are the goals of primitive man:

1. Survival
2. Procreation
3. Control over their environment and peers (promotes survival)

All people strive towards these goals every day to varying degree. The majority of students in secondary school are interested in the shortest path to these goals. They go to school to socialize in an attempt to better position themselves for 2 and 3. This could be termed popularity.

Thus, every student at the school is seen as competition for societal control and procreation. Everyone faces the same hostility that so-called nerds face, however nerds make no attempt to mitigate it. Nerds are people see all the posturing as futile. They don't want in on the contest to be the top primate. I hate to say it but there is a definite intellect barrier. Asking why a nerd doesn't get involved in social circles is like asking why Jeffrey Daughmer didn't feel remorse when cutting people up. They just don't see the point. Nerds have an "i'll win later when I have the advantage" attitude.

This doesn't mean the nerd is intentionally avoiding socializing. Their minds are just running programs in the background just like everyone else. Thus once the "win" threshold is crossed in the nerd's mind, they immediately go into overdrive mode. Get them out of the school society, give them lots of attention and suddenly the become King Caesar. The opportunity for societal gain is too good to pass up. The advantage has been gained.

Basically in nerdese:
non-nerd is to zerg rush as nerd is to battlecruiser

We need to get over ourselves.

After testing, Sensei took a bunch of us out for beer and wings. Nice guy. Very loud, very smart in a Buddha-meets-Jim-Belushi kind of way. One of the junior students, who is kind of a sanctimonious, attention-seeking little guy, said something to the effect of "I don't think I should go to the advanced classes. I feel like I'm holding everyone back. I... I... I..." Sensei put down his beer, and said, "You think you're being humble, you think you're making yourself more worthy of attention by saying this. Fact is, this is your ego talking. You become so concerned with how inferior you are that your training suffers as a result. In fact, you become inferior because you think you are. So go to the advanced classes. Feel stupid. Screw up. Transcend your ego, and get down to business. Forget about 'you'. Think about what needs to be done and do it."

And this, friends, is how we all must be. We need to stop martyring ourselves to the lions of popularity and public opinion. We shouldn't "apply our intellects to playing the game." If we do that, we become the calculating, soulless PUA's [fastseduction.com] and PHB's [dilbert.com]. We need to learn that the people who seem to cross social boundaries effortlessly do so beacuse they act as if those bounds do not exist.

Think about the last time someone, say, bumped you in the hallway. Did you brush it off, thinking, "maybe they were in a hurry"? Or did your ego take over, spinning the incident into a larger tapestry of us-vs-them, nerds-vs-jocks social conspiracy, all directed at keeping YOU down? If it was the latter, you need to reexamine how you relate to the world, and find a healthier way to do it.

One reason to thank Bill Gates

It might be my imagination, but I remember computer programmer being a really nerdy and looked down upon profession until Bill Gates was named the richest man on the planet. Since then it appeared to me that it then got grudging respect from even Joe Bloggs in the street.

Phillip.

one-upsmanship

What I noticed about nerds in high school (I was a stoner, almost as bad) was the incessant need to show how smart they were. Always correcting others in conversation, especially on obscure points. And with that Comic Book Guy tone of voice. It's not really about how smart, it's about social interaction.

The article was written by an apologist.

Let me tell you my view of things:

All my life, I've been one of the smartest kids in whichever school I've been in. I'm not saying this as a brag, but to frame the post: when I was 12, the state said my IQ was 138; later, when I took the SAT, I scored in the top two percent across the board. And, this was the OLD SAT, back in 1987, when it was significantly harder than it is today. I'm in Mensa, for what that's worth, and I'm a senior Programmer/Analyst. I think, I'm a pretty good one.

All my life I've been picked on without mercy -- until that is, I spent two unhappy years in the United States Marine Corps learning how to kill people. That seemed to change the balance of power quite a bit (for those who are wondering, yes, I got an honorable discharge, as a Gulf War vet, yes I was a Fleet Marine, Infrantry, and yes, I got it early -- long story).

I never consciously did anything to deserve the abuse, except trying to do well in school. But, that sometimes is enough. The other students hated me for it, for making them look less smart in comparison, for knowing answers they didn't know. Some of the teachers even hated me; I remember my fourth grade teacher humiliating me in class after my statement that ice ages were a periodic phenomenon (it was innocent, we were talking about it at the time). She told me very sternly that there was only "one great ice age". Then she brought over the "science teacher" who backed her up on that. It was amazing to me; I knew for a FACT that there have been several ice ages. In fact, she later admitted to my mother, during a parent-teacher conference in which my mother put her on the spot, that she didn't really know whether there were one or many, but she wasn't going to let some kid get the better of her. Typical.

Or I could tell you how my english teacher, an abusive asshole who was known for striking his students physically, gave me an F on an english paper for using the word "alas". He said, "Sixth graders just do NOT use the word alas!" So I used it in a sentence, and he sent me to the principal's office for being a smartass.

I could tell you how many times I was physically attacked by other kids, humiliated in various ways, hit and struck and threatened, how one guy pointed a .45 over/under derringer under my nose to freak me out one day... Then turned around, dumped out the bullets into his father's bureau drawer, and showed me the empty gun saying what a pussy I was. But, I saw the hollowpoints that had been there before. Nice, for a ten or eleven year old kid, huh? But that's New York for you.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. The teachers were mostly hostile, the students were mostly hostile, and life was a living hell. I don't want to hear any crap about how it's just the system that makes this happen, or how the kids aren't actually evil. Let's make no bones about it. Most of the kids going to public schools are mean little bastards, plain and simple. And, the teachers don't care, so they have a free rein to do as they please. If you're smarter than they are, and you make them feel small, no matter how unintentionally you do it, you're going to be the target of their pathetic, cruel vengeance. And, that's what this is all about. Vengeance, for being smarter or more interested in studying. It's not about envy, it's not about desire. It's about hatred, and vengeance.

In high school, I lucked out: my parents had had enough of watching me get abused in the NYS public school system, so as of the eighth grade I went to a private school populated by rich kids. They picked on me a little, not so much for being smart, as for being poor. They made fun of my clothes and my virginity, mostly -- they were going to all these cool parties, doing drugs, drinking... I was home studying, and this made me suitable for teasing. But, thank God, it was nowhere near as bad as it was in public schools. Most of it was pretty harmless, and some of it was good-natured. And, I never got beat up by anyone. In fact, one of the only real problems I had was all the leftover hostility and paranoia from my years in the public school system!

The only really awful thing that happened to me in high school was a continuous torment by Jessica, who was supposedly the prettiest girl in the school (actually, she wasn't, but she was very pretty). She knew I liked her, so she tormented me continuously, trying to set me up for hideous pranks... For example, one time she tried to trick me into taking my clothes off with a dozen students hidden behind a door nearby -- I didn't fall for it, thank God. I opened the door and embarassed her little audience. Another time, she nagged me into taking her to a public dance in my junior year, and then didn't show up, so I had to listen to my "friends" Mike and Kevin take odds from people, bookie-style, as to whether she's going to show up. But even that wasn't that bad. Just kind of annoying, and hurtful. It was nothing like the beatings I had to deal with in public school.

I had a long and unhappy childhood, and the first ten years of my adult life were unhappy as well. I am not inclined to forgive any of the people who tormented me, nor am I inclined to write off their abuse as "just the structure of the system" or "something nerds get because they don't want to be popular". Abuse is abuse; the torment I received ultimately turned me into the crazy, celibate hermit I am today. And, I'll tell you, a society that vilifies people simply for being smarter, or a little more shabbily dressed, doesn't really deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt. Is high school like prison? Sure. Are the students like inmates? Sure. Does this mean that basic human nature, unrestrained, is cruel and vicious? Perhaps. But these are not excuses!

Sometimes I think I'll be alone until the day I die. I really only want to date someone who is in the same boat as me; I don't want to think about ever dating someone who, back in high school, was one of the abusive types I loathe so completely. My only hope is to hook up with a woman who in high school, was neutral (didn't associate with any cliques really, and didn't pick on anyone). I don't think it's going to happen, so I keep to myself, I work on my PC, and I program. It sustains me; my machines are better companions than any person (aside from my parents, who have always loved me) has ever been. I might buy a dog at some point. German Shepherds and Rottweilers are pretty smart, loyal, and friendly.

As a final thought, MY kids (if, that is, I ever have any) are going to private school as of grade six. NO FUCKING WAY are they going to put up with what I put up with. And, I'm going to dress them well, and teach them about what I call "social camoflage". If they can't fit in because they're smart, at least they'll be able to fake everyone out and get out with their skins (and minds) intact.

Just my two cents.

Re:Laughing Last

Het, when I get out of college, odds are there will be jobs of 50k and up just waiting for me, while the jocks are slaving away at some factory somewhere, or still asking if they want fries with that, they can be as cruel as they would like, just gives me more things to chuckle about when things in my life go right.

And this would be a great example of why people think geeks are a bunch of elitist assholes.

--saint

Ummmm no...

I've been in the software engineer game for over 10 years now... almost all of my collegues have either switched fields or taken a 30-40% paycut to stay in it. (Switching fields takes a paycut too btw)

the market is FIERCE now with out of work software engineers.. What makes you think your odds are so good Mr. No-Professional-Experience?
I sadly think you're in for a rude awakening once you hit the market.

Re:Laughing Last

Het, when I get out of college, odds are there will be jobs of 50k and up just waiting for me

Looks like you'll be doing Graduate level work at Hard Knocks U.