Looking back, the thing I wish someone in middle/high school pointed out to me is how <i>temporary</i> it is. Day in and day out it's your entire life and you think it goes on like that forever, and then one day you graduate and <i>poof</i> it all disappears. I remember the day after I graduated it sunk in that I'd never be in that world again and this huge feeling of relief and excitement washed over me...and then I remember feeling so stupid for being so blind to the fact that high school ends and you leave that world behind. But while you're in the middle of it--and for me even right up until I graduated--it really did feel like it went on forever.
It took me too long to realise that a lot of the popular kids where also smart.<p>They just had social skills as well.<p>It's much easier to tell yourself that other people don't like you because you are smarter than them than it is to work on yourself.
This article is in the same vein as that execrable Lisp article that showed up today: "Alas, poor brilliant misunderstood me, cursed by my genius and unwillingness to ~play the silly games of the lesser people who surround me~"
If you've ever spent 5 minutes talking to a programming (most likely a nerd), you don't need an article to tell you why they're unpopular. From my experience, most nerds are completely condescending and complete assholes.<p>Maybe it's time us nerds to look at ourselves and take a little blame instead of shifting it off to everyone else.
I was a <i>HUGE</i> nerd at highschool and I disagree with this article completely. I think nerds are unpopular at highschool because their intelligence is incomplete.<p>You see, Abstract thinking is only one of intelligence's dimensions. It will make you good at things like Math or Science. But there are other aspects. The one which is relevant to the article could be called social skills, or empathy. Successfully navigating human interactions takes a non-trivial amount of mental processing.<p>Some kids become popular "by default" (the rich guy. The prettiest girl). Others are naturals at social skills, just like some are naturals at Math. For the rest of us, the only option is getting better at it via practice.<p>In my case, I actually remember using the scientific method to improve my social skills. I formulated hypotheses, and tested them on my (extremely limited) social circle. Small talk was really difficult at first, until I discovered that teenagers love talking about themselves (I felt like I had discovered the fifth platonic solid with that one.). So I just asked them things about themselves and assumed the easier role of a listener instead of a "real speaker".<p>Gosh, I was such a nerd.<p>These days, I find that social skills complements my abstract-thinking intelligence in my job. I think empathy makes me a better programmer. I can totally spot code which was written by the socially challenged.
This is part because the smart kids are told they go to school to learn things. That's obviously not the case; school is a horrible environment for transmitting knowledge and skill.<p>I for one never figured out that school was there to learn to socialise until far too late. My parents obviously meant well, and I hold no grudge, but if I was told when I was 10 or 12 to focus on the subjects I liked rather than try to do well in everything, and spend the rest of the time making friends and having fun and <i>paying attention to other people</i>, I'd probably be just as well off in terms what I actually retained, and much better off in social skills.
Oh yeah, thanks for the reminder. I'm glad I'm not in high school any more. After high school I found there's a bigger pool of people, and I can read a math book for <i>fun</i> (as an example) without people looking down on me for it.<p>In fact, I know people who do the same thing. It's great. We respect each other.
One of the things that is pretty apparent but is not discussed much is maturation. "Nerds" are typically slow to hit puberty, get at the bottom of the pecking order since essentially it's like kids competing with the grown ups and then by the time they graduate it's too late to "make up" for it.<p>Reunions are actually quite entertaining to observe from that perspective - you'd see things like a tall and athletic "nerd" standing next to a short skinny-fat "jock" and wonder "what happened?"
All social animals have the concept of social rank.<p>Rather than popularity I would rather translate that to: "why nerds are ranked lower in the human social structure". Now, to answer that, you need to standardize in a definition for nerd.<p>Nerd for some is about superficial traits, whereas for others it is only a descriptor for personality traits, for others it is about intellectual traits, whereas for others it is about interests.<p>I think the answer lies on how humans, or generalizing, greater apes, rank each other. For example: if you went hunting, who would you take with you in descending order?
Being unpopular in school often means being bullied or ostracized, so we should be especially wary of victim blaming, which I sadly see in many comments here.<p>I was bullied for a while in school, though it wasn't in the US, and by the end of school I was quite well-liked. The advice I'd give to my younger self would be a) to get serious about some explosive sport like boxing or sprinting, b) to get fast and on point with words. I could've easily spared a few of my endless videogame hours for that, I just didn't know it would help at the time.
This article is a memoir dressed up as sociology. I don't doubt that it's a true statement of the way Paul Graham felt about his high school, but a great deal of it seems like arrant nonsense when applied more broadly.<p>The other thing that rubs me the wrong way about this article is the rather sanctimonious tone about nerd behavior, as if every nerd's "smartness" is a beautiful quality ("I want to make computers and rockets!") rather than, well, a pretty normal desire for a certain type of achievement wrapped up in a desire to impress in a <i>different</i> social hierarchy. I went to a school with a lot of nerdy types and there was a hierarchy among the nerds too, with people spending a lot of time putting on displays about how much smarter or funnier or hipper they were than the other nerds and reaping Nerd Popularity. I think the sanctimonious attitude is actively mischievous; I met many nerds in university who seemed to feel that they could do no wrong as they were clearly One Of The Oppressed Class and went on to do ugly things to weaker, lower status people whenever they could.<p>Part of the reasons that nerds are 'unpopular' is that they often can't resist trying to ensure that everyone around them knows just how much smarter the nerd is, regardless of whether they are. We started hitting this phenomenon in the mid-90s, where the ability to program a computer or some minor knowledge of science led to nerds proclaiming themselves experts on Every Damn Thing (art, politics, philosophy, urban planning, ...).
<p><pre><code> Alberti, arguably the archetype of the Renaissance Man,
writes that "no art, however minor, demands less than
total dedication if you want to excel in it." I wonder
if anyone in the world works harder at anything than
American school kids work at popularity. Navy SEALs and
neurosurgery residents seem slackers by comparison.
They occasionally take vacations; some even have
hobbies. An American teenager may work at being popular
every waking hour, 365 days a year.
</code></pre>
This almost seems hyperbolic for the time, but I wonder if it isn't more true today with the way social media is omnipresent. Extending the popularity game from just rumors and who's sitting with who, to who you're taking selfies with and posting photos from the hot party this weekend. Not just playing the popularity game while around others, but even at home in your own private spaces, arranging things for photos and making videos and posts.
The 1983 version of this, from Playboy, now hosted on an MIT web site.[1]<p>[1] <a href="http://mit81.com/baker/sites/default/files/technodarlings.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://mit81.com/baker/sites/default/files/technodarlings.pd...</a>
I always pinned this on being introverted and nothing to do with smarts. I could be popular with effort and actually being outgoing but it was exhausting and I would quickly find myself getting annoyed at popular people. What they did and talked about just wasn't stimulating.
I also came to see the latter years of grade school as a kind of petty game. At the time it fed into a bit of subconscious nihilism but I was always optimistic about the future and getting on with my life.<p>If I could tell myself anything though it wouldn't be what PG recommends here. It'd be,<p>"Good for you; you figured it out. It's a petty game that has no real consequences. You have more time and ability to shape yourself into whoever you want to be than you're ever going to have again. Make the most of it. Live it up."
I think it's an optimization in the world to enable its further progress. If you want to achieve something great, you need to go through adversity that will test you to your utmost capabilities. High school, as it is largely irrelevant, is a great place/time to do it. Treat it as a testing ground so that you can get used to these obstacles on your way to greatness. Then please don't fall into the trap of taking satisfaction in the misery of others that had fun during high school but hell afterwards.
The problem I had when I first read this article and still do today is the terminology. I am probably being overly picky, but I remember reading a categorization that differentiated between geeks, nerds, and dweebs. I still think it is possible to be a geek and be popular, or at least, "above" (more socially acceptable) the social circle of nerds or dweebs.
Fast forward fourteen years from when this was posted, and now everyone is a self proclaimed "nerd" of something. Half naked women on Instagram, holding video game controllers, while attending a sold out ComicCon.