Even now this is probably the single worst essay PG has ever published, and he's written some stinkers.<p>Nerds weren't unpopular in school because <i>they were actually even cooler than everyone else</i>, and didn't want to waste their time stooping to everyone else's debased level of communication and friendship. That's an absurd fantasy.<p>Nerds are unpopular in forced social settings like secondary schools <i>because they're huge assholes</i>, the kind of people that even 25 years later write essays about how really it was everybody else's fault that nobody got along with them.<p>Very few nerds come to understand this, the only media I've seen that gets it right was this: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reunion_(30_Rock)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reunion_(30_Rock)</a>
I'd wager it also has much to do with nerds not knowing how to be 'dumb', and thus, not being able to forge meaningful connections with people of lesser mental capacity.<p>Having interests and vocabularies that are alienating to people who struggle to keep up can often do just that.