Why Nerds Are Unpopular 1535
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."
US only phenomenon? (Score:3, Interesting)
Can anyone who grew up outside of the US comment?
Reminds me of the good old days... (Score:2, Interesting)
Ummmm no... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Bullying (Score:4, Interesting)
It depends on how you define "nerd" (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Jealousy (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I don't know that it matters (Score:2, Interesting)
But then, I was also a track and XC person (not that they are exactly worshipped).
I would think that in a diverse pool the socioeconomic background plays a larger role than the intelligence level and/or grades.
Where I grew up, the cliques were based on family income and how one expressed it, and the grades made no difference.
From what I saw, the only way to escape income bias was to excel at sports - excelling at grades didn't seem to matter one way or the other - but help the school win a football game, or go to states in track and people respected that.
Re:Embarressing (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I'll tell you why (Score:2, Interesting)
Alternate subject: (Score:5, Interesting)
"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:one of my few regrets from HS (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Not beating the crap out of people who pushed me around
2. Not getting laid more
3. Not skipping more
4. Not taking any programming classes, or even any computer classes (hey, I was gonna be an architect).
5. Going to the shittiest school district in central Texas (Del Valle - may you rot in peace...)
Re:Ill tell you. (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
You're in denial my friend.
I don't quite agree: the school DOES matter (Score:5, Interesting)
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]
Re:Ill tell you. (Score:5, Interesting)
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:
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:Helpful? (Score:3, Interesting)
How can you claim that you know me well enough to know my morals and where they stand? You disrespect me more than you add to your argument with your attempt at an attack against me. It does matter one bit what one person thinks about another, because while your thoughts hurt the other person their actions physical hurt you. Why is it that people say emotional pain is worse than physical pain, yet the constant knowledge that some smart-ass smug little nerd is always thinking down upon you without knowing you is perfectly ok?
My issue is that too often geeks and nerds try to always make themselves out to be the victims without understanding that they also play a part in the bullying. I saw it happen when I was a kid, and hear about it now. The kids who don't try to be different, and accept that they are part of humanity rarely have any problems outside of the standard kids teasing each other. Those who walk around thinking they are better often get knocked down off their pedestal. Those kids are also the stupid ones, because they're not smart enough to realize it's their own fault they are getting picked on.
This isn't an analogy to rapists saying, "She was wearing a short skirt, she was asking for it." This is more likened to a woman walking around naked saying, "I'm soooooooo FUCKING HOT and you WILL NEVER have sex with me so HA HA HA I DARE You to do something about!!" then getting pissed off that the guy raped and beat her. Was it right? No. Was she innocent? No.
It takes two to tango, and there is always a reason why the bully picks you. I was 5'3 my Freshman year, and never got bullied because I didn't act like I was smarter, or better than anyone else. Yet other kids who were larger than I was got it all the time, and you could always overhear them saying, "At least I'll amount to something in my life."
Well good luck Seymore Q. Fuqs, you aren't amounting to shit other than a 40 year old scared little kid who is still so convinced that the world doesn't understand you. I'm a nerd, and proud of it. People call me pretentious, but I know that people, no matter how smart or stupid, still have value and aren't better than me. No one is better. People are all equally stupid, and all will equally end up as a pile of dust.
The bullies and the "victims" are just too ignorant to drop their attitudes long enough to realize they're just making asses out of them both.
These are people that are children in name only, and you would excuse their actions and exempt them from even a juvenile standard of assault and battery.
You need to grow up. There is a huge difference between a 12 year old beating you and a 22 year old beating you. Fights happen. People are just such pussies now adays, they can't handle getting a bloody nose. Go watch Fight Club a few times, then go get yourself off your mommas tit.
Re:Laughing Last (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't feel that way about the ones who didn't pick on me and are still stuck waiting tables - I'm friends with those folks.
Re:I think it can be better summed up by.. (Score:2, Interesting)
We were constantly having discussions about behavior patterns we saw, trends we noticed, or theories we had about the whole popular/not-so-popular interaction. This was one of our fascinations, but I'm not sure if it was a cause of our unpopularity or a direct result of it. I'd be interested in finding out how prevalent these conversations were in similar groups across the world. Does anyone else recall similar conversations?
More like Why the unpopular are nerds (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, there are higher rates of association of sociopathological disorders with major psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia and manic depression, and to throw one stat at you, roughly one in 33 of us are bipolar. Most of the bipolars have the type (bipolar type 2) that puts the person in the depressed phase longer and hardly ever in the manic phase that it's almost not worth distinguishing them from unipolars. The Internet provides a safer outlet to break the law (credit card fraud, phreaking, dos attacks) as it is less likely to get caught doing that than it is to shoot up schools. Not all people with these disorders have these antisocial disorders (not all dogs are poodles), but we're generalizing here. The Internet also provides very easy access to all sorts of pornography, and paraphilia is also correlated with these disorders at substantially higher rates than the healthy folks. Just take a look at what's flying through your Gnutella monitor. And if you got Windows, check out some of those member-created AOL chatrooms. Paraphilia's all over the place.
Another thing to keep in mind is that there is virtually no association of lower intelligence with these disorders (often the opposite, in fact), so that could also be why the people who are a little too good at computers are, let's face it, pretty weird.
Don't mean to offend anyone, there should be no more shame with suffering from any of these psychological diseases than there is with suffering from diabetes. They're often just as treatable, by the way. And there are lots (most) of the computer whizzes without any thought disorder whatsoever. But I think I'm onto something when I say that various abnormal psych disorders are conducive to both relatively heavier computer use and odd social ineptitude of all sorts, and maybe some of you agree. I'm anticipating a flamebait mod, but this is what I think.
I didn't know graph theory then .... (Score:3, Interesting)
I was not, however, a nerd in high school. I was a dork, which is like a nerd, but without the good grades.
Re:YHBT (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Helpful? (Score:3, Interesting)
You're grasping. You can't pick on someone unless you're higher up on the social scale, and using that power to either physically or verbally humiliate them. The fact that you think insulting someone is the same as picking on them indicates that you don't know what the Hell you're talking about. Believe me, if you've been picked on, you know what it is. It's not a "joking banter of insults". Stop trying to bring me down to your level. I am not a bully, you are. If it bothers you so much, go talk to someone about it, but at least own up to being an asshole. It's just insulting to your victims when you don't. I'm sorry, I meant "accomplices".
"flattener"—no (Score:3, Interesting)
The university is not a flattener of hierarchy, it's a decisive, irrevocable split, the beginning of a lifelong segregation. A "top" and a "bottom" are sheared off, left aside forever.
The bottom--I use the hierarchical terms loosely here, just for illustration--is an "underclass" of people who can't continue their educations for reasons of economic or other deprivation, or infirmity, or youthful error, or simple misfortune. They just aren't there to be disdained anymore. If they were around, they would be.
The top is the rough equivalent of the "nerds" and "stoners" of the linked article, people whose lives simply take a different course because their skills and talents lie outside the set "professional"--like certain kinds of artists or technicians, who have their own, separate schools, or simply mavericks who strike their own paths outside the hierarchy--and/or who view college as merely a continuation of secondary school's horrors, but populated wholly by the priveleged (the "popular" and "nerds" of the article).
The members of your group no longer interact personally with the members of either of these groups, so, in your minds, they don't exist. Sometimes, they deliver you a pizza or make a movie or record you like, but they're essentially non-persons to you...
...judging by the blithe sanctimony your comment, that is.
Hell, I went to art school and we even had nerds (Score:3, Interesting)
But even better:
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.
________________________________________
Re:It happens for more reasons than just nerdiness (Score:2, Interesting)
You gave me an idea...
I think this would make an awesome reality TV series, sort of like "cheaters" PI's could tape the bullying, and then end it with a confrontation to the parents. I know if I had ever humiliated any of my bullies like that, they wouldn't have touched me again. Especially if I had tapes that I could seek damages with at any time. A good threatening lawer letter saying "You authorize us to use this footage on TV or we sue" would definitly make the parents of said bully rethink their discipline.
You should work on pitching that to a production company, i'm sure it would get good ratings.
Re:i'm not even trying to be an ass here.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think I'm coming off too harshly on the book. She does a very good job of getting across how stressful it is to just live in such a precarious state, where even a small setback can throw everything off. I wish she had talked more about health care and how that can be the whammy that can ruin lives. When me and my partner were both working at the book store (about 10 yrs. ago), she had to go to the emergency due to flu induced dehydration. We didn't have health insurance so that one visit cost us $900. It took many months to pay off but at least for us it only meant not adding money to our safety net and a bit less enterainment. Much more recently she had a more serious condition which put her in the hospital for a week, including some time in ICU. That bill was $24,000 but she had health insurance so we didn't pay a thing. What if the $24,000 incident happened back when the $900 one did?
Re:I've never done this but... (Score:2, Interesting)
I always did well academically *and* isolated myself from all other students, not because I thought I was so much more clever than them but just because I wasn't interested in them.
I went to a few different schools, the pattern followed was always quite similiar, They'd ignore me until they realised that I was also ignoring them, and then they'd try to bully me, assumedly because they thought I was arrogant or whatever.
It never worked, I was twice as large as the average child in high school and had a developed interest in several martial arts, after a few fights resulting in the assailants getting concussions, broken bones, or knocked unconscious, they went back to leaving me alone like they did in the beginning.
Some of them even tried to make friends with me, I guess due to my not reciprocating I was a little arrogant, I can't rightly remember, it was nearly ten years ago now, I don't remember consciously hating them or feeling anything about them at all, I think they were just there and that was all.
The point I was trying to make I think is why should anyone be required to give a damn about any of their fellow students? It seems to smack of attention seeking behaviour to me. You shouldn't be under any obligation to massage somebody else's ego by gracing them with conversation or even acknowledgement if you choose not to, and for that person to then become violent with you and expect to be in the "good guy" seat is a little too much for me to stomach. I may not have hated them, but I was not at all sorry when they were severely injured as a consequence of their actions, either.
Re:High School = Prison?? (Score:1, Interesting)
Certainly all my time at school was basically 'make work', the intellectual equivalent of pressing vehicle license plates, I would generally have learnt anything that interested me well before the curriculum would get around to it, and I can count the amount of things I was taught between 11-18 that have been useful to me on one hand, compared to how much I had learnt outside the system in the same time.
You gotta be kidding !! (Score:2, Interesting)
It cant be that serious in the US as this article says! Although brazilian geeks in fact suffer somewhat from prejudice and ignorance, its not even close to the pain endured in the US...
hey you football playing geek abusers, GET A LIFE!
Okay, Okay.. I know. Probably the football playing geek abusers are not avid slashdot readers anyway...
Re:Nerd != Smart (Score:2, Interesting)
My high school was the "cliquey" kind in a 99% white suburb. In my grade we were well received, well liked, etc. but the grade higher was of a different era I guess... They just hated the hell out of our little "group" for whatever reason. Many jockos and preps. Well one day we were just playing in the snow and we hear "Hey look! Faggot love!" exactly like in the movies.
So we throw a snow ball at his car and horribly miss (on purpose, I mean what the hell) so he gets out and tries to start a fight. Well, being unprepared (and weaponless) we let him have his glory. Next day there were 13 of us ready to run him over. Needless to say, most of us had some sort of weapon (chain, knife, iron bar) and were ready to get this on. The whole football team started getting out of their cars screaming stuff to the effect of "WE WILL KILL YOU!" in their mightiest football cheering voice. Cops came, patted a few people down, no fight happened. But a few months later, one of my friends was at a party and he ran into the guy we almost ran over. The guy said something like "I'm so glad we didn't fight, I was scared as shit."
Just made me realize that some of these people are just putting on a facade, just like everyone else. We meant business, and I think that guy just thought we were some spineless twerps. All you need is a spine usually and they'll leave you alone.
Disclaimer: don't try this now, god knows, I graduated the year Columbine happened and my school became a police station. If that happened a year later we all would have been expelled.
Re:Ill tell you. (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Windows bashing (Score:2, Interesting)
I understand that as a 16-17 year old student, the only Linux users that you have been exposed to are likely elitist uber geeks that like to berade Windows "just because", so I can understand your viewpoint in some respects. I just want to remind you that the majority of Linux users choose the platform out of a want for freedom and for the basic fact that they control the system and how it works (it's really transparent in many ways), not the other way around. Compiling code and choosing what inane window manager to use really means something to those of us that care and have the knowledge to do so (I am not trying to sound elitist, I'm just pointing out this simple fact). Many of the professors that work at my old job use Linux because they have control over it, and can customize their software (or know scientists that can do it for them). My dentist uses Linux because it is free and doesn't crash on him daily (yes, I moved his entire office over from Windows 2000 and XP to Redhat 7.2). My Russian co-worker is in his 50's, is a two time MCSE, and uses Linux because it is more powerful and practical for his consulting (he is a CCNP that contracts out for "heavy duty" connecting-50-networks-together-from-around-the-wo rld networking). The Windows platform does not offer him the amount of freedom and software choice without a high cost that Linux does.
And again, from the experience of a person that beta tested Windows 2000 on a mission critical system and probably was using Windows XP before most people had even realized that it wasn't going to be named "Whislter" any longer, I can tell you that it is no where near as stable as Linux or BSD (especially BSD). It doesn't take a genious to figure out XP, hell it's amazingly simple running a Windows server (or 10, like I used to). The problem is that you know little about what is going on, and even the software companies that you pay a bundle too are reluctant to "give up the goods" concerning the details of how their software talks to Windows. In such an environment, crashes and downtime are inevitable. I understand that your box doesn't crash when you are using it to play Unreal 2003 or download off Kazaa, but try managing 500 workstations running Windows XP in a corporate setting with Netware servers and a variety of legacy database clients and see how many service tickets are generated just to get people up and running again. It's a lot, if you didn't guess that already. A hell of lot more then our Slackware clients back at my college job ever generated anyways.
My current employment affords me the ability to get in-depth info on just how unstable XP really is to hardware device driver writers. It isn't very pretty.
In closing I just want to say that you are lucky. Everyone I work with (and it's a lot, trust me) have their share of XP horror stories. No one has a Linux horror story to speak of. This is an important reason why I enthusiastically use and promote Linux for personal and business use. I also want to commend you for defending your OS choice, it's not an easy thing to do on Slashdot.
Re:Jealousy (Score:3, Interesting)
At the risk of sounding hypocritical here, I will say that since HS, and college (physics, computers, math, astronomy) I am now a Master Carpenter, working his way towards being a craftsman.
Occasionally I cut glass for a living.
I've also been a cab driver, programmer, windows tech, electronics repairman, mechanic, truck driver, house painter, motorcycle bum, astronomy teacher for a astro club, and many other things.
Watch your biases.
Just a friendly warning
SB
Re:dishwasher? (Score:3, Interesting)
big screen TV
surround sound set up
alphabetical anime DVD collection
any pr0n
Do not:
mention sports
mention computers in any depth greater than "I work with computers" or to recommend the purchase of a Dell or a Macintosh
mention how women find you unattractive
Do:
ask questions about her
listen to them
sympathise with her plights
be ready to provide technical support with making derisive comments about technical skills (right: "ok, that ought to do it." wrong: "you have two System folders! What the fuck did you do, you retard?")
Assuming you have an ok job and hygene, you are now officially interesting to single girls older than 24. Whether or not the trade off is worth it is up to you, though it's worth mentioning that once you land the girl, you can slowly bring out the sports/computers/home electronics talk (keep the Anime well hidden...).
Also, if you only can do one of the above things, keep your bathroom immaculate. That is the #1 criteria by which you are measured by girls. In fact, casually dropping the fact that you can eat off the floor of your bathroom will probably get girls to ask you out.
Being a nerd is a modern problem (Score:1, Interesting)
Fast forward to the modern highschool, and you have NONE of that: surrounded by thousands of peers, not only the same generation but exactly the same age. The mental machinery that evolved to help us integrate into the family/tribal unit ends up dividing those highschool masses into tribes on the basis of individual traits whose merits would have been valued by others in the ancestral environment - it ends up being adolescent tribal warfare, and everyone suffers.
Unpopular Nerds?? Not in Scandinavia (Score:2, Interesting)
After years of watching american television series, I've always wondered why nerds are so unpopular, because if there's anyone I relate to in those TV-series, it's the nerds/geeks.
It's probably because "the nerd stamp" doesn't mean that much in Norway...
Re:Ill tell you. (Score:4, Interesting)
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
The article was written by an apologist. (Score:3, Interesting)
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
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:by an apologist - common threads (Score:3, Interesting)
I also notice that this seems to be true for those over 30ish. The younger ones, claiming to be in college now, seem to say they had little or no problem. Maybe the schools really have improved a little, that would be good. But I also notice, for each of us that went through hell, including me, that we all switched schools to survive. And again, there are success stories - decent jobs, educated people, much more enlightened about the world, sensitive to others, and civic minded. With all of our crutches and scars, it looks like we all came out pretty good after all. You won't be alone forever. Just get out there and smile, and when you take the time to get to know someone, you might find out that the same things happened to her.