Well, given that we're on a site called Hacker News, populated by a bunch of programmers and other assorted techies, I'm willing to be that many of us were, in

Well, given that we're on a site called Hacker News, populated by a bunch of programmers and other assorted techies, I'm willing to be that many of us were, in fact, the nerds that got ignored and picked on when we were kids. Although I was never nerdy like my bespectacled, asthmatic buddy Marcus, I wasn't too far off, and certainly "geeky" would have been accurate. And of course I took my lumps as a result. In my case, and I'm willing to bet the same is true of many others, this helped engender a powerful motive to succeed. So ironically, it may be that all of the people trying to put nerds down just end up motivating them to rise up. In which case, you might even be able to argue that without looking down on, ignoring, and even bullying nerds, we'd have less technological innovation today. ;)