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Why Nerds Are Unpopular (2003)

61 points by tempw 10y ago

geovani_filipp0 10y ago
It's funny how Mr Paul Graham is projecting his own 'Nerd'iness and unattractiveness to the opposite sex on the whole tech / intelligent / scientific community. Of course, Nerds are, and will always be unpopular because, all said and done, men and women are primitively hard-wired to be attacted to physical characteristics and as such, the football player, who works out and stays in shape and can go longer in bed than the Nerds will always win. Sorry PG, don't take it so personally. I am sure you eventually got laid.
n0us 10y ago
I don't remember nerds or unpopular kids being any smarter than the popular kids and for the most part it was the other way around.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  There's been some co-opting. The same thing happened with Punk back in the day, apparently.
ktRolster 10y ago
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 fun (as an example) without people looking down on me for it. In fact, I know people who do the same thing. It's great. We respect each other.
jff 10y ago
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~"
- gthtjtkt 10y ago
  "I was too busy studying to be popular!" > Few smart kids can spare the attention that popularity requires. Just like all those quarterbacks who were too busy with football practice to waste any time honing their social skills. Oh wait...
  - EamonnMR 10y ago
    Training for a team sport probably involves social skills to some degree.
    - graeme 10y ago
      And also directly increases social status. PG mentions how playing soccer improved his.
  - eropple 10y ago
    There is a lot more overlap between "smart kids" and sports than a lot of tech folks want to admit, too. In the (small) town in which I grew up, the honors students were the smart kids were the popular kids were mostly playing sports. There were a lot of self-anointed "computer nerds" and others who were bookish and not popular, but not necessarily smart. (Most never left that town, while the football-playing honors kids are almost all at least bachelor's graduates and never go back.)
    - DubiousPusher 10y ago
      Interesting. Couldn't be more the opposite where I'm from. Which probably just means that anecdotes make poor indicators.
  - Anderkent 10y ago
    You don't really need social skills if you're in good physical form - even the original article admits that: > Unless they also happen to be good-looking, natural athletes, or siblings of popular kids, they'll tend to become nerds. Being good at sports or good looking is just viscerally impressive, and makes you more popular. Being book-smart has no such effect, unless you're particularly witty.
Jtsummers 10y ago
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. 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.
- nosuchthing 10y ago
  It's not really more true, as most people, kids even, are able to see past those facades.
deleted 10y ago
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mcguire 10y ago
There's an awful lot of over-generalization here. This would be more convincing with some empirical data.
- coldtea 10y ago
  Like what? "23.478% of male nerds don't have girlfriends", "studies have shown nerds to be in the 20% percentile of popularity", etc?
  - mcguire 10y ago
    Sure, that would be good.
gavman 10y ago
Looking back, the thing I wish someone in middle/high school pointed out to me is how temporary 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 poof 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.
- diminoten 10y ago
  Adults try to explain this temporary state to children a lot, but they tend to mess it up by using some form of, "this doesn't matter" which doesn't pass the smell test for these kids who are struggling. "If this doesn't matter, why am I in so much pain?" The trick is that it both does matter, but also isn't permanent. So little of what happens in high school is irreversible, and certainly almost none of the things that feel permanent are, but it's hard to explain that without minimizing legitimate feelings.
- sjg007 10y ago
  At that point in your life it is a larger fraction of your life. 25% at age 16. That's why, also just having been in school for 10 years. But one should keep the philosophy that everything in life is relatively short in general. This too shall pass.
- gthtjtkt 10y ago
  > it really did feel like it went on forever. It does go on forever. The only difference is that the "opt out" option is unlocked after high school, but opting out has consequences. Even if we don't want to admit it, there's a lot of truth to the phrase "It's not what you know but who you know". I hung out with plenty of nerds in high school, and most of them took solace in the belief that they'd eventually be laughing all the way to the bank while the jocks were flipping burgers. It's one of those things you keep repeating to make yourself feel better even when you suspect it's not true (kind of like people who say "I could've been popular if I wanted to"). Turns out they were wrong, and I'm guessing it's because popular people are able to use their superior social/networking skills to easily find job opportunities (and promotions), while nerds struggle to find the courage to answer the phone when the interviewer calls.
marsrover 10y ago
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. Maybe it's time us nerds to look at ourselves and take a little blame instead of shifting it off to everyone else.
- yansuck 10y ago
  You are an idiot.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  From my experience, most nerds are completely condescending and complete assholes. There's definitely a subset of nerds that are like this. Don't waste your time with that subset.
- Anderkent 10y ago
  You don't sound condescending and like an asshole here at all /s
- gmarx 10y ago
  true but some of that is a reaction to how they were treated when they were younger. My cousin once remarked to me, that when I was younger I used my sense of humor as a way to reject people before they could reject me. Sounds like a self defeating behavior that arose randomly. Then I lost 130 pounds and discovered some people are treated better on the average and far less often rejected. I suspect a lot of unpopular kids internalized the lessons of their unpopularity, became bitter, and began to engage in behaviors which made them more so and rationalized it for them. On some level it changed to a choice they had made.
overcast 10y ago
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.
- coldtea 10y ago
  Meanwhile, the actual nerds are still as unpopular as ever. It's just that the niche comic book culture spun off blockbuster action movies -- and everybody plays videogames. But the actual over-studying, learning minutiae, having isolating hobbies, being introverted, etc, part is not shared.
  - overcast 10y ago
    Until money comes around, and then all bets are off.
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  It depends on whether "nerd" is defined by personality or hobbies. If it's the latter, you're right, but so are they. If it's the former, what are the new nerds doing?
  - Animats 10y ago
    Startups?
    - forgetsusername 10y ago
      Startups are "cool", not "nerdy".
jmkni 10y ago
It took me too long to realise that a lot of the popular kids where also smart. They just had social skills as well. 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.
- flying_kangaroo 10y ago
  I thought 21 Jump Street hit the nail on the head w.r.t. (modern?) high schools, a lot of the most popular kids in that movie were also the smart, "nerdy" types. Could be a regional thing though, who knows.
  - TillE 10y ago
    Sure sure. The smartest kid at my high school was also one of the funniest people I've known; he didn't hang out with the "popular" cliques or anything, but everyone knew and liked him. You can be a nerd and not horribly awkward.
- diminoten 10y ago
  It's sad that people tend to think of life as some kind of DnD character creation, where people have the same points but allocated in different ways. Instead, some people just have more points than you, and just because they have more points in charisma, doesn't mean they also don't have more points than you in intellect. I've heard, even on this site, people deride management and C-suite types as "dumb" or "the popular kids", and in the same breath worship "that guy in the room"[0] but the stark reality is quite different from this fantasy. [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/dont-go-dark/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/dont-go-dark/
  - formerly_ta 10y ago
    I'd go even further than that. They're not independent variables, but instead are highly correlated. High achievement in one area means you're more than likely to be above average in another.
- jesuslop 10y ago
randomname2 10y ago
Today in 2017 this is not as true anymore as it was in 2003
bitL 10y ago
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.
dwe3000 10y ago
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.
deleted 10y ago
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bananabill 10y ago
http://i.imgur.com/CyFyMRL.jpg http://i.imgur.com/CyFyMRL.jpg
- elastic_church 10y ago
  this is satire, right? such that you know none of this is anything to brag about? I know bottle service girls that would get kicked out of every tech convention solely for making some boring accountant-that-learned-ruby uncomfortable, who are more experienced in "the blockchain" than the introverted asperger folks.
  - bananabill 10y ago
    Yes it's satire
Anderkent 10y ago
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. 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 paying attention to other people, I'd probably be just as well off in terms what I actually retained, and much better off in social skills.
- CM30 10y ago
  Sometimes I suspect this probably applies to college/university as much as it does school. Yeah, the degree is nice to have, but making connections with people in a similar field/with similar interests seems like it's a heck of a lot more useful in retrospect. Especially if your interests are in starting a business or other venture and you need cofounders.
Animats 10y ago
The 1983 version of this, from Playboy, now hosted on an MIT web site.[1] [1] http://mit81.com/baker/sites/default/files/technodarlings.pdf http://mit81.com/baker/sites/default/files/technodarlings.pd...
partycoder 10y ago
All social animals have the concept of social rank. 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. 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. 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?
otikik 10y ago
I was a HUGE nerd at highschool and I disagree with this article completely. I think nerds are unpopular at highschool because their intelligence is incomplete. 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. 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. 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". Gosh, I was such a nerd. 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.
- orangea 10y ago
  > I can totally spot code which was written by the socially challenged. That sounds very interesting to me. Could you elaborate?
  - otikik 10y ago
    Hum. It is difficult without delving into specifics. When I write code I'm always asking myself questions about future code readers. "Is this understandable enough? Are the identifiers concise? Is the intent of this method clear?". If I must spend 15 minutes on a dictionary looking for the exact name for an abstraction, I do so. Code written by someone without empathy reads to me like its author has mostly asking himself questions related with functionality: "Does this work? Is this fast enough? Am I using an up-to-date API?". You get lots of names with 'info' or 'data' or 'manager'. Several things named the same way. The same thing named different ways in different places. Long methods, with tangled dependencies. Classes hiding inside other classes' methods. "Clever" code which uses obscure language features in non-standard ways. Etc. Mind you - I also think about functionality, speed, etc. But most of my mental processing is dedicated to thinking about future maintainers.
glangdale 10y ago
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. 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 different 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. 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, ...).
jaimex2 10y ago
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.
cousin_it 10y ago
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. 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.
ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
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. 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?"
DubiousPusher 10y ago
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. If I could tell myself anything though it wouldn't be what PG recommends here. It'd be, "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."
deleted 10y ago
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61 points by tempw 10y ago

It's funny how Mr Paul Graham is projecting his own 'Nerd'iness and unattractiveness to the opposite sex on the whole tech / intelligent / scientific community. Of course, Nerds are, and will always be unpopular because, all said and done, men and women are primitively hard-wired to be attacted to physical characteristics and as such, the football player, who works out and stays in shape and can go longer in bed than the Nerds will always win. Sorry PG, don't take it so personally. I am sure you eventually got laid.

n0us 10y ago

I don't remember nerds or unpopular kids being any smarter than the popular kids and for the most part it was the other way around.

stcredzero 10y ago
There's been some co-opting. The same thing happened with Punk back in the day, apparently.

ktRolster 10y ago

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 fun (as an example) without people looking down on me for it. In fact, I know people who do the same thing. It's great. We respect each other.

jff 10y ago

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~"

gthtjtkt 10y ago
"I was too busy studying to be popular!" > Few smart kids can spare the attention that popularity requires. Just like all those quarterbacks who were too busy with football practice to waste any time honing their social skills. Oh wait...
- EamonnMR 10y ago
  Training for a team sport probably involves social skills to some degree.
  - graeme 10y ago
    And also directly increases social status. PG mentions how playing soccer improved his.
- eropple 10y ago
  There is a lot more overlap between "smart kids" and sports than a lot of tech folks want to admit, too. In the (small) town in which I grew up, the honors students were the smart kids were the popular kids were mostly playing sports. There were a lot of self-anointed "computer nerds" and others who were bookish and not popular, but not necessarily smart. (Most never left that town, while the football-playing honors kids are almost all at least bachelor's graduates and never go back.)
  - DubiousPusher 10y ago
    Interesting. Couldn't be more the opposite where I'm from. Which probably just means that anecdotes make poor indicators.
- Anderkent 10y ago
  You don't really need social skills if you're in good physical form - even the original article admits that: > Unless they also happen to be good-looking, natural athletes, or siblings of popular kids, they'll tend to become nerds. Being good at sports or good looking is just viscerally impressive, and makes you more popular. Being book-smart has no such effect, unless you're particularly witty.

Jtsummers 10y ago

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. 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.

nosuchthing 10y ago
It's not really more true, as most people, kids even, are able to see past those facades.

deleted 10y ago

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mcguire 10y ago

There's an awful lot of over-generalization here. This would be more convincing with some empirical data.

coldtea 10y ago
Like what? "23.478% of male nerds don't have girlfriends", "studies have shown nerds to be in the 20% percentile of popularity", etc?
- mcguire 10y ago
  Sure, that would be good.

gavman 10y ago

Looking back, the thing I wish someone in middle/high school pointed out to me is how temporary 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 poof 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.

diminoten 10y ago
Adults try to explain this temporary state to children a lot, but they tend to mess it up by using some form of, "this doesn't matter" which doesn't pass the smell test for these kids who are struggling. "If this doesn't matter, why am I in so much pain?" The trick is that it both does matter, but also isn't permanent. So little of what happens in high school is irreversible, and certainly almost none of the things that feel permanent are, but it's hard to explain that without minimizing legitimate feelings.
sjg007 10y ago
At that point in your life it is a larger fraction of your life. 25% at age 16. That's why, also just having been in school for 10 years. But one should keep the philosophy that everything in life is relatively short in general. This too shall pass.
gthtjtkt 10y ago
> it really did feel like it went on forever. It does go on forever. The only difference is that the "opt out" option is unlocked after high school, but opting out has consequences. Even if we don't want to admit it, there's a lot of truth to the phrase "It's not what you know but who you know". I hung out with plenty of nerds in high school, and most of them took solace in the belief that they'd eventually be laughing all the way to the bank while the jocks were flipping burgers. It's one of those things you keep repeating to make yourself feel better even when you suspect it's not true (kind of like people who say "I could've been popular if I wanted to"). Turns out they were wrong, and I'm guessing it's because popular people are able to use their superior social/networking skills to easily find job opportunities (and promotions), while nerds struggle to find the courage to answer the phone when the interviewer calls.

marsrover 10y ago

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. Maybe it's time us nerds to look at ourselves and take a little blame instead of shifting it off to everyone else.

yansuck 10y ago
You are an idiot.
stcredzero 10y ago
From my experience, most nerds are completely condescending and complete assholes. There's definitely a subset of nerds that are like this. Don't waste your time with that subset.
Anderkent 10y ago
You don't sound condescending and like an asshole here at all /s
gmarx 10y ago
true but some of that is a reaction to how they were treated when they were younger. My cousin once remarked to me, that when I was younger I used my sense of humor as a way to reject people before they could reject me. Sounds like a self defeating behavior that arose randomly. Then I lost 130 pounds and discovered some people are treated better on the average and far less often rejected. I suspect a lot of unpopular kids internalized the lessons of their unpopularity, became bitter, and began to engage in behaviors which made them more so and rationalized it for them. On some level it changed to a choice they had made.

overcast 10y ago

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.

coldtea 10y ago
Meanwhile, the actual nerds are still as unpopular as ever. It's just that the niche comic book culture spun off blockbuster action movies -- and everybody plays videogames. But the actual over-studying, learning minutiae, having isolating hobbies, being introverted, etc, part is not shared.
- overcast 10y ago
  Until money comes around, and then all bets are off.
forgetsusername 10y ago
It depends on whether "nerd" is defined by personality or hobbies. If it's the latter, you're right, but so are they. If it's the former, what are the new nerds doing?
- Animats 10y ago
  Startups?
  - forgetsusername 10y ago
    Startups are "cool", not "nerdy".

jmkni 10y ago

It took me too long to realise that a lot of the popular kids where also smart. They just had social skills as well. 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.

flying_kangaroo 10y ago
I thought 21 Jump Street hit the nail on the head w.r.t. (modern?) high schools, a lot of the most popular kids in that movie were also the smart, "nerdy" types. Could be a regional thing though, who knows.
- TillE 10y ago
  Sure sure. The smartest kid at my high school was also one of the funniest people I've known; he didn't hang out with the "popular" cliques or anything, but everyone knew and liked him. You can be a nerd and not horribly awkward.
diminoten 10y ago
It's sad that people tend to think of life as some kind of DnD character creation, where people have the same points but allocated in different ways. Instead, some people just have more points than you, and just because they have more points in charisma, doesn't mean they also don't have more points than you in intellect. I've heard, even on this site, people deride management and C-suite types as "dumb" or "the popular kids", and in the same breath worship "that guy in the room"[0] but the stark reality is quite different from this fantasy. [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/dont-go-dark/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/dont-go-dark/
- formerly_ta 10y ago
  I'd go even further than that. They're not independent variables, but instead are highly correlated. High achievement in one area means you're more than likely to be above average in another.
jesuslop 10y ago

randomname2 10y ago

Today in 2017 this is not as true anymore as it was in 2003

bitL 10y ago

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.

dwe3000 10y ago

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.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

bananabill 10y ago

http://i.imgur.com/CyFyMRL.jpg http://i.imgur.com/CyFyMRL.jpg

elastic_church 10y ago
this is satire, right? such that you know none of this is anything to brag about? I know bottle service girls that would get kicked out of every tech convention solely for making some boring accountant-that-learned-ruby uncomfortable, who are more experienced in "the blockchain" than the introverted asperger folks.
- bananabill 10y ago
  Yes it's satire

Anderkent 10y ago

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. 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 paying attention to other people, I'd probably be just as well off in terms what I actually retained, and much better off in social skills.

CM30 10y ago
Sometimes I suspect this probably applies to college/university as much as it does school. Yeah, the degree is nice to have, but making connections with people in a similar field/with similar interests seems like it's a heck of a lot more useful in retrospect. Especially if your interests are in starting a business or other venture and you need cofounders.

Animats 10y ago

The 1983 version of this, from Playboy, now hosted on an MIT web site.[1] [1] http://mit81.com/baker/sites/default/files/technodarlings.pdf http://mit81.com/baker/sites/default/files/technodarlings.pd...

partycoder 10y ago

All social animals have the concept of social rank. 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. 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. 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?

otikik 10y ago

I was a HUGE nerd at highschool and I disagree with this article completely. I think nerds are unpopular at highschool because their intelligence is incomplete. 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. 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. 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". Gosh, I was such a nerd. 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.

orangea 10y ago
> I can totally spot code which was written by the socially challenged. That sounds very interesting to me. Could you elaborate?
- otikik 10y ago
  Hum. It is difficult without delving into specifics. When I write code I'm always asking myself questions about future code readers. "Is this understandable enough? Are the identifiers concise? Is the intent of this method clear?". If I must spend 15 minutes on a dictionary looking for the exact name for an abstraction, I do so. Code written by someone without empathy reads to me like its author has mostly asking himself questions related with functionality: "Does this work? Is this fast enough? Am I using an up-to-date API?". You get lots of names with 'info' or 'data' or 'manager'. Several things named the same way. The same thing named different ways in different places. Long methods, with tangled dependencies. Classes hiding inside other classes' methods. "Clever" code which uses obscure language features in non-standard ways. Etc. Mind you - I also think about functionality, speed, etc. But most of my mental processing is dedicated to thinking about future maintainers.

glangdale 10y ago

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. 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 different 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. 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, ...).

jaimex2 10y ago

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.

cousin_it 10y ago

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. 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.

ChemicalWarfare 10y ago

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. 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?"

DubiousPusher 10y ago

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. If I could tell myself anything though it wouldn't be what PG recommends here. It'd be, "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."

deleted 10y ago

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