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Struck a nerve? Not a nerd? Confusion about terms? Most people spend large part of their effort on popularity contest. Nerd is somebody that even if he/she wou

Struck a nerve? Not a nerd? Confusion about terms? Most people spend large part of their effort on popularity contest. Nerd is somebody that even if he/she would like to take part in the contest they value other, more intellectual exercises. They end up underdeveloped socially because they don't have as much experience as somebody that spends most of their time partying, socializing or avoiding study or work to be able to party and socialize.

Barrin92 6y ago
> Nerd is somebody that even if he/she would like to take part in the contest they value other, more intellectual exercises No, nerds are the people who lost the general popularity contest and then started one in a parallel universe. Almost nobody is more competitive about status than subcultures internally, almost like a middle-finger towards society at large. This shows in video game competitions, programming language and editor wars, literal startup company competitions. I mean nobody is more vicious in their status fight than the stereotypical nerd-turned-techbro fighting for the attention they didn't get in high school. A lot of famous tech people literally fight like they went into a sort of delayed puberty in their 20s and 30s. This comes through not just in this essay but a lot of Paul Graham stuff, the kind of "you bullied us in high school and now we're rich!" subtext.
- sasaf5 6y ago
  I think the parallel universe is created prior to losing the popularity contest, by sheer force of mutual interests. And I don't see why nerds are more viciously competitive than other groups, your examples can be easily matched with ones from non-nerd universe. You hardly see an editor war actually turning violent.
  - tenebrisalietum 6y ago
    > You hardly see an editor war actually turning violent This is funny because this specific wording allows for the possibility that it has happened at least once.
    - sasaf5 6y ago
      Well, to make my point, we do often see (e.g.) a soccer cheering crowd war turning violent. To be fair, even though my wording has allowed for the possibility, I have never seen or heard about an editor war turning violent. I did see more than once nerd arguments gathering enough heat that it granted a "jury".
  - lmilcin 6y ago
    It doesn't matter (a lot) how this happens initially. Once the person stops participating in the mainstream popularity contest they are necessarily going to be left behind and it is going to affect their persona. I know both types of "nerds". Ones that became nerds after not being popular and ones that were never interested. I, for example, started my journey to being nerd before the contest. I started reading books when I was 6 and by the time I was 7 or 8 I would be spending large most of my time either reading books or searching through books in the library. I would be coming back home with bags full of books once a week. I never went to preschool and I never had any peers (other than my siblings) to interact with before I started spending most of my time reading. By the time I went to school I was not interested to compete with other kids for anything and I was quite ok being left to my own interests. I also know people who turned as a mechanism to cope with their apparent loss in the contest. But in my mind that's not strictly "nerd". Nerd is somebody who does what they do because they want to do it and not for some other reason like popularity in their field or as an advantage at work. People who turn to other things as a mechanism to cope typically are less passionate about what they are doing, at least that's my observation.
    - watwut 6y ago
      I think that issue of people in this discussion is that they treat relationships with peers solely as competition. If that is your only framework for thinking about people, of course you will have few friends. Among other things, you quite clearly are not interested in them and project own insecurities on them. Plenty of social and popular people have and interests as nerds and have them because they like them. But self identified nerds, who by own words never really interact with them more are interested to, do seem to imagine that such thing is not possible.

Barrin92 6y ago

> Nerd is somebody that even if he/she would like to take part in the contest they value other, more intellectual exercises No, nerds are the people who lost the general popularity contest and then started one in a parallel universe. Almost nobody is more competitive about status than subcultures internally, almost like a middle-finger towards society at large. This shows in video game competitions, programming language and editor wars, literal startup company competitions. I mean nobody is more vicious in their status fight than the stereotypical nerd-turned-techbro fighting for the attention they didn't get in high school. A lot of famous tech people literally fight like they went into a sort of delayed puberty in their 20s and 30s. This comes through not just in this essay but a lot of Paul Graham stuff, the kind of "you bullied us in high school and now we're rich!" subtext.

sasaf5 6y ago
I think the parallel universe is created prior to losing the popularity contest, by sheer force of mutual interests. And I don't see why nerds are more viciously competitive than other groups, your examples can be easily matched with ones from non-nerd universe. You hardly see an editor war actually turning violent.
- tenebrisalietum 6y ago
  > You hardly see an editor war actually turning violent This is funny because this specific wording allows for the possibility that it has happened at least once.
  - sasaf5 6y ago
    Well, to make my point, we do often see (e.g.) a soccer cheering crowd war turning violent. To be fair, even though my wording has allowed for the possibility, I have never seen or heard about an editor war turning violent. I did see more than once nerd arguments gathering enough heat that it granted a "jury".
- lmilcin 6y ago
  It doesn't matter (a lot) how this happens initially. Once the person stops participating in the mainstream popularity contest they are necessarily going to be left behind and it is going to affect their persona. I know both types of "nerds". Ones that became nerds after not being popular and ones that were never interested. I, for example, started my journey to being nerd before the contest. I started reading books when I was 6 and by the time I was 7 or 8 I would be spending large most of my time either reading books or searching through books in the library. I would be coming back home with bags full of books once a week. I never went to preschool and I never had any peers (other than my siblings) to interact with before I started spending most of my time reading. By the time I went to school I was not interested to compete with other kids for anything and I was quite ok being left to my own interests. I also know people who turned as a mechanism to cope with their apparent loss in the contest. But in my mind that's not strictly "nerd". Nerd is somebody who does what they do because they want to do it and not for some other reason like popularity in their field or as an advantage at work. People who turn to other things as a mechanism to cope typically are less passionate about what they are doing, at least that's my observation.
  - watwut 6y ago
    I think that issue of people in this discussion is that they treat relationships with peers solely as competition. If that is your only framework for thinking about people, of course you will have few friends. Among other things, you quite clearly are not interested in them and project own insecurities on them. Plenty of social and popular people have and interests as nerds and have them because they like them. But self identified nerds, who by own words never really interact with them more are interested to, do seem to imagine that such thing is not possible.