Paul Graham's essay indicates that (a) Paul Graham went to High School in a cartoon and (b) Nerds are unpopular because they care more about being smart than be

Paul Graham's essay indicates that (a) Paul Graham went to High School in a cartoon and (b) Nerds are unpopular because they care more about being smart than being tolerable to be around. I'm certain that this is true of Paul Graham, but I'm pretty sure a lot of people who are labelled as nerds are lonely for other reasons. People with social anxiety might naturally gravitate towards solitary activities, like reading or computing, which are considered "nerdy." If that's you, then you need to convince your brain that other people aren't scary. One strategy I've heard for this is running "experiments" where you write down what you're worried will happen before undergoing a social situation that provokes anxiety, then afterwards write what actually happened and compare them. Usually, things will go better than you worried, and calling attention to this each time can (hopefully) reduce your overall level of anxiety. Other people might begin with "nerdy" interests and develop social deficits because of media and people like Paul Graham who say that people interested in those things must be weird and unpopular. If that's you, then you should work to convince yourself that you're not a nerd, and in fact there's no such thing as a "nerd." You should probably do this anyway, because the idea that you have to be a "nerd" to be good at stuff like programming excludes people who don't fit the prototypical image of a "nerd," such as women. If, as Paul Graham says, you're lonely because you care too much about being/appearing intelligent, you should convince yourself that the most important thing is not to be smart, but to be kind.