8 ms·

This writer is really clueless as to what high school is like for those on the bottom of the heap -- I mean, really, no idea at all. For that reason, it's hard

This writer is really clueless as to what high school is like for those on the bottom of the heap -- I mean, really, no idea at all. For that reason, it's hard to listen to what else he has to say, no matter how relevant or (potentially) awesome. Obvious that he's never been the low end of the totem pole. It may be different now, but when I was in high school, geeks and nerds got shit on by every group -- the jocks, the actors and actresses. Everyone.

andreyf 17y ago
It may be different now, but when I was in high school, geeks and nerds got shit on by every group -- the jocks, the actors and actresses. Everyone. Everyone's mileage varies. I went to a decent public school in the suburbs, and most people in my social circle belonged to a couple of others tribes as well - I was pretty active in the business competitions (as well as programming). Most other "nerd elites" were in marching band, actors, singers, swimmers, fencers, jugglers, etc. Sure, there were plain old jerks, but they were a certain a minority, and easy to ignore.
tylermenezes 17y ago
It seems to be different depending on where you are. The geeks at my high school (myself included) are, at least respected, and in the cases of many of my friends actually have a social life. (I'm too busy with the internet for that.) On the other hand, I know some people from other places who've had terrible experiences, so it's really hard to generalize.
njoubert 17y ago
It definitely varies. I was not all that invested in programming at all, spending most of my time biking and playing music, but as a "smart kid" there was lots of ostracizing going around, just because I didn't play the main sport that everyone plays. What I take away from this is the importance of growing up - you get through those stages and move into a more nurturing community of people that support what you create, not the details of how you created it.
- eru 17y ago
  "Sir Michael Marmot, of University College London, and his intellectual successors have shown repeatedly that people at the bottom of social hierarchies experience much more stress in their daily lives than those at the top—and suffer the consequences in their health. Even quite young children are socially sensitive beings and aware of such things." Growing up is important. But early stress does have long-term consequences.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
rorymarinich 17y ago
I spent all my time on computers, I played Dungeons & Dragons. I spent all my time up until I was about 15 being shat on, and being incredibly angry because I thought I was being persecuted for my intelligence. Then, in my sophomore year, I took a drama class, realized that people didn't care what kind of person I was as long as I was an interesting person who wasn't too obnoxious, and began to move away from my nerdier friends and towards a much more cosmopolitan group of kids that included film buffs and stoners and snarky hipsters. I'm still friends with a lot of my old friends - I go to college with one - and there's still a latent exclusivity where the group of anime/computer people act pretty rude towards people not in the group. As was said by another commenter, perhaps it's different everywhere you go. I was in a place where I realized later on in high school that all of the torment and suffering towards nerds had some sort of a logical pull. And my school wasn't some sort of utopia: one dweeby kid in marching band had a bag of shaving cream smashed against his face during lunch as part of a hazing routine. What I noticed from that incident was this: while perhaps that one thing was inevitable, a lot of the sympathy I had towards that poor bullied kid dissolved away when he turned that one single incident into a sort of theater for discussing how unloved he was - particularly since that was the sort of thing I did when I was younger, too. I wish I'd focused more on the programming aspect of this thing, though, because to be honest high school isn't worth talking about in my mind, not in this context. This was a response to an article titled "Rails is (still) a ghetto", where the author took a similarly hyperobnoxious approach to looking at a problem that didn't require anything obnoxious, and the larger problem is that the world of programming is highly inaccessible to non-programmers.
- bena 17y ago
  The problem is that it was also the programming community that is pointing out that the guy was being kind of a douche. You are taking a very small portion of the community and extrapolating extremes from that. The plural of anecdote is not data.
- jimbokun 17y ago
  I just want to know how you can hold up the "Rails community" as a positive example of socially well adjusted people, when their acknowledged leader just explicitly approved of a presentation that would obviously result in complaints of sexual harassment in any normal workplace setting (and did result in such a complaint, although given in an almost apologetic tone because she knew that her complaints would not be well received by the Ruby community, and was proven right).
endlessvoid94 17y ago
I thought that was the point of the essay. We're all old (and hopefully mature enough) now to accept that maybe it wasn't completely the jock's (or whomever's) fault that the nerds were unpopular. An outside perspective is almost always useful in figuring things out. I found this essay hit home. I was definitely in the nerd group, and if I had read this in high school, it would've helped.
- chairface 17y ago
  > maybe it wasn't completely the jock's (or whomever's) fault that the nerds were unpopular. I can agree with this to a point - by the time high school rolls around, yeah, the unpopular kids probably have adopted a set of behaviors that contributes to them being unpopular. However, those behaviors are probably defenses developed against some early damaging experiences. And who is responsible for those experiences? In my experience, it was those same jocks (or whatever) inflicting their damage all the way up. Personally, I find it much more helpful not to worry about who to blame for unpopularity itself, and to focus more on what is _done_ to the unpopular. And the responsibility for that is much more clear.
  - rorymarinich 17y ago
    To be completely honest, if I were to go back to elementary school and look at when I first started being divided from other kids, I'm almost certain it would have begun with me being an arrogant brat because of my intelligence. When you're bright, it's too tempting to try and rise above teasing by claiming superintelligence. I'm not saying that arrogance is a bad thing, but I feel that people who are persecuted for arrogance should at least admit that their own attitude is partly at fault. Of course, such an admission makes persecution less likely to happen. It's a nice circle. Personally, I find it much more helpful not to worry about who to blame for unpopularity itself, and to focus more on what is _done_ to the unpopular. And the responsibility for that is much more clear. To discuss a problem, you need to get to its root. The root of the problem is twofold: people on one side are too willing to ostracize themselves, and people on the other side don't want to spend time learning about people. My belief is that it's not the responsibility of others to spend time trying to understand you. I think that bullying is a problem, but frankly, if nerds were ostracized but not actively bullied I would find a hard time blaming the other kids and not the nerds. I actually discussed this problem with a professor: my solution to this problem would be twofold. First, get the other kids to realize why nerd things are cool. If people think programming is really super neato, then suddenly programmers are neato too. (It worked with math in my school: once you like math, then math geeks are pretty awesome kids. By my junior year all of the math kids hung out with the jock/class clown group.) At the same time, though, you've got to do the same in reverse. Teach the nerds to appreciate the non-nerds. Intolerance works both ways, and there are a lot of people willing to dismiss sports players or actors or musicians or artists or preps as stupid and meaningless, and what this essay's all about is that in my experience, the nerds are usually a lot less tolerant than the other people. My first day in college, when my roommate arrived, I was unpacking a virtual library, and he was carrying a volleyball, and my first impression was that we wouldn't get along because he wouldn't "understand" me. This year's taught me a lot about how you can be smart and not be a nerd, and I honestly think that the nerds are less aware of this than the other groups.
banned_man_2_0 17y ago
I don't think nerds get shit on by "everyone". On the contrary, it's only a small percentage of the population who are driven by envious hatred to such an extent as to be mean-- maybe 20%. Most of those envy the popular kids (who can defend themselves) and only a quarter of them have envy related to intelligence per se. So it's only 5%. The problem is that when you have 5% converging on the smartest 1%, you still have a 5-to-1 mobbing. The other 94%, by and large, stand by and watch without doing anything; this is the worst thing that can be said about them. It's not the stereotypical "dumb jocks" who do the mobbing. It's the reasonably smart (115-125 IQ) kids who defined themselves by their intelligence, only to find out that there were people significantly smarter than them. If they had defined themselves by their athletic ability instead, they'd leave the nerds alone but develop a Tonya Harding complex toward their athletic superiors (and, actually, young athletes outside of "cool" sports like football and basketball are often harassed, much like nerds, for being "overdedicated" to their sport).

andreyf 17y ago

It may be different now, but when I was in high school, geeks and nerds got shit on by every group -- the jocks, the actors and actresses. Everyone. Everyone's mileage varies. I went to a decent public school in the suburbs, and most people in my social circle belonged to a couple of others tribes as well - I was pretty active in the business competitions (as well as programming). Most other "nerd elites" were in marching band, actors, singers, swimmers, fencers, jugglers, etc. Sure, there were plain old jerks, but they were a certain a minority, and easy to ignore.

tylermenezes 17y ago

It seems to be different depending on where you are. The geeks at my high school (myself included) are, at least respected, and in the cases of many of my friends actually have a social life. (I'm too busy with the internet for that.) On the other hand, I know some people from other places who've had terrible experiences, so it's really hard to generalize.

njoubert 17y ago

It definitely varies. I was not all that invested in programming at all, spending most of my time biking and playing music, but as a "smart kid" there was lots of ostracizing going around, just because I didn't play the main sport that everyone plays. What I take away from this is the importance of growing up - you get through those stages and move into a more nurturing community of people that support what you create, not the details of how you created it.

eru 17y ago
"Sir Michael Marmot, of University College London, and his intellectual successors have shown repeatedly that people at the bottom of social hierarchies experience much more stress in their daily lives than those at the top—and suffer the consequences in their health. Even quite young children are socially sensitive beings and aware of such things." Growing up is important. But early stress does have long-term consequences.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

rorymarinich 17y ago

I spent all my time on computers, I played Dungeons & Dragons. I spent all my time up until I was about 15 being shat on, and being incredibly angry because I thought I was being persecuted for my intelligence. Then, in my sophomore year, I took a drama class, realized that people didn't care what kind of person I was as long as I was an interesting person who wasn't too obnoxious, and began to move away from my nerdier friends and towards a much more cosmopolitan group of kids that included film buffs and stoners and snarky hipsters. I'm still friends with a lot of my old friends - I go to college with one - and there's still a latent exclusivity where the group of anime/computer people act pretty rude towards people not in the group. As was said by another commenter, perhaps it's different everywhere you go. I was in a place where I realized later on in high school that all of the torment and suffering towards nerds had some sort of a logical pull. And my school wasn't some sort of utopia: one dweeby kid in marching band had a bag of shaving cream smashed against his face during lunch as part of a hazing routine. What I noticed from that incident was this: while perhaps that one thing was inevitable, a lot of the sympathy I had towards that poor bullied kid dissolved away when he turned that one single incident into a sort of theater for discussing how unloved he was - particularly since that was the sort of thing I did when I was younger, too. I wish I'd focused more on the programming aspect of this thing, though, because to be honest high school isn't worth talking about in my mind, not in this context. This was a response to an article titled "Rails is (still) a ghetto", where the author took a similarly hyperobnoxious approach to looking at a problem that didn't require anything obnoxious, and the larger problem is that the world of programming is highly inaccessible to non-programmers.

bena 17y ago
The problem is that it was also the programming community that is pointing out that the guy was being kind of a douche. You are taking a very small portion of the community and extrapolating extremes from that. The plural of anecdote is not data.
jimbokun 17y ago
I just want to know how you can hold up the "Rails community" as a positive example of socially well adjusted people, when their acknowledged leader just explicitly approved of a presentation that would obviously result in complaints of sexual harassment in any normal workplace setting (and did result in such a complaint, although given in an almost apologetic tone because she knew that her complaints would not be well received by the Ruby community, and was proven right).

endlessvoid94 17y ago

I thought that was the point of the essay. We're all old (and hopefully mature enough) now to accept that maybe it wasn't completely the jock's (or whomever's) fault that the nerds were unpopular. An outside perspective is almost always useful in figuring things out. I found this essay hit home. I was definitely in the nerd group, and if I had read this in high school, it would've helped.

chairface 17y ago
> maybe it wasn't completely the jock's (or whomever's) fault that the nerds were unpopular. I can agree with this to a point - by the time high school rolls around, yeah, the unpopular kids probably have adopted a set of behaviors that contributes to them being unpopular. However, those behaviors are probably defenses developed against some early damaging experiences. And who is responsible for those experiences? In my experience, it was those same jocks (or whatever) inflicting their damage all the way up. Personally, I find it much more helpful not to worry about who to blame for unpopularity itself, and to focus more on what is _done_ to the unpopular. And the responsibility for that is much more clear.
- rorymarinich 17y ago
  To be completely honest, if I were to go back to elementary school and look at when I first started being divided from other kids, I'm almost certain it would have begun with me being an arrogant brat because of my intelligence. When you're bright, it's too tempting to try and rise above teasing by claiming superintelligence. I'm not saying that arrogance is a bad thing, but I feel that people who are persecuted for arrogance should at least admit that their own attitude is partly at fault. Of course, such an admission makes persecution less likely to happen. It's a nice circle. Personally, I find it much more helpful not to worry about who to blame for unpopularity itself, and to focus more on what is _done_ to the unpopular. And the responsibility for that is much more clear. To discuss a problem, you need to get to its root. The root of the problem is twofold: people on one side are too willing to ostracize themselves, and people on the other side don't want to spend time learning about people. My belief is that it's not the responsibility of others to spend time trying to understand you. I think that bullying is a problem, but frankly, if nerds were ostracized but not actively bullied I would find a hard time blaming the other kids and not the nerds. I actually discussed this problem with a professor: my solution to this problem would be twofold. First, get the other kids to realize why nerd things are cool. If people think programming is really super neato, then suddenly programmers are neato too. (It worked with math in my school: once you like math, then math geeks are pretty awesome kids. By my junior year all of the math kids hung out with the jock/class clown group.) At the same time, though, you've got to do the same in reverse. Teach the nerds to appreciate the non-nerds. Intolerance works both ways, and there are a lot of people willing to dismiss sports players or actors or musicians or artists or preps as stupid and meaningless, and what this essay's all about is that in my experience, the nerds are usually a lot less tolerant than the other people. My first day in college, when my roommate arrived, I was unpacking a virtual library, and he was carrying a volleyball, and my first impression was that we wouldn't get along because he wouldn't "understand" me. This year's taught me a lot about how you can be smart and not be a nerd, and I honestly think that the nerds are less aware of this than the other groups.

banned_man_2_0 17y ago

I don't think nerds get shit on by "everyone". On the contrary, it's only a small percentage of the population who are driven by envious hatred to such an extent as to be mean-- maybe 20%. Most of those envy the popular kids (who can defend themselves) and only a quarter of them have envy related to intelligence per se. So it's only 5%. The problem is that when you have 5% converging on the smartest 1%, you still have a 5-to-1 mobbing. The other 94%, by and large, stand by and watch without doing anything; this is the worst thing that can be said about them. It's not the stereotypical "dumb jocks" who do the mobbing. It's the reasonably smart (115-125 IQ) kids who defined themselves by their intelligence, only to find out that there were people significantly smarter than them. If they had defined themselves by their athletic ability instead, they'd leave the nerds alone but develop a Tonya Harding complex toward their athletic superiors (and, actually, young athletes outside of "cool" sports like football and basketball are often harassed, much like nerds, for being "overdedicated" to their sport).