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Why Nerds Are Unpopular
AccordionGuy writes "Paul Graham, who's known for his writings on Lisp and other Lisp-like languages as well as his essays on combatting spam has taken a bit of a detour from his usual topics. His latest essay is one that's a little more personal and that we can all relate to: Why Nerds Are Unpopular . It's a lengthy but engaging writeup of that chamber of horrors we call high school and why being smarter than the average bear is more of a liability than an asset during that stage in life. It's food for thought for those of us who've already been there, done that and been stuffed into lockers by the football team and it should give some hope to those who are going through it right now."
What ??? Impopular, me ???? No way.... thats totally impossible cause I Use Linux (TM) and Linux rocks !!!!
Lisa Simpson found that it was a pheromone that caused people to beat up nerds! (This effect, of course, could easily be neutralized by spraying said bully with vinegar).
Because they are condescending assholes. Smug, superior bastards.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
It's a lengthy but engaging writeup of that chamber of horrors we call high school and why being smarter than the average bear is more of a liability than an asset during that stage in life. It's food for thought for those of us who've already been there, done that and been stuffed into lockers by the football team and it should give some hope to those who are going through it right now.
And I'm sure its going to do nothing but reinforce lots of negative stereotypes and Katz-style whining.
I'm a nerd - I'm a computer professional - I was an athlete in high school and I'm still active today.
People need to take a little bit of responsibility for their own lives rather than chalking everything up to "well, I'm going to get picked on because everyone else in the world is so much stupider than me."
--saint
Thanks to Bill Gates, and the numerous (though short-lived) dot-com millionaires, being a nerd isn't the social crime it once was.
(if you mod me down, you're in denial).
nerds feel it necessary to lord their supposedly superior intellect over others... they do it in their inner circles as well. This is the reason they get stuffed in lockers... You may have a bigger brain, but they got bigger arms... And don't give me that innocence crap, you KNOW you're guilty of looking down your nose at whomever because you thought you were smarter than they....
It was the cse at our school, like all other schools, that the Geeks were singled out for "special" attention. However, that attention was infrequently hostile, and if you had the wit to deal with it (a decent put-down, offer people help in classes if they asked for it, laugh at their jokes if necessary, etc.) you soon got the respect and the social acceptence that came with it.
/they/ knew) "Ignore them and they'll soon get bored."
Essentially, merely "being Geeky" was not enough to attract hostility, even from the footballers, but it was poor social skills aggravated by what the "geek" percieved as persecution.
Simply laughing it all off is usually the best way to deal with it.
It's like your parents used to say (shyeah! like
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
but if i had a quarter for every 'popular' kid from my HS class that later served me my meals at Uno's, Bennigans, etc., I'd be one handspring treo richer.
;) .
and yes, if you haven't guessed yet, i'm a nerd
smd4985
you've never heard of chad? why, he's the sexiest geek alive!
2 1337 4 u!
For the love of God, won't somebody please come and let me out?!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
That's so USA, in europe smarter students are usually the ones that most admire and girls/boys want.
In most european countries, being a really dumb student and just "in teen life style" results in isolation.
I'm curious if this happens all over the world or only in the states.
Can anyone who grew up outside of the US comment?
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
I'm writing this post from a locker now.
...because they spend waaaaay too much time navel - gazing about their time in high school. Yesh.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm smart enough, I'm good enough, and gosh darn it, people like me.
Jocks don't need girlfriends, because beautiful girls will have sex with them without requiring any emotional investment.
It's because of his lisp.
Het, when I get out of college, odds are there will be jobs of 50k and up just waiting for me, while the jocks are slaving away at some factory somewhere, or still asking if they want fries with that, they can be as cruel as they would like, just gives me more things to chuckle about when things in my life go right.
And this would be a great example of why people think geeks are a bunch of elitist assholes.
--saint
but I find that I, while being scholastically inclined and possibly considered a nerd, am not unpopular. Perhaps in the 60s and 70s when football and cheerleading were the only forms of American entertainment nerds were segragated against, but in the 90s and 00s, I see no such discrimination. Maybe what the author said was relevant 30 years ago, or maybe he was just trying to justify his inability to fit in with the rest of society - whatever the case, I guarantee those who haven't had recent school experience that applied to the present, this article might as well be complete fallacy in that "nerds", or intelligent people, are as equally respected as the idiot jocks or the slutty cheerleaders.
I got a 1600 on the SATs.
Who cares? It's been over twenty years since I graduated high school. A couple of years ago, I attended the 20th anniversary.
I learned something... I can go the rest of my entire life without ever seeing any of my classmates again and still be happy.
It's four years... After it's over, forget about them and move on.
Defecation occurs.
People have an ingrained trait that they like to know as little as possible.
I'm sure most of the 'nerds' here have tried to explain something to someone and seen their eyes glaze over.
The majority of people who consider knowledge bad see nerds as being heritics for not resisting knowledge.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Although I was the classic 'band geek' and not by any means popular, I always regarded my time in high school as at least a fun time as college was. There was tons of time to hack away on the home computer (or on the lans at school). I also enjoyed all of the chances to compete with my fellow classmates (such as in chess, track, etc.). Once in college, it was just the drudgery of "when's the next test, what's my GPA (if you actually cared), etc." and very little time to goof off (at least compared to high school).
You are plenty cool when they realize you are smart enough to run a methlab.
"no one knows how to fill in the void called america" --the discovery channel
Ever notice, the same people that picked on you in high school look up at you know?
.which I don't have to mention usually kix the shit outta their life / wages.
Most of em are smart enuf to know their past is responsible for their present, and likewise with your present.
Comedian Paul Rodriguez:
You remember those kids in school who you called Nerds?
You know what you call 'em now?
BOSS!
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Like I taught my boys ... Call me NERD today, Call me BOSS tomorrow !!!
A fellow student from my horror days relate a story to me about a incident he witnessed during one of the after school hunt and destroy mission conducted by most of the 4th, 5th and 6th grade boys where I was the target. Apparently the message of 'We are going to beat up the nerd after school today' had reached the lower classes. While following the masses he noticed some 2nd grader pounding the daylights out of a 1st grader. He asked the kid what he was doing to which he replied, 'This is the nerd, isn't it?'
My email and pager is blowing up with chicks that need me to fix their printer, email, etc. That makes me popular, right?
Most of us think that the reason we were so unpopular was that we were smarter than everyone else. It's much more likely that we were/are unpopular because we're socially inept. Hint: acting like you're smarter than everyone else is socially inept.
There are popular nerds. There are unpopular nerds. The nerds which are unpopular are condescending, arrogant, assholes who measure their self-worth by how many Linux distros they've installed and what other people say about them. The popular nerds understand that different people have different talents and flaws, and are able to be social due to their high self-esteem and lack of worry about what others think of them.
--
I got out of trouble by talking over the assistant principal's head. He was an ex-football coach that most people wouldn't want to piss-off. Somehow, I think I failed at pissing him off; I'm certain he knew that I was intentionally talking over his head, but now I wonder...
what is this, 1982 ? i was pretty nerdy in high school, and had no problems, or felt 'persecuted' due to being smart. it's as if the world was a John Hughes movie. people get made fun of if they are smart, dumb, big, small, weak, or dopey. where i come from, being a nerd is what got me laid.
The notion that you were "smarter" is absurd. The reality is that you were dumber. You got picked on because you didn't bathe, brush your teeth, and made fart jokes at every possible occasion. That doesn't make you smart, it makes you digusting, and worthy of contempt.
The smarter bears washed on occasion, and learned to carry on a conversation.
--
You sure got a purty mouth...
Inferiority complex.
They feel inferior to us, they hate that. Enough said.
I've been in the software engineer game for over 10 years now... almost all of my collegues have either switched fields or taken a 30-40% paycut to stay in it. (Switching fields takes a paycut too btw)
the market is FIERCE now with out of work software engineers.. What makes you think your odds are so good Mr. No-Professional-Experience?
I sadly think you're in for a rude awakening once you hit the market.
I always thought that my nerdishness in high school was a result of unpopularity, as opposed to the opposite. Without parties to go to, I naturally lent myself to books and science and gadgets.
I would guess that high school clics are largely an effect of positive feedback, where brownian fluctuations in the "popularity pool" while we are young create swells and dips which then grow out of proportion due to the positive feedback effect.
Yeah, too bad there are athletes who also can program computers and will have the social skills and connections to land the job before you do.
The fact that you measure your life by how poorly those around you are doing highlights your patheticness and the reason that you get beat up in school.
Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone,
Dare to have a purpose firm!
Dare to make it known!
You didn't get laid in high school because you couldn't dress, spit food, were too fat/skinny, had stains on your shirt and tried to impress people with your arcane knowledge of a trivial pop-culture phenomenon. This does not make you a superior person.
And yet they are often socially awkward, irritating, and with little ability to talk on subjects other than computers. Their behavior towards women is much like that of a dog; they lust after them, publicly voicing their desire, and if a woman makes herself know to them on the web, they are surrounded by them like puppies taking turns on a mother's teat.
But remember, nerds are better because they can code.
They cannot see how the world works past their own needs; all the supposed freedom infringements of the DMCA, RIAA, MPAA, STFU, all boil down to "ME WANT IT FREE! ME WANT IT NOW!" like they are more important than everyone else in the world.
But that's OK, because they can code.
In the workplace they demand casual dress. They demand completely relaxed environments, with full control over operating systems, hardware (remind me why a sysadmin needs a GeForce?), software - and they don't see the hypocrisy when whinging about a "mere user" trying to do something their way rather than "the right way".
But that's OK, because they can code. In fact, that's all they can do. And that's why they are universally diliked, bullied, lonely.
Jokes aside though - a very serious matter. Kids get bullied a lot as early as primary/secondary school and often it haunts them in high school as well. I used to do volunteer work for a charitable trust that was campaigning for teenage suicide prevention. It's pretty unbeleivable how many teens end their lives because they just can't take it anymore. And don't give me this bullshit about those that pull through and "become stronger". Some maybe do, but others still receive a pretty vicious mental trauma. Who knows how will this unnecessary abuse will reflect on their adulthood ?
funny
Het, when I get out of college, odds are there will be jobs of 50k and up just waiting for me
Looks like you'll be doing Graduate level work at Hard Knocks U.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Learn how to interact with people in a way that is pleasurable to them, and they will enjoy your company. It does not really matter what your IQ is. For example:
don't talk down to them
don't talk over their head
don't tell them things they do not want to know
do talk/ask about things they want to talk about
avoid being negative
be yourself, and be comfortable with yourself
we geeks need to conform, sell-out, and fit into mainstream society if linux is to advance beyond the server.
When we were in junior high school, my friend Rich and I made a map of the school lunch tables according to popularity.
:)
And I'll bet he wondered why people thought him strange
I then attended college for computer science, landed a part time tech job at the same college within a week (which quickly turned into a full time gig after roughly a month), was introduced to Linux, and now I'm hear on Slashdot. A regular, on Slashdot. Yay Linux, it turned a perfectly normal human being into a geek.
I was fairly (ok... majorly) geeky in high school (member of computer club, math club among others, in AP classes, etc) but I never really had a problem with the classical "geek gets bullied by the jocks" or anyone else. Got a wedgie my freshman year from Football players, but everyone did on the Cross Country team... it was sort of a ritual and not really looked upon as Geek bashing. Maybe I got lucky, but I got along pretty well with all of "the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads..." I'm not saying they all considered me a "righteous dude," but I was never ostrisized for being a geek, probably because I a) never thought of myself as a geek (although I fit the description pretty well) and b) am a pretty gregarious person. I could care less if you were a jock or a chess dweeb, I'd bullshit with you either way.
Granted, there are going to be asshats in any social grouping, just don't tar everyone with the bad apple's brush.
why being smarter than the average bear is more of a liability than an asset
What a load of tripe. Being smarter is never a liability. However, here is a list of real liabilities:
- bad hygene
- bad personality
- boring lifestyle
- funny appearance
Popularity is not about being smart or dumb, it is about being interesting.
Show me someone that claims to know someone that was interesting,smart,good looking, and still jerked around HS and I will show you a liar.
Nerds aren't cool... Aw, crap.
Being a nerd was a great thing..
I wasn't a total nerd (to the point where I used to get beaten up or anything like that) but I wasn't popular or anything like that.
Its pretty satisfying to see some of the people I used to take flak off at school working in pubs and stuff like that - I, by my own choice, walked into a pretty stable IT / technician job shortly after I realised that university wasn't for me..
I am now chewing through the Cisco CCNA course, and I am working in a job that I have enjoyed getting up in the morning for, every day for the past 4 years. Sure, it gets me down at times (doesnt every job?) but on the whole I think I am pretty well off!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
They tricked me into getting into the locker. No, really!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Because nerds dont WANT to be popular. What advantage is there to being popular? I mean really? The more popular you are the more people hate you. You have no advantage or incentive to want to be popular. Nerds dont seek popularity because there is no value in it.
Also not all intelligent people are elitists, I think you must spend too much time at Harvard and other Ivy League schools. Intelligent people are just smart enough to know that being popular doesnt matter.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Enough with the selfpitty already!!!
Do you pop out at parties?
The answer to all your problems is in this bittle ottle.
Feh, unpopular, speak for yourself, Paul.
I guess this article is the best answer to this.
But, my mom says I'm cool.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Sorry, but I call BS.
1. Being a nerd doesn't mean you are smart. I knew plenty of dumbass nerds.
2. Being smart doesn't mean you are a nerd. I knew straight A students who were all around athletes and in the "cool" crowd.
3. Being a nerd (or smart) doesn't mean you can't be athletic. See #2.
4. High school is a traumatic time for pretty much everyone, not just the smart/nerdy people. And I use "traumatic" lightly, because I realize that high school was not that big of a deal. (I hope everyone else realizes that) It was just another period in my life.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
who cares
another story from an ugly smart person
we good looking and smart can go to sleep now
The fallacy in the article is not that smart kids can choose their degree of popularity, but that they're even smart. The fact that he thinks, even now, that geeks are smarter sort of goes a long way to explaining his adolescent cluelessness.
Apparently Paul Graham hasn't heard of the theory of multiple intelligences, either. Just because you're good at math or science, doesn't actually make you "smart" or that you necessarily have greater control of your fate than everyone else. A geek isn't someone who's socially 'different' or nonconformist or anything like that, it's simply someone who's socially unsmart.
The Skinny Pushover. The Skinny Pushover finds sports 'hard' and exclusively for "those jock assholes". Recluse behaviour makes them antisocial, irritating, cyinical and generally unpleasant to be around. They feel as if they're more intelligent than normal people
The Fat Fuck. The Fat Fuck doesn't metabolise quite as well as his thin counterpart. The Fat Fuck therefore packs on the pounds of blubber just playing video games and watching cartoons all day. The Fat Fuck is typically more bearable as a friendly human being, but is only marginally so due to reeking body odor.
Now that I've defined the two breeds, I have some more ideas why nerds are unpopular.
They smell bad because they're unwashed. Basic hygiene cuts time out of watching Cartoon Network and playing MMORPGs. Thusly, the poor hygiene forces them to seek the willing company of their own kind for sexual encounters, leading up to the next point...
They prefer games like Everquest and Quake3 LAN parties to actual social interaction.
The nerd only seeks a certain type of employment: see IT/IS technician and or sysadmin. Further isolation leads to undesirable public behaviour, on the rare occasion that it occurs at all. Case and point, poor manners and emulation of cartoon characters.
Excessive quotation from the television show "The Simpsons". While amusing the first couple re-runs, memorised and regurgitated script from a cartoon proves to be an incredible deterrant for normal people.
(i didn't read the article, so I hope it's not the same idea)
Studying and intellectualism is seen in a similar light to school work and therefore one who is seen to do well in classes, or be bookish, is subconsciously aligned with the teachers and administration. The maturity of their attitudes towards school is i'm sure proportinal to one's nice treatment of the smart kids.
This is different from being the kid who doesn't bathe and doesn't take care of him/herself. That's just being slovenly, and I think it's more understandable - yet condemnable still - that one would be persecuted for one's hygene (or lack thereof)
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
If "nerds" just stopped whining so goddamn much about being unpopular, perhaps they would be a bit more popular.
I'm in high school right now andi'm an a nerd/geek by my own admission but nobody bothers me for it, alot of people like me actually (maybe it's because i've helped virtually half the school cheat on tests ;) ).
Ok, so I only read the first few paragraphs...(so sue me, it was boring and stereotypical crap;)
But he starts down the path of "the smart kids getting picked on", which only applies in the movies. From what I remember from high school, confidence and social skills were more of a factor than intelligence. Alot of the bullies got good grades, and alot of those who were abused didn't. The people who were picked on had some combination of low self-confidence and poor social awareness (dressed bad, smelled funny, bad hair, etc..). Just looking at the nerds, geeks, etc.. and you knew which crowd they ran with. Alot of my D&D friends (yes, I'm old) ended up pumping gas and stocking shelves after school, not going to Stanford.
Only Linux nerds are unpopular. Thats why it's dieing.
Go BSD!
Yes, the article does say why, but not directly - you have to read the first line, and completely ignore the rest of it.
The author makes one statement, and then goes on to produce the stupidest bunch of hooey I've ever read.
When we were in junior high school, my friend Rich and I made a map of the school lunch tables according to popularity.
You do stuff like this, and still wonder why you're unpopular?!?!?!
Because non-nerds don't waste time doing stupid things like this.
Unpopular kids are not unpopular because they want to be (as the article implies), they're unpopular because they have unpopular interests. Unpopular children have fewer opporunities to learn social skills, and so become nerds. (Which is the primary difference between a geek and a nerd.)
I am a geek. I'm happily married, have a good job, and have friends from all walks of life.
I was unpopular as a child, but learned why. Social skills can be learned. It's about time that the Mr. Graham woke up and realized the truth.
that would have made it more difficult for them to throw rocks at my head.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
First, I'll admit I didnt read the article, but to me it seems that people always have it backwards. It's not that "Nerds are unpopular" but more that "Unpopular people become nerds." If you're not attractive enough for most people to want to socialize with you, you'll end up in a shell and build it up around you even more once it gets started. Then, being bored all the time you're brain will run around looking for something to do. TV works for a while, but eventually bored people who dont socialize will probalby start to read something or do something that challenges their brain. So, it's the nerdy looking kids who get too much free time on their hands and use it to GET SMART; the whole time finding the faults in society that made them the way they are. Not as often as the smart people decide to become nerds. Of course, this is not the LAW, but I belive is the More-Often-Than-Not. You've also got pot-heads, lathargics, colombine-wackos who've been pushed too much and want to demonstrate that even though you pick on them, they can bite back 1000 times harder than you think.
nerd sympathizer?
I don't know if I would be so quick to dump the envy card. I think it is a valid factor in bullying and unpopularity. Come at it from this angle: you are an average student. During class, your teacher constanty showers praises at a particularly smart nerd. They always seem to have the right answer. They always seem to get the good grade. You go home, and your parents berrate you for doing so poorly. While your friends may not think it is cool to do well in school, and you might agree, maybe your parents and teachers don't. The parents thing especially might cause some resentment to build up. You decide that maybe roughing up that smart nerd will make you feel a bit better. So we have the motivation for bullying. Unpopularity may be something related, in that bullying (verbal or physical) has a way of eating at someone's confidence. I think confidence is a large factor in someone's popularity. If others are eating away at it (for whatever reason), then of course they are going to be unpopular. For the people that mentioned that they were smart and popular? Well, they had confidence in themselves, and probably at one time early on stood up to a particular person of average intelligence.
Unless you are dumb enough to study CS or IT in college, which will reward you with getting to stand in line for food stamps with the PHDs who can't even find work that pays 10k and up. LOL!
I was bullied pretty badly at school for exactly this sort of thing, but I realised that it's not my fault, it's their fault for not being as smart as me - in a way I felt sorry for them; I may not have been popular with the girls in school, but I've since had a girlfriend from my LUG (yes, they do exist) and although we've broken up now, I think it proves that the bullies at school didn't even have that above me.
I was equally popular/unpopular growing up. I got beat up a lot, but also got invited to the cool kids' birthday parties.
But then, I was also a track and XC person (not that they are exactly worshipped).
I would think that in a diverse pool the socioeconomic background plays a larger role than the intelligence level and/or grades.
Where I grew up, the cliques were based on family income and how one expressed it, and the grades made no difference.
From what I saw, the only way to escape income bias was to excel at sports - excelling at grades didn't seem to matter one way or the other - but help the school win a football game, or go to states in track and people respected that.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I grew up on the Reservation and went K-12 at Cheyenne-Eagle Butte in Eagle Butte South Dakota.
We had one of those Quiz Bowl teams where we went on the radio and competed against other school's geeks.
In the afternoons in High School they read off the announcments and always put sports scores at the end.
When they'd read our almost always asskicking victory scores, you could hear people cheering all over the high school.
Eagle Butte 230 Timber Lake 40 would get cheers
That didn't happen with any event or sport.
Nerds are smart and usually not physically strong. Jocks/Football Players/Popular people are usually strong and have better "fighting skills". In high school, you can generally beat up someone and get away with it without any serious reprecussions (ooooh..detention...well i still made that nerd look stupid and that's all that matters). In the "real" world, strength doesn't work as well cause you get sued. So therefore in a more barbaric lawless society (high school) the stronger are in control. I knew some kids that were very smart, and very strong/big. No one seemed to pick on them. Doesn't make much sense according to the articles arguments.
When I was in H.S., which, admittedly, was a few years back, I had an intense interest in all things digital, to the point that I had a reputation as someone unusual. (Not to date myself too badly, but the term "geek" hadn't been invented yet.) My brother, on the other hand, was very outgoing and got along with everyone, particularly with the more unsavory characters at school. You know, the ones that mom and dad told you to stay away from. So I get out of H.S., go on to college, and enter the digital realm. My brother, meanwhile, takes a slightly different path, but becomes a rather kick-ass carpenter. Flash forward a few years. I've been through a few job changes, but mostly for the positive, and I'm doing reasonably well. My brother has also been through a few job changes, but not quite as well. So he's down at the unemployment office to keep his claims going and runs into one of those characters he used to hang out with in H.S. (You know the ones.) This guy is also trying to get his unemployment, and he doesn't have a car, so he asks my brother for a ride. The two of them are riding back to the other side of town, reminiscing about those good times back in school, and talking about how they ended up where they are. It turns out this guy has been in jail for drugs and assorted other crimes, so life didn't quite go the way he planned. But he asks my brother "So, whatever happened to that weird brother of yours? I remember he was a real goofball." And my brother says (this is priceless!) "That goofball is making six figures now." It was a very quiet ride back home. My brother told me this story, and it made all the hell in H.S. worth it! Living well is, truly, the best revenge.
This article is very typical of the nerds way of blaming their problems on others. A nerd without his smarts does not end up in the popular group but the loser group (the other D group in the high school). Also while the A group (football players, cheerleaders) may not be all that intelligent, the B group (leadership crew) usually end up going to private schools (Ivy Leagues, Stanford) that rival the schools the nerds go to (MIT, UC Berkeley). So the correlation between smarts and popularity does not exist. What does the popular crew from the unpopular crew is self confidence. Nerds in general tell them selves that they don't fit in, and end up fulfilling their self told prophecies. They in fact give up in trying to be "normal" that they let there physical appearance go to hell and stop trying to be friendly. But, because the talk themselves into believing that they are smarter than the rest, their subconscious mind learns that and they end up doing well in the real world (except with woman of course).
It all goes back to communication ability. It's not that being smater in High Scholl is a Bad Thing(tm), it's the lack of social skills that so many programmers I know posses (or rather do not posses). That's why I jumped the Comp Sci ship in college and went with a degree in Digital Media (Communications Department). Here is the link to my schools site so you can get an idea of what we study:
O MS .asp#IV.Digital%20Media%20Concentration
http://aaweb.csus.edu/catalog/current/PROGRAM/C
It's kinda like CommS and Comp Sci mixed, but with more media tools (Dreamweaver, Flash, Director, etc) and we are required to take Small Group Communications and classes of the like. Food for thought for those about to enter college.
-Valiss
He's completely wrong about why things change once a person gets "out in the real world". It has nothing to do with how abilities, real or imagined, are valued. High School is all about stuffing people from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds into a small space and expecting them to get along. Once you get out of high school and college your sphere of social interaction becomes limited to only people in your general class. In other words you have more control so you choose to be around people that won't beat you up or degrade you.
.. Ah high school, that bastion of testosterone-fueled idiocy I left in the early 80s.
Things To Do To Jocks
Dump paint stripper on their car, hit at least two panels.
SuperGlue in a gym locker lock does wonders when he is in the shower.
Let Jocko copy your homework with wrong answers then correct before handing in.
Pull a Columbine.
Jokes aside, most of the "cool Jocks" from my school are now working shitty jobs, I even asked one for help at a local supermarket where he was putting out produce. Nice advancement in 19 years, losers.
Trolling is a art,
I've never felt like a "Nerd". No one picked on me in school, or they learned not to. And we had a big group of friends. Maybe it was because I went to a large high school, like 550 graduating class. I didn't even know most of the people in my class. The "smart" kids were pretty much segregated into the Honors classes. I grew up thinking the "Nerd" aphorism was dead, like a bad 70s kick. There were the "preppy" smart kids, and the "alternative" smart kids, and even the ROTC smart kids, oh yeah and "BandFags" but they were a very tight clique.
-- I am not a fanatic, I am a true believer.
Teen Angst.
You always did what it took to fit in. Great, perhaps someday you'll ahve an original thought.
I think it is much easier today. No one thaught a 386 with a EGA card was cool stuff when I was in high school. There were no 'cool' mp3's or cool 3D games. Now days, the computer seems like it is close to replacing the TV as the pop-culture delivery device of choice for just about everyone.
Also, it seems like people are more achievement-oriented today, even in public k-12, than they were while I was in school not so very long ago. College is getting more competitive and expensive. Acheivement academically is more respected because college is no longer such an elitist thing. This has been steadily changing for many years.
People are very diverse and this often causes people to misunderstand those that are different. I think the internet age has helped to temper this. Skateboarding used to be a fringe sort of thing and look at it now. People understand it much better now that they have been exposed to it much more. Ditto for much of 'geekdom'. I never thaught that you would be able to talk about your shiny new computer to more than 5 people at your big suburban school but now you can.
It was an interesting fantasy, but check this line:
"why are smart kids so consistently unpopular? The answer, I think, is that they don't really want to be popular."
Umm, no. I can safely say that the reason many nerds are not popular have nothing to do with their personal choice.
DrPascal: Not the language, the mathematician.
i was unpopular, but not because of any status as a "nerd".
they were just jealous of my stylish good looks.
The wise follow a damned path, for to know is to be forsaken.
No reason to get upset here.
Just wait a couple months until after he graduates and he's proudly hanging his CS degree above the deep fryer at his "50k" job.
Normally "k" refers to dollars though, and not dimes.
I have a theory; people aren't unpopular because they are smart, they are smart because they are unpopular. Yes I know there are exceptions to this rule and it doesn't always hold true but hear me out before posting verbose retorts. There are two kinds of smart, book smart and just plain smart. It is sometimes difficult to determine between the two and this theory only works for those who are book smart. People who are not exceedingly athletic, attractive or funny, this accounts for the fat kid who by all accounts should have no friends but is dating the head cheerleader, don't have many social outlets. They aren't asked out on dates very often, they aren't invited to parties, they don't have practice to go to and as such don't have anything better to do than study. Thus it isn't the intelligence that separates and isolates but instead it is the isolation and loneliness which leads to academic excellence and the nerd label that is so often attached to this.
That's a whole lotta bitterness crammed into one article! Sure, Swedish high school could be miserable at times, but it was nothing like this. I suspect he's exaggerating (is he?) but still, the cafeteria at our school was just... a cafeteria. No D tables. I think he's absolutely dead-on in his analysis of the culture, though - if kids aren't given a place in our culture, they will create one of their own. And it won't be a pretty one.
OK - so I was a nerd (honors classes in HS and graduated with honors in college) *and* a jock (3 yr letterman and All-League in Swimming and Water Polo both HS and college), besides being tall, handsome and well-mannered (and heterosexual - with a larger-than-average penis - to head off the expected barbs from those less fortunate and envious). I also have a wonderful sense of humor and am a great conversationalist, and a natural leader. I am highly skilled in music, art and several forms of martial arts. I can solve Rubik's Cube in mere minutes, rope a calf in seconds, and run the marathon in under 3 hours. I have rebuilt car engines since youth, designed my own custom home and written a popular book on past, present and developing Internet protocols. I can shoot like a marksman, dance like Fred Astaire and croon like Bing Crosby. I am currently recording a Jazz/Rock/Rap fusion record, though I had to take a break to try out for the Detroit Red Wings. I can speak 6 languages fluently (and 4 understandably), am frequently consulted by high level government officials from most Western countries on foreign affairs and economics, and am considered an expert on military tactics worldwide.
So - why does everyone still hate me?
- A. Gore
I haven't finished reading the essay yet, but I just hit on one passage that I find extremely insightful. The author talks about how it's largely the B's and C's that persecute the D's and E's, and not the A's.
I'm not only a nerd, but a High Functioning Autistic, which makes me an E. I get endless shit from the B's and C's. I learned several years ago to stop giving a damn and just ignore them, but that doesn't stop them. However, I've found that the football players (A's) of at least average intelligence are quite civil to me. I agree with the author's explanation; they're not afraid to be seen with me because nobody in their right mind would mistake them for one of my group.
Don't even pretend that the "nerds" are the people who started this war between classes. We were nerds because we * didn't care * what the other kids thought of us. That's why we were unpopular, we put little effort into being popular. So, if we didn't give a damn what the "popular" kids thought, why would we start shit?
Look on the flipside, the "popular" kids. They were popular because they gave a damn about what other kids thought of them, and worked to make other kids think more of them.
Now ask yourself this, who's more likely to do the looking down? The kids who cared about what other kids thought? Or the kids who didn't?
No one is blaming the people who were the "popular" kids for what they did when they were a teenager. You don't need to get defensive. But to blanketly declare that everyone's personality is only a result of their own doing and not from outside influences is naive.
Overrated Moderation: This posts sucks... because.
For those to lazy to read the article, the salient points appear to be:
1) There is a correlation between being smart and being unpopular.
2) The reason it's hard to be smart AND popular is that being popular takes up mental bandwidth that most smart people would rather use "making great things" (rockets and computers are used as examples). "Few smart kids can spare the attention that popularity requires."
3) The reason "popular" kids persecute "nerds" is that, in general, pushing others down lifts you up and makes you feel better. Also, persecuting nerds is a kind of bonding process for "popular" kids. "...nothing brings people closer than a common enemy".
4) Things are different when you leave high school. In fact "nerds collect in certain places and form their own societies where intelligence is the most important thing." (e.g., university).
That seems to be mainly it. Interesting reading... it matches up with my experience of high school. Certainly the worst time of my life (so far).
grib.
maybe
Speaking as a former member of the bottom rung of the high school social ladder, here's how things were in my high school:
- The jocks weren't stupid: both of our valedictorians were jocks
- The popular kids weren't all jerks: in fact many of them were popular because they were, gasp, nice people who happened to have mastered the baffling rules of high school social life
- Many of the unpopular kids were jerks: in fact, some of the worst bullies I had the misfortune of knowing were roundly disliked.
- Let's not forget the artsy types: forget the artsy girl in the paint-splattered overalls and square glasses who catches the quarterback's eye. The kids I knew who excelled in the arts also excelled in social life and in other endeavors.
- Mix-n-Match: In fact, there were almost no patterns. There were smart/popular/nice people, stupid/popular/nice people, smart/popular/jerks... pick one from each menu and I could probably remember an example. I'll admit there were a few general rules (I never knew an unpopular football player) but generally it all boiled down to how well you could handle yourself in the tough social situations.
It's all just stereotypes, folks. The many complaints we have here inMiko O'Sullivan
Then I went to college and met people from all walks of life and from all over the world, and then I discovered the one universal truth that binds all mankind....
EVERYONE NEEDS SOMEONE TO HATE
Everyone needs someone to be an external representation of all that they hate in themselves so they have something external to direct their anger at. Deal with it - people are not logical or rational and no ideological rant in the world will change that.
That knowledge, and a weapon to keep these idiots at bay, is all you need to have a happy life. Other's opinions only hold as much meaning as you choose to give them.
Choose well, live well.
Arguably the most popular person in school went on to graduating at the top of his class from his Bachelor's degree, and was admitted to a Master's degree in finance.
I was captain of the swim team, quite popular (I dated the "popular" girls in school, anyway). Yet I graduated with an B+ average in CS (and I didn't get an A because my responsibilities as Student Council President for 2 years ate up much of my time).
Of the students that graduated with excellence ( which requires above 90% average for the 3 years of high school), 8 were girls, and all 8 were considered "catches" by most (if not all) jocks in school.
One student won the Canadian Science Fair (that's all of Canadian Students) and went on to work on the Canadarm. He was not much of an athlete, but he was respected by everyone in school, including the athletes.
I'm not 100% sure why some people were picked on more than others. If I'd have to veture a guess, I'd say that general "dork" behavior would have you tagged as unpopular (brown-nosing the teacher and mentioning anything RPG were big no-nos).
Phemur
I am in High School right now, and I am presently a Sophomore. I am very much so into computers, and it works for me. I have never been much of an athelete, and won't lie and say that I am one. I currently am my schools sys admin. That doesn't keep me from having a social life. I still hangout with all of the people at my school. And I also have a girlfriend. (And she is not into computers at all...if that crossed anyone's mind, she is just another non-nerd.) So I don't understand that just because I am a nerd, it makes me a social reject. Actually, a lot of my friends think that it is cool that I know as much as I do about computers. My $.02
Why being smarter than the average bear is more of a liability than an asset during that stage in life.
I'm a full time software engineer, and I'm not sure that it gets better as you grow up. I'm only in my 20's, but I've never heard a girl at a bar say she really wanted to get with me because of my high IQ.
Sure, you computer nerds had it bad and all that, but I was (am) a literature geek. I was the kid in your english class who compared "Death of a Salesman" to "Hamlet". I was the kid who ran the school poetry/literature magazine, worked in the library and read the optional assignments for fun. I was the kid who the girls looked down on for being a brown-noser and the guys thought was gay.
I was never shoved in a locker, swirleed or beat up after class. I was just lonely. I could talk to people just fine, make 'em laugh and all that, but no-one ever bothered.
But then I started talking to co-workers and classmates, going to bars and stuff, and you know what? People like the sort of stuff I'm good at.
I hated high school and will always look back on it with a bit of a frown, but I don't think those four years hurt me much. If anything they've given me a healthy dose of perspective.
Triv
You go to school, a crowd of football players surround you and stuff you into a locker / your head down the toilet / your bag in the trash. You head to your first class and your teacher tells you that you are an "overacheiver" and that you should "slow down and let the less advantaged people catch up" (the same ones who picked on you only a few minutes ago).
For anyone with an above-average IQ, high school is a very bad place to be.
"When we were in junior high school, my friend Rich and I made a map of the school lunch tables according to popularity.
You do stuff like this, and still wonder why you're unpopular?!?!?!
Because non-nerds don't waste time doing stupid things like this."
Non-nerds make the map in their head. "Nerds" maybe aren't as good at that sort of social maneuvering (because they're thinking of other things), that's sort of the point of the essay.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Dude, bullies at school don't have shit on you. Chances are, you're making double what they're making by the time you're 25. Your skin will clear up (if it hasn't already), your shoulders will fill out, and you'll get cooler glasses or contacts.
Just do yourself a favor, and talk to a counsellor (or "shrink" if you want to call it that) about your experiences in high school. That way, it won't bother you, and the bullies will have truly lost.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
I see people saying geeks think they are superior to everyone else. I would say, based on my own childhood, this is a defensive mechanism. It is very cruel to be rejected by your social structure, given that humans are social animals. Hence, the natural response is to develop a very strong opinion of self, since there is no support and lots of ridicule from the people around the geek.
As to whether the geek starts this early on or is rejected first, I don't know. I suspect it is not always one or the other.
My sympathy, however, must go to the geek. I don't care if someone thinks they are superior to me - let them prove it. If they are smarter/faster/more skilled, great. They gain my respect, but not my subservience. Nor do I hound someone with a superior attitude. Let them trip themselves up. It's not skin off my nose. The persecution of a geek by the social structure, however, is active and hostile. Superior attitudes are minor annoyances - just ignore that person until their accomplishments warrant merit. The geek, however, cannot ignore people wanting to beat him up - that would be a dangerous thing to do.
Leave the geeks alone. Ignore them if you must, but don't abuse or humilate them. Lots get messed up for life by that, some few snap and kill people. Yes, ultimately that is their responsibility, but why push them in that direction?
Kids are mean, but isn't this guy a little old to still be bitching about high school? It seems to me that a part of true intellect is being able to make a definite distinction between the present and the past.
I was a geek in high school. I wasn't popular, but people didn't really pick on me either. I guess they were scared I'd come in and start shooting people. Everybody said they thought I was psycho. Basically people acted like I didn't exist.
And no, I wasn't an asshole or condescending towards people. I was the exact opposite. I hung out with the nerds, the geeks, the people nobody else would talk to because they weren't "cool".
I distinctly remember being asked "Why do you hang out with so and so? He's stupid, he smells." My answer was that I've known him for years, he's a cool guy. I do not judge others by their appearance.
None of it matters now, I've got a great job, great house, and plenty of money. I'm making more than some of those people combined, and this is not a rich area.
If Paul Graham brings that shit to my house, I'll kick his nerd ass and stuff him in a locker...
I cried while reading that. Exactly my life. 100%...
Granted, nerds tend to have condescending attitudes and generally poor "social skills", but I think if you ask around you'll find that not too many people really felt that they were really accepted in high school.
Geeks blame it on geekiness, jocks on (perceived) dumbness, tall people on gangliness, etc. The world is constantly telling you that high school is supposed to be a blast, and it feels like you're the only one not having the time of your life. Even the popular kids might tell you (years later) that they didn't really feel like they fit in. Nobody does. It's the defining characteristic of adolescence.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
I have discovered nerds are unpopular, and I was a nerd. So I stopped wearing khacki pants/polo shirt, and wear bluejeans/tshirt. I make stupid comments and jokes every chance I get, and I stopped taking hard classes, and started making worse grades, I am already getting popular. This may sound stupid at first, but it is true and it works. Grammer Nazi's on slashdot are probably the most hated people in the real world. I came to decide I don't need good grades to get along in life, all I need is good intentions. I think I will live, and if not I will die, I am happier now too that I am less nerdy around other people. Sure, you can say, "I don't need other people to be happy" but thruth of it is, you probably need to loosen up and take more showers, and you will find yourself TRULY happy around other people.
Preston
not to detract from your larger point, but you may be off-track with this particular statement...
Nerds of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your wedgies!
I AM THE LIZARD KING!!!
"I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of dea
I was the quiet, smart, small one in High School. I don't find the locker comments funny, because I was one that DID get stuffed in the locker. The emotional scars will never heal. Why are certain kids @$$holes? Because they can be. Fortunately my parents had a good long talk with the principal, threating legal action if other parents can't even teach their children to act civilized, and treat others with respect. For some reason, I was never was picked on again after that.
As to being unpopular in high school -- fuck the popular crowd. They aren't real friends anyways. Once you are out of school, they won't give a shit about you. Besides, I'd rather take quality friends then quantity anyday.
Anways, that was a long time ago. I've forgiven and forgotten my old classmates.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
I think the most insightful observation was the likening of high schools to prison. The primary goal is to keep you on the premises, make sure you get fed, and keep you out of too much trouble. In that order. (And if you learn something, that must be a bonus.)
Constitutionally Correct
"They cannot see how the world works past their own needs; all the supposed freedom infringements of the DMCA, RIAA, MPAA, STFU, all boil down to "ME WANT IT FREE! ME WANT IT NOW!" like they are more important than everyone else in the world."
;)
Complaining about copyright might be because of the fondness of stealing, or may be because of appreciation for the public domain - depends on the person obviously. Complaining about the DMCA, however, has essentially zero to do with selfishness, and everything to do with the public having its freedom eroded by companies trying to protect their interests.
"In the workplace they demand casual dress"
I don't, and I don't know anyone who does.
"But that's OK, because they can code. In fact, that's all they can do. And that's why they are universally diliked, bullied, lonely."
That's incorrect. I'm not disliked (AFAIK), bullied, or lonely. OTOH, I can't code very well - maybe that's why
Anyway, your entire post was ignorant stereotyping, so I'm not sure why anyone thought it was insightful. It's about as insightful as a Klan member complaining about "them darkies".
"
I think the issue is that society expects people to have skill in either the technical or the interpersonal domain, and people with both often cause discomfort because they are hard to categorize and generally don't fit quite perfectly into either group.
Alpha Betas rule!
The problem here is as alluded to in the essay: parents. American family values have always been weak at best. They're simply pathetic now. Also, many bright students have dull parents that don't realize what a meaningless game high school is.
Also, this problem isn't merely limited to the US. My wife had similar problems in Russia. However, her father was a similar sort of geek and clued her in about the essential meaningless of public schools.
That alone made her public school experience considerably easier and more productive than mine.
I just feel fortunate that I was enough of a freak in high school to just plain SCARE off any potential bullies. People don't mess with you anymore after they think you're crazy.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I had a rough childhood, almost everything was beyond my control. There were times growing up I wasn't just ridiculed for my small stature or interest in being a "computer nerd" Go read my journal if you want all the details.
There are two types of nerds, there's the nerd with a good family, that has a clue on how to raise their kids. The kid goes into all the clubs, and is pretty popular. This kid is recognized by their peers and peers parents as having a loving, stable home. Their well being and stability is attractive to teachers, students, and other members of the school community.
Then you got nerds like me. People who had some fucked up parents. Never learned to socialize properly at a young age with other people. I used to spend all my lunches and recesses either in the library or, if I kissed butt with teacher, could spend it with an appleIIe. I would do this to hide from the bullying that would take place. Even my "freinds" took turns bullying me, everything from practicing what Hulk Hogan was doing on WWF (now WWE) to just talking me down to make themselves feel better, since our group was cast from the social misfits known as the "mod" style in the 80's.
I was different than all of them, I could not "fit" in with the "normal" kids. I could not fit in with the "abnormal" mod kids. I didn't know U2 from The Cure. I knew all the poke locations on my atari, I knew how to format a floppy, I knew some basic. While my friends were picking out styles of clothes to wear I just wore whatever was in my drawer. I had no style sense whatsoever, I would wear green shirts with blue pants.
There were times at school, I would just be standing there, and suddenly some stupid ass jock I didn't even know would run into my back full speed to knock me down. I would always do my best to try and kick their asses then and there, which would end up with 4 guys jumping on me.
Sometimes the teachers would give me shit, "Toqer, why don't you just walk away?" Yeah thats it, just walk away, while they shout out insults to your back. Not fighting just shows them you're scared of them, which makes the bullying worse.
It's never stopped throughout my life. Even as an adult, I let people influence me because sometimes I feel inadequate when it comes to interpersonal matters. Am I inadequate? Or did outside influences keep me from developing what I needed in this area early in life?
I really blame my parents a lot. They couldn't get along with each other, they had a vicious divorce. Us kids were passed back and forth as messanger, "TELL YOUR FATHER HE'S A BUMB" "TELL YOUR MOTHER SHE'S A WHORE!" This was how I was taught to deal with the oppisite sex at 3-4 years of age.
I got lucky, I met a good woman who loves me and tries to remind me that I'm no longer there. Still though, all these scars have effected me in my adult life. I couldn't control my life as a kid, I just wished the jocks, teachers had the empathy to see that as well.
I clicked on the "being stuffed in a locker by the football team" in hopes of actually seeing someone being stuffed in a locker.
Quite the disappointment.
maybe the problem is you? ;)
No. Adults are just as cruel as children.
The difference? Adults can choose their environment... children can't.
In High School you are FORCED into closed spaces with people who you share nothing in common, day in and day out for weeks on end. Before them you may be asked to perform humilating tasks at which you are completely inept.
Compare this to adults who can at least choose their work environment (specializing to an area of likeminded folk) where you have some autonomy and privacy.
Also adults have rewards for excellence. If someone is a slouch and a social butterfly, they can be stuck in the same damn job for 40 years. If I decided to work my tail off I can advance in wage, privilege, work and retire at 50 with a fat package and a red Escalade. I can improve my social standing through money gained from hard work.
For kids no amount of showing off will get you out of work. Personally I've never understood this. If someone proves themselves, why can't they be given less mindless work? Instead you're stuck and any excellence is just "showing off"... and you are soon shown your place.
What is music when you despise all sound?
(comment (complain (format-p (web-site-p `(great-man-p `("Paul Graham")) (width-p (table-p 209)))) (convinient-p (unreadable-p `("VERY NARRAW!!!")))) (additional-facts ((modern-monitor (width-p 1024)) (girls (have-p `("MODERN MONITORS")) (read `("ARTICLES"))) (nerds (want ("GIRLS"))))) (conclusion `("NEVER PUBLISH ARTICLES IN SUCH A NARROW FORMAT! GIRLS CANNOT READ IT!" "UNLESS GIRLS WILL READ IT ON PALM PDA...")))
Less is more !
Ok, i kind of have a problem with this. If you were a nerd in school, its not because you were into computers or smarter than other ppl. its because of your social skills and the way you present yourself. if you are outgoig, have a personality and know how to make ppl feel good when talking to them then you are most likely going to be a well liked person or popular as others call it. you can totally be into computers and even install any distro you like, but you cant make that you life or your not going to come off as someone that ppl want to talk to. i for one was a well liked kind in school, went to a good private college and dont serve fries with anything. i was too small to play sports and most of my time right after school was devoted to what i like most(computers), but all of my friends were jocks and they too all went to good schools(Univeristy of Illinois, Purdue, and the like). ppl who didnt have a lot of friends in school and thus were classified as nerds was because they were not social ppl or ppl who were condescending. i know this because i have a little brother who was a nerd in h.s. because he was condescending to everyone around him. i dont like him for this and i would not be friends him if he acted like that towards me. dont take the easy route and say that you were a nerd or got picked on because you were smarter than other ppl. the reason why you were a nerd is because you are not someone that ppl want to be around, thats your fault, not ours. about the beating up thing, it never happened at my school, and i know this for a fact. if it did it was because of the kids that did hard drugs and thought they were cool. those are not popular kids and they probalby will serve you fries when you see them next. dont get assholes who think they are cool and those that have good personalities mixed up because noone wants to be an asshole. as i said earlier i was a popular and person had a gorgous girlfriend and was into computers, computers or being smart never stopped me from being popular. so flame away anyone who disagrees.
Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. In fact their primary purpose is to keep kids all locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done.
Sorry, I couldn't read beyond this absurd statement. Parents, if you truly believe that this is what's going on at your children's school, CHANGE SCHOOLS. There are schools where the teachers and administration are there because they believe that there are things children need to know and they want to teach them. And most of them are there not for the money (because the pay is lousy), but because they really believe in what they are doing. Not all of the schools where teaching (and learning) really occurs are free, but they are the ones worth paying for.
Don't mistake the results of a flawed system for the designed intent of the system. Even the worst schools weren't intended to be prisons. And even though the best schools still aren't perfect, important learning occurs there. This fatalistic attitude that "schools are prisons" is part of the reason public schools are getting worse, not better.
BSD is dying...
Let me start by openly admitting that I didn't read the entire article. Why not? Because it's very long and I have papers of my own to write. I'd rather take issue with this stereotype of nerds being pushed into lockers, and offer a different perspective.
I graduated from high school three years ago. I was, in many ways, the quintessential nerd and academic. Egotistical, into computers, lots of geeky friends, bookish...(my great love was, and is, military history). I cared not for my appearance. I ought to have been shoved into a locker. However, I also played football my freshman year. I'm no athelete, believe me. I'm not scrawny (5'11, 185 lbs), but I wasn't nearly as big as a defensive lineman needed to be. However, I did it anyway. And you know what, if you just toned down the geekishness and grunted a bit, those jocks were okay. They grew to respect the geek running alongside them, huffing and puffing his way through conditioning. I later worked with some of these guys in the same summer job or had the same classes, and we got along fine.
My point is this: we criticize the jocks for being in their own little world, but what the hell are we doing? Get out, mix a bit! Did I suck at football? Sure, probably as much as the quarterback would suck at network topology. Life's too short to be defined by a clique...
No statement is true, not even this one.
is that nerds try to go around talk about computer stuff to non-nerdish people and talk about it loudly when they are with another nerd. If you just shut up and talk about fast cars, women, and other things nerds AND normal people like, they will accept us. I think if you watch the snl sketch "Nick Burns, the company's computer guy" you will probably get a description of what most people think nerds are.
Support Objectivism and the United States,
Ayn Rand
(With selective memory) I can't remember nerds other than myself having a particularly hard time at my last high school. The year before me the highest scoring student was also the captain of the first fifteen (rugby team) and hence head-boy and popular. And the prettiest girl in the school asked me out (and paid for my ticket I think) to the school prom, but some people thought this might have been for a bet :-)
Strangely enough, I had more problems in my first year at university.
...yeah, sorry, I was Scholar Athlete of the year in my school Captain of the Scholars Bowl team and a big nerd. I was also voted class clown for my senior superlative. So, being well rounded is not an impossibilty
Being a nerd IS probably as bad as being a jock, or a motorhead, or what have you because you confine yourself to one discipline. Branch out in all areas in high school. It will help you greatly down the road as you move into adulthood. Well rounded multi-talented people can take whatever you throw at them. And they don't shy from new challenges.
So, spread your wings little nerdlets, you can acoomplish anything you choose. But whatever you do, do SOMETHING athletic. It can be very inspirational and leads to both a healthier mind and body.
"Because non-nerds don't waste time doing stupid things like this."
but id they spent the lunch time analyzing the last big game, that wouldn't be stupid?
the primary difference between a nerd and a geek is style. Geeks try to live to a style, nerds don't give a damn.
I am a Nerd. I am also happily married, have 2 wonderful children and get along fine with my nerd friends. My social skills are fine within my peer group.
You can go on and continue to do what people expect you to, I'll do what I enjoy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Half the replies on here are whining from folks about how "elitist" nerds are. NONE of you even think to ask how that attitude a) may have been adopted by nerds or b) if that's just yet-another social stigma populated by anti-nerds (ya know, like, way back in, like, high school?)
Nerds weren't just the smart guys who used computers. They were kids in band (yes, I was) or theater. They were ANYone who liked to learn, and not all of them were "unbathed savages" as one particular must-have-been-a-jock pointed out.
So many people on here are JUST like the adults of today: so EAGER to blame the problem on the victim. How many of you actually understand the point? How many of you went through the hell that is 7th, 8th, and 9th grade? No, the blame OBVIOUSLY must be that smart kids don't bathe. That's it.
News. I bathed, I wasn't particularly socially unsmart, I was actually somewhat big (180 in 9th grade, and that wasn't fat). But I got crap too. Sure, after 7th grade no one had any guts to actually fight me (it helps when you're four inches taller than everyone), but the hierarchy was clear. And I wasn't alone.
So, instead of modern day American society, where it must ALWAYS be the minority person's fault, or the woman's fault, etc., why don't we OWN UP to the problem and try to fix it, rather than shove it under the carpet and pretend it doesn't really happen like so many American adults of today?
Ciao!
I don't know where the author gets the idea that everything that happens in middle and high school gets tossed out once we enter "real life". This couldn't be further from the truth. Adolescence has a HUGE impact on where a young person fits into the social hierarchy of our society. Follow me for a second...
/.ers (and Dilbert) love to poke fun of? They've got power. They've found a niche. And that niche usually gets them just as far in life as studying advanced programming.
You know those pointy haired bosses
And how'd they get to be that way? By focusing their development on learning how to be charismatic, how to work the system.
Why do you think that so many "jocks" and "fratboys" become econ majors in college? Because they find it stimulating? Maybe, but more often than not they know that they need to leverage the assets they have: looks, charisma, personal networks... to find their niche.
Nerds: You'd do the same thing in their shoes.
In case you didn't notice, life is competitive.
Hi from one of your bullies.
Your self-delusion and arrogance are what cause people to beat up on you.
it's their fault for not being as smart as me - in a way I felt sorry for them;
I hope people continue beating you up for being such a prick.
It's not us nerds who have the problem - we use Linux because it's better.
Oh? You speak for all nerds. Right... I use FreeBSD, and I'm a nerd. I have never been beat up at school, because I'm not an arrogant asshole like you. I do have a girlfriend, and guess what? I didn't meet her at a LUG, she isn't even into computers. Maybe because I don't make my whole life revolve around my computer. There's nothing wrong with having a desire to learn about computers, but the second you start saying "I feel sorry for others who aren't as smart as me", you have ventured into what psychologists call "state of mind", which is the disconnect from reality that most geeks sadly live in.
Get in touch with reality, linux is not the end-all be-all of operating systems. It does some things well, some things poorly. The same is true for all operating systems. I know I'm coming off as a troll, but seriously. Read this through and think about it. No one likes an arrogant asshole.
I read most of this while snowed in the other day. I liked some of his ideas, especially about how nerds aren't popular because it takes too much work to be popular, but I wasn't necessarily convinced about any of them. It was filled with anecdotal evidence about his high school experiences and a makes assumptions as if the reader experienced similar social structures. The problem with anecdotal evidence is that it can always be combatted and to go on to make decisions based on that evidence can be wasteful or dangerous.
Popularity is about as subjective as you can get, despite his high school crew's attempts at measuring it via a lunch table scale. Decisions should be made based on an analysis of one case, which lends nicely to a single student having problems who can talk to a parent, teacher, older sibling, etc. If you can't talk to any of those, find someone.
By the way, where on the scale would you be if you sat in the library more than the lunch room?
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
Reading the article.. the man says, "When we were in junior high school, my friend Rich and I made a map of the school lunch tables according to popularity." Maybe nerds are unpopular cause they would take the time to make a stupid map like that.. if you are constantly concerned with popularity maybe that's your biggest problem.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
if you used half the time it took to make a pseudo code post to check spelling, you might have spelled a few words right.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Learn how to interact with people in a way that is pleasurable to them, and they will enjoy your company. It does not really matter what your IQ is. For example:
don't talk down to them
don't talk over their head
don't tell them things they do not want to know
do talk/ask about things they want to talk about
avoid being negative
be yourself, and be comfortable with yourself
I was with you until the last one.... how can I be myself without talking down to them and being negative?
Sorry, _am99_, I just couldn't resist that one.
maybe your HS wasn't like this but most are more like prisons then like the 'civil' world.
If you're at the bottom of the social structure in places like HS, prison, people can pick on you with no repercussions. So it's not always your fault. Someone has to be at the bottom. That's how those societies work.
I feel like the inverse of what Mr. Graham describes - back in high school (26 years ago) I was a popular kid who aced AP physics and math tests. Science and tech was fun, it rolled off the tongue without effort, but I really thrived on social interaction. School plays, music and girls, etc. Fast forward to college, MIT. I hated that place - not for the academics, which were more or less what I expected, but because I found the social environment so lacking. I felt alone and unwelcome - no less "smart", but definitely different from the MIT crowd. I got through the place by focusing on off-campus activities and work where I could find "normal" people with whom I could commiserate. After school, I didn't go straight into engineering (I was a EE major - course 6.1) because as a profession it appeared filled with those same "nerds" that made me so uncomfortable! So I did other things, some technically related and others not. I have done just fine. Now in my mid-forties, I certainly know myself better than I did as a young man and realize that we all have different areas of need and interest; ignore them at your peril. For me, I must rank social interactions above tech or I am unhappy, and that's fine. I make my living by understanding both and being very good as a liason between those two worlds. Now if only those nerds would let me out of this locker...
Any ape is stronger, faster and has better reflexes than the best human. Not a single one of them could write a compiler however.
I started high school pretty lonely then i made some friends that were like me, i am pretty sure that just being friendly and having a nice personality is all that it takes to be popular. Of course getting hot-headed about things is never good, but remember one thing : saying out loud what other thinks for themselves may draw attention on you, be it good or bad. Popularity is a matter of interest : The more people is interested in what you do the more popular you are going to be in this area if youre good at it. I used to start playing music in high school and it was the base of my popularity, once i stopped, less people were noticing me, because i started to suck at music.
Hmmm, it seems that I was even more of a lone person in HS than even a nerd. I was both a jock and a smart kid.
My first year of HS, I was pretty much what you would call the classic geek. I was interested in computers, Star Trek, didn't have a girlfriend, and was a member of the chess club. But I did play sports all year long: football, soccer, basketball, baseball and tennis. I was somewhat accepted by the jocks because I was a pretty good athlete, but they didn't know what to make of me because I sat at "that table" at lunch.
Aside from the JV sports, who were all underclassmen, all the other guys at school picked on me all the time. They teased me about my unpopular haircut, and wearing shorts that were too short for the current trends (in 1995).
My sophomore year, I decided that this was not how I wanted to live my life through High School. I was determined to find respect amongst the school population, especially the girls. So, I set out to do that. I figured that there was no way to convince people by being in a AP Chemistry as a 2nd year guy, so I had to become good at what the jocks were good at (the upper classmen who teased me). I worked my ass off that preceding summer getting physically ready for athletics. When fall rolled around, I grabbed a place on BOTH the football AND soccer varsity teams. This took the upperclass jocks as a bit of a suprise, particularly in the second week of school when I landed a starting postion as a midfielder for our soccer varsity team.. and subsequently displaced a rather jocky jock.
That eventually rolled into bigger and better things for me. With the acceptance of the jocks, the girls also followed, and life became MUCH easier for me.
But many might be thinking, "oh you bastard, you went to the dark side". Well I tell you, no. I stayed on the chess team, took AP classes, and still went to see the premere of ST: Generations opening night. But this presented a new challenge for me: maintain my new found status, while being true to my real friends: the geeks.
This was incredibly difficult. Who's lunch table to I sit at now? Where do I hang out after school? Am I supposed to pick on the geeks now? I don't want to. Things like this became more difficult to handle than being picked on by half a football team of jocks. Fortunately, I was able to find a happy medium in between.
I guess the moral of this little story is that:
If you want something in life, it is up to you, and only you to make it happen.
That's what I did, and it seemed to work. Yes, I liked sports unlike most geeks, but I did leverage it, and become an incredibly better athlete so that I would have something in common with the jocks so I could eventually meet my goals. (and mind you, I also was able to become friends with the goths, pot heads, skaters, hispanics, and all the other cliques because I wanted to. Upon graduation, I could sit at any lunch table I choose.)
If I had never gone after what I really wanted, I would have never gotten with the two most popular chicks at school, and still been able to debate calculus proofs with my geek friends.
Het, when I get ot of college, odds are there will be jobs of 50k and up just waiting for me
Either you've got the worst lag ever, or you're not aware that 1999 was four years ago. In either case, you might want to get a reality check.
I am not Herbert.
I wasn't exactly popular, and in fact was a pretty big-time nerd. However I still picked on the kids 'nerdier' than me because I was too immature and insecure and just plain ignorant to know what I was doing was the same exact thing that all the 'cool' people were doing to me.
That's it. Not missing out on 'prom night', not missing out on beer and sex and all that (which came in the dozens later). The only thing I look back on and regret are the few times when I snapped and put down people who I felt were even 'lower' than me. God, I hope they are kicking ass out in the real world and I hope they don't give me a second thought.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Excessive quotation from the television show "The Simpsons". While amusing the first couple re-runs, memorised and regurgitated script from a cartoon proves to be an incredible deterrant for normal people.
Worst. Post. Ever.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
I worked in Taiwan for a while. On one occasion myself and another Westerner were trying to explain to a local Taiwanese the meaning of the word 'nerd' (or was it 'geek'?). Anyway, it seems they just don't have that concept in their culture!
:-)
We started saying things along the lines of "...is really smart, does all his homework, doesn't play sport, may play a musical instrument, has glasses" - and the last point, particularly in an Asian context really served to narrow it down
The point is, in Taiwan these kinds of people are popular and looked up to, for their intelligence and ability - it's a refreshing cultural difference.
I was able to blend into almost any social group.. the unfortunate side effect of this: No one really notices me now.
When you blend into the background sometimes you get left there.
You can't be serious? They laughed in your face not because of what you knew, but because they didn't care. I used linux like every good geek should in highschool, but the reason I was friends with the "popular" kids is because I understood social dynamics and didn't bother broadcasting it. You weren't smarter, and obviously still aren't smarter than most of the "popular" kids. Your just another social retard.
because other things are popular. Look at what is popular. Things like actors, athletes, politicians (maybe). What is common with all of these things? They have an audience.
What is popular about being a Nerd? Are people going to applaud and jump when the nerd quickly traces down the erroneos off by 1 pointer atrithmatic error? I don't think so.
Now, why nerds are squashed by others?
Because nerds are a threat, because they are smart and because they tend to be intrinsically motivated (ie, doesn't follow the crowd). Nerds are not good followers, so leaders have to put them down so they are still "leading". A leader is any bozo that can get people to follow them. Look at politicians, they don't have an original idea about anything. Nerds are threats to these people, because they are in the know.
Example: JFK says lets go to the moon! Popularity goes up, for pres. Then its the nerds at NASA that come up with all of the reasons that we can't go to the moon. A list of priorities is made by said nerds. JFK states our priorities for getting people to the moon. JFK popularity goes up. Nerds fix problem & go to moon. One of the "greatest achievements" of mankind, and can you name a single nerd that helped?
Your right. Though I think people are more interested in getting on the internet than the cons of IIS and the pros of Apache. From the people I've talked to they use Windows because its what came with their machine, and would use Linux if it came with there machine. Though I have gotten laughed in my face because I use Linux, by those MCSE people(yes nerds vs nerd), though I got my revenge when Code Red hit and they didn't patch there workstations. I can tell you now that not one person in the building laughs at me anymore. I also at Steven's Institute of Tech, they made us take Gym. I was physically fit, but some of the other people I saw I would think haven't seen the light of day each and every day like myself. I wouldn't say I was subdivided in highschool or anything because I didn't obsess about computers and technology there. I did physical activities, and lifted weights to keep myself from becoming fat.
No, you were not unpopular because you were smarter than everyone else. If it makes you feel good to think that, then fine, keep lying to yourself. There were many other reasons... Maybe because you didn't try to be social, maybe you smelled funny, maybe you shunned things like physical activity all together, maybe you came to school each day looking like a dork. I don't know but there are thousands of reasons you may have been unpopular.
Slashdot and some of its readers seem to enjoy to perpetuate the myth that all athletes and popular people in high school are dumb while the unpopular people are for the most part misunderstood and are getting the short end of the stick.
Being liked isn't tough. For the most part if you just follow three rules you aren't going to be shunned.
1) Personal hygene. If you smell like feet, and your greasy hair doesn't look like it's been washed in days, people aren't going to like you. Shower daily. Wear deodorant. Brush your teeth. Comb your hair. Wear clean clothes.
2) At least try to be social. People don't like people who don't talk or won't look them in the eyes. Smile, say hi to people you may not even know. When you talk to someone look at them.
3) Maybe try to have similar intrests... If you shun everything most people like, you aren't going to have anything at all in common with anyone are you? I'm not saying you have to become a rabid sports fan, or become glued to watching whatever TV shows kids these days watched... But a little effort to have some of the same interests of your peers goes a long way.
These three rules not only work in high school they also work in real life.
The reason for the bullying in school as opposed to out in the "real world" has nothing to do with maturity. The reason bullying stops after people leave high school is that high school is the last place where you are actually forced to spend time with people you don't have anything in common with. After you "get out" you no longer have to spend time with people you don't like just because they are geographically nearby and living in the same school district. And it goes both ways - the bullies are no longer forced to spend time with the people they don't like, and so their anger toward these people fades too.
I suspect that if you took about 1,000 random adults, and forced them into a program where they have to spend 7 hours a day in the same building, doing the same activities with each other, for four years straight, that even among the "mature" adult population you'd see bullying problems resurface. And NO I'm not talking about working in an office or a factory, because that's not a random sampling of adults.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
this artical is exactly opposite of what my life is now (i'm in high school now) and i have plenty of girls who are my friends and there are a select few who make fun of me
but i'm bigger than them so they can't do any thing but say stupid things about me
that might be one realson why my popularity level is up becasue i'm a large guy
I was considered the smartest kid in my school (tiny, Iowa school) hands down. I got the crap kicked out of me constantly until 6th grade, when I started to learn how to fight back, after which, I won about 55% of my fights. Had it not been for my three older brothers (who also kicked the crap out of me, but didn't like others to do so), I probably would be dead by now.
;) ...
I got teased, harassed, and picked on because, among other things, my 4th generation hand-me-downs from my three brothers. All the other kids had expensive designer clothes, but my parents couldn't afford them, and wouldn't buy them for me if they did.
I came to associate the trendy fashions and fads with the people who harassed me, and peer pressure had nearly zero effect on my from about 7th grade on. For that reason, I never got into the heavy drinking that most of the kids did for diversion, and I spent my time playing computer games, and learning how to write my own games...
Today, I'm a successful software engineer. I'm going back for my 20th next year, and I'm sure the reaction of the crowd will be different, because we've (most of us) grown up, I'm successful, and I'm now 230 lbs and 6' 1"
Anyway, their picking on me made me an individual, free from the herd mentality. I'm glad it happened.
Dochood
Think "Office Space" and Tom's character. I work with the customers so the engineers don't have to.
I think that people have the cause and effect reversed here. Nerds aren't socially backwards and hated because they are smart, they become smart because they are socially backward and hated.
Or in other words, look at it this way. Everyone has to have something they can feel good about and base their self esteem on. People with athletic abilities take pride in their sports skills, charismastic people take pride in how good they are with people, how many friends they have etc. So what do socially challenged nerds take pride in and as a result constantly work at? Being smarter then the rest of them bastards!
Wow. Why do you post here and have a login?
Just thought i'd point that out to you.
Heh, I used to play footy at high school (Rugby League, not that girly US stuff where they wear body armour).
;)
;)
I decided that being an Athlete wasn't the best career choice when the captain of my footy team asked me how to spell "WHAT"...
I guess at my High School though, (Kedron State High - A public school that thought it was private) - Academic and creative talents were held in the same regard as sports (heck, most of the sports people were into the creative/academic programmes too).
For all those guys that have been given a hard time by those 'Jocks' - just remember that you're going to be at your peak when it really counts - Adulthood. You'll be the guys making the world happen =)
-- Dan =)
P.S. If there's any locker stuffing - don't remind them about how you'll be driving the European Sports car, Have an amazing Wife/Husband/Partner and live in Beautiful House... Wait until the 10 year reunion
..A total waste of words.This,in essence,is what I sifted from the article: Geeks===non-conformant Geeks==losers Geeks are a microcosm of the real world attitudes,while the non-geeks are blissfully ignorant. Peer pressure leads to do what we do. Just as a Geek wants to be a futbol player, A futbol player aspires to be a geek. So,there is no such thing as a geek===loser and futbol player===winner! As an aside,remember,there was a huge furore recently at Rice University,where the futbol players are regarded as the scum of the earth(In author's words--Geeks:-))
Just like you can't blame the Israelis for wanting to retaliate against Palestinian terror attacks. And just like you can't blame the Palestinians for wanting to retaliate against the Israelis who bulldoze their houses.
Right?
On the other hand, maybe the "He hit me first" excuse is bullshit.
I fit the nerd profile in HS, I hung out in the BBS's, tinkered with all things electronic I could find, went to space camp, read and read and read. Read the whole Dune series in one summer, and I had already read them all once before...really nerdy stuff. I was not once stuffed into a locker (ours were too small).
I was smarter than most of my classmates, but I knew that that fact didn't make me better than anyone else. My nerd friends got the crap kicked out of them frequently; they seriously believed that their intelligence made them superior to the jocks, I think that was the reason for the beatings. You can't hide that from people. And the popular kids/jocks aren't that stupid. Just like any other pecking order: If an underling seems to challenge someone above him, he is put back down. If he can't fight back, he remains down.
I wasn't popular, not by any stretch of the imagination. But I wasn't persecuted, either. I even seemed to garner enough respect to stop some of the persecution of my friends.
Of course, being a 6'2 freshman probably didn't hurt too much.....
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
From the article: Nor, as far as I can tell, is the problem so bad in most other countries....
It was the same in the UK when I was growing up. But there the class system makes a difference too. Public schools (which, ironically, and the type of schools in the UK that are not free) are not immune, but are somewhat less likely, to persecution of the smart kids. Regular secondary schools, however, sound about the same as the american schools talked about in the article.
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
It's a lengthy but engaging writeup of that chamber of horrors we call high school and why being smarter than the average bear is more of a liability than an asset during that stage in life.
No, this is why nerds aren't liked. For Christ's sake get over yourselves a bit, eh? Try and just get along with other people and understand them and work with them. Don't smugly assume just because you're a social recluse that you're "smarter than the average bear". Please. This is what puts those people there in the first place.
the primary difference between a nerd and a geek is style.
This is true - geeks have style, nerds don't.
Geeks try to live to a style, nerds don't give a damn.
No, nerds can't do something, so they resent those who can.
You can go on and continue to do what people expect you to, I'll do what I enjoy.
You're an idiot. See, I do what I enjoy too, and I'm able to interact with people outside my peer group.
Just because you're incapable of learning social skills doesn't mean that others are just as limited as you are.
OK I admit it, I am a nerd. And do you really think I give a shit?
I am the only person in the entire school (1200 people) to use Linux as my main desktop OS. I got a few other people into it but they at best dual boot. I am still the recognised Linux guy for the school (at least to those who know what linux is)
I am the server admin of the school forum server (running linux)
I think all your base is hilarious,
I can fix any computer, and enjoy calculus
I have bought my own computer, and spent another grand on programming books (continually learning new languages)
My friend made up his own dating system and I can tell you what Tuesday it is. (every day is Tuesday, except next millenium it will be Wednesday)
I exhibit very nerdly charectoristics and I DON"T CARE. I have a close circle of friends, say 5 or 6 people (hardcore computer nerds). And a very large circle of aquaintances (people who have some resemblance of a life outside computer related junk).
Popularity is such a relative thing that I don't even care. I got out of attempting to play that game a long time ago and have never looked back. I couldn't give a shit if a cheerleader thinks I am a geek. I really don't care what other people think of me. I am not depressed, I am not suicidal, those who do feel depressed because they are not one of the "popular" crowd are still trying to be one of them. It is much easier if you give up and be yourself.
Going out, getting drunk, and getting high really never appealed to me,
Room 112 at lunch (computer lab) at my school Is the best 72 minutes of my day. It is when I get to hear geeky jokes, it is when I get to play with computers, it is when I get to check Slashdot, configure a php server for a programming class, wallowing in my own geekyness
I am a nerd and proud of it.
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill
Then you will find that jock turned out to be: your lawyer, your judge (God forbid), your congresperson, your boss - in short America is, by and large, governed by these "jocks". I know because I went to my ten year high school reunion.
Oh and speaking of useless trivia, some of my buddies still know all 56 prepisitions in the english language we had to memorize in 5th grade (in alphabetical order). Talk about useless! At least it makes a good joke for my students.
"Before the law stands a doorkeeper, on guard" - Kafka
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
Just like any learned skill, such as coding, math, or other sciences, you have to put in as much time learning it in order to get tangible results. You can't expect to be a sauve debonair with the ladies if you have yet to get past, "Hello" or "Do you have the time?"
If geeks spent as much time hitting on girls and practicing their social skills as fraternity and sorority people, then maybe they wouldn't get beat up so much.
To sum up:
You are an idiot if you think that everyone is automatically interested in the same garbage as you are. Take any example topic that you are not interested in and there will be someone out there who would welcome the opportunity to run their mouth on it until you think your brain is going to explode. So instead of trying to relate everything to your own ego-centric view of reality try to find commonalities between yourself and others and work from there.
click for your free lapdance:
here
N-E-R-D otherwise known as The Neptunes...
has made me relatively ignorant of this "anti-nerd" phenomenom.
Heres why. I went to a High School in an exceptionally wealthy portion of CT. The overwhelming majority of students had profesional parents that worked at the top of their respective field. The result was a school in which education and learning was prized by all.
The breakdown between nerds, and those who were normal was based not on intelligence, but rather on an individuals ability to maintain a high GPA while getting stoned/drunk/sexed constantly.
The nerds were those who could not manage anything other then school work.
Conclusion: if you feel like a nerd, move to Fairfield County Ct, where the only things that matter to social acceptance are $ and IQ.
Sidenote: The football players were tolerated but not loved. This lead to some confusion on their part, as reality often conflicted with the movies. The result was occasional outbursts of extreme frustration and stupidity, usually involving rascist or anti semetic slurs.
Dream on.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Just to play a bit of devil's advocate, is it better to do the things you actually like, or socially whore yourself to be popular?
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
I find that singing the Minty Mints song under my breath helps my brain go into neutral, and everything turns out alright.
There's still far too much blaming of the victims going on in these replies. Tacitly implied in that stance is that underdeveloped or late-blooming social skills are justification for severe physical and mental abuse. That's crap.
Sure, maybe these days too many of us try to say that we were picked in because we were smart. Part of what the column said was that (and I paraphrase) people who spent their time studying, did not spent the necessary time learning the social skills required for the Secondary School Court. This doesn't mean that those who did this were necessarily smarter, just that they chose to study. The worst part is that at the time, it wasn't apparent that there was a choice.
Certainly there are some shining stars, some exceptional kids who were smart enough to master the academics, AND physically endowed and developed enough to master sports, and play the popularity game. It doesn't change the fact that late-bloomers, bookworms, and the unfamiliar are generally ostracized and persecuted in the name of popularity.
A counter-point that I can draw on in my own high-school (9-12) experience is the college-bound clique. This was a smart, studious group that was also very socially adept. I gained a lot of social training from this group, even though I was only a fringe member. Interestingly enough, their social status was based on the more adult values of education and erudition. Their social standing within the clique wouldn't have benefitted from the abuse of someone of lower station. I can't however provide any such experience from the abject hell-hole that was junior-high (7-9).
Aside from the generalization that geeks are necessarily smarter then the other groups, even on average, what he said was spot-on.
This is not a sig.
Why are Nerds unpopular?
I think I can answer that. I saw this episode of Star Trek once where Mr. Data....
(See number 2)
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
I do know that one of the thing that did help were the Advanced Placement classes. About junior year when college seemed more real, there was a little respect for people taking those classes. Things turned around a little then, but it wasn't till college that I started to enjoy school.
Interesting comentery though, we lock up our teenagers because we haven't figured out a way to make them econmically usable in society, and this is the result. Thats a tough one to solve.
BOFH, My model for being a sysadmin :)
People want to know what they want to know, not what YOU want them to know.
That is not a hatred of all knowledge. There is a difference.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Damnit! That's the last time I RTFA before posting.
>:(
Most people here don't read short articles, much less Paul Graham's normal-length articles. How many people are going to read all 7000 words of this one?
I would guess "pretty much none", and a quick glance at the comments shows that's about right.
The people who read long, well-thought-out articles like this one are the people who are going to find and read them, anyway. There's no point in putting up a headline for something that nobody is going to read, and then just guess at its contents.
Go back to reviewing video cards and Microsoft's latest crap.
I got all the information I needed from the title: Slashdot | Why Nerds Are Unpopular.
I cherish my elitist assholeness. I'm arrogant, and I know it. The trick is to not let all the little people know you're an arrogant, elitist asshole who secretly believes they are idiots (see MrEd's comments on social skills above).
It doesn't come natural, you know.
I think his point in the article was pretty accurate.
Summary for those who haven't read it: American public schools tend to be little more than prisons, with large classes and indifferent teachers, where the kids are more or less left alone to create their own sub-societies (with all the "Lord of the Flies" cruelty that ensues). The nerdy types aren't totally expending their efforts on popularity (unlike most others), so they end up on the bottom of the heap.
This describes the public junior high school I went to perfectly. Education was really a joke there; the main thing was to keep us little darlings under lock and key for some hours while our parents worked, and if we learned something, so much the better (if we didn't, oh well). I got pretty badly picked on, partly for nerdiness (I was taking college-level math at the time) and partly for just being very different (I had just moved from rural Virginia to urban Minnesota).
Before my 9th grade year, I toured the public high school that I was supposed to go to, and immediately my radar told me that I would probably not make it out of that place alive (or at least with all my bones intact). Football stuff everywhere, with glassy-eyed teachers who really didn't give a damn. The other school I could have gone to had just become the first in Minnesota with metal detectors and had a rep for open gang warfare.
I begged my parents to pay for a private school. Somehow, they scraped the money together through loands and so on. (Thank God for my parents.) The first I went to, a boarding school near my parents' home, was a disaster (buncha spoiled rich kids whose parents had dumped them there and never visited them -- Lord of the Flies, Mercedes Edition).
The next year I went to a small, recently founded K-12 private school, where my class was all of 25 students, and where the teachers were all basically rebels from another private school who where determined to make a better school. The kinds of things described in the article just didn't happen there -- the teachers actually gave a sh*t about us, and we didn't feel like we were in some kind of penal colony.
A lot of the reason the school was better was the small class size (harder to have a crushing pyramid hierarchy when you've only got a small number of students) and the teachers actually got involved like *teachers* and not *wardens*.
Another reason is we didn't have jocks. We didn't have a football team, though we did have soccer. And the school's pride and joy was its Quiz Bowl team (hey! I was on it! State Champs in 1989!). Those who had high SAT, PSAT and ACH scores were also publicly praised by the school director (who, by the way, spent lunchtime serving the students corn so he could personally chat with each and every one). So knowledge and nerdiness was actually rewarded, and there was actually positive contact between staff and students.
Sadly, since then the school has grown dramatically (their reputation spread like wildfire, and soon they had huge demand for the school), and the director retired, so I tend to wonder if it has fallen to the same problems as other large schools. But it can be done -- a school in America where nerds are actually valued. I just am very grateful my parents scraped together the money for the place -- otherwise I probably would have spent more time in lockers than in classrooms...
The school, by the way, was Mounds Park Academy, if anyone's interested.
At any rate, even though I tend to be leftish politically, I think the above is a pretty good argument for school vouchers. The public school system in America is so screwed that the only solution is to nuke it flat with vouchers, and let the parents and students sort it out through the market.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
The kids who were at the "D" table were simply the intellectually smart kids who either didn't have or hadn't developed the emotional side of their intelligence. There were plenty of smart kids who play football and sit at the A table. It's nice to think "We're just smarter," but it's just not the case.
Popularity in high school is based on having a high level of empathic awareness -- knowing what to say, or moreover, how what you say will be understood. This extends into the realm of behavior and dress -- you can have popular boys who are not handsome and unpopular girls who are pretty. The emotionally intelligent know what a certain type of dress, hairstyle and other cosmetic accessories will evoke in those they choose to evoke at--their "target audience," if you will.
Once you're into the real world, however, the measure of popularity suddenly becomes MORE than just emotional intelligence. The combination of emotional and intellectual intelligence is what contributes to how successful you might be. And in society at large, success=popularity. The rules change... That's why a lot of the popular jocks in high-school end up washing cars. They had high emotional intelligence but either didn't develop or didn't have an aptitude for intellectual thinking.
I was a nerd. I got picked on in high school. My horror story is when one of the class bullies wanted to copy my math paper when the teacher went out for a minute. He came up, grabbed my hair and ordered me to give him my paper. I sat silently refusing. He grabbed (and tore) the paper and took it back to his desk. This was 9th grade.
I was a nerd/geek. I would never hide it -- it's part of who I am. I've worked to develop my emotional side over the years. When I was young, I LOVED programming. I still do. I look at social interactions in much the same way -- and they are FAR more challenging than any code I've ever written.
Eventually, I became a successful programmer, manager and director. Last I heard, the guy who bullied me was working at a gas station. Seems like a fair deal to me.
On the other hand, maybe the "He hit me first" excuse is bullshit.
Oh, your post is, buddy.
First of all, situations like this hardly scale to the level of comparison you are describing here. If you want to add rationally to the discussion, please do. But to compare a nerd vs. jock rivalry with a life and death struggle which is largely founded on religion and politics is quite a joke.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
I'm 32 years old. I have more than once longed to explain to my people (the nerds currently suffering away at the D table) that they need only wait a little while.
You couldn't have been a bigger dork than me: a dreamy, introspective poetry freak with a penchant for computer games, D&D, and all the other stuff that goes along with geekdom.
I went off to college and discovered that all the things that had conspired to make me an outcast in college ended up making me (dare I say) attractive and popular (even with the girls, with whom I had been constitutionally incapable of having a conversation until I was about nineteen). I thought I had died and gone to heaven to suddenly find myself in a place where the members of the A table were dropping like flies and generally reviled by the much larger (and more powerful) group of smart, instrospective freaks who were all suddently blossoming into cultured, sensitive adults.
God, it sucked being in high school. It brings me nearly to tears thinking about it. But the fact is, all the things that make you unpopular then can at least make you comfortable in your own skin later on. I look at my beautiful wife, my incredibly fulfilling career, and think: Yes, the last, joyful laugh.
It was because I donned a Darth Vader mask and had sex on the moonbounce with the girlfriend of the biggest jock in the school.
Man, it was worth it.
Ok, I'll bite.
If I don't tell them things they do not want to know, and do talk/ask about things they want to talk about, how the hell am I supposed to be yourself, and be comfortable with yourself ?
Casca
This is how I felt yesterday: http://dmarien.com/?section=menuNews&sid=38 sometimes your flush, sometimes your bust.
dmarien
There's an interesting connection between nerds and punkrockers, both of which i was all through high school. Both suffer from social rejection, mainly for being different, but for also for holding an attitude of superiority( justified or not ). They tend to have closely knit groups in which features many different types of nerds or punks. Their social interaction revolved around the topics which define their group ( ex/ nerds talk about stark trek and DDR ram, punks talk about music and whether Jello Biafra should be president ). Regardless, almost every punk I know has also been a nerd at heart( a huge number love star wars for example) while most nerds I know they inevitably fall into the punk scence.
nerds saved punk for the current generation
punk saved nerds from being completely social rejects
This guy's argument is bullshit. Claiming that nerds are unpopular because they want to be smart is ridiculous. I was the perfect description of a nerd in early highschool. I sat with all the "nerds" and didn't dare approach the popular seats for fear of getting my ass kicked by a football player. Yet at the end of highschool, I was a two way starter on the football team and could sit where ever I wanted. I graduated with A's and 1380's SAT's. This is my point: there is no "Choice" neccesary. All that made the difference in my life was getting involved with other people, and not being scared of being publiclly ripped to shreds. After getting on the football team, I learned that half the kids on the team played chess, and there were alot of "nerds" on the football team, though when I was younger they all seemed like overgrown lumps of muscle who were idiots. I think its all a matter of prespective. If you avoid other people because you think they won't like you, you are sealing your own fate to feeling unaccpeted and miserable. I think thats a lesson most "nerds" need to learn. People, even kids in highschool are generally nice. (Certainly with some exceptions) And blaming a "nerds" unhappiness on the popularity of others is bullshit, when he/she needs to learn some social skills.
Sorry if you disagree, but I feel its a necessary side to portray.
Grass-roots web hosting.We are poor colleg
The article claims that social and professional hierarchies are benign as long as they are based on some "natural measure of performance."
IE, "When there is some real external test of skill, it isn't painful to be at the bottom of the hierarchy. A rookie on a football team doesn't resent the skill of the veteran.... And the veteran in turn will be kindly disposed to the rookie."
This is an incredibly simple-minded view since jealousy of others' abilities and achievements can just as easily lead to petty sniping and bullying. The reason that such behavior is less prevalent in adult life has to do with the circumspection and temperance that comes with age, and not because adult hierarchies are somehow more wholesome.
Your last bullet point is not funny at all.
How dare you suggest the deaths of the 15 or so people in Colorado were for fun and games.
You stupid idiot, I hope to god that you have not just given a distraught "nerd" any ideas.
To those distraught kids out there, don't worry. School doesn't last for ever. And when your out, you will be their boss!
..simply because having some snot-nosed freshman calling me a 'communist' because I was playing Tetris provided me with endless entertainment.
(Well, the fun 'thunk' of a freshman's head being smashed into a locker was fun, too.)
In Soviet Russia, people with Russian lineage bash you!
Being an asshole has never been a legal excuse for beating someone.
It's time that all of these teenagers, that will get tried as adults if they act out too much, start having adult standards applied to them.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Stolen from the <A Href="http://maddox.xmission.com/anime_nerd.html"> Greatest Website</A> in the universe
<br>
1. The "I wish I was Japanese" anime nerd:
Everyone knows someone like this. They refer to themselves as "otaku" and they embrace everything Japanese, not necessarily because it's something unique or interesting, but because it's Japanese. They wear clothing with Japanese or Chinese characters on it that translate to English phrases like "good will" or "long life." They wouldn't be able to get away with wearing a shirt that said "long life" in English because it would just look stupid, but as soon as it's translated into kanji it suddenly becomes cool and mysterious? Please. Since they'll sooner die than admit that their fascination with everything Japanese is a sham, you'll occasionally sense how uneasy they become when confronted with something Japanese that's so lame and obviously for little girls that they almost start to back off from the mountain of stupid they've climbed up on. Almost.
<br>
2. The balding gothic loser with an ugly girlfriend nerd:
This is a goth who's so much of a loser that he's even shunned by other goth losers. A telltale characteristic of this nerd is his inability to stop deep throating his ugly girlfriend in public. They not only kiss, but they kiss in the most vulgar way possible (full on tongue and groping). As if it wasn't bad enough that they're both kicking the funk, they usually sport massive pizza-face crater acne. Barf!
<br>
3. The big-titted lardass nerd:
If this type of nerd was a soup, he would be Campbell's: Thick and Chunky. Girls usually refer to this nerd as "a nice guy," and despite every girl's wish for a nice guy, they'd sooner be shot than date, let alone bang a guy like this. This type of nerd is usually very sensitive and introverted. You can get away with punching this nerd in the face because he's too much of a pussy to do anything about it. However, you can expect to find an entry about what an asshole you are in his blog several days later. And don't expect to be invited to any Magic: The Gathering parties he hosts any time soon.
<br>
4. The nerd leader:
This is the "cool" nerd of the group. The nerd all other nerds aspire to be. You can tell which one is the nerd leader by watching his posse swarm around his every move. No lesser nerd dares speak against the nerd leader's opinion on cartoons, sci-fi movies or debates about which Star Wars characters are able to defeat jedis "if only they learned to use the force." The nerd leader revels in being able to boss around all the other nerds and does so as often as he can to make up for his utter inability to boss anyone else around in his life. This nerd is usually tough shit until you point out the fact that he's 36 and still lives at home.
<br>
5. The "Silent Bob" trench coat mullet nerd:
Tries to look intimidating but ends up just looking stupid as he clumsily trips over his trench coat. Usually has shaving scars and a patchy, random-ass beard because he can't grow facial hair. Thinks he's the character "Silent Bob" from the movie Clerks. Pretends to be above it when other nerds laugh at nerd jokes, secretly goes home and cries himself to sleep.
Remember,democracy never lasts long.It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. John Adams (1814)
AND I'M A NERD!
I admit it.. So...
PS. Maybe it helped that I was adults champion in karate (kumite) too when I was 17... just maybe... ;)
Every time I read those stories, I have to wonder. Why didn't my high school have this sharp class division? The only reasons I can think of are:
1. We didn't have cheerleaders, because
2. We didn't have a football team, because
3. A school's task is not to foster a class of heroes-for-a-day, ruining their academic prospects in the process.
From the article: Being smart seems to make you unpopular.
I was the homecoming king in my highschool, a member of the student body as well as a starter on the waterpolo team. I sat in the 'A' tables, and my popularity was even larger than me.
I also tought myself Pascal and C when I was 14, reading textbooks on the pool deck during swim meets.
How come so many slashdotters assume that geek==social misfit. That's a stereotype that (while often true) bears no correlation.
You can be popular and be a geek. You can be female and be a geek. You can be a popular female and be a geek. Get over it.
I'm guessing the treatment of us nerds isn't as bad as it was many years ago. I don't get treated badly by anybody "popular". I do get harassed by people who think they are "popular", but they have the intelligence of drunken rabid wombats on crack, so it doesn't matter.
Some people could consider me popular, but I wouldn't. I'd consider myself to be average.
However, my parents insulated me from the world so much, my first year of high school was terrible. Sophomore year was better, much better, but my parents still peered around in my life, prevented me from hanging out with my friends, or even going to parties. And they know I wouldn't have gotten drunk or high...This year is even better, since I can actually drive, but, of course, I am still having no luck with the opposite sex. And my parents are still as overprotective...
I can't wait to go to Germany this summer and college in about a year.
Slashdot is a waste of time. I enjoy wasting time.
I was fat (still am a bit - working on it), that led to other kids picking on me, which in turn led me to seek the company of other things that would not critize me. That's how I found computers. Now I'm a computer nerd with thick glasses earning a lot of money writing PHP code while still 16 years old.
If they have connections and social skills, why the HELL are they wasting their time on CS. If you are so inclined, you can make MUCH more money in other fields... Like ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
i think the biggest problem is the growing trend of antiintellectualism in america. families are a great deal stronger in europe, as mentioned by the author, but americans _do_ have an inherent distaste towards smart people. many believe the only reason american culture has embraced einstein so much, for example, is the myth of him "being bad at math in school." sure, there are plenty of stupid geeks, called nerds, but at the same time, associating with someone "smart", esp someone dubbed "booksmart" is always considered degrading.
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
This is a very good paper. Very well written and in depth. , but even so this paper has shown me a perspective that has opened my eyes even more. He seems to have touched upon an even larger problem at the same time. The entire issue with popularity, education, bullying, hierarchy, etc. is something that will forever shape America. If this paper doesn't do a good job of showing how big the problem is, then what will?
Question everything.
...please MOD this parent up.
Being smart doesn't make you unpopular in school. I knew plenty of popular smart kids in high school. What makes you unpopular is not wearing the in-clothes, looking akward or having no social skills. It's about being obsessed with computers or Star Trek. It has nothing to do with intelligence.
"Nerds" like to make themselves feel better by telling themselves that they are just smarter than everyone else and that's why they can't get a girl or everyone hates them. You know what? Get over yourself.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Marge, try to understand. There are two kinds of college students: jocks and nerds. As a jock, it is my duty to give nerds a hard time.
If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten. -George Carlin
You're an idiot.
Why the hostility to people who act like you yourself used to? Look, if you still hate the person you used to be, then that's your problem. No reason to take it out on others by calling them juvenile names.
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
In fact, not to make any accusations, but I can't think of anyone I know who would choose to return to a retail gig
Most everyone would agree that to shoot someone in cold blood is murder. Now, how about if that person had a gun leveled in your direction with an intent to kill you? What about if he shot you in the arm? Would your shooting him be murder now? No, it would be self defense.
You are naive to think that every action should be judged the same regardless of the motivations behind it. Psychology does not work that way; the law doesn't work that way; society as a whole doesn't work that way.
Perhaps you should think the subject through before using cliches to justify your point.
Overrated Moderation: This posts sucks... because.
Nerds aren't smarter, thats BS. Do you people know anyone in any profession that are more clueless about economics?
For christ sake 9 out of 10 IT companies are heading towards bancruptcy at the speed of light (swedish figures but it's likely the same over the globe).
I can't believe this made Slashdot, I really can't belive it. Well, now that I think about it, I can belive it. I'm just dissapointed.
I saw the article on another site, metafilter, I think. and I thought it was idiotic. Basically a winy "People didn't like me because I wasn't smart." rant, with absolutely no scientific grounding whatsoever.
Really, it's just excuse making. "nerds" don't want to believe they aren't popular because they lack social skills, but because they are feared for their intelligence.
It's just not true, there are smart people who are social, and *ghasp* there are smart people who play sports, believe it or not. There were also outcasts who were idiots.
I have a simple rule that applies to just about any kind of argument, especially sociological things like this. Show me real data, or shut the fuck up. An anecdote from a biased, self-serving viewpoint is not data.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Intelligence has nothing to do with being unpopular. It has to do with the fact you're socially inept. If you're getting beat up it's because you're an ass. Blaming it on your "intelligence" is just the common excuse to try to justify your unpopular behavior.
I had the gall to make fun of our sucky football team in front of one of the players. He looked at me and goes "Because I respect you, I'm just going to give you a 'get out of death free' card." I never made fun of the football team again and I never needed to cash in my card. I was blatently into computer programming all through school from 7th grade on and never got beat up because of it. I even worked on my stuff during classes. The only time I had issues with people was when I said something obnoxious.
I've found that the kids who are the most unpopular are those who bitch all the time and those who are arrogent; about how smart they are or otherwise. Nobody wants to be around people who constantly bitch. People don't like to be depressed believe it or not and making people depressed is not going to win you friends. This may also shock you but people also really don't care to hear how great your grades are.
One of the most popular kids in my old school from 7th to 9th grade was/is pretty much a genius and everyone respected him for it because he was/is also a very nice person.
People don't hate you because you're smart. They hate/don't give a rip about you because you're socially inept and beat you up because you're an asshole. The sooner you can to terms with that fact the sooner you can correct your problems and be a lot happier. People don't care how smart you are. They care that you can entertain them.
Not everyone who is picked on is smart. The most picked on kid during my junior high years was by no means exceptionally intelligent. I've also found that the most popular people are often very intelligent.
This article is just a perpetuation of stereotypes and it's not shocking that the person who wrote it had a tough life. "Why's everybody always picking on me?" I think is a very appropriate summary of that article. The person doesn't have a clue and nobody cares to talk to him long enough to clue him in.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Well, one of my old schools http://www.yatsen.school.fj/ seems quite proud of its maths team. It was OK there, though when I was there the class size was 50. And I was rubbish at learning Chinese.
So, of course, I was a multimillionare before I was 40, and speak to my parents once a year.
Never realized there were so many bullies here.
/.'s friend/foe system, but that it never really came into the open due to not enough people using it...
Now I can go and mark them all as foe, while all the fellow nerds will become friends.
A lot of the other nerds will be doing the same; and then we can really see the power in these webs of interconnectedness. I've always thought there was a lot of potential in
I don't think being smart and getting good grades in school are really mutually inclusive. The way the school system works, you can get good grades just by working hard and having a good memory for example, you don't really need to be all that smart. OTOH, smart people don't have to be all that interested in studying or even necessarily good at it. I personally partially lost interest at some point in senior high (the equivalent of it here) and junior high wasn't challenging or interesting at all.
:)
I agree that we shouldn't be so self-centered as to think we are the smart ones and be so quick to classify people as intelligent and dumb. I should know as to a certain degree I used to think that way back in high school but while not everyone who is "smart" is bound to be a nerd and unpopular, I do think that Paul Graham's observations do have some value.
I was unpopular back in high school, a nerd (still am I guess, but definitely not the same kind of nerd). I can think of at least one reason for it.
I didn't really care about what I looked like. I had many interests and used to think it was not important. I just wore what I had and didn't go into shopping sprees to find cool clothes. Nerds usually have glasses too, I don't think it's because they've looked at the screen too much. They just don't look good and that is not good for popularity. Only later did I start to realize that I needed to dress well in order to gain more acceptance but it was too late then. Many nerds and other individuals concerned with everything else but how they look also do this in their adolescence too, of course. But as Graham points out, it isn't really a problem anymore. My father was one of those people, however, and my lack of interest possibly was partly due to him as well.
I've decided that I will try to dress my children better and educate them about it when they reach that part of their life. Probably not the most important thing on your checklist for raising children but something I'd like to get right for my offspring.
Naa, this is just sweet revenge for years of torment. I love coming back to my hometown on vacation from my high-paying job and seeing the assholes who used to pick on me still working retail over at Sears. It's just, somehow.
I don't feel that way about the ones who didn't pick on me and are still stuck waiting tables - I'm friends with those folks.
I was not a nerd or geek but I was unpopular. Dont know what is wrong?
Tat Tvam Asi
I am a Nerd! Come on and say it we are NERDS!
A great movie once said, nerds are the people that are different, different enough to not fit the norm, everyone of us is a nerd, just some show it more than others.
Myself, I was born different. Physical defects albeit slight, always visable to the youth amongst us.
While other kids grew up playing ball, I was sitting in a hospital reading books and learning, because it separated me from my physical pain. So when school started from me, my physical and educational differences separated me too far from the pack
This is not bad! It is a part of what makes us different. During my school years did I like the ridicule? Did I like the beatings?
The answer is no. Did I let it stop me from helping out the others? Being charismatic in school, being active in the community during school? Being respected in the school? No!
Each challenge issued was a new force to reconcile. Find out what those that torture you need, miss, or percieve as the reason of ridicule. Address them. Not as an adult, but in your youth.
The jocks see you not playing sports, join them, make them know you as a person, share some of their pleasures. The popular folks, don't know you, be active in the community, approach them, understand them and sell yourself. You will grow for what you try.
People remember people that have a name and they can relate too. People will torment those that remain victims. You can stop being a victim and take care of your life.
If you don't try, only you suffer.
Remember in the words of Friedrich Nietzche.
Was machet mir nicht umbringt, macht mir starker.
Gator/Claria is Spyware.
I doubt this will ever get read but I had to throw in my 2 cents. Where does it say that if you are technicaly proficient that you must be a nerd ? I might consider myself a geek, but I am not a nerd. I work as a Systems Engineer, make good cash, and yes I was a JOCK in high school. Grow up people !
There's no reason to be proud of sitting at the "D" table, but if you did, it's your own fault.
I went to a small high school with a small contingent of "bullies" or "jocks" but of course in High School there were the usual cliques. Still, quite a few people managed to play a ton of sports, take a shitload of tough IB courses (IB is like the AP, but in Europe), and perform in bunch of extra-curricular activities. They were all the more popular for it. Of course they got good SAT scores and went to kickass universities.
A lot of it has to do with the parenting. If you were a socially inept geek/nerd, I believe in large part your parents didn't get you to interact with others very much while you were growing up. That's a crucial part of maturing into a well-balanced individual.
If the geeks made a bigger effort to blend in with the cool people, it would certainly be reciprocated -- you could make some friends among the "popular" guys/gals, and everybody would benefit; you from their popularity, they from your intelligence.
One thing parents have to do is get their kids involved in sports -- no matter how geeky you are, there's gotta be some game you're willing to play (aside from computer games or chess).
As for jocks going on to getting flip-burger type jobs, that isn't necessarily true. I know a bunch of kids from my high school who were bona-fide jocks and academic losers who in the end shaped up to managerial positions and some even became doctors or lawyers. Some people are just late bloomers intellectually (I think *most* people are in that category, actually).
I haven't read the whole article as it was quite lengthy, but one thing strikes me. Even the nerds themselves put the Footballers into the A category. Why? What was it about them that invoked the envy? WHy were the nerds not content with themselves?
I also think that smartness is not the issue, as I recall several smart people who were popular.
I loved to learn, but I hated school. School seemed to be more about a social pissing contest than about learning anything meaningful. Inspiring teachers were few and far between, and I just didn't see the point of it all.
Now I'm older (and hopefully wiser) and I think I can help out some of my younger brethren. This is the advice I give to anyone who is struggling in school:
Schrödinger's cat is not amused—maybe.
My definition of a nerd is someone who has the ability to keep concentrated at [whatever] for longer times. I've seen computer nerds, psychology nerds, glider pilot nerds, art nerds, etc.
Because computers are hard to understand, for many people, computer nerds are not understood. A psychology nerd however is of course very nice and empathetic. Not. They think they are. During conversation the other party can understand what they are talking about so fewer damage is done.
One problem I think many nerds have is that they don't generalize their skills. Managing a powerfull tool, like deep concentration and intelligence combined is, is an art. That is something to be trained.
I don't mind being able to "nerd". I can snap out of it now but I don't always want to. I know what I can do with my skills now (but it took an awfull amount of time and trianing).
nosig today
I found this point interesting, but still somewhat lacking. Certainly popularity can take a lot of work, especially since a lot of it involves conformity -- doing and saying all the "in" things, keeping up with the trends, always being aware of how you appear to others. But I think there's a bit more to it than that. If you think differently, it's a lot more work to conform, since conformity means turning off your natural ideas and just following the trends rather than your own reactions. It's amazing how much effort it takes not to think, or at least to react as though you don't have a mind of your own.
Geeks/nerds are not really outside this. Even among fellow geeks I can be an outcast due to not caring any more about what tech toys or games are "in" now (yet here I am on slashdot, go figure) than I did about what clothes and music were "in" when I was in junior high. I discovered quite early that I was too far out of the loop to even credibly fake interest in the trends of the moment, and that was that.
I do agree with the author's point that kids might not be as involved with popularity if they had something else to do. Though given how much he blamed it on life in the suburbs, I half expected him to start quoting Rush.
I'm a CS major. We're all geeks, in one way or another, in this major. The "stuffed-in-the-locker" geeks, though, are the ones who never let up, even when they're wrong. The ones with ridiculously unfunny comments at innappropriate times in class. The ones who fucking INSIST on using a laptop or handheld to take notes on, even though they're taking notes many times slower. These are the whiny fucks the world can do without. The prima-donna for no reason shits that can't code their way out of a freshman bubble sort assignment in Pascal, but who drop enough acronyms in a sentence to sound knowledgable. These are the wanna-be geeks, forever destined to the same position after college, because in the real world of software development, no one will put up with their useless shit.
That's the truth. If you don't like it, then you're one of the annoying geeks. Please grab the seat in the very back of class, stop clacking on the keyboard, and shut the fuck up. Or college is going to be just as painful as high school, you goddamn geek.
FTA: Nerds don't realize this. They don't realize that it takes work to be popular.
Interesting point of view.
If this is the case, I have to wonder if nerds have a more difficult time at it because it's something far more abstract and socially oriented than the "traditional" strengths of nerds: "hard" subjects like science/math/computers/etc. I can accept the theory that it takes work to be popular in high school (perhaps you can coast a bit when you're at the top). But what if I realized that I'm probably smarter than X% of the students, but I can't figure out how to be popular? Suddenly I have an incredible mental boundary. Popularity often defies traditional logic... it would be difficult for a nerd to understand why all these other subjects (math/science/etc) come so easily to him/her yet popularity remains so elusive.
I know that in high school I did very little actual school work; most of the subject matter was easy for me and I could do well at it with minimal application of work. But popularity was a whole different ballgame; if I cared enough to apply myself I would have found that my normal levels of effort required for success would've fallen rediculously short.
He really misses the boat on hormones...
Shakespeare wrote a decent play about 400 years ago about a couple of hormone-crazed teenagers who couldn't see the big picture and committed suicide.
[TMB]
"I was bullied pretty badly at school for exactly this sort of thing, but I realised that it's not my fault, it's their fault for not being as smart as me - in a way I felt sorry for them;" An attitude like that and you wonder why you were bullied?
I've seen better nerds at the dick of a goat.
If no one else will help you, you need to help yourself. If you don't you're responsible. This is not to say that you're 'culpable' or should be punished, only a recognition of the fact that you should have tried to stop it. Bitching about everything and saying that they all hated you because you were stupid is not going to help anything, and it's probably not even correct.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Half the replies on here are whining from folks about how "elitist" nerds are. NONE of you even think to ask how that attitude a) may have been adopted by nerds or b) if that's just yet-another social stigma populated by anti-nerds (ya know, like, way back in, like, high school?)
I'm glad that someone pointed this out. Most nerds in my school did not lord their supposedly superior intellect over everyone else. No, they actually took pains not to draw attention to themselves. Sure, eventually most nerds came to the conclusion that they were smarter than those who beat them up but that is definitely a defense mechanism. No one likes to think they are pathetic. It's a natural instinct to assume that something is wrong with your attackers.
The elitist mentality that one finds in nerds is usually (a) hidden from view and (b) a response to bullying rather than a cause.
GMD
watch this
1. People in the mid-popularity range pick on whoever seems to be an easy target.
... so, what have we learned today? That people like to bitch and moan! People feel trapped in their lives and feel they can do nothing to help themselves! Other people can be real assholes at times!
2. People who are cerebral and don't participate much in the sham that is high school society wind up to be easy targets. It gets better later on... you won't get beat up anymore, you'll just have your VCR stolen, your wallet pickpocketed, or your car jacked...
3. High school is an institutionalized teenager prison. Innocent until proven 18.
4. Geeks are highly pretentious because they know they're smart (even if they're not) making them not only morally superior but also intellectually superior - meaning society needs them more and will reward them more later on. (is this true? haha, only when it's convenient for The Man to have you around...)
5. Geeks can't wait until all the popular kids are working at McDonalds one day...
We clarified in the article that, in fact, the most popular kids have no interest in torturing others for fun and social gain; this is the domain of the middle crowd. So, in fact, this is not due revenge, but blind jealousy. Also, since the end of the tech boom, geeks have been picking up spatula duty as well...
6. Teenagers are not inherently depressed, they're just bored and imprisoned by society. As opposed to all the grown-ups who became office workers...
Yes, the article hits a nerve, but the comments here make me realize that it was written to do that. And somehow that'll make someone money, so I don't put 100% philosophical value in articles written to hit a nerve.
Someone wake me up when they write an article that says how we can move past the bullshit. This is just preaching to the choir.
Is it me? or does American schools sound a lot worse than British school? I mean, sure we have the usual bullies and the "townies"/"rude boys" whatever are just plain fuckers, but sounds like we don't have such large seperations between students. Could this be due to the fact we all have to wear the same uniform? We have the popular kids, the geeks etc, but because we were in uniform, it put everyone on the same level. Now in 6th form, we get to wear our own clothes, we get a whole variety of people/cultures that I've never noticed before in my classmates. I don't think by being a geek necessarily correlates into being unpopular - as (self advertising here) - in my group of friends we are popular (more or less..perhaps the B table refered in the article), we have a respected band, we are known by all the popular people (skaters and the trendies) and yet we are total geeks. Ok, admittedly, arty geeks, but geeks nevertheless. Well, that was my rant... anyone else with a thought on the British school system?
Fight Crime - Shoot Back!
Yes, stand up and say "they stuffed me into a locker because of me." If you were smarter it would not have happened. If you don't beleive me, you are still not smart enough.
Chances are, you're making double what they're making by the time you're 25
Or, they could be making double what you do, and working a quarter of the hours because they went into management.
if not all of his points. I think "smart people" are "unpopular" because they realize how unimportant "popularity" is. I think intelligent people see through the illusions of popularity, idolism of movie and rock stars, and pop culture in general, and are more prone to simply being themselves because it is the only logical thing to do (since you can't be someone else.) Most "popular" people are nothing more than followers of the trend. The rare few are the "trendsetters" and lead the flock with charisma or raw good looks. I've known many "popular" people who were far from average intelligence, but they are not the norm for high-IQ types. I mean, if you are a "nerd" try to imagine what you would have to do to be "popular" -- listen to the right music of your clique, wear only clothes of brands a through f, keep up on trendy catch-phrases. I can understand the lure of those with athletic ability and why they would be popular, yet "nerds" -- or at least myself -- know that such ability is meaningless in the modern world, other than to prove your superiority over others -- which again to most of higher intelligence is meaningless, since there is "always a bigger fish" and we are well aware of that. I think nerds are what they are because they are too smart to buy into and follow along with a culture of mindless sheep, which is what 90% of american people are. We refuse to be drones, to be statistics, to be so easily classified -- not that we really escape it moreso than anyone else does. Though, I have noticed of late that geeks often start their own little clique's online, where if you don't know x languages and dual boot linux, then man you just are not cool... ;)
"Eagles may soar, but Weasel's don't get sucked into Jet Engines!"
1. Nerds aren't always as unpopular as they think they are. In high school, I was conviced that I was a ridiculously inept and disgusting creature who no girl in their right mind would ever look at, much less date. Looking back on my experience, my lack of popularity had far more to do with this perception than any external stigma. I'm pretty sure, in fact, that a number of the popular girls would have been happy to date me if I hadn't been so hung up on my unpopularity.
2. I don't know where the author of this essay went to school, but it sure wasn't my high school. I'm working on a PhD in hydrology/climatology right now and I use stuff that I learned in high school all the time. Even at the time, most of my classes seemed at least somewhat relevant. My high school calculus class is still one of the 4 or 5 most useful classes I've ever taken.
In any case, I guess Paul Graham's experience just wasn't anything like my own. Some of his points are certainly valid, but many seem to be based on stereotypes that are certainly not universal in time or in space.
But I digress. It's great to see Paul Graham get some SplashDrop love as well. That man is a shining, twitching God.
Yours,
eSolutions
What if "being yourself" negates all of the other directives.
This can be especially aggravating when "sharing the knowledge" is a best practice.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Nice job quoting Saturday Night Live in your signature, chief. I'm sure that's a real hit with the ladies. I seriously doubt he owns fatwallet though.
There is nothing to brag about in claiming to be "hard" Because once you become hard you cant go back, you cant feel emotion anymore the harder you get.
What is the benefit to being hard when it comes time to be soft, such as when raising your kids, dealing with your friends and family, or raising your kids but you forget how to feel anything because you were too busy trying to be hard to remember how to be soft?
Its true, I did escape into video games and computers, if i did not I'd be lost like the rest of these people who live in the real world until the real world makes them cold like walking dead.
Whats the point?
Pretty soon they are really cut off from the pack with just a few other zealot nerd friends. They probably are even being friendly in a classical sense. If they are nerds they probably spend their time arguing with one another. The difference is the pack is not real friends, just people who dont give a shit/fuck/damn about you. They only hang around you because you have something to offer them, maybe you entertain them, maybe you have money, maybe you have a sense of humor, but these people wont be there for you when you have your down times which every human has. When your life isnt going well and you need someone to talk to, these people wont listen, they will drop you and turn on you in an instant.
I've been popular for a while and it was fun at first until they all turned on me. Popular sucks because they arent really your friends, so its smart to be introverted growing up when everyone around you is ignorant.
Zealots tend to only take care of one thing or a couple of things in their life with any real devotion. Everything else suffers. They often aren't in shape, can't hold a good conversation, can't pick up the girls, won't take time to develop common interests to bullshit with the rest of the pack. Nerds (zealots) are rebels. I like rebels.
The world does not give a damn about how well rounded you are, the economy does not give a shit about how well you pick up women, the only thing which society cares about is what you can offer it, and these well rounded people have nothing to offer. So what you can talk to women better than me, you are maybe more atheletic, and? This doesnt help you because eventually you will grow old, and your job at the gas station or mc donalds will not help you raise your children.
The key to success in this world is to focus on something. Often "Zealots" focus on something and are considered a genius but its only because these well rounded people dont focus on anything which makes them well rounded.
I could have had social skills, will it help me get women? Not really, you wont find a wife with social skills alone, the Macho Atheletes get women in highschool sure, but it ends there, it is the nerds who have women around them from College and on.
Even though I get attention from women, I dont know if its because they think I'm attractive or they think I have potential to be successful because they feel I'm smart, I ignore most women due to the fact that they usually have motives which arent pure.
If a woman approaches me, becomes my friend, and likes me for me, thats the woman I pay attention to.
The woman who sees me and thinks I'm hot, the woman who thinks I'm very smart, but does not really want to know anything about me on a personal level, those women I ignore,, although I might have sex with them a couple of times first.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
. . .that smart kids have:
1. A more detailed perception of the delicacy of human interactions
2. Are more reflective and self-critical
3. Have a greater understanding of the long-term consequences of their actions.
Therefore with a single statement made to a member of the opposite sex -- let's say "Your eyes look like they have iron sulfide inclusions," they are immediately able to tell that:
1. The person had no idea what you were talking about.
2. The person now thinks your a freak.
3. The person is now going to tell everyone else what a complete freak you are, and you'll never have a date as long as you live.
Fortunately, despite their intellegence, smart kids are often wrong on all three counts.
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
If these people are beating you up, why not press charges? Sue them, or the school?
I mean, at some point you have to take some responsibility for your life.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I was by far the smartest person in my high school (now I have a Ph.D. in mathematics). I wasn't a nerd though, and none of the nerds even approached my intellectual capacity. For the most part they were just stupid AND ugly.
All is Number -Pythagoras.
Read a couple flame wars between condescending Linux / Mac / Windows geeks and the answer will become obvious pretty quickly.
One word: Intolerance.
It's interesting that the author notes that this phenomenon is not found (at least not in the same intensity) in most other countries.
/., right?) -- maybe I didn't want to believe or admit that at the time, but still I was friends with pretty much everyone in my class and with most people in my grade. One of the guys in the latter years that was friends with everyone in the class was the one with the higher notes, too.
From my own experience, I can tell you that, in my country of origin (or, at least, in the slice of society I was immersed in) we, first of all, didn't have this "being popular" thing, at least not in the same way as in US high schools. Sure, some people had a reasonable number of friends, some people seemed to be friends with everyone, and there were the kids who only had 2 to 4 other friends, but they were not necessarily nerds in the US sense of the word, they were more like socially inept people (there was a guy in my class that was in the school from the first year (i.e., ~6/7 year old) to the last one (~17/18) and, at least in the last few years, which was when I was in that school, only had 3 friends). There wasn't THE guy and THE girl who were THE populars (like, in the US, typically, the stars of the football and cheerleading groups*), there wasn't an attriction or conflict between different groups based on popularity. Good looks counted, but that was only in the male-female dynamics. Good-looking guys were "popular" with the girls, and the hot girls were, of course, arrogant.
Some of the "popular" people were very intelligent -- without necessarily being nerds. I think I'd probably consider myself a nerd at the time (I know I am now -- I'm posting to
* -> This may have to do with the cult of personality, the things we see in the USian movies (which I have never experienced first-hand, so I don't know how accurate they are) like the homecoming queen or whatever that is, the star of the football team, the King and Queen of the prom (I don't know, maybe some of these are overlapping or they are all the same thing).
I don't know, I kinda lost track here and wasn't really able to explain accurately how this is different, but the point is, it seems to be a tipically United-Statian phenomenon, and one which, I believe, for people from other societies, seems pretty stupid (at least it does to me, sorry for being honest).
This article is 120 paragraphs long. Yet, somehow there are7 +5 posts submitted within 12 minutes of the article getting posted.
It was clear clear from the content of the posts that none of the posters, or the moderators had read the article.
Post without reading if you want, but please don't moderate.
Anyone ever really think of why this is? Could it be simply because they're different? Because they don't share the same common ground with the majority of their peers. Because most of them whine about their situation, or hide behind a limp mask of superiority. Guess what, the bullshit doesn't end at college? People don't suddenly start flocking around the geeks and realize that they're some kind of second coming...
They HAVE to associate with them. They have jobs. They have social circles. They realize that all good machines need a little oil to keep turning smoothly. You can't beat the hell out of that sneering little prick in accounting or you might be fired....or even worse he'll screw up your budgeting nexst year. Being civil to that self aggrandizing fat fsck in IT...it won't really hurt your job, but he might give a little bit more attention to that damned TPS report reformatting that you requested two quarters ago....
Nothing changes.....kids are just a little less elegant/delicate about how they develop socially.
Grab some guns, some trenchcoats, put together some explosives, and fix your situation Doom-style. If you can't beat 'em - shoot 'em.
Flamebait? What???
Really?? Maybe by the time they're 45. No one's in management by 25.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
I couldn't have said it better myself. I'm in awe that these two unpopular students (though not nerds in the strict sense) struck back and dealt a severe blow to the jock mentality: push us far enough and we'll strike back. Less deadly means would have been better, but now maybe jocks will think twice. Yes, it's terrible and all that, but how less terrible is the torment some people suffer at the hands of popular students?
Now I'm starting to believe that there's a flip side to that coin -- sleezy little weasles with scripts that scan every thread for speling or grammar misteaks so they can poke people in they eye.
I don't think being smart makes you a nerd or vice versa. That's bull. Personally, I think your social demeanor is all that matters. If you don't "fit in" socially (youre inverted, shy, etc) and don't spend alot of time with peers, then you will probably spend alot of your time "selfishly" (in a non-derogatory way). You'll probably read alot more, be more inclined to make an effort in class, be less likely to catch on to trends like clothes and music, and do things that please family (like get good grades, because hey, you have no friends to impress!).
Me and my friends were in a social group between the preppies and the smart people. We were all smart (ie, most on honor roll), funny (ie, smart-assed), and quick-witted. It was great because we were socially cool yet still liked by teachers.
It's food for thought for those of us who've already been there, done that and been stuffed into lockers by the football team and it should give some hope to those who are going through it right now.
You forgot the Oxford comma after "done that."
Coach Harris: "You just got your asses WHIPPED by a bunch of goddamn nerds!....NERDS!"
Chris
To bring out the trolls.
There's a stunning portion of us (~17%) that have some type of abnormal psych disorder. Some, not all, of these disorders compell people to detach from the rest of the outside world, either out of complete ahedonic lack of interest in other people or anxiety-stemmed social phobia. My theory is that these people, the folks with the negative (not manic) symptoms, have a lot more time to kill because they're simply not doing stuff out of depression and thus have nothing much to do but watch TV or sit in front of a computer. The other group that have subdued social phobia symptoms obviously find it easier to use chatrooms and other Internet forums for socializing. These aren't necessary the ones that are the culprit disorders in my hypothesis, but FYI some of these personality disorders include paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal (those are NOT schizophrenia), borderline, antisocial, histrionic, narcissistic, avoidant, dependent, etc.
Also, there are higher rates of association of sociopathological disorders with major psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia and manic depression, and to throw one stat at you, roughly one in 33 of us are bipolar. Most of the bipolars have the type (bipolar type 2) that puts the person in the depressed phase longer and hardly ever in the manic phase that it's almost not worth distinguishing them from unipolars. The Internet provides a safer outlet to break the law (credit card fraud, phreaking, dos attacks) as it is less likely to get caught doing that than it is to shoot up schools. Not all people with these disorders have these antisocial disorders (not all dogs are poodles), but we're generalizing here. The Internet also provides very easy access to all sorts of pornography, and paraphilia is also correlated with these disorders at substantially higher rates than the healthy folks. Just take a look at what's flying through your Gnutella monitor. And if you got Windows, check out some of those member-created AOL chatrooms. Paraphilia's all over the place.
Another thing to keep in mind is that there is virtually no association of lower intelligence with these disorders (often the opposite, in fact), so that could also be why the people who are a little too good at computers are, let's face it, pretty weird.
Don't mean to offend anyone, there should be no more shame with suffering from any of these psychological diseases than there is with suffering from diabetes. They're often just as treatable, by the way. And there are lots (most) of the computer whizzes without any thought disorder whatsoever. But I think I'm onto something when I say that various abnormal psych disorders are conducive to both relatively heavier computer use and odd social ineptitude of all sorts, and maybe some of you agree. I'm anticipating a flamebait mod, but this is what I think.
I've been watching the comments fly by, and I notice some common threads, and they fall into behavior that can be categorized by the above article. Some examples are:
1. Nerds deserve to be unpopular because they're socially inept, unwashed, etc..
Here the nerd is defined as someone with less demanding tastes regarding personal hygiene as the accusing group; of course, it is the accusers who gets to set the standards of hygeine.
2. Nerds are unpopular becuase they're elitist.
Some of the people I knew who were unpopular were, some people weren't. I offer up that it may be a symptom, rather than a cause of unpopularity. It's a great shield, telling yourself that you're better than those who would put forth their slings and arrows.
3. "I was good at athletics, and I'm smart/in a tech field, so, since these nerds can't handle it, they deserve it..."
Elitism. Plain and simple, this sort of comment comes either from someone who still exists in the "high school mindset" or was irreparably damaged by it, and now can't escape it.
There's a lot of putting down going on here, and all of it seems to be hypocrisy in the face of this article... I'll put forth a new definition of nerd that tries to steer the conversation to where I think the article wanted: Nerds are those people who were persecuted in the age ranges mentioned in the article, namely from the 11-14 bracket to to the 18-22 range. I think what the author is pointing out is that there is a level of persecution in high school, that usually goes away. This article is about referencing that as a problem, and seeking ways to address that problem. I agree with the author completely, and I plan to better arm my children for what comes ahead, or to keep them out of the school system. In society, ultimately, we are interdependant, and I agree and I say that children should not be isolated from reality.
Author's biographical note:For portions of my schooling career, I was in the unpopular groups, until I finally learned how the game worked. Nowadays, I have diverse groups of friends, some of which would be labelled as "nerds" or "geeks", while others fit into "jock"/"football player"/"cheerleader" stereotypes. They don't mix, because disastrous things happened when forced together, but there is no persecution of any kind going on, as they are able to accept that people live in different ways...
Wow! You're right! Student athletes never look down their noses at others! They try to go to the nerd parties but they're frightened by the computers and the fruit punch! All the members of the Chess club are constantly wearing their letter jackets and sweatshirts and rubbing everyone's noses in it!
Get real. Nerds aren't simply "the smart ones". There are plenty of smart, popular kids (and people). The real difference is their interests - Chess Club vs. Track, that kind of thing. And what about Band? Or JROTC? The scholastic world isn't Jocks vs. Nerds.
The 'elitism' you see is more of a reaction than a provacation. Those that show off their smarts are as likely to do it to their peers as much as anyone else, or even more since they'd be viewed as direct competition. However, it is also true that those that are labeled as nerds try to take consolation in the belief that they are shunned because of their intelligence. Neither the article nor your 'response' provides any illumination as to which comes first, but I certainly don't remember the Model UN having it's own stadium, locker rooms, boosters, trophy cabinet, or even room.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
It seems to me that what we really need is some sort of nerd mentoring. I'm in college right now, and it'd be ideal for me to go out and find a middle school kid who fits the nerd profile and help them learn to program. That self-confidence that is born from knowing you have valuable life skills is something that any preteen could use.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
I find it sad that you felt the need to post that, gribbly.
I would say "If you were too lazy to read the article, don't fucking post your half-baked opinion on it," but I guess I'd just be asking too much of the Slashdot readership.
Other than that, I thought it was a great article, and I agreed with most of it.
Now, RTFA, you bastards!
"As intelligence goes up, happiness goes down"
what the hell was all that rot? I am now dumber for having read your post. Not once in your random, incoherent ramblings did you come anywhere near a rational thought. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
" What point has life without friendship and social relations? I know I won't give a flying fuck about all the software I've written when I'm sixty and retired - or when I'm 85 and dead!"
Thanks for aggressing that. People who are popular have no friends. I was popular before, these jokers turned against me when I was popular, I had no real friends, they were just people I knew. Of course I was stupid and thought they were my friend, they only talked to me for a specific reason, perhaps I was useful to the group, I was entertaining, I was funny, I was "cool".
The second I ceased being cool, the second I had nothing left to offer the group, they group drops you. Which means the group doesnt give a damn.
I would much rather be out on the town partying with friends than sitting in a darkened room figuring out why libDV is miscompiling - don't you people understand? When you are gone, none of this will matter, and the best you can hope for is that you will have left some happy memories for those that survive you.
You act like Nerds have no friends, I have friends, the difference is we know exactly who are friends are and who they arent, its unreaistic for anyone to have 20 friends, 30 friends etc, you know most of these people talk shit behind your back, make fun of you, and dont give a damn about you, you might have a friend or two out of the group of 20 or 30, but why surrounded yourself with questionable people when you can surround yourself with good people who accept you for you and who you know are your friends?
Please, for your own sake, try and enjoy your lives before they are over, and before the best years of your lives fly past. Of course, if you do prefer debugging programs to the stuff people do together in the flesh, the laughter and socialising and romance, then go for it. It's not for me, or anyone else to tell you otherwise.
There are no "best" years, you have to understand everyones best years are different, my best years might be someone elses worse years. People try to live up to societies standards so much that they try to force their best years to be in their prime years when its not supposed to be, sure you can drop out of school and sit around drinking and going to parties, and what 10 years later when you are out of your prime? Well then you have a lifetime of shitty years just so you can have maybe 5 or 10 years of best years.
But don't refuse to see the value of popularity, and never think it's beyond your grasp - I would say that 90% of 'nerds' could become paragons of friendliness and popularity if they just came out of their shells! Don't change your clothes, don't take up a sport, don't join a gang, just be yourself, smile at people and learn to listen!
I'm not the usual nerd, because I didnt start off as a Nerd. I was popular, then I wasnt, then I was going back and forth, but the only reason I was popular is because I always had the most video games, the nicest toys, or because I went out of my way to entertain people, even at the expense of being a class clown. Sure I was popuar but these people didnt give a fuck about me.
The friends I have now do, thats the difference. I'm not popuar and I can count my friends on one hand, but these people are part of my circle and we will be cool till death.
How many people do you have who you know care about you and who have proven in? I'm sure popuar people cannot say each of these people they KNOW give a damn about them, in fact most of them are just taking advantage.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Let's see - I'd almost call it a troll if it weren't true in some cases. That said, I'd like to dispute a few points:
Yes, I got picked on a lot in middle school and a bit in high school. However, by the time I hit high school I was already hardened emotionally to it, and didn't let it phase me much. Glad I did - Eventually those who would harrass me would give up, and everyone else decided I wasn't such a bad guy. I turned out a much more intelligent, hard-working individual because of it. It also has helped professionally - I understand how to "win friends and influence people", but it also doesn't hurt my feelings if I'm the last man standing for the better solution. I know quite a few co-workers that, as soon as their solution starts looking unpopular (but not necessarily worse), abandon ship to jump on the trendy solution. Some of the dumbest things I've ever seen out of this company come from decisions like that.
I'm an engineer. However, professionally I'm now an analyst and (still in some small way), a programmer. I use Windows and Linux interchangably, based on what's better for the job. I try to be a rational, balanced person. I'm a photographer, a writer, and a musician in my spare time. I read everything from paperback scifi to the great literary works of history. I like watching everything between Farscape (damn you, SciFi) and NFL games. I'm married, I have hobbies that absolutely don't involve much technology, and I have often thought of becoming a professional chef. Almost tried to go into culinary arts rather than engineering. I (oohh, here comes the negative karma) side with the RIAA in quite a few arguments - like the fact that 99.8% of Napster use was downloading music most people didn't own the rights to. Why? Because in my mind, it just makes sense. I've thought about it, and these are the things I feel make sense. Maybe it doesn't to you, but that's why we're individuals and we can argue about things. I think I've done a pretty good job of being balanced - perhaps a bit too much so, as it seems I'm always behind on everything I want to accomplish.
I do have an issue with many of the organizations and laws trying to step on my freedoms. Most of my arguments to the Evil-Acronym-Of-The-Month (DMCA, MPAA, etc.) are that they infringe on my freedoms to tinker with stuff or use it for things I'm legitimately allowed to do. I like ripping stuff apart, modifying it, understanding how it works. It's good for my professional mind, and keeps my curiousity going. I typically only get upset when they prohibit doing anything that might possibly sort-of, kind-of maybe lead to the ability for me to do something illegal, if I wanted to.
Punish me for the thing I did (or was about to do) wrong, not for the possibility that I might someday use modified Mountain Dew can as an antenna for a wireless network, over which I could, maybe, pirate movies. We don't assume people are mass murderers because they own a chain saw, despite that's one of Hollywood's popular uses for the tool. However, it seems certain organizations would like to label me a pirate because I have a computer with lots of MP3s (around 10 gig worth). The catch is that every one of those was ripped, by me, from CDs I purchased and still own. That's fair use - format shifting. Why do I keep them as MP3s? Because it's easier to take my laptop with me on the road than a stack of hundreds of CDs.
I also demand casual business environments. I don't come to work without shaving for a week, I get my shower in at least once a day, and my clothes are always clean and mostly appropriate. A polo-type shirt, jeans, and boots are my usual work wear. Soemtimes a random t-shirt sneaks in to the wardrobe. Why? Because it just makes sense. I don't need to impress anyone on the average day - my computer doesn't care what I look like, and neither do the people that call or email me to ask questions. Whether I'm wearing a suit and tie doesn't change the results in the reports I write. I find suits/ties very uncomfortable, and find they decrease my productivity because I am uncomfortable. I often work lying in a beanbag on my office floor. Why? It's comfortable; I get more done. Not only that, but when I'm soldering together a prototype chunk of hardware, I don't want a tie in the way or dress slacks to soak up the splatters of molten solder. For a meeting with the VPs? Sure, drag out the suit. Otherwise, tell me I have to wear a tie and I'll quit. I've done it before, when a previous company I worked for had a change of heart.
Okay, I feel better now.
If you are not interested in what they have to say, and only interested in what you have to say, then why try and interact with them at all?
It's not us nerds who have the problem - we use Linux because it's better. Someone uses Windows and we tell them it's not as good, they laugh in our faces. I was bullied pretty badly at school for exactly this sort of thing, but I realised that it's not my fault, it's their fault for not being as smart as me
Is that trying to be funny? I thought so at first, but then...no, it has to be funny. No one would really write that and be serious about it.
The article is mostly good, but he's missing something:
Nor, as far as I can tell, is the problem so bad in most other countries.
It is. Americans like to loathe their own educational system, but the truth is that most of the world is the same.
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
I'm 15. I'm a sophomore in high school. I'm a geek. Unbelievably enough, I have friends.
;)
I had no trouble getting friends up until 8th grade. For some reason, a shyness struck me then. I was too scared to talk to people in other groups. I did eventually make a few friends in 8th grade (one of which I still talk to today, despite him living in California), but it wasn't a very successful year socially, at all.
9th grade rolls around and... wow. No friends made. At all. Sometime before the first semester ended, I decided that public school sort of, uhm, sucked. I tested to go to a private school (which shall remain nameless) and got in. Ahhh, yes, a perfect opportunity to get my life back on track and make friends!
WRONG. The most I succeeded in doing there was rape my GPA and lose $18,000 (which, by the way, they are still holding my grades hostage until we pay $10,000, though now it's ~$3000 due to the insurance). Even worse, things started going wrong in my family (really sick stuff that I won't go into).
Well, 10th grade rolls around, and I'm still in the private school. I decide to join debate/forensics since it appears to be a fun class. Best choice I ever made in high school. I have made countless friends in debate. _ANY_ geek that is scared of not making friends should make debate a priority. Honestly, debate probably saved my sanity, considering what some of my teachers were telling me that I had learning disabilities and what I was going through at home. (You see, in American literature, we'd take reading quizzes every morning. They consisted of 10 questions, -not- multiple choice. These questions were among the lines of "What color was Gatsby's shirt" and "What do characters A and B spot at the mountains?". I cannot remember things like this. Maybe you can, but _I_ certainly can't.)
Sometime before the semester ended (heh, just like before), I decided to transfer out of the private school, back into public school. The straw that broke the camel's back was an unsatisfactory in English telling me that I was essentially an idiot. There were more events (such as saying something in the computer lab ["badass," to be precise] while the headmaster was walking in. Funny how little old "Reading Disability" Elliot would get "hated" by the headmaster while everyone else was talking about, uhm, more "interesting" things.) that occured that day which convinced me that the private school wasn't worth it too, however.
Well, I eventually rejoin the public high school which was oh-so-evil in 9th grade. In what is a totally unexpected turn of events, I make a bunch of friends. Perhaps the only reason that I have these friends today is because of debate. I automatically made about 5 friends the second day (I didn't have debate the first day) because people knew me from a debate tournament.
Of interest is that my grades at the public school slowly started rising as time passed. I suspect the main cause of the rising of grades was getting back my PSAT scores (80% higher than all sophomores in Verbal Skills. Reading disability my ass! I missed five out of 25 critical reading questions; 4 in Section 1, 1 in Section 3).
In conclusion: JOIN DEBATE! It even made me make a few friends at the private school. Also, Depressed geeks going to a private school really ought to go to public school. It's a lot cheaper and the education quality is the exact same, if not better. And you'll already have a couple of friends made from debate tournaments.
This all leads back to the Columbine incident. We have high schools where the faculty, the community, and often even the parents raise kids that are told if they can't throw a football or tumble for the cheer squad, they aren't shit. Oh, you got an A in AP English? That's great, but Bobby here threw 300 yards in the last game. Oh, straight-A's this semester, did you here that your sister made the varsity squad?
Who gives a FUCK what sport you played in a high school. My education landed me a damn nice job, are you good enough to go pro football? Is suzy going to be a professional cheerleader? All this shit that makes the jocks/popular kids special in high school is over the second they get that diploma, where as my talents will support me throughout my life.
As for Columbine: Hey man, nice shot.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
"Kids, this is your principal, Mr. Johnson. Thanks to your boosters, we will have a secret vote at the end of the year. The ten students voted 'nicest' by the student body will each secretly receive $25,000, which they may reveal or not. The ten students voted 'cruelest' will be our janitors for summer session. Have a 'nice' year!"
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. -A. Turing
without even readin the article(cant say I want to) the reason why nerds are unpopular is because 99% of the time there attitudes resemble that of an 8year old boy hording its toys crossed with the `going through pubity stage` of a 14year old girl(ready to kick and scream at anything when there not the center of attention) and lets not forget the dab of movie star wannabie personality in them.
/' or 'elf sym tabs' mean, so why do nerds take the piss out of people that are computer inept? because they suffer from the above stated points in the first paragraph of this statment bullshit ramble.
I am a nerd, but I respect the fact that NO not everyone is fucking computer literate.. most people(really, no shit) dont take the piss out of nerds for being socialy inept but for there disguting attitude to people when they dont understand what 'rm -rf
Ive for to long had to put up with some of the mose outright arrogent fucks ever to have walked this earth, and there all 'twaty nerds' that give the 1% of us with some ability to understand that NO; not every-fucking-one knows every-fucking-thing about computers, most nerds social losers because there to high up on the fact that they think there god for knowing somthing the average joe dosnt.
MODS: kiss my ass if your gonna mod me down, it just goes to show what can be expected from you fucking losers, nothing better to do than mod down a retard japping away.. when you could be modding up the more important posts..
c----
moo
Being smart does not make you a nerd, being a nerd makes you a nerd. You can be smart and popular - just dont hit the books at lunchtime or weekends!
Pixels keep you awake!
Don't you think it's sort of sad that you continue to base your feeling of self-worth on how other people conduct their lives? I'd rather work at Uno's than be so pathetically trapped by my past.
Sharing the knowledge is a worthy cause, but as you probably know, if the information is not presented in an attractive way, it is often discarded. It is always easier to get someone to listen to you if they know you are listening and reacting to what they are saying.
Let me explain it all to you again...
Humans are stupid, ignorant, irrational, malicious, and fearful.
Mostly what they fear is death.
They have this pre-rational idea that there is only a certain amount of life to go around and if anybody else gets some, they won't get enough.
This leads to the usual animal fight or flight behavior.
Flight reaction takes two forms: 1) Stand up, wave your arms, and try to attract the attention of whomever is giving out the "life". 2) Drag down anybody standing above you, and stomp on anybody below you, so they don't overshadow you and get "your" "life".
This is called mammalian dominance hierarchy.
Humans are domesticated primates and are entirely consumed by this behavior. Virtually every word and action of a human is conditioned by this overriding fear of death and consequent behavioral patterns.
You can't change this behavior without eliminating what people euphemistically and laughingly refer to as "human nature".
The only solution is Transhumanism, specifically the rearrangement of the human body and brain to maximize conceptual thought and minimize biochemical and evolutionary conditioning.
This will be done via nanotech and biotech over the next fifty years or so. The resulting Transhumans will give you humans exactly what you've been afraid of for thousands of years - either death or transmogrification into Transhumans (which you will perceive as the same as death, being morons).
You're going to die, one way or the other.
We won't.
Have a nice day.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
In real military units (i.e. not these uniformed pansies that are always the first to demand benefits and the last to pick up a gun and fight) you will find that you get many of the nerdy types that will indeed be made fun of. The level of testosterone involved in these units is palpable yet ironically the jeering is more of the "use for fun" and less of the "use as a weapon and status elevator." I am not sure why exactly but I can hazard a guess that a good deal of it is the direction and sense of purpose everyone shares (which the sharing is another major element).
Back in high school, I remember how it definitely was more important to learn to take tests and charm teachers than actually incorporate knowledge and develop reason. "The test of a good teacher is not in the number of questions the students can easily answer but in those questions posed by the students that the teacher can not readily answer." I personally think that a lot of the problem lies in sports as well. Many join up with various sports clubs for glory and fame, others for a sense of involvement, some to avoid being the nerds and still others just because it is there and they enjoy it. (yes, feel free to combine those it is a logical or operation :) However, I feel that the environment within these groups is not conducive to what in the past was so important about sports and physical bonding activities. For millennia the majority of personal and team sports and exercise served the vital purpose of training for war. When wars were as common as funny beer commercials you wanted to ensure that your town or village was well protected. However, strict training became old to many and like many methods of exercise there is not only a law of diminishing returns but actually a point that you do more harm than good. Enter competitive sports. Competitive sports put the fun back in training (just look at modern Jousting) while still honing those skills vital to winning battles.
Fast forward to modern times now. I remember recently hearing someone remark that "athletes of team sports make better soldiers" and I had to keep from spitting up my drink. Sure that sounds great in theory, yet the reasons given are so shallow as to make me think that the person saying this was trying to convince himself of this poppycock. The athletic aspect is irrellevant since a good military indoctrination program not only whips your ass into shape but teaches you everything you need to know how to stay in great shape. The team work aspect that is often touted as THE factor here is in reality backwards as the majority of really good players will go on to college and pros thus rendering them void. Last is the "suck it up" factor... well this is probably the best one but still a good training process will instill this in the recruit. Perhaps this comparison would be valid if not for the fact that the majority of sports players get all the wrong ideas, lessons and "values." Instead of learning to play for the team it is all about impressing the coach, the cheerleaders and themselves. Military professionals should be focused on fighting for the team. It is the creedo of the wolf, "the strength of the pack is the wolf and the strength of wolf is the pack." Football, basketball, etc (at least as they are managed today) produce a bunch of self serving, prima-dona pansies... yet pansies in good shape.
Personally I think that high school should be a place to learn how to be an adult. Adults accept responsibility for their actions if only on a Newtonian law principle. However, when you make jokes, excuses or justifications for those that assault others simply out of a desire to gain status then you are setting a very bad example for all. Sure it looks bad if the weaker (assuming he is) nerd is helped out of every situation by the "authorities" yet in real life what would happen if I started assaulting people or even stealing from them around my neighborhood? Would the cops just share a laugh and look the other way? Perhaps I could tell the judge, "Your honor... look at them, they are pathetic nerds... they dress like trolls and drive crappy cars." Yeah that would work.
My solution with my kids (none yet) will be simply this. Even though they will be in very good shape (ranch work does that to you) and will most likely be able to kick the shit out of anyone based on martial skills I will personally beat their ass, sell all their shit and throw them in jail if I ever find they are preying on anyone else or resorting to violence to solve what is in reality an issue of words.
"We were doing something they couldn't get... "
"I was not arrogant..."
You have to admit, it's an interesting choice of words.
Because ther are no positive examples of nerds/programmers/etc
No sig for you!!
Unfortunately I have to strongly disagree with this article. Let me start of by saying I am Canadian and not American and thus do not know if Canadian High Schools act any differently from American besides the grading systems. I would think they act very similar as a large part (but not all) of our culture is the same. Let me start of by saying that in my High School based upon his leveling of A-E I would be considered a C, but that scale barely exists in my school. Though many people do still go to their "groups" such as football players hanging out with other football player, intelligent people or "nerds" as he CRUDELY puts it hanging out with the other intelligent people, but it is not a shock to see intelligent people hanging out with football players and vice versa. I myself achieve marks in the high 80's to low 90's and yet on of my good friends is VERY athletic, dead opposite of me, big into football and wrestling. That aside I also do have friends who are more intelligent, but I share a mixture. So do many other people throughout my school as this can be seen just by looking down the halls. This is also seen in other high schools I have been to. I am not saying this true for all people however (one person I consider to be in the A section I would never be friends with, but that a whole different matter), but from my prospective it seems that majority of the people have friends from all areas of the scale. To me the article itself seems dated (which the author admits could be true) as I have heard tales of things as someone being shoved in a locker, but most of its in the past. I will not deny that it still happens (more as jokes), but real; lets face it; bullying does occur, but it does not seem to be as regular. In this day and age intelligent students seem to be more respected and often aid in the football stars or cheerleader if needed. Many of the football players or cheerleaders themselves may actually be of the more intelligent level. The one thing I will admit that still seems to be a problem is appearance. Not really so much clothing wise, but physically. This problem however seems to come, sad to say as I am male, more from the male side and even them more from the unintelligent or drugged up ones. Females seem to not so much mind physically appear as much anymore especially entering senior years (not say this is all true). This physically appearance problem I have also noted is becoming less and less common among the males as they mature (remember males are about 2 years behind females in majority). I could also not agree with his outlook upon the future in the workplace where he says that the reason this does not exist any longer is because minorities ban together etc.. I believe that it is because we have all matured to a point where we see the need for those intelligent people or where in the university and collage years we grow up to become those smart people. The smart people themselves also learn to stand up for themselves (not always true). These are just some possibilities. The only thing in the article I agreed with really is that school is like a prison. I don't like the idea of doing this mindlessly over and over again never knowing what we will be doing and how we, the people being educated are given little say in our own education until later years of high school, but fortunately over the past 2-3 year, in Ontario anyway this has GREATLY changed and we are not doing real-life problems and see where and why things are done. To quote a teacher on the new system "finally we are out of the routine and into the creativity". I also have a few other points of disagreement but I have forgotten em..Cya and remember this information is what I have observed in a Canadian City and Canadian High Schools and may not be true everywhere, but I think it might be more true then the article, especially since its more present then past.
You should all conform to the lowest common denominator.
I don't think that it's a matter of "not wanting to be popular as much", as the author stated.
I think that being intelligent has a high correlation with a lack of social skills.
I was sort of middle-of-the-road, popularity-wise. I made good grades, was on the Quiz squad, etc. -- but I also played tennis, hung around with the "popular" kids, etc.
There were geeky people "below" me who seemed to want to be popular more than anything, but just didn't know what to say or how to act around their peers -- and there were intelligent people "above" me who were extremely popular but never seemed to try very hard at it.
Maybe there are genetic differences that produce higher intelligence at the cost of lower social skills.
Maybe, higher intelligence causes you to second-guess yourself a lot because you're too introspective, when the more neanderthal types simply behaved on instinct.
Regardless, many nerdy people that I knew wanted to be popular... very very badly. They just didn't know how to go about it.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
I also disagree with the article about what defines a geek, it's not brains or interests, it's how your rated by the opposite sex. It's not looks it's personality.
In my case, If I'm interested in things that GIRLS think are corney, then I am a geek. Jocks can call you a geek, but only a women can certify your geek status by laughing at your pathetic attempts to hook up with them. This carries over into adult life as well, which is why geeks don't go to clubs(at least I don't).
Looks will not get you geek status either, it is ALL about how you dress and behave. Ugly guys who dress fly and act confident always have chicks, so they cannot be geeks. I'm good looking enough to approach women with confidence, but after about 5 mintues of talking, the women realize I'm a geek and leave...that, and I have no game.
So even though I have been out of school for over 10 years, I am still a geek because I cannot attract the opposite sex because my personality is that of geek.
There is no hope is the point of the article I think.
I never gave a damn about the people that picked on me because I knew I would be able to say to them in in 5 years "Thats 20$ on pump #3 now hurry the hell up"
Sure they are. Graduate at 21, work 2 years, 2 year MBA, entry-level management track position.
Ya know, if I had it to do all over again, I might have carried a weapon throughout H.S. (not a gun though).
The "law of the jungle" bullshit I had to go through was just ridiculous. I got in 4 fights in one year during gym class (none started by me). By the end of the year, I had assholes who wanted to fight me just because I was undefeated. Every time, the gym teacher basically let the fight continue until it was clear who was going to win, and I never got in any trouble beacuse he knew everyone gave me shit and I was just trying to "stick up for myself."
There's no reason I should have had to put up with that bullshit. These days I'm much more protective of my body. I'm not going to fuck around in a fistfight with anybody. I really wonder why there aren't more school shootings. Not everyone is big enough to protect themselves barehanded, and schools give bullies plenty of opportunity to push people around. Since kids have to go to school, being the subject of one of these opportunities is pretty much unavoidable.
Being beat up for your lunch money should not be a traddition. In the real world, assault will get you sent to jail, but somehow, at schools, it's accepted as the norm and usually only results in a slap one the wrist. In the real world, if someone assaults me, I have a "duty to retreat." If I can't, it's legal for me to do what ever I have to, up to and including killing them. Then, I go file a police report and they're looking at jail time. In high school, the person getting attacked usually get the same punishment as the other guy. Hell, my brother actually got detention for calling a kid who had just punched him in the head an asshole. What did the other kid get? Detention.
If schools aren't going to provide a safe environment for our kids, how can we blame them for taking their safety into their own hands?
AAAAAAAAAAAA So sorry I really did have this broken up by paragraph in a wor d processor.. I frogot the break.. SORRY
Y'know, the funny thing about stereotypes is, sometimes they are essentially true.
I see a lot of posts here about, "Oh, this article is rubbish because I was a nerd *and* a jock, and popular, too." Also: "You nerds were picked on because you were antisocial goobers."
And to you I humbly suggest, "Bite me."
The central tenet of the article is simple. A lot of people are nerds not because they are smart, but because they do not want to play the popularity game. A lot of smart people (and I arrogantly claim I was one) believe they had better things to do than try to get people to like them. Not all nerds are smart, and not all smart people are nerds; but a lot of smart, nerdy people were picked on because they *gasp!* refused to play stupid popularity games.
I was fortunate: I grew up in a very small town. I graduated with 3 other people. Although I was not popular, it didn't matter.
However, I did spend a year in a school that had thirty people in my eighth-grade class. My God! That was hell. Sure, there were some smart, popular people; but they were more derisive than the stupid popular people. Later in life, while visiting that town, I ran into one of those smart, popular ones. She apologized to me for being a bitch, and told me it was the pressure of being popular that made her do it. (My summary, but very close to her exact words.)
There is more than just a kernel of reality in the article. There is enough evidence to support his core thesis, that our school system is a holding pen for kids, and that something should be done before it is too late.
Like the author, I'm not sure *what* needs done, except that it must involve engaging the kids in activities that matter. I predict eventually a specialisation in schools, like the "IBM Technology Secondary School," or the "Houghton/Miller School of English Arts," and the "Martha Stewart School of Home Slavery."
But then again, I have been wrong before.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Folks, not for nothing, but being "intelligent" -- read: "egghead," "braniac," or that most spitefully delivered of words, "intellectual" -- has been made into a curse in more ways than I would care to admit at this point:
"If you're so smart, how come you ain't rich?"
"I bet you think you're pretty smart."
or
"I bet you think you're smarter than [me, us, the other people in this bar]."
Being intelligent and making use of that intelligence in America more often than not exposes you to ridicule from people. And it's impossible to hide behind the feeling that you are able to do things they can't because you're smarter -- think of the bully whose entire existence consisted of learning where other people lived and following them home to beat them up, or the mechanic who has all these great ways to gouge you without you ever knowing about it, because you have X more lines to code (or diapers to change, or what have you) and can't waste your time with something as trivial as a spark plug.
People seem to have an ongoing, inbred contempt for anyone smarter than them, and high school is not the only place this comes to the surface. I've had friends who have worked in offices that demanded at least a college-level education, and they were consistently appalled at how people who used their smarts to make everyone's jobs easier there got stabbed in the back.
Just say no to prejudice against smart people.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
When I was popular, I had people wanting to kick my ass, people who were jealous of me and I didnt even know who they are, I had rumors being spread about me for no reason, I had people talking behind my back constantly. Whats the point of all this political bullshit?
The more popular you become the harder it is to determine who your friends are.
There is no correspondence between intelligence and social ineptitude. I've known as many popular smart people as I've known unpopular smart people. Infact, most of the unpopular smart people I knew scored lower on their SAT than the popular. I realize that this is a rough estimate and that SAT scores do not directly relate to intelligence; perhaps it was just coincidence, but still an interesting statistic, none the less.
I judge intelligence not just by how well you do on tests in school, but how you live your life. If you are getting into trouble, and you are doing stupid things outside the classroom I dont give a damn if you get all As, you are stupid. IF you are doing good in life, if you dont get all As so what? You make up for it by how you live.
Alot of smart people are smart but dont know how to be social, thats because they focused too much on academics, then you have people who dont focus on academics enough, but most people focus on neither, they do a half assed job at academics and at living, these are your average people in school, you know the popular ones.
Its easy to be popular, just try to be as average as possible, but have a unique sense of humor. Dress like everyone else, act like everyone else, be stupid like everyone else, and dont have a personality, instead change your personality based on who you are around, be a nerd with the nerds, be a thug with the thugs, be an athelete with the atheletes, this is how you become popular.
But being popular only makes you hated, everyone knows you, including ignorant people who may get jealous of you, this is the downside to being popular, the other downside is no one in any of these groups actually knows you and none of them gives a damn about you, you are just a person who walks around from group to group talking to different people every day, you have no real friends.
This sucks because when you are upset, sad, or need someone to talk to about personal stuff no one is there for you, none of them will want to hear what you have to say, in fact they will most likely share it with the world if you do tell them just so they can get a laugh.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Like i've mentioned before in several posts, i've used several versions (each) of Linux, Windows, and the Mac OS (as well as DOS, BeOS, and several other operating systems), and the only ones that have ever crashed on me are previous versions of Windows, Mac OS 7, and Mac OS 8. Windows XP has never crashed for me, and neither has Linux. Now, i consider myself an intelligent person, but i have very little programming experience (just a little Visual Basic, BASIC, and Java, the former of which will get me labelled as a fool on Slashdot instantly), and i really don't know all that much about internal operating system workings like APIs and junk like that. But i appear to be intelligent enough not to crash my fucking computer, even when i'm running all kinds of alpha-blended windows and third-party theming applications and transparent high-resource mouse cursors and other such "garbage" (as many would call it) that suck up system resources and can result in crashes if you don't know what you're doing.
Why can't you keep your XP computers running, O Holy Ones? My guess is one of the following: (01) you're wanting it to crash so you can have an excuse to agree with everyone that says "omgz teh lunax si teh best cos teh windoze sux0rz + crashes"; (02) you're trying to make it do something it can't; (03) you're using some outlandish, crazy hardware that is not meant for personal computers or does not have Windows drivers; (04) you had some tiny stupid problem like incorrect/incompatible NVIDIA drivers, and instead of using your extensive knowledge to fix it (which you could have done easily), you fall back on some excuse like "well Red Hat detects my drivers right" or "FreeBSD didn't have this problem". I'm willing to bet probably 80% of you "Windows doesn't work"/"Windows crashes" people have formed your judgements based on one of the above asinine reasons.
PS: I know Linux and BSD are different things, but to save space in this post i have grouped BSD, Darwin, HURD, Linux, UNIX, and whatever other UNIX or UNIX-like systems any of you may be running into "Linux".
I couldn't finish reading this article for one simple reason, and that is the authors failure to recognize multiple types of intelligence. Look here: http://www.ericfacility.net/ericdigests/ed410226.h tml This talks about Gardner's definitions of intelligence or at least the discerning of different types. Some popular kids are very smart. I remember as i'm only three years out of high school. It is possible to have a high mathematical iq and a high emotional iq.
im a hippie
you are not interesting. Work at it. Say something people want to hear or at least in a way they want to hear it.
All this nerd talk makes me wanna kick some nerd ass!
-Alex
Nerd's don't have to be unpopular. I am a total nerd and went through the whole time of being picked on and shunned but by highschool I was fairly popular. I still didn't fit in but everyone knew me and got along well with me.
;)
The first reason is that throughout elementary and middle school I showed that I could take being beaten up by people bigger than me and laugh about it. If someone kicks your butt and you laugh in their face they'll respect you and fear you a little.
Second is that I had a sense of humor. I could play practical jokes that nobody else knew how. I also knew how to do naughty things that impressed my fellow teenage males. Explosives, robots, etc are cool if done right.
Third I suddenly grew a foot and a half taller. Having a guy smarter than you and able to laugh off your violence suddenly become much bigger than you is quite the shakeup. That part was just luck.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
...I was. often. I had been hunted down not because I showed off, but just because I was answering right whether other could not. Simply giving the right answer to a question was/is enough to be treated as showing off. I learnt that the HARD way.
I developped a strong sense of hidding, shutting my mouth, answering false intentionnaly not to draw attention. I had developed it so good that after a while attack ceased... I was in the "middle average". But I still learnt, and in my head I answered the question the teacher asked and checked if I was right.
And Guess what ? I got the baccalaureat (high school end diploma in most EU) with a really average note. but the next year entering Uni I found KIN. And then I free'ed myself and exploded the score to finish at the very top. The difference with Uni is that average people and most of my "tortionaire" were filtered by the system and popularity was "out" or not as important as having truly friends and fun together. There wasn't a top or bottom.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The truth hurts and karmas a bitch.
Right now, I am pulling in 60K + 20K bonus this year. I have a GED and 4 years as a System Admin. I made 45K + 15K bonus the year before. The year before that I was making 35K + 500 (dollars not K) bonus. The year before that I was making 10/hour + 250 (dollar not K) bonus.
/. makes me want to puke.
Next year, I estimate I will make about 60-75K + 15-20K bonus.
This is with a GED... a college degree would have taken me a lot farther quicker, as I can only apply for jobs that don't say 'BA required'.
I work as a Unix/NT Sr. system admin for a finicail company.
If you have a college degree, and a decent computer admin/programmer there is no reason your aren't pulling in _atleast_ 50K... stop your whining, if I can do with with a _GED_ and _NO_ cerfications, you can do it EASLY with a BA degree.
*sigh* I don't know how many times I have been turned down by a job because I didn't have a college degree like you pretty boys.... and to hear you whining about it on
Really? I find being arogant and patronising works just as well. As long as people know that in all likleyhood they're taking me more seriously than I'm taking myself...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
.. for a website that headlines:
News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
Before you mod it down, realize it is intended as a joke.
A bar is merely a extension of HS. Its another meaningless social competition. The competition is to see who can buy the pretty girl the most drinks, come up with the wittiest bullshit lines, etc.
Dont play that game, refuse to compete.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
In my high school, being smart did not mean you were unpopular. I saw plenty of really popular kids in my AP classes. They were usually at the top of the class.
It's not a matter of being smart, it's a matter of being active. Academics does not have to define who you are in high school. Being active and social plays a big role in popularity.
As noted many times over around the time katz's hellmouth series came out, high school is not like the real world. In fact, it's about as far from the truth of the real world as you can get. Like prision, there is a social structure, and like prision, you either make someone your bitch, or you are someone's bitch, or you hide.
hit my school and blew all of that away. People had reasons to hang around each other and the 'nerds' were trippy.
We went from eight to ten percent use to more than seventy in three months. It was fun.
Contrary to popular belief in the nerd community being an unpopular lamer does not actually have anything to do with being smart.
Just because you like japanese cartoons, use esoteric operating systems and watch star trek does not actually make you smart, sorry.
It's not the 18 INT that gets you stuffed into a locker, it's the 9 Charisma.
I'm a Junior in High School right now, and an avid "geek". I don't particularly see the problem of unpopularity though. I have a small group of very good friends, some popular, some not, but all somewhat nerdy. I actually prefer to be unpopular. I would hate to be a popular moron, that's going to be a useless member of society, once let out out of high school. I think my Biology teacher put it best once, when talking about a certain low-level popular class, he described them as "The future workforce of Target". =)
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
Many ignorant people. Sure some people at university are intelligent, but 60 percent I'd say are ignorant and just rich, gifted, or other.
But rarely have I met people who I view as both intelligent inside and outside the classroom. You will not impress me because you can get a perfect score on a test, so you have a photographic memory, if you cannot use that photographic memory in the real world you are stupid.
I see most people in college spending all their time partying and acting immature, I'm not saying theres anything wrong with this but just watch how people act, not how they act in class but in real life. Look at how they treat their relationships with the opposite sex, most people in college dont seem to take relationships seriously, cheat on each other, and do other stupid shit, intelligent? But not intelligent enough to ask older generations how to properly handle a relationship? Not intelligent enough to know the difference between love & lust? Not intelligent enough to get along with a roomate?
These people act intelligent in the classroom only proving they arent really all that intelligent if they cant take their intelligence and properly use it. What about moral intelligence? What about knowing right from wrong, having good judgement, knowing how not to make stupid mistakes like drink yourself to death like some of these dumbass kids do, or stupid women who let men drug their drinks and get raped.
I mean really if you are in college you should be intelligent enough to avoid these things and situations, you may not avoid all situations but 90 percent of the time the situation you are in are the situations you allow yourself to be put into.
I know I'm ahead of the game in terms of social intelligence, and moral intelligence considering I dont have to fuck up a thousand times to learn not to do something, I know better because I watch other people fuck up and then I learn from them.
Every action I do, I know the effects of this action, and possible reactions in which the enviornment might have on these actions.
Theres alot more to being intelligent than just getting good grades, and just because you can talk to girls and you think you know what you are doing doesnt mean you are smart enough to avoid being seduced and taken advantage of by a woman, or a woman getting sexually abused by a man.
I think I've made my point here.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Nerds have no social skills whatsoever. They also fail to bathe regularly (which is probably a symptom of having no social skills). What exactly is the mystery here?
Ok. I expect to get dinged for this is slightly off-topic, but really, how hard is it to avoid getting the gears by the neanderthal athletic crowd in secondary school?
;-)
Not very hard, as it turns out. In Canada, you can go and join the Reserves before you are an adult with your parents permission at age 16. I assume it is the same in the U.S.
You join. You get physical conditioning (not a bad thing for geeks, when you stop and think about it). You get training on how to kill people and blow shit up. You get paid for it all the while. It sure beats flipping burgers and mowing lawns.
Here is the fact: when you walk away from military training, you really come away with a newfound sense of confidence and self-worth. Honestly, compared to a drill instructor, a knuckle dragging football player isn't much of a real threat.
Oddly enough, you can now look into a lot of the high-school level bullies eyes and see them for the pathetic beings that they are. That, and stare them down without too much of a problem. The short haircut, newly found muscles and "ARMY" sweatshirt doesn't hurt in psychologically intimidating them, either.
And, yes, there are geek releated positions in the military such as communications, but it's more fun to go into a combat arm. First person shooters ain't got nothing on the real thing. That and the life skills you develop will last a lifetime.
That and you now have a really big gang to back you up.
I was picked on in HS not by the football team (some of whom were actually pretty cool) but from the group of losers that didn't want to be in school in the first place, dropped out and got GEDs or even finished but went on to be ranchers (HS was in rural Texas for me). I remember one incident in particular where such problems occured unprovocted. Were the people who did that wrong? Certainly and something should be done about it ... (shooting anyone who takes education for granted into the sun would be a good start ... okay I'm kidding).
However looking back at HS I realize that other than one or two incidents I brought a lot of it on myself. I was an arrogent SOB, I prided myself on being so much smarter than everyone else that I couldn't make friends, and I couldn't understand why no one just wanted to sit and listen to my superior intellect.
By my junior year I got over it, some significant wake-up calls got me to realize that I'm not God's gift to the universe. By that summer I made real friends and my senior year was actually quite smooth.
I think that if geeks would take a step back and be themselves instead of trying to impress people with their smarts they would be a lot better off.
The Anti-Blog
YHL; HAND.
posted from ancient win2k. blue screens when I press ctrl+scrlk twice, on purpose. linux protects me from hax0rs and pimps wireless. W3rd!
Also you need some smack or some shit to cool the hell down. Better, I find you some dope honey so you can blow your load. Christ man!
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
I wasn't a true nerd, I had social skills and actually knew popular kids, but I alwasy knew I didn't fit in with the general population of teh school. Being smarter than those troglodites was all I really had. I didn't intentionally look down on them, but it's hard to respect ass-kissers and muscle-bound jerks who are getting by on the thickness of the brown goo on theor noses or their ability to play sports when you actually study and try to know what the hell the teachers are talking about.
Every group lords their chosen "gift" over the others. The jocks lorded their gridiron skills and the schools willingness to let them do as they please as long as they win. The cheerleaders lorded their desirability over the other girls. The rich kids lorded their parents money over the less furtunate. It's what every group does. Don't single out the nerds and brains because they had something you couldn't ever have.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
A nerd has poor to nonexistant social skills. A person needs good social skills to become popular. Therefore a nerd is unlikely to be become popular.
First off, IANAPBIGTO (I Am Not A Psychologist, But I Go To One :P ) It seems like human nature will often prey on the weak. Look at performers. If you don't control the stage, the audience will walk all over you.
I think a lot of the people that have been picked on are victimized because the Pickers (nice name for them) sense some sort of weakness. It could be that the Pickees are a bit too compassionate or nice, or it could be due to some physical defect, if they are underweight, have a different voice, etc. Whatever it is, the jerks pick up on it pretty quick. If the person doesn't defend themselves in a way that the Pickers see strength, the torture continues. Honestly, I really see that a lot. It seems to be human nature, and a lot of humans suck for this very reason.
From the article:
There are many questionable conclusions drawn in the essay, but I find this one to be the most questionable. I believe that most tech-geeks that are working for some of the very largest techno companies/corps would tell you that the Peter Principle is very shockingly real. This isn't necessarily a bad thing for geeks working in non-tech firms (I imagine their geekiness is probably great job security) but when the revenues of a company directly relate to technology and innovation...the results can be devastating. (I mean, look at the tech sector in the US today. *shrug*)
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
Even though they will deny it, just about every group can be considred some type of geek.
For example jocks would be sports and athletics nerds.
...being smarter than the average bear is more of a liability than an asset during that stage in life
I'm sorry, just because you are a nerd doesn't automatically make you smarter than anybody else. Intelligence is one of those strange concepts that doesn't develop over your lifetime. Granted, a lot of nerds have _experience_ in dealing with strange computer-related situations, but experience and intelligence are not the same beasts (though they often work hand in hand). That jock in football could be a genius that just enjoys playing football and having a few laughs with some friends (at other people's expense).
A nerd is a social concept... If I could apply any term to nerds in general it would be "introverted" and perhaps "socially inexperienced". No matter how hard you try to justify it to yourself, being a nerd is a social choice... do not incorrectly attribute it to above average intelligence.
I think, therefore I am an Atheist.
I defanitly agree with your last line.
On the other hand, being bigger then the bullies, and being able to knock them down (Yes, I can!) helps even more.
The Solution? Just Grow Taller!
.noitacidem deen uoy siht daer nac uoy fI
A big point of the article was: Why doesn't this structure happen anywhere else? If anime has taught me anything (which it often doesn't), it's because of complacency, which the author hints at.
In particular, I'd recall the school series Kareshi Kanoujo no Jijyo (His and Her Circumstances). When a student is announced to have gotten the best grade on the exam, the other students look on in admiration. For many students, having the best grades in the class and being popular are synonymous.
The Japanese have a very rigid, strict teaching style that mostly focuses on lectures, just standing in front of the class and speaking the material. Any American educator would call that idiotic. So why do Japanese schoolchildren do better on standardized tests? Because they care. If you asked an American mother about how she felt her children were doing in school, she'd likely say, "Oh, they're doing fine." She may even say, "They're passing almost all of their classes." A Japanese mother is more likely to say, "They could do better."
I think that when it comes right down to it, American culture is far more to blame than an inefficient school system. With all of the different classes you could take at a well-off suburban high school (which I certainly did not attend), you could open up a whole wealth of opportunities. If you combined the Japanese work ethic with that "personal" education program, you could have young virtuosos. But if you turn on MTV, an "adult" world, you see fashion models and men with their pants hanging around their knees, and no one cares what you got on the math test. Chicken or the egg: did MTV inspire this culture, or did these kids tell MTV, "This is what we want you to sell us"?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
I still am popular :) I used to draw crowds to the soccer games cuz I was so aggressive.
Just because you're smart doesn't mean you can use that as a crutch and not be athletic too.
Same goes for athletes, gotta get smart too.
That being said, I'm popular as a mofo, and beat up lots of big guys in my life, but bein sincere to the ladies puts me at a disadvantage in that dept.
God spoke to me
"Nerds would find their unpopularity more bearable if it merely caused them to be ignored. Unfortunately, to be unpopular in school is to be actively persecuted."
That's it in a nutshell.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
9 out of 10 companies are run by "suits" too . Tech ppl work as sled dogs for managment ppl much akin to those starring in Dilbert cartoons ....
Thus why they are so damn popular and so
damn funny ....
You prolly do not get this because ....
Your a suit ...
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Wow, where to start... First of all, I have two cousins who were at Columbine that awful day... They will never be the same. Second, I was not only a "nerd", but also a punk. Smart guys with blue mohawks were not exactly getting their own reality TV shows in the early 80's. I also happened to be of above-average height and spent several hours each day on a skateboard. The fact that I was naturally built for football or basketball, yet chose not to participate, confused and angered the morons who really had to work at it. I put up with constant taunting and physical abuse for years, culminating in a series of events that brought about the bucketload of tripe known as Satanic Panic by Dr. Jeffery Victor. Anyway... The end result was me schooling myself in revenge through viscious pranks, dirty tricks, and mild violence. So, the internal conflict is that in a way, I understand what drove those idiots at Columbine to do what they did, while being closely related to the horrors that they caused. What it boils down to is teaching children not to be savages while not homogenizing them into some orwellian nightmare. I'd say, for a start, stop babying any idiot in a shirt with numbers on the front, and start rewarding excellence across the board. Otherwise, we will see more "popular" people die. In the meantime, I do enjoy having them serve me appetizers at Applebee's...
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
The second half is amazing, and not nearly as knee jerk reactionary as the majority of the people that have posted.
If you are getting beaten up in school, and your parents doesn't seem to be able to do anything about it, I know of one possible way around this. Martial arts.
So do I want you to be the next Jet Li or something? No. First of all you will learn something worthwhile, probably fixing your body up (a.k.a. can code longer and won't get back problems as easily when you get older), and make friends. Hey, even make friends with black belts who are not the guys getting picked at after all.
There are all sorts of plusses, depending on what you wanna do (that is on the other hand another discussion), but I assure you that one way or another it is going to help. For sure. Just remember that it doesn't mean that you are going to turn into a bully yourself and start being people up. That is wrong.
If they want to beat the crap out of you on the other hand, I won't be the one crying if they get a little bit humiliated. I myself have never had to use either my Karate nor my Aikido. I have great fun at the dojo though.
{
Shotokan Karate
Aikido
}
I was not, however, a nerd in high school. I was a dork, which is like a nerd, but without the good grades.
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
... and it wasn't a funny experiment. Not at all.
... that wasn't always the case. Even most of the times it wasn't. I got a nickname in pre-high-school that appeared after I started having too many tests rated above 80% correct. A lot of people bullied me for that, beaten and laughed at by boys, scorned by some girls. Being the youngest and smallest one (sometimes to a good difference) in the class didn't help too. I got beat up because I refused to let some asshole copy from my test (yeah, like it was my obligation or something). And no, before you even think, he wasn't just "asking a couple of questions". Soon people who didn't know me from anywhere were bullying me because you see, bullying is a fashion and a mob act. People get envious of you, and take advantage of the fact that they're not "alone" in their misery and bully you as well for no good reason.
;), and whoever gets to know me ends up surprised that I am a computer geek in addition to being whatever I am. Really.
Yes, I was one of the so-called "nerds". So nerdy that I was a reference-model for nerdness in my high-school, up to the point that everybody knew exactly who I was yet nobody "knew me" (no saying hi, didn't even garner enough respect for that).
I've seen some posts here that, thruthfully, claim that many times you get bullied for being arrogant and self-delusional. I think they are absolutely right and a good share of my bad experiences of being bullied with are the result of my own making. However...
That continued into high-school, where I was 99.99 % known, and 85% hated for no particular reason. Guys who didn't have the slightest idea who I was would hit me. Nobody really knew who I was, only that I was a despicable being of some sort. Starting an argument with a teacher in the class over some stuff (even simple) would lead me to having the whole class against me, even if I was right.
This changed. A lot. Started changing in high-school's last year, when a lot of the assholes and bullies started seeing their life go backwards over bad results. I started giving pretty much a shit about most people so eventually they forgot me. I laughed in the end.
And now, today, 6 years after high-school, I get to laugh a good lot. Laugh at those jerks who can't now get a job, save read a good book, because they're so goddamn stupid. Some even came to me for a job. Tough luck, I'm not in a position to do so, thankfully, because maybe I'd feel bad smacking in their face that they didn't deserve it. As the saying puts it, "he who laughs last laughs best".
Don't now have any problems with girls avoiding me (if at all, it's the opposite problem
So to all the bullies out there, hey, have your fun beating up the nerds. When a nerd then passes in his high-powered car, driving into a puddle of water, and gets your gutter-trash ass all wet, try to remeber the good days of beating him.
Sorry for the long rant and sorry if it's offensive to some, but I really got hit bad in my days, unfairly, and I had to shout this out to whoever's listening.
Graduate at 21, work 2 years, 2 year MBA, entry-level management track position.
Laughable. "Entry-level management track" positions don't turn into actual management for 20 years. Assuming said MBA could even land a job at all intoday's job market. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It may be theoretically possible, but it just plain don't happen. Sorry.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
Then again, I was a defensive lineman and used to stuff bullies into lockers . . .
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
In the real world, nerds aren't forced to spend time with jocks and vice-versa. Also, jocks cannot get away with beating up nerds without repercussions.
I have to disagree with the author here; there is still some real-world backlash to nerds, as evidenced by Bush defeating Gore in the election. If Gore hadn't used words people didn't understand, he would have won.
Also, I disagree with the peception that the "popular" ones are the ones that are sucessful in high school. Usually the popular ones are a small group, only liked by each other, and amdired only by htose who do not really know them. The nerds, who have each other's respect and friendship, who achieve good grades and go to prestigious colleges, who have the latest mp3's and laser pointers and understand the world around them on a deep level, these are the people who have succeeded in high school. It should be noted that the nerds look upon the popular kids with contempt and disdain. The nerds consider the popular kids to be an inferior forms of life, and that the things the popular kids worry baout are petty, like phone calls, makeup, sports, and prom. IT isnt so much that non-nerds dislike nerds because the nerds are smart; it is that the nerds are smarter than they are. This is the personal part, this is where the egos of the non-nerds are hurt. Nerds can also be nitpickers, as evidenced by people who find fault with others' spelling or grammar. However nerds are not unpopular, they are simply losing at a game created by the popular kids. In an environment where the race is on to know the most facts and solve problems quickly and ace tests even when one spent the whole last night hanging out with friends, the nerds are the ones who are popular winners.
It seemed to me, at the time, that all that was needed was to be helpful, honest, and genuine with other people. Hah! Thankfully, however, this notion has come true later in life. Several years ago, I was in a Blockbuster and I overheard (former Oakland Raider lineman) Bob Golic lamenting about a problem he was having with his laptop modem. I politely introduced myself, apologised for eavesdropping, and then told him what would probably solve his problem. During this, several people had come up to him asking him for his autograph. After I had helped him, he gave me a sincere "thanks".
It's then that it struck me. A half-dozen people in the store were thanking *him* for his autograph, and then he's thanking *me* for my help. It kinda helped me see my place on the "gratitude food chain" a little clearer, I guess.
I guess the moral of the story is that (as most of us have learned) the dedication to "nerdcraft" in youth bears fruit later... even though most of us didn't understand why it didn't bear any in high-school.
I went to school down the street from Mounds Park Academy at a fairly expensive private highschool,
Aargh...I forgot the name of the place. It was a Catholic school, right?
In fact as I remember, MPA is in the building that your school moved out of in the mid-eighties. But I can't remember the name of the original school. (Was it Hill-Murray?)
but I have a good idea what your other two school choices were like (Were they North St Paul and...???)
No, they were Como Park (the football-mad school) and St. Paul Central (the metal-detector school). Central has since supposedly improved a lot, from what I have heard (though I'm pretty out of touch with Minnesota these days, now that I live on a different continent). But North St. Paul was pretty bad in those days, too...
I may have had a chance to get in at Highland (which had a fairly decent reputation), but it would have meant a lot of bitching at the school system and a long commute. So we went with MPA, which was worth every cent.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
I admit it. I was a chess playing nerd in high school. The kids didn't pick on me however. Not in high school anyway. During junior high they did until one of my friends pointed out that not only was I a chess playing nerd but also on the wrestling team and a lot bigger than most of the other kids.
I never liked fighting but I had finally had enough so one day the worst bully pushed me too far and I beat the crap out of him. Then I went to everyone else who had been picking on me and ask politely if they wanted to settle the score. No one did.
I still wasn't popular but no one ever picked on my again. It's sad that I had to stoop to their level to earn the right not to be picked on.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Seriously. This is probably one of the most thought out articles I have read. It clearly points out many of the miscommings of the current system and why they need to be changed. It also shows why it is so hard to see things for what they are at that age.
Truely insightful, but sadly I feel that nothing will come of it other then us hear reading it and praising it. If only all high school, middle school and grade school education boards were forced to read it and actually forced to discuss why things are done the way they are, and not simply say "they are done this way because they have always been done this way".
This is also not just related to public schools, even many private schools are the same. I feel a great followup and possible case study should be made to look at tech and trade schools and compair the social structures with public schools. This might easily show that when students are learning things that are pertinent and useful and not just menial, that they have better lives during their school years and possibly through their life.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Folks, even though we're no longer shoved in a locker, we're still bullied by less intelligent, evil people in our professional lives.
Just some observations:
- I've omitted some of my academic background in order to get better responses to my resume. For a tech job, many managers *do not want* someone that smart. They want someone they can manipulate.
- Don't half of you work for a less-intelligent manager, who reports to a person with average IQ and an MBA? Is that MBA the person who:
+ Says you need to hire someone this quarter but last quarter laid off some people who could have performed the new work (with or without new training)?
+ Forks the code again and again to satisfy a single new prospect at the expense of long-term (and even short-term) throughput of the organization?
+ Thinks they're running your unit effectively by leveraging business process management knowledge alone -- without more than a modicum of knowledge of technology? (I.e., the "building software is like building a house"-mentality types, who don't realize that software is *all design*)
+ Pays you less than "Account Managers", "Business Analysts" (who often know astonishingly little about what they're supposedly documenting), salespeople, non-technical Project Managers, and HR people, whose jobs you could all do with a month of training?
+ Works the engineers 10-14 hours a day while everyone else goes home?
Commenting on why there are so few women in this field, Philip Greenspun remarked "The question should be: 'Why are there so many men?'"
There were some stupid fucking nerds out there. This one kid, total nerd. Bad hair, glasses, bad skin gawky. In to computers, math, etc.
But he was stuid too. Just fundementaly. I tried to avoid him, as he annoyed the hell out of me.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You don't have to put up a front of "being smarter than everyone else" in order to get picked on.
Things got better when i became more successfull at hiding, at not standing out in a crowd, not taking the bus home if possible. (Half the attraction of the after-hours computer club was that it meant my parents would come pick me up directly at school.)
This helped me out in Jr. High and high school, but needless to say it had a pretty disastrous effect on my social abilites, which i still think i probably haven't made up for.
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Uhh, I've known people like this. Starting salaries for MBAs, even people without much experience, were into six figures here during the boom. Whether they actually MANAGE people is irrelevant; they're technically in the management track, and they make more than techies.
...for example, Daniel Goleman's book.
One of the first signs of incompetence in any area is a failure to recognize one's own incompetence. In my experience, "nerds" usually have an incredibly inflated opinion of their own intelligence and ability. They love to think they're smarter or superior in some way, and that this sets them apart and explains away their being misfits. But if anything, this is probably just a defense mechanism, or wishful thinking.
Ever notice how none of the nerds ever get the highest grades or SAT scores, or get into top tier universities?
I know plenty of people from my high school years who were top athletes, straight-A, all-AP students, got at least 1450 on their SAT, attended an Ivy League level university, and went on to illustrious careers in *science and technology* that would make most Slashdot nose-pickers bow down in worship.
The bottom line is that winners are winners, and losers are just losers. So quit kidding yourselves.
Don't have a clue what to do with a woman, but they sure know what to do with penguins ...
Mind you, if you're snowed in on the East Coast right now and you're all alone, and a penguin just happens to fall down your chimney or something, I suppose there's nothin' wrong with a little sweet penguin love ...
I can relate to this topic very well, and may have a story you'll find amusing.
When I was in 8th grade me and two other fat, smart nerd guys always hung out together. A group of 7th graders ALWAYS picked on us, but in groups of 15 or 20 at a time so we were too scared to fight back and let the littler kids bully us.
One day I caught one of the little pricks when he was abusing us without enough of his friends around. I outweighed him by at least 50 pounds. I knocked him to the ground, wrapped one arm around his head as I leaned on him so he couldn't move, and started repeatedly punching him in the head as hard as I could with my free hand. He was a mess pretty quick. After a dozen punches or so I heard a loud clearing of the throat above me. I quit punching and looked up to find Mr. Schmidt, the football coach and playground attendant that day, looking down at me. He said "Is there some kind of problem?" I figured I was screwed if I tried to pull anything, so I let go of the kid, stood up, looked Mr. Schmidt in the eyes and said "There was, but I took care of it." He said "Good" and walked away.
He knew as well as I did that sticking up for myself was required, and as long as the other kid wasn't dead yet he outta drop it. And after that incident, the younger bullies were way less interested in harassing us since they knew we'd fight back.
My motto is: Never give up - unless it's harder than you want it to be.
Don't act like you switched out of some desire. You switched because you were going to fail out. I've got a copy of your transcript you dirty, filthy faggot. You are a goddamned liar if you say otherwise! Fuck you!
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
What a wonderful essay on the American education system. It should be required reading for all educators and parents of school-aged children
Tangentially, I'd like to say I'm freaking sick and tired of most of the highest posts being marked (Score 5 Funny). There should be a way in preferences to autmoatically subtract N points from posts marked 'Funny'. I appreciate a good one liner, but I'd rather not see them at the top of every discussion as if no one ever has anything serious to say here.
My mom says I'm cool.
---- Anyone can act smart, but it takes a smart person to act stupid. ----
I wouldn't say I was subdivided in highschool
;)
ooh, nice. I caught that even before noticing your sig, then your username. yeah Rush!
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
maybe arrogant attitudes like this: "why being smarter than the average bear is more of a liability".
You're a *great* example of a geek! Too delicate to go to public school. Yup, I knew the type... never learned hwo to deal with real people, so they intentionally shelter themselves ("Mommy, pleeeese let me go to the private school!!"). Quite honestly, you probably would've turned out much better if you did go to a public school and had to learn how to interact with people different than yourself.
By this guys standards the dumber you are the more popular you are. I've known lots of popular people who do well in school, and I've known lots of unpopular kids who were just plain dumb. This article reminds me of the stuff Jon Katz used to write.
I'm currently a Junior in high school and a nerd. Despite being top of my class as well as being known throughout the school as the person to come to for computer help (gets me out of class all the time), I do not experience this negative treatment, such as "being shoved into lockers by the football team". Quite the contrary actually. I have become quite popular and my previous boyfriend is our quarterback (neither of us have come out yet. Shhh!). When I go to the basketball games, the cheerleaders all run up to me and give me hugs. Granted, I do run cross country and track, but trust me, we are terrible and cross country especially is laughed at. I am still my geeky self, but people don't seem to notice or care. Although my school is very geared toward athletics, you are looked upon favorably in some cases if you are smart as well. There is a group of "nerds" at my school who fit the stereotype, and I hang out with them on occasion, but no one cares or says anything. Contrary to the article, I don't work to be popular. The key I found out is to simply refrain from talking about something that is over everyone's heads. If you do this, even unintentionally, they think you are trying to show off which leads to the problems many nerds seem to face. People just respect me for who I am, and maybe by some fluke of nature, the Universe has forgotten me and let me become popular, but somehow I don't think that's the case.
But I have observed one thing -- teenagers burn. They're too active with fast-twitch anaerobic muscle activity and concentrated thinking. They burn through their puny glycogen stores in about 4 hours then crash and become extremely cranky and irritable from hypoglycemia. Or suffer rebound [insulin shock] hypoglycemia from eating too-quickly absorbed carbs (high glycemic index).
They were popular because they weren't pretentious, they were self-confident, and they knew how to talk to somebody without scaring or boring the shit out of them. Which none of us geeks quite had a handle on yet . . .
Exactly! People with the necessary skills will succeed socially, no matter what their other interests are. Social incompetence is just that -- incompetence.
I'm sorry, I don't agree.
I know a lot of Nerds who went to great schools, scored high on their SATs and did well professionally. And I know a number who didn't. I also know a few high school "winners" who went off to their Ivy Leagues and crumbled.
I feel your assertion that calling oneself a Nerd is an excuse for self-aggrandizement is off-base. I didn't think I was a Nerd then --- it's only now looking back that I realize how utterly alone I was. There were no other thirteen-yr-old girls in my small hometown reading Sartre. I was indeed different. It was indeed painful. And, what's more, I am successful now, and I do think it's interesting and worthwhile to consider how much of what made me different contributed to my success.
I think maybe you are confusing the term Nerd with Loser --- they aren't the same thing. I dont' like calling anyone a loser though. One of the things that being smart has taught me is that you can learn something from practically anyone.
http://ob-la-blog.blogspot.com/
...of course, I had a mullet and played football too. I was still picked on, and probably would have "gone Columbine" at times if I had any access to guns. It was funny how civilized some people got after I gave them concussions in practice.
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
I had good hygene, the bullies didn't seem to care. I was a little smaller than average until midway through Jr. High, at which point the physical bullying tapered off and the emotional harassment started up.
2) At least try to be social. People don't like people who don't talk or won't look them in the eyes. Smile, say hi to people you may not even know. When you talk to someone look at them.
I tried that at first, and it worked in elementary school, i had friends and stuff. Then i got into Jr. High. One of my friends "became" popular and started bullying me, maybe to prove his allegience to his new friends, i don't really know. Other's picked on me too to a greater or lesser degree. Do you know what a fairly normal reaction to that is? To _hide_! If talking to someone will get you teased and bullied, then you tend not to speak up. You stay quiet, stay in the corner, try not to attract anyone's attention.
3) Maybe try to have similar intrests... If you shun everything most people like, you aren't going to have anything at all in common with anyone are you? I'm not saying you have to become a rabid sports fan, or become glued to watching whatever TV shows kids these days watched... But a little effort to have some of the same interests of your peers goes a long way.
Some of the people i had similar interests in turned on my and became bullies. By the time i found other people with similar interests, too much damage had been done to my socialness. When i found a group of people who had the same interests as me but didn't seem to get bullied (they were a Trench Coat Mafia type group) i desperatly wanted to belong, but it didn't seem to work. I was _already_ interested in the same things as them, anime, RPGs, computers, computer games. And we got along okay when we were together in class. However after school they would go off on their own and i wasn't invited. I hoped that if i showed enough obvious interest in their activites, that they would notice, decide i was worthy, and invite me to join them. However by that point years of hiding had destroyed almost any ability to try and actively ask them if i could participate, and i never worked up the courage.
Part of what makes the misfits unpopular is stuff they do, but part of it is how others treat them, and social preconceptions in place before they entered the picture, and part of it is psychological damage done to them by previous bullies.
I was rejected by the nerds, how sad is that?
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Starting salaries for MBAs, even people without much experience, were into six figures here during the boom.
'nuff said. And, no you don't know anyone 25 years old that makes six figures, and works for someone else. Even fresh-out-of-school doctors don't. MBAs are a dime a dozen nowadays, my man. Sorry, but I'm older than you, and really do know better.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
From the "Voices from the Hellmouth" posts.
My basic answer is F*** Em. In a few years they'll be looking back on HS as the "best years of their lives."
Just think about, how sad their lives are, that they will never have a better time in their lives.
Meanwhile we Nerds/Geeks/Whatevers are moving on and changing the world (if just a little bit slower then we were a couple of years ago.)
I do know an Adam Smith. He makes darned fine stuff for renfaires and conventions. I have no idea if he has an invisible hand. (But I've heard rumours...)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Might make things better, might turn into a disaster. Nerds say "you picked on us so we'll intentionally do poorly to screw your funding," the sports teams reply to that threat by throwing all their games. Hopefully their pride would prevent that from happening. And maybe jocks would show up at nerd events to cheer them on and vice versa.
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If they act like animals, treat them as such. Nothing says you have to put up with being treated like an asshole just because you've got a clue. Get out there and learn some social skills, find your clique.. and if the shit gets really heavy, go for violence of a degree and quality that removes all doubt about who has the bigger dick.
I'm not sure what part of "I KNOW THESE PEOPLE" you don't understand.
Go do a search on google for "average starting salary MBA".
You're making a common mistake of deciding that your experiences represent some sort of universal situation.
I think he meant to say "intelligence is linear" rather than "intelligence is a scalar", in the 12th paragraph. Intelligence, if measured by IQ, is in fact a scalar. :)
The university is not a flattener of hierarchy, it's a decisive, irrevocable split, the beginning of a lifelong segregation. A "top" and a "bottom" are sheared off, left aside forever.
The bottom--I use the hierarchical terms loosely here, just for illustration--is an "underclass" of people who can't continue their educations for reasons of economic or other deprivation, or infirmity, or youthful error, or simple misfortune. They just aren't there to be disdained anymore. If they were around, they would be.
The top is the rough equivalent of the "nerds" and "stoners" of the linked article, people whose lives simply take a different course because their skills and talents lie outside the set "professional"--like certain kinds of artists or technicians, who have their own, separate schools, or simply mavericks who strike their own paths outside the hierarchy--and/or who view college as merely a continuation of secondary school's horrors, but populated wholly by the priveleged (the "popular" and "nerds" of the article).
The members of your group no longer interact personally with the members of either of these groups, so, in your minds, they don't exist. Sometimes, they deliver you a pizza or make a movie or record you like, but they're essentially non-persons to you...
...judging by the blithe sanctimony your comment, that is.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
But even better:
I don't think this point can be underemphasized. We think nothing of having a free *intern* in the office. Why couldn't a fourteen-year-old come into the office and hang around and ask questions? In some companies, it would be totally looked down upon. Frankly, in mine, I would consider it to be a boon to a parent's productivity -- and make them feel much better when they can tell the little jerk to go make copies.
I just generally agree with Mr. Graham's views that our education system is generally like a prison system. Kids need to be out in the world exploring. The two main reasons I got through high school unscathed was because I was surrounded by beautiful countryside to play around in and when I went off to art school, I went to a place where my talents were appreciated for what they were. Everyone in my high school had a fairly mutual respect for one another and I think that stemmed from the faculty repeatedly telling us that we were special. Most of my friends thought that the computer skills I had inherited from my nerd Dad were "totally awesome. You know about this internet stuff?" It was practically science fiction to some of them.
I guess I'm just trying to say here that I was really blessed in my experience and I wish all kids could have that. There is something wrong with the system and we all need to focus on that. Really I think that what Paul Graham is saying, what it boils down to, is that children are the only reason society exists.
________________________________________
Nerds are unpopular almost as a direct result of the definition. Nerds are people who are into objects, not people. This means you spend less time honing your social skills. Simple.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
This guy who wrote the article wrote it like being smart precludes you from being popular. He simply doesn't get it.
Popularity is the result of charisma, or a sort of IQ for people skills. It's a different vector from mechanical or intellectual IQ. You might as well wish you had been born a different sex or that you were left handed when you are right. It seems like you should be able to do it but you can't.
The reason why it doesn't matter as much as an adult is because nerdy people simply don't like to hang out with popular people. Its adulthood, you can get away with that type of behavior.
The idea that people who are good at drawing are good at it because they do it all the time is nonsense. They are good at it because on that particular IQ vector they are smart.
The sooner this guy gets the picture that there are different kinds of smart, the sooner he can go back to writing about something he actually knows about.
Beware the wood elf!!!
What the hell? WHICH state of mind? Try again bucko.
You're a *great* example of a geek! Too delicate to go to public school. Yup, I knew the type... never learned hwo to deal with real people, so they intentionally shelter themselves ("Mommy, pleeeese let me go to the private school!!"). Quite honestly, you probably would've turned out much better if you did go to a public school and had to learn how to interact with people different than yourself.
Er, and just what provoked that comment? Good Lord, man, get the chip off your shoulder...
As to my choice of school, my parents were well aware of how shitty the available public schools were. Didn't take much convincing. (Hrm, shall we send Junior to the school that has a 30% dropout rate and zero chances of getting him into college, or send him to the school where he'll probably get shot or stabbed once a month?)
I'm perfectly happy dealing with other people -- I have to in my work, since being self-employed I have to deal with my clients and subcontractors a lot. A lack of people skills wouldn't get me very far in business, and I get along with my clients swimmingly. (At least they recommend me a lot to others, so I can't be all that bad to deal with.)
Why am I self-employed? Not because of a lack of people skills -- actually, I enjoyed my last job a lot and am still friends with my former colleagues and bosses. The reason was money, pure and simple. (Why have the company pocket $120/hr for work that I do, when I only get $25/hr out of it? Doesn't take a rocket scientist...)
There are plenty of other reasons why self-employment (and private school) were the right decisions for me. People skills, or the lack thereof, didn't factor into it at all.
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
I think there's actually a lot going on here that ends up with junior high making many people's lives miserable (as it did mine), some of which may be related:
Just my thoughts...
I wish this author could have used britannica's definition of a nerd rather than hollywoods definition. A nerd is not someone that is smarter than the average person. I know plenty of nerds that are never going to make it into mehnsa nor spell it correctly. What makes a nerd a nerd is their social behavior. The dictionary defines a nerd as an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person. Being smart has something to do with being a nerd but being a social reject is the primary reason. Ok, next rant. Is this author really a nerd? He writes like he is one, wants to be one, and knows them more than they know themselves. And what's up with the 1981 high school chess club picture? Is that really necessary to put on the front page of your personal site...20 years later? Does he look at that every night then pat himself on the back before going to bed? This guy is a tool but not a nerd.
Each instance of "'nerds'" in the third paragraph should have read "some 'nerds.'" Typed it rather quickly.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
EQ versus IQ morons. Intelligence versus Smarts. And am I the only person who is sick of self labeling "nerds" calling themselves the smart people.
The popular "jocks" at my school now make much, much more money as doctors, lawyers and business men than any "nerds" I knew. And their kids are not embarassed of their fathers!
Having gone through school myself between 1984 and 1997 (K to G12) I wasn't really considered the nerdy type so much as I was the kid who was larger then most (height wise and body build) and that was why I had been through a lot of fights starting from Grade 3 even.
:D
I believe it was mostly because of the fact I didn't bow in to peer pressure or "Fashion styles" crap. I've always had the attitude of "Well damn why do I have to dress like this or that because someone says I must"? That and I had a very natural talent for spelling and reading as early as Grade 3.
Where other kids in my class would have trouble reading simple paragraphs or sentences even in Grade 3, I was already the near perfect speller and I had no problems reading whatsoever. Hell I would read so fast and pronounce the words properly that the teachers had trouble keeping up.
I've always enjoyed reading and today at the age of 25 enjoy having a LARGE collection of magazines (Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Scientific American) and novels (Star Wars/Trek, Clive Cussler and more).
Yet kids always felt the need to try and start fights with me, and of course I would get blamed when I always fought back and decked a kid or punched the tar out of him.
Teachers didn't give a damn either in what schools I went to over the years, all public schools. There was only ONE teacher I respected in Grade 5 from Australia, teaching in Canada.
He was the nicest teacher you could have, and he stuck up for me and others and actually gave a damn. Unfortunately he left next year but my mother bought him a really nice mans wallet which I gave to him and he
Otherwise all the other teachers were rude, obnoxious, one even damn near came close to being charged because he grabbed my face and jaw HARD in 1987 and squeezed as hard as he could, all the while screaming at me because I didn't do a homework assignment.
The second I told my mother and father that, my mother went storming right in after school and literally yelled and swore at the teacher, to the point the principal and vice principal came in and calmed things down. I would not have been suprised if it would have came to blows, with my mother kicking or hitting that teacher.
And yet USA and Canada wonders why more parents in the mid 90's and todays keep thier children home for HOME SCHOOLING. Where parents can teach thier children themselves in most cases without worrying about a smart childen being labeled a nerd or geek and getting knifed or shot, or if the parents have a daughter, whether she will be raped by some other kid her age.
In Canada I learned going thru K-12 that the school system was really bad then and its even worse now. Overcrowing, large class sizes and teachers that dont give a damn. A good example was me in Grade 8 and 9 at a Junior High School. Built in 1977 it was meant to house around 700 or so students. In 1992 the school ALREADY had over 1200 students and 6 portables in the back of the building on the grass field.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
I'm a geek; I go to an admittedly geek-heavy university. But I played football for a year and a half as well, until I decided schoolwork was more important, and I still don't have any trouble mixing with kids my age. I do still play soccer. I wonder where this theory places us, the folks of supposedly well-above-average intelligence who can still fit in well enough with the rest.
-- shayborg
The people who write that these people deserve this treatment:
violent beatings, rejection by the majority of the peers, insults, etc
because they are:
fat, ugly, annoying, obnoxious, smelly, etc.
have no excuse for their behaviour. I am not going to say I was social adept, or any of those things. But I am willing to say that I did not deserve a weekly beating by the jocks, or a continual supply of insults from my peers.
Saying that it's okay to do this because they are any of the above, or any reasons given in this list, is equivalent to saying that it's okay to beat up (insert race, sexual orientation, etc. here) because they are of that group. The only difference that exists in the states and in Canada, and elsewhere in the world, is that people don't frown upon beating up people who are socially different (fat, ackward, etc.) rather, they seem to encourage it.
This is why I feel that anyone who tries to justify this behaviour towards "nerds", or any group is blatantly in the wrong.
In most high schools, there is a very distinct pecking order that verges on a caste system. It usually varies between regions, but the basic layout is the same:
- -The Over-Achievers: They take all the advanced classes, participate in student government, sports, and just about everything else on campus. They are (usually) universally admired. Most of the team captains fall into this category.
Teachers, for the most part, do little to change this system, either because they don't care, or they believe that their interference will only make things worse. More often than not, a teacher that steps in to help a student being picked on will be seen as under the teacher's personal protection and will thus be subject to even more cruel treatment once said teacher is gone.-The Elitists: They take enolugh of the advanced classes to make friends with the Over-Achievers, and will usually pick one sport to play, usually on an above-average level. They try desperately to gain the levels of admiration given to the Over-Achievers, but usually fail due to an immature, cruel streak that gets taken out on the less-popular groups. These people are the bullies that the lower groups both despise and envy.
-The Average Kids: The majority of students fall into this category. They don't participate in many sports, clubs, or anything of the sort. Most of their free time is spent hanging out with friends, working, or other typical high-school behaviors. -The Pariahs: The bottom of the rung, this group bears the brunt of attacks by the other groups, either by people trying to get a higher standing, or to simply maintain the one they already have. The Pariahs are subject to discreet discrimination by the Average Kids, brutal teasing & bullying by the Elitists, and a simple denial of their existennce by the Over-Achievers.
So what recourse do the down-trodden, mistreated masses of today's public schools have? Very little. If they speak out on the subject, they are seen as whiners and will be treated even worse than they are now. If they complain to their parents about it, they'll be told that it's a part of life and there is no option but to suck it up and deal.
And now, for the anecdote:
When I was in high school, I did my best to imporve my social standing. I took the advanced classes, I joined clubs, I joined the track team. My social skills were on par with most of the student body, and I had good hygeine(sp?). And I did this with the grace that poseurs lack.
All of it was in vain. The awkward kid from junior high stuck in the minds of those I went to junior high with, and this idea spread among the Elitists. I was isolated in the advanced classes and the clubs until I eventually quit in disgust. I was forced to leave the track team due to an auto accident that screwed up my left knee, and was taunted for being a "wuss" and a "sissy", even though I had to, and still do on occasion, have to walk with a cane because of said injury.
And frankly, it hurt. The utter feeling of loneliness, was sometimes too much to bear. I was seriously depressed throughout high school. I considered suicide, and even attempted it twice. And I had nowhere to turn, except to my other Pariah friends, my books, and my Internet connection. My parents didn't care; it's all a part of growing up. The teachers and administrators could do nothing about something as subtle, and as vicious, and this.
Once I got out of high school and became involced in matters of substance (read: college), I was able to put the pain of the last four years behind me and become a person instead a member of a caste. I changed myself from a disillusioned, depressed wreck into an active college student with an active social life and diverse interests. But just because I've put it past me doesn't mean I've forgotten it.
The only reason I keep my Windows partition is so I can mount it like the bitch that it is.
Your life is what you make of it yourself, nerds are nerds because they want to be known as nerds. There are people in my class constantly talking about what they have programmed yesterday and throwing with some nice sounding words they themselves don't even understand the meaning of. These people don't care about their image, or popularity. It's not very hard to show up casual clothes and wearing your hair like everyone else does, why don't nerds do this? Because they think they are cool in their own way. Being smart doesn't have anything to do with your social abilities, the problem is that most nerds think it has. Besides that nerds definitely like to be victim: there is no law that says that higher intelligent people can't stand up to the lower intelligent, is there? I don't think so...
He certain brings up several interesting points. Social behavior is a topic people don't even master with a phd so I guess we can't be too critical of this short argument. Certainly, the master formula for popular success cannot be addressed which such a simple explaination. I would like to point out a few assumptions that really take away from the credibility of his argument...
1. He bases his argument on a suburb lifestyle. Certainly these problems exist in urban and rural communities so the enter suburb argument is irrelavent.
2. Not all popular kids are dumb.
3. Not all nerds are smart.
http://www.askthevoid.com
Is Paul Allen (the Microsoft guy). He's a big sports fan and owns several sports teams. He is also a rather nerdy guy.
Think about this.
The types of people that are more than likely to get married and have kids the fastest are the ones who trash on the geeks.
The types of people who make great accomplishments or have great sucess stories to tell are the geeks.
Wait until your first High School Reunion and you'll see how true this is.
Dolemite
Save the World! Use a Quote!
Or, the far more common: The discussions I have on Linux vs. M$ are another story...
How many slashes would a slashdot dot, if a slashdot could dot slashes?
If I had to say why it's different I'd put it down to sport. Australians generally enjoy sport. We'll watch a game that's played for 6 hours a day for 5 days where a significant portion of the games end up having no result (test cricket for those who have no idea what I'm talking about) and still call it exciting. But despite this there is no jock/cheerleader thing anywhere. The closest we have are sporties who are the people who are good at sport. They tend to be in the popular bunch but it isn't a free ticket to the top of the heirarchy. Sporties would get their prizes in assemblies but so would the smart kids. It was about equal time and all everyone else wanted to do was go to lunch rather than sit in the assembly anyway.
The only way onto higher education is by study. Universities play sport but there aren't special courses designed to coddle athletes to a degree. If you want a uni degree, you have to be smart and/or work hard. I can honestly say I have never seen anyone who intentionally did badly just to fit in. Being not so bright will get you teased as much as being smart.
As with the Kiwi above, pretty much everywhere here has school uniforms so everyone looks much the same. Physical education (gym class?) becomes a once a week torture but other than that there wasn't much you could do to distinguish yourself. When I was there it was socks. 5, 6 pairs of socks and you were the hippest thing since Grease.
Also, Australians, seriously laid back. Putting in all that effort into getting ready in the morning really isn't worth it. Generally you'd find an area that was where your particular social group hang out and go there until some of your mates turned up. All that effort is pretty much wasted.
One sure way to single yourself out is to be arrogent. Being smart will mean kids'll call you names (geek, nerd, square, cube, unit etc) but as a whole most people wont care. Saying "You all suck because you are soo stupid" will not only get you special treatment from the popular kids, it'll also mean you wont have friends for much longer either.
Combine all that and high school isn't that bad for most people. Most people find a bunch of people they can call friends and hang around with, and the groups seem to be more fluid than in US schools. Speaking to somebody from a lower social group doesn't mean it's all over. You try not to antagonise the rough kids. Doing well in class isn't a torture sentence and being good at sports isn't a free pass to cool. Even doing the part time popular thing means you will generally fit.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
It's pretty unbeleivable how many teens end their lives because they just can't take it anymore
So how many is that then? A number would be more believable than "it's really many!".
Smart != Straight A's
Smart is intellectual ability while straight A's is data recall abililty and effort.
Although smart, nerds are as imature as other teenagers, so they don't understand that futilities are needed to keep sanity and rest its minds.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
also, here is a clue: calling yourself 'smarter than everyone else' is pretty horrible thing to do. how would you feel if i decided that political science majors are smarter than techie geeks? or business people? well, in fact, they are, because business people rule over the geeks: imagine how business people feel with all their 'brains'. oh wait, the whole idea nerds have about 'smart' is stupid, and wrong, and idiotic. einstein would not find slashdot to be 'intelligent', largely because it has no social conscience, which he had a gigantic portion of. slashdot also has very little imagination, which einstein knew was more important than knowledge.
face it. oyu arent smarter than everyone else, and people hate you because you are an asshole and treat everyone else in the world like shit, like meaningless peons put on this earth to serve you. that is why you are hated.
it's very easy, and tempting, to say that the reason that nerds are disliked is that they lack the interests that the jocks have, and blame the jocks for not being accepting. Simialarly, it's easy to say that the nerds simply don't want to show interest in mainstream activities and blame them for their social issues.
I place the blame elsewhere...in the parents, families, and teachers that never tried to get the children of their communities to have a love of experimentation and exploration into new activities and environments.
I am a nerd. I love my computer, and I spend a chunk of time every day visiting web comics, reading slashdot, surfing hardware sites. I can quote Simpsons, Discworld, and Kevin Smith at the drop of a hat, and often do. However, I also play hockey, sail, hike, listen to music, scuba dive and do all sorts of other things. What is the upshot of this personal ad? Somewhere along the way, somebody taught me that i shouldn't confine myself to interests within my narrowly defined social group.
My mother insisted from when I was very young that I try lots of sports. Never mind that I was reading at a very high level, or that I was a little butterball, she wanted me to have a well rounded personality. Many of those activities have ceased...I haven't played hockey or baseball since elementary school, still, participation taught me how to talk about the sport. Since she kicked me out of the bedroom, instead of doing the easy thing and letting me lie there eating cheetos all day, I can now talk to jocks, watch a football game, even, god forbid, play pickup games that look like fun.
The upshot of this is that in high school I hung out with a whole bunch of people admittedly nerdier than myself. They never had the exposure to a wide range of activities I did. They couldn't make friends outside of the small circle, since they had no interests in common with the outside world. I, on the other hand, had friends all over the place, despite membership in their little group. The reason for this, I'm convinced, is that I had that little extra nudge to make me enjoy activites outside of my area of expertise.
In fact, durring the senior year of high school, the little nerd group did branch out. What was the miraculous change caused by??? Alcohol and drugs. Lando, the boy who could easily quote passages from Wheel of Time, found out that he liked vodka. All of a sudden, he could talk about something in common with even the dumbest jock. Slim discovered marijuana. All the stoners and musicians were instant friends. It wasn't that hard to get along with all the other groups. All you had to do was throw a party, invite them along, and you know what? Anybody can get along when they have something to talk about.
My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.
Well, first off i prefer the term "geek" as it lends itself more toward my computing abilities...but anyway...I think that sometimes the popular consensous about nerds being beaten up and tortured is a little off. Sure if I ever tried to hang out with the "cool" or "popular" kids I would be rejected, but i surely wouldn't be beat up. I am actually proud of the fact that I'm a geek, and so are my friends. Maybe its the fact that I have a close group of "geeky" friends to hand out with...as I'm sure life would be a lot different if I was the only smart kid. But in general, I would think that geeks or nerds or whatever you want to call them, don't get beat up as often as you would think...at least that's what it seems like to me as a nerd currently in high school.
SIGFAULT
which is why geeks don't go to clubs(at least I don't).
Some of the best fun I've ever had was going to a dance club just to watch all the crazy popular people. I sat on the sidelines with a pepsi (it was like, highschool night or something) just absorbing everything. With about an hour left in my little expirament, i went out onto the dance floor and flailed around with everyone else for a song or 2. the world didn't stop, and no one beat me up.
I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere...
In the western world, a University education is lauded as a fundamental step for any wealthy, well connected, person looking to climb the social ladder. It is held by many, that one of the most respected and prestigious choices a prospective student might consider, is a degree in the field of engineering. Unfortunately this is a massive misconception that needs to be abrogated without delay. To become an engineer, is to do a disservice to humanity. Engineers are responsible for the deaths, and general suffering of millions of people in the last 100 years of human existence, and that the world would have been a better place without them.
In a corporation, an engineer has limited power. If the boss wants to you to build a vibrator or a talking fish then that is what you have to do. With so many degrees handed out by accredited universities and colleges around the world, there are more than enough people to do the jobs lazy westerner's refuse to do. Do you think that all the people that work for Microsoft are evil people, bent on destroying the glass house of stone throwing lunix zealots? I don't think so. They need to feed their families and buy their well deserved luxuries, just like any American. They therefore become stooges to their masters, blindly obedient, regardless of the impact they impart upon the world.
In a benign example of this zombie like obedience, in the last ten years or so, the bumpers on cars have been switched from being hard metal bars encased in rubber, to flimsy molded plastic covers that crack at the slightest bump. Back in the good old days, when you got into a fender bender nothing happened except for maybe a sore neck and slightly embarrased ego. Your car was fine. Today the story is entirely different. The flimsy crap that is passed of as a bumper these days invariably breaks - leaving the user with an $800 bill for a 5mph car accident. Why is this? Well the car companies have obviously colluded together to make money. Why build a car that survives low impact accidents, when they can build one that breaks easily and requires the owner to purchase a brand new part, -- that is both easy to produce and notoriously expensive -- straight from the factory? Nothing, because engineers are spineless subservient drones willing to do their masters beck and call. They know that this bumper-gate is just a way to ripoff the public.
It is obvious that engineers could care less about the public that they serve, as long as their own hedonistic desires and cravings are answered, who cares about anyone else?
So we have seen that engineers will ignore any moral problems that they have with the product they are helping to create. This is mainly due to the nature of a prospective engineer. These people, mainly "men", are well versed in maths and computing sciences, and are notoriously awkward with the opposite sex. This creates a cognitive dissonance, or a friction within themselves, that continually makes them unhappy and anti-social for the rest of their lives. During high-school they are labeled as "dorks" and "nerds", which does nothing but re-enforce an already poor self-image. At University, engineers band together like a herd of elk being stalked by a hungry lion. They construct a community, and don "team" jackets to announce that they belong to the Faculty of Engineering. This is obviously a sign of insecurity, copied for the same reasons as the Hitler Youth and the Cub Scouts. Outcasts need to band together to survive. However, this can only last so long. When they are placed in a working enviroment, this social safety net is gone. A strong boss in a management position can easily bully an underling engineer to do what he wants him or her to do. He is no longer wearing his red jacket. His power is gone. Look at Steve Jobs, and how he manipulated and took advantage, of Steve Wozniak, the real genius behind Apple Computers. Steve lied and stole from Wozniak for years; the atypical engineer.
Most engineers never set foot near an Arts class or a sorority. They miss out on useful classes like psychology which is helpful in developing manipulative skills and defending against manipulation by employers. Their lack of ethics and philosophic training is also apparent. But where is the death and suffering you ask? Well before we get ahead of ourselves, we know that engineers can be easily manipulated by their bosses due to their lack of a classical education which teaches at least, strong critical thinking skills. We know that this manipulation has been applied to create cheap easily breakable bumpers designed to rip-off societies car drivers. But what if that car company, is a corporation is in the business of murder - like a nation is in time of war - then, applying the previous tenets, we get an army of engineers who are charged with creating machines of destruction, who are entirely moral-less and gutless to question their supervisor's demands. The A-Bomb, the Maxim Gun, sadomasochistic devices, structural failures; if engineers had any sense they would have refused to build airplanes and the World Trade Center. The list of black marks against engineers goes on forever.
This article has argued pervasively and effectively that to become an engineer, is to become a powerless drone-murderer, who can only help to increase the suffering of the human race. I heard on the radio the other day that the draw-string on common set of window blinds, were killing babies with such regularity - the string would become looped around the curious babies neck - that they had to be withdrawn from public sale. Would you like to be the engineer who designed this baby death trap? Do you think engineers sleep very well? Think again, murderer's consciousness are often very dark and clouded, regardless of the material rewards that one might gain from such ugly business. Now that the luster of engineering has been scratched and tarnished, the torch should be passed on to the study of literature or astronomy, as these fields of study can't be used for evil.
Hey Lewser get a life.
I didn't even get along much with the geeks at my high school. Although there was a connection at a superficial level, I never did anything with any fellow geeks and I just didn't like at least half the stuff they liked. I liked the stuff like computers, math, etc. but I never cared about the "peripheral" components of geekdom - the RPGs, the total lack of normal social interaction, Star Trek, etc. That pretty much ruined all interaction with the other geeks. Perhaps I've got it all wrong and geeks are such that they're constantly in search of fellow geeks because they're the only ones they feel that can truly relate with them, which further segregates them from "normal" people. Maybe I just haven't gotten out much and lurk way too much for healthy living.
I grew up in Sweden, and a big difference is that the school is not involved with sports at all, more than some phys ed.
If you're involved in sport - and many Swedish kids are - it's a a hobby on your own time. There is no "school spirit" involved, and in my impression, the jocks were seen mostly as a type of nerds, with just sports as their obsession, rather than books or computers.
Not that there is no bullying or hierarchies, but the jocks are not at to by default..
I think a lot of kids mellow out when they get older. Or maybe their vices just become more subtle.
Either way, they are less annoying.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Our geeks were edgier than most kids. We were the types that listened to Gravity Kills, Nine Inch Nails, various heavy/death metal, played very violent games, new about cult stuff, you name it. We also weren't very physical diminutive either. I was one of them and was and still am as imposing physically as many of the jocks that I went to HS with. If we were playing chess and someone was actually an asshole enough to fling our chessboard across the room, they'd better be a good fighter because we were more than capable of holding our own in a fight. I could probably kick a lot of our jocks' asses then and now. Most of the school was nice and accepting, but my first high school wasn't. Even there a lot of the rules still applied: don't fuck with the geeks because we're built like normal people and are not pussies like the nerds.
I can't even begin to count the number of times one of my geek friends or I prevented a fight by growing cold toward the other person. They were too afraid because it became a matter of "dude he might fucking kill me!" for that idiot. I will also say this about nerds: most geeks I know tend to find them exceedingly annoying. The nerds I grew up around were perpetually like little kids and didn't fully understand what people were doing to them. What made most of the geeks dark was that we were nerds for a while but grew up and began confronting what was happening. To me the nerdish naivete is a form of weakness because it's either a separation from reality or a total denial of reality. For many that I've seen it's the latter. My reaction is simple: how they hell can you let people do this to you? When a jock tried to knock me to ground by running up and jumping on my back in PE I didn't cry to the coach I grabbed his arm, ducked and threw him over my shoulder onto the indoor basketball court. From that day on the jocks respected me and left me alone.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Huh. What if I don't talk to them, period? What if I don't care whether or not they enjoy my company?
If nerds are so unpopular, how come you find them everywhere?
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Towers/9151/educate .html
There have been articles on this in Japanese newspapers, the prime minister even hamfistedly addressed the issue. Everything I've ever read about Japanese schools makes me tend to believe they are real hellholes, worse than American schools. (Well, not the worst of American schools.) There is even a dystopian movie about them called Battle RoyaleAll the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I'm sure everyone reading this thread has known at least one incredibly intellegent person who fit in perfectly. The link between intellegence and "fitting in" is not nearly as direct as most of these posts indicate. Other tendencies may lead to this conclusion. Maybe antisocial people find more time to read or think about things that their parents would reward them for; maybe the chicken came before the egg. Certainly, this article is an oversimplification.
"When we were in junior high school, my friend Rich and I made a map of the school lunch tables according to popularity"
Seems like he's divined why nobody liked him in Junior High in the first 23 words. I didn't do a single social-map of my lunchroom, and didn't feel particularly alienated. One might suspect a causal link, although the direction arrow would be debateable.
Personally, I spent most of this time talking to girls, trying to convince them that 'spin the bottle' was as much fun as they'd heard.
-Styopa
Which is that "smartness" and "being picked on" aren't even correlated. The people who were picked on were the misfits, regardless of how smart they were. Calling all the popular kids stupid is idiotic and simply an escapist fantasy.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Nerds are boring people.
They're just people who get excited about boring things.
Q: What do you call a nerd after he graduates?
A: Boss
Heh, what self-respecting 'nerd' as you say would use pointer arithmetic in this day and age
/nasily voice
*snort*
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
When I was at my school, I'm sure there were popularity circles - but unlike everyone else I had absolutely no idea about them. I was one of those people who was told constantly "you could do so well if you just tried." I didn't want to try - school was teaching me too slow and there's a whole world out there to learn about. I perceived school as a waste of my valuable time. I knew what I wanted to learn, I didn't need to be told.
So during school, I just didn't care - I had no idea who was popular and who wasn't. I just had some friends, and I was happy with them.
And I think there are two reasons why nerds get picked on in school:
1. They act arrogant, and no one likes someone lording it over them
2. It increases the popularity of the idiot who picks on the nerd, so it's like a drug to them. Old habits are hard to break.
I felt above school. As I said, I was happy with my friends, and happy with who I was - I was just unahappy with where I was. It doesn't have to be as wretched as the article makes it sound. I am very poor at social interaction - but I'm learning. Yet despite this I don't wish for more popularity. I'm happy with what I have.
And that's why smart people's lives tend to be worst between, say, the ages of eleven and seventeen. Life at that age revolves far more around popularity than before or after.
It was worst for me as I said above - school moved too slowly, and I already knew what I wanted to learn. I'm even tempted to think there are at least two streams of "smart kids" at school - those who constantly study and perform well in school, totally inept at sports and popularity but yearn for it (nerds). And those who almost never study but perform well without effort, who misbehave in school and are oblivious or uncaring of popularity.
My worst tormentors in High School were the nerds. The arrogant smarmy nerds, not the nice quiet ones. Why? I think it was cause I'm a girl who was at least as smart as them, and who wouldn't give them the time of day (I was into skater/stoner/goth guys, and a good sense of humor is more attractive than intelligence). Incidentally, I never was a victim of the manipulative social practices girls seem to excel at, but the boy-nerds made every AP class miserable for me. I didn't sweat it much at the time, probably cause none of the kids I wanted to be accepted by cared what the nerds thought. You just have to rise above the situation. A good come-back line is invaluable social currency.
Nerds are unpopular because they spend too much time thinking about why nerds are unpopular.
Shame on Google.
I have read quite a few of the posts on this topic and....
I have to say one thing many have overlooked. Everyone is an individual treat them as such, get to know small things about everyone you encounter, say 'sup to them when you see them on the street.
If you are getting beat up, learn to defend yourself to stop the trauma, then learn to socialize, you will need to do that in the real world for raises, securing contracts or making sure your dream workstation is ordered the way you want it.
Stop having a martyr complex, if you are viewed in that light you will always be a nerd and will be despised in real life, no one likes a whiner.
Grow some balls, don't be sheepish, socialize with people, it's fun, really! Get to know some people outside your own little world, you'd be surprised how the "stupid people" live, and the fact they are smart too, many of them just can't stand the daily bs either.
Please learn to relate to other people, the world does not need another arrogant ass behind a computer screen, people expect me to be that way because so many ARE assholes (and can't cash that check either).
I guess I'm interested in what makes people tick, what makes someone do what they do, what they like and don't and why.
Most people are more alike than different, but those small differences will get you everywhere.
Well...not ALL nerds are unpopular. In high school I was an All-League football player. I played guitar in a metal band. I was considered "popular." I still am I guess. The kids who are unpopular are the ones who ONLY know computers. Yeah, I know computers.....but I also ride motorcycles on/off road, wakeboard, play guitar, write, play football, etc. I also can speak and write well. I believe the nerds that are made fun of have no social skils, no outside interests, and use computers as an escape. I use computers as a tool, to make money. Admittedly I am torn sometimes between partying or programming, but at least I have the OPTION of partying because I know REAL people.
As a fairly geeky guy throughout my time at a fairly rough-and-tumble high school, I found a pretty easy solution to physical bullying:
Fight back
Kick one football player's ass, and you will never be picked on again. I'm not built like a football player, but I was smart enough to learn to fight well, and it saved me several times.
Similarly, with more verbal types of bullying, I responded with witty responses, continually showing them up, and at the same time not caring too much about the result.
Geeks are generally smart enough to play the popular folks' game better than the popular kids can, while remaining interested in their geeky things. It is just a matter of balancing you're interests.
So what you are saying is
Geek == social misfit.
End of story.
Incidently, what are these 'F' and 'D' tables people keep referring to? I take it these are America-only?
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
1) NERRRRRRRRRRD!
2) Any association of social misfitisms with psychological diagnoses is problematic, scientifically. The diagnoses, being based on expert judgments rather than confirmable measurements, are already the products of social exclusions (cf. Foucault, Szasz, etc. re: expertise as mask of power), not of scientific measurement. In other words, social malcontents aren't allowed to become experts in the field of mind-disease-diagnosis, so, unsurprisingly, these malcontents are diagnosed by mind-disease experts as "diseased." QED (almost).
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
Guess what, most people don't care about computers. I know this may come as a shock to you, but really, most see it is a paper weight with moving parts. Your "whose operating system is better" arguments are like an intellectual form of the old "whose dick is bigger" arguments but are so far above most people that they just shrug it off as some poor nerd's latest (and failing) attempt to be better than everyone else.
If you're really smarter, you won't need to ram it down people's throats. People **knew** I was smart. With minimal effort I got straight As in all of my AP classes which are harder than most of the college courses I've taken at my unviersity by an order of magnitude and I go to one of Virgina's best schools. I didn't have to walk around with signs plastered to me saying "bow to Einstein 2.0" Hell I took half the time that most of my peers did to complete my AP US Government exam and I outscored most of them anyway, I got a 5 after taking only 40 minutes to complete 4 essay questions.
As for you meeting girls at your LUG, good for you. Maybe one day you'll wake up to the realization that unless you're as laid back as your average stoner or a lazy and complacent fuck who doesn't care about your skills, you'll end up competing with your girl if she's a fellow computer nerd. If you can handle one, look for an artist or a musician. But if you're anything like most nerds I've met, you can't. Most nerds I've met have little respect for any artist or musician who doesn't kick ass at what they do. That comes from the "my shit doesn't stink" attitude they have. Which I guess is their way of living in denial, afterall we geeks tend to steal your spotlights all too often.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
This is EXACTLY why nerds get picked on in school. Instead of dealing with your social ineptitude and fixing it, you turn the argument into a Linux vs. (I assume) Windows bash.
You may be smart in the computer world or the star trek world, but there is another social world out there where intelligence is also required to succeed.
It is all about being a balanced person. Nerds, are obviously not balanced. (I know I am making a big generalization, there are, of course, always exceptions.)
Really, a perfectly good argument could be made the other way around. That one's code contributions to society are more important than selfish, self-indulgent "friendships" that people like to obtain.
Hey, I'm all for indulgence myself, but I'd like to think that my work for the public good makes a a more important impact than the fact that I was friends with a few people.
This problem is wider than Paul Graham realizes. I went to a rural small town high school, not a suburban high school, but Paul's description still fits completely. (And now I can be proud. I was a triple nerd thread in high school: chess team, marching band, and high school quiz bowl.)
Paul's analysis is 100% right: this society has nothing to do with hormones, and everything to do with the unnatural environment of junior high and high school.
But my lovely wife claims that her school experience was very different. She was certainly very smart and not at all interested in popularity contests, but she did not suffer from or even witness the games described here. She attended Catholic schools.
So are these popularity games a feature of public schools only? What about non-religious private schools? Does anyone have experiences to report? My interest in more than academic. I have three young girls who are already showing signs of nerd-like interest in obscure things.
He said that that is what people defensively think, and then he said that it was really for other reasons. Not that it was really all that clearly, and definitely not succinctly, stated. The main thrust of the argument was that nerds are at the bottom because they aren't interested enough in the social game to play the social game. Not that they don't lament their position or envy the people who get the girls, just that they are interested enough in something else that they don't put enough effort into being popular to avoid being at the bottom of the heap.
The main thrust was that it is the pointlessness of nearly everything that happens at most schools that causes the unhealthy social structure to emerge in the first place.
Although I do agree that it had definite hints of leftover "they hate me because I'm smart" in it, I don't think it was his main point.
Liberty uber alles.
It cant be that serious in the US as this article says! Although brazilian geeks in fact suffer somewhat from prejudice and ignorance, its not even close to the pain endured in the US...
hey you football playing geek abusers, GET A LIFE!
Okay, Okay.. I know. Probably the football playing geek abusers are not avid slashdot readers anyway...
It hard for jocks to get into IT fields too because so many of the people are nerds.
Man, back in my day we didnt have linux. We used Unix Goddamnit and we enjoyed it. Sometimes we would have backpacks full of transistors and 5 1/2 in floppies. We had to read the man pages to get the info.
Ps. I wasnt friends with the popular kids, but I was friends with all the average kids. As we grew up, some of them even became jocks and cheerleaders. All you really need is a good sharp wit and good timing, and you will never have a reason to sit alone in the Cafeteria.
I wasn't part of the in crowd, but nobody bugged me in high school. It certainly didn't hurt being 6'1" and 180 pounds of solid muscle (I delivered TVs for my family's business, and those damned things weighed a lot in those days. Great workout.). One guy (a football team member, actually) tried to take my school newspaper once and without thinking I punched him in the arm as hard as I could. No retaliation, and after that I had a rep as a dangerous hothead. Good times, good times.
...or at least the middle!
He is not saying that being smart makes people unpopular.
That is not what the story is about. It is about the social structure that emerges when people are shoved into a place together and forced to be around each other, like it or not. Your three simple rules would be eagerly followed if that was really all that it took for people to overcome what they face in many schools.
Liberty uber alles.
Paul Graham makes each of these points in the article. Read first and comment later. That way everybody wins.
Not all those who wander are lost.
Yep. 50k a year. You'll work your butt off for 4 or 5 years, graduate and learn that you keep working your butt off for people who don't appreciate the skill your job takes.
Meanwhile. that social expert will be getting a sales job that pays 100k/year and is more appreciated by management.
The real solution is to drop the elitist attitude, stop thinking about 'revenge', and find something you love doing.
I come from a country where English isn't the first language and I've noticed that on countries like the US, the gap between cool and uncool, nerd and popular is always emphasized. Countless American movies depict this, bad cool boy kicks the ass of smart underdog.
Let me just say that my high school life in my home country has been very enjoyable. To give you an idea I'm the first and so far the only full time student who has ever become a full time UNIX systems administrator in my campus. I haven't been given the "loser" treatment. In fact, I had a very active social life with what you would call "popular" students...basketball and soccer players. During my junior prom I was even invited by my crush to be her date!
The "nerds are losers" mentality is just applicable to the US.
One thing that I recognized at an early age was that as much as everyone wants to segment everything into nice simple cubbyholes, these artificial barriers are inherently flawed. I also recognized that this was a simplistic solution to the really unique aspects within everything. Hierachical segmentation is a binary solution (it either is or is not in a particular box), whereas reality is pure analog (this may sound funny coming from a computer scientist - however I know it to be true - it is also why I grok'd fuzzy logic when the idea first gained popularity).
The author of this piece (and many of you here for that matter) make the same mistake. Why must we pigeonhole everyone? The very term we use to label ourselves on these forums, 'Nerd', really serves to reinforce this self denigrating process. I really think - while most people are reasonable and intelligent in various aspects of their lives - they get it all wrong when it comes to this (pattern matching is something we instinctively learn at a very early age - perhaps that explains this tendency).
No one is a saint or a sinner - only what they choose to be at any given moment. Integrity is recognizing this and being your true self at every opportunity.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I've got a simple answer - because they are total assholes. Most nerds aren't the good spirited, friendly types you see popularized in the media. They are usually total assholes - arrogant, unfriendly, and outright mean and unconcerned about the impact their words and actions have on others, and need a beat down on a daily basis.
And this would be a great example of why people think geeks are a bunch of elitist assholes.
And this would be a great example of why blanket statements are a bunch of bullshit.
Yes, there are SOME nerds who are elitist, but there are also SOME non-nerds who are as well. Elitism runs rampant in society. If someone thinks they're better at something than someone else, they will invariably use it to bolster their self-esteem, whether someone else hears them or not.
Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
I read his latest article because I've read most of his writings. And I have his book on Lisp. I respect the man. That being said, I work in an office with 10 other programmers, and I'll be damned if any of us were ever nerds or persecuted. In fact, and I'll only speak for myself, I somehow doubt that I would have spent 6 years in the Marine Corps if I were a nerd.
I haven't actually met many nerds in this industry, and I wonder if that isn't a popular myth.
We have a few people promulgating BS. The few nerds among us try to make it look like all of us are. And then you have idiots like ESR making it sound like we're evangelistic.
There was only ONE good OS that ever came out of Redmond: ;-)
/sbin/init. (except Irix, can't grok it)
Win2k.
Until you can get the "professional network install" of XP SP1, I've found it isn't worth it.
There will be NT 6.0, and I might get to liking it, but we'll see. In the meantime I can continue my love affair with anything spawned from
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
I nearly shit myself with surprise, last year, when I overheard one day at practice, a huge 'jock', 'roid monkey, who's started on the Varsity team since 8th grade and had been offered football scholorships to multiple US schools, talking about the inner workings of IP and the finer points of running and maintaining an FTP server. Upon further conversation, I learned that he had always been a serious gamer, and not just the latest 'ooh, shiny' 3D shooter type, either. I'm talking serious classics, like Civs 1 & 2, and a game collection of over 50 (no RPGs, though; no one could not be an amorphous blob after a good bout of Nethackia).
The point of this shamelessly self-indulgent, incoherent rant is that this particular stereotype is not true. Or maybe its just not true anymore. Or maybe Canadian culture is a lot more tolerant, understanding and equal. It seems that I don't know what I'm talking about, and this whole 'tolerant, understanding and equal' thing has made me ashamed of what I've become, in my old age. Just mod me up, dammit!
...at least for your kids. Home school. It's safe and legal in all 50 states. No, your kids will not end up "unsocial". They will likely recoil in horror at stories like the ones here, though, becaues they won't believe that people really treat one another like that. They you'll show them how the holocaust, Sri Lanka, passed-down child abuse, and many other examples demonstrate that ordinary people in bad situations often choose to become extremely cruel.
:).
But anyway--yes, your kids will have to be more important to you than the money or "fulfillment" that would theoretically come from both parents working.
And don't assume home schooling is the same all-day affair as regular school. You can cover a regular day in about two hours. If you want to. Unschooling is a very viable option (harder in the more Nazi-esque states, but still doable).
Search on "Growing Without Schooling" at google for more on that. Read "Learning all the time" or "how children fail" by John Holt. Read "The teenage liberation Handbook"
Graham says apprenticing isn't economically viable now, but he certainly doesn't prove it. People do apprentice at a lot of different things. True, it's nt the default, but that doesn't mean you can't or that it's not available.
If you want to save the world, start by saving your own family. Then you have allies to help you save the world later. Well, that's what I'm guessing. But I need to get off this thing and go play with my kids
Liberty uber alles.
I'm a nerd - my wife will testament to that. I was also a jock, though no longer (my belly will attest to that). And I was a brute - my fellow classmates will agree on that.
:-)
I would shout "what did you get on your math test, Bob?" for everyone to hear. "A" was the reply. "What?!? Just an A???". My class mates hated that.
Why didn't anyone kick the shit out of me? Because I was smarter than them, because I was stronger and bigger than them and because I didn't act like a loser. "Wanna fight me? Better bring all your buddies, if you have some."
I was popular among the girls - not so much with the boys, but a lot of the kids liked the fact that I didn't care who they were (in the pecking order). In fact, I treated everyone pretty much the same - hmm, well I was rather mean to a couple of bullies... but they deserved it.
I really don't think it matters if you are a nerd or not. You just have to be a little bit smarter and unafraid. The best advice I got through this time was that all kids are really just insecure and afraid little monsters. With this in mind you should be able to put your social life in the right place so that you can forget about it and study/read whatever you want.
I will never forget this classmate of mine telling me she really started studying when I had snorted: "Hah, you will _never_ get an 'A' in maths." She got so pissed off she started reading - and guess what - she succeded.
Ah well, the States might be different from my home country...
Roggie.
I'm good looking enough to approach women with confidence, but after about 5 mintues of talking, the women realize I'm a geek and leave...that, and I have no game.
It's a really bad idea to open with the line, "Baby... I want to indent your code all night long." Sure, it -sounds- sexy to us; but chicks just don't get it.
I stopped reading just over half-way through and jumped to the end. I couldn't take it any more. The topic is deserving of dialog, but not pontification on this level.
The author of the article, in my mind, mentions the true tragedy of high school - that young adults spend a significant portion of their youth in a purgatory not so far removed from prison, depending on your school. Their potential - jocks, nerds, or otherwise - so often unrealized. Minds wasted. This only gets a paragraph or two in his article (that I read).
I was a nerd. I was smart, well read, etc... but my education was still not so great. I found that out my first year in college....
My experience is not what others had. I could relate to a lot of what the author wrote via direct observation and experience. At the same time, it's all crap. Why? Why? Why? Oh... the humanity! SAVE THE NERDS! And NUKE gay WHALES for JESUS! (That last line is an actual bumper sticker I saw.)
In short, I'm not unsympathetic. "Nerd Persecution" is a bad thing. At the same time, I'd argue the problem of nerd persecution is really a symptom of something that is much more deserving of our attention, even by the author's own arguments.
Oh... the thing about high school teachers being wardens for a population they don't want to interact with? Pure crap. There are some places where that is true, and some places where it is not. It is probably becoming an accurate assessment more often than not, but that is because of the plummet in the quality of individuals who become school teachers now. Still, there are some very good ones out there still. It used to be an honor to be a teacher as a profession. Now it's a joke. Yet another aspect of society out of whack.
In summary, I think this article was really weak.
The article says "Teenagers now are useless, except as cheap labor in industries like fast food"
but:
- if there weren't a minimum wage law making low-employables merely unemployable
- if there weren't age related employment bans and/or social-services snooping
- if there weren't irreducible minimum red tape and tax burden making every employee cost, even if they are a volunteer
- if young people were not forced en masse into "education" whether they were willing to learn or not
...then would teenagers still be useless? All these things were not present so recently as the earlier half of the 20th century, and there was no "teenaged hormone madness" back then.
How many jobs REALLY NEED a college degree to actually DO the job? (Rather than merely as a "is more intelligent than a goldfish" checklist item, to winnow the resume pile.) How many of those could not be instead learned apprentice-style, working up from office coffee-maker and gofer?
Not vastly many. As demonstrated by the fact that many college dropouts go on to become successful earners, once they've conned their way into their first job.
Truly, school is not merely a prison, but the very need for it to be there in the first place is a socially (and governmentally) constructed fiction.
Oh, and as to the badness of letting teenagers run around at liberty: observe the ruin and havoc created by homeschoolers. (What, there isn't any? How surprising.)
i used to beat up ppl who prayed on the meeker type and most of the time i could do more mental damage to them then physical if i wanted too, we didnt have a football team, but god the local school really wanted me on one
:-)
i know ppl are blessed enough to do that, that is why i tried to look out for my fellow geeks and nerds
oh and just because your big or athletic doesnt mean your a jerk or stupid
I was originally going to withhold from commenting on this discussion, but upon further thought, I think I'm going to offer my 2 cents.
;).
/. standards.
;) Last year, I went 3 months without showering to see if I could (after the first 2 weeks, you really stop feeling dirty at all...it's quite easy after that). I hate the scent of perfume and soap, so I don't wash my hair usually. When it's dyed, most people don't really notice the grease, but like the showering thing, your body eventually reaches a plateau. Once you hit this level, you don't really get dirtier; you just remain at this level until you finally shower/wash your hair/etc.
For starters, I think that the surest sign of a nerd is someone who's just dying to be popular, but can't be. Note that this is a self-defeating cycle; people that are popular are without trying. Usually, they're just naturally amicable and friendly, and have some charisma or other personal quality that drives people to like them. People that just want to be popular, and sit in the lunch table all day making tables and charts and desperatly trying to figure out how to get into the upper echelon of the social heap are never going to make it -- it's an extremely unflattering trait (btw; am I the only one that saw the incredible irony in the author's quasi-scientific analysis of teenage social circles and his own inability to fit in there?
That being said, I'm really tired of seeing this generic parental advice to nerds from nerds on slashdot. "just wear deoderant". "take fashion tips from other people, NOT your friends". "shower on a daily basis". So on and so forth.
So here's my confession. I guess I'm kind a nerd, by my own definition. At the same time, I'm not unpopular; I have plenty of friends and a girlfriend-type-thing going on. I get along with most people I meet, because I just do my own thing and can usually find things to talk about with other people. Thus, I wouldn't really be considered to be 'unpopular' or 'nerdy' by
However, I am a HUGE nerd by this said set of standards. I'll admit it: I'm fucking dirty. I fucking hate fashion, pop culture, and consumerism, so I don't buy into that shit. I wear the same thing every day. I have gone 7-8 months without washing my clothes, and while I might wear a different shirt every few days or so, I have been wearing the same pair of pants for the last six or so months. They're a pair of mutilated cargo pants with patches, studs, and other crap all over the place. They started out khaki in color, but they're really closer to brown by now. =)
Oh yeah, and I don't shower much either. Usually 1-2 weeks or when I can detect my own stench.
In spite of this, people don't avoid me like the plague. Nobody gives me hell about my personal hygene or the way I dress; at this point, people realize that it's part of my personality and beliefs. My point is that these 'laundry lists' (no pun intended) of things you need to do to overcome your nerdiness are bullshit. It is the unquenchable urge to be popular that makes people true nerds, though they can certainly be outcasts for other reasons.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
So what can be done in a school to improve the environment?
;-) ) for Physical Education which I hated. So we decided we would rather go mountain bikeing during the same period. We would orgaise a route nearby we would folow nearby and notify the PE staff, we arranged consent forms from parents and said we would be back at the same time.
If kids are willing to act like adults they should be given the same privledges.
If we are going to build prisons (to use the same analogy), then put good prisoners into open prisons, and make the criteria for "good" some thing real.
I had the fortune to go to a fairly enlighted school. Very middle class, most of the kids had support from their parents and most of the teachers wanted to teach us something rather then just escape back to the staff room.
Nerd were still picked on but nothing like to the extent they were elsewhere. I think to some extent this was because being responsible/smart meant you generally had more freedom. The aditional freedom was envied.
For example:
We played Rugby ( think football without the pads
We had to work out what was required to do this, set a course of the right length, organise ourselfs, pursuade the staff this was a good idea and have the initiative to make it happen.
The reward was being able to do something that we wanted, and it was without doubt "cooler" to be seen leaving school for a couple of hours without supervision.
I'm from the USA and university is expensive as hell, our government doesnt pay shit unless you dont have a dime and your family doesnt have a dime (like in my case) and even then you have to pay most of the loans back.
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I went to four high schools in total.
This afforded me the chance to be both a popular kid and an unpopular kid. In all cases, I was just as nerdy as I am now (i.e., I did succeed in spending large amounts of time programming in assembly language and building things while being popular), the only difference was how I approached people when I first showed up at a given school.
Granted, my first high school, at which I was fairly roundly despised by most people, was in the school system where I skipped the sixth grade. That's about the only spot where I see a correlation between smart and popular - that one act sent me into a two year period of basically having no friends. So it wasn't really being smart, it was a specific thing I did that was understandably a guaranteed way to make people not like me.
&& I don't think that being in the popular crowd is the only way to be well-liked. I can remember people who were part of the popular crowd that everyone, even the popular kids, agreed were assholes. I can also remember people who weren't members of the popular crowd but who were liked by most everyone and could move freely among at least a few of the tribes.
Also, I don't think popularity had anything to do with my general happiness at any given time. When I was at the high school where I was very roundly a member of the 'in' crowd, I also spent some time in a psych. unit for trying to commit suicide.
I agree that the school hierarchy system is real, but I think all the stigma and rationalization people attatch to it is mostly a product of hormonally unbalanced minds stuck in a confusing limbo between childhood and adulthood that most people don't get a chance to go back and re-analyze because by the time you are emotionally stable and mentally mature enough to look at the situation with a clear head, high school is closed to you.
I'm not saying I had a guide or a mentor growing up, I didnt, so I fell into that trap too, it wasnt cool to be smart.
Until I turned about 17 or 18, and had bills to pay, when I finally got a job I then began to understand how the world actually works, thats when I began to take school seriously, although I blame my parents for not making me understand this sooner.
It seems everybody says that in high school. But as much as the need to talk themselves out of caring what others think, deep down they always do. It's possible your family support was much greater than hers. All too often, the parents again, it is not too important that the girl gets educated properly, hey she's just going to marry someone who is.
While I never cared what people thought of me, I wanted to be liked, because I thought it was what I was supposed to do, everyone telling me I need to make friends including my family, forced me into this thought process that I need to be "cool"
Good for you, to think that way in high school. I myself tried, but I think I was 25 before I actually got it.. On a side note, I raised a daughter, and watched her tank through high school, even though I knew better. But I spent a lot of time reminding her of her strengths, and that she would leave all of these so-called friends in the dust. It does help - the family support. She is all A's now, and very career driven. She is indeed, leaving her friends in the dust.
This is right, but as a parent I think its the parents responsibility to explain to a child how the world works at a young age, perhaps give that child little jobs and make then earn their allowance instead of just giving it to them, teach them to think for themselves, and lastly, dont pressure them to make friends or be overly social, 90 percent of the people they will meet in school will be a bad influence. Make sure they focus on their work and explain to them cause and effect.
When they say they want to be a doctor, explain to them what they have to do to be a doctor, dont just tell them to stay in school just because they are supposed to, tell them exactly and bluntly, "if you want to be a doctor you have to be educated"
explain to them in their final year of middle school that they should dedicate the next few years to accomplishing their goal of being a doctor, and perhaps give up their social life for a few years and put their heads into the books, get all As, give them tips on studying, such as explaining to them how they dont have to be limited by the class, and how they can read ahead on their own, explain to them tests arent a measure of intelligence and to gather as much knowledge as possible regardless of their test scores, and they should do just fine.
If they dont get a 1500 on their SATs, so what, as long as they have alot of knowledge and study skills by the time they get to college they will be in the habit of reading the required chapters of a book and to continue on reading extra, instead of just doing enough to get by, if you can get a student or child to put 100 percent into what they are doing success is almost guarenteed.
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"When I was popular, I had people wanting to kick my ass, people who were jealous of me and I didnt even know who they are, I had rumors being spread about me for no reason, I had people talking behind my back constantly. Whats the point of all this political bullshit?"
:)
-- Think of it as a social disease. I have since my freshman year in college, when I realized that very few people who really mattered acted that way. I got a lot of crap from a lot of the cliques in high school up until I was a sophomore in HS, when I got my brown belt in TKD. After a lot of people realized that I could wipe them into the ground easily, some of the pressure eased off. Some, not all.
"The more popular you become the harder it is to determine who your friends are."
Until you grow up and start understanding how to determine the difference between real friends and false friends; unfortunately, perfect understanding in that seems to take more years than we live; but one learns every day. It gets better, if you're willing to work at it. Trust me. Just don't expect it to change tomorrow. It's a process.
Most of the rest of your post I'll address by saying this: Live your life the way you see fit, treat other people like you want to be treated yourself, remember that everyone goes thru similar anguish at one point in their life or another, and be compassionate towards those who don't understand yet, when you can, because someday they may thank you for it.
Everyone else is fair game
Those three simple rules have served me well for a long time (I'm nearly forty y.o.).
Good luck and I hope this helps.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
" That's why I had to put in that paragraph about university being the ultimate reality check for geek megalomania. It wasn't until partway through that particular wringer that I truly "got it", in that I figured out it was also OK not to have a 4.0 GPA, so long as I was learning something and making progress towards the goal of a degree in a field you enjoyed - and to stop beating myself up every time I got a 3.5."
Its not OKAY to not have a 4.0 GPA, you should always put 100 percent effort into everything you do, now if you did your absolute best and you have a 3.5 GPA, you did good.
If you reduce yourself to accepting low grades you are going to make yourself lazy. With every test you take you should aim for 100, with every book you read you should try to gather as much info as possible, reading beyond what is required, do extra research on your own using the internet, write papers that are of perfect quality, not just the quality required to pass the class.
This is important because what matters in the real world is perfection, not hard work.
Of course no one does perfect work, but the closer your work is to perfect the better the quality.
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Having been a nerd at least once in my life, I was curious about this article. I don't agree with a few of the author's statements, for example, "Being smart doesn't make you an outcast in elementary school." I definitely got picked on for being a nerd all through elementary school! I agree with the author that junior high is the worst but I guess I was lucky. High school wasn't bad at all. I grew up in the 80s near a college campus with an excellent radio station and picked up a few social queues from college students. I affected some punk rock influence in dress and musical tastes and . . . surprise! Nobody picked on me anymore. David Sedaris talks about how when he started wearing black and snarling, the mean kids left him alone. He wasn't really any more dangerous than he had been, but the kids didn't know better. It's pretty easy. Just act a *little* menacing and surly and the mean kids will stay away. You can keep playing with computers at home.
I'm a junior in high school, and I, having read this full article, now disagree with the statement about "freaks", or "stoners".
Perhaps my school is an isolated incident, but drug use really does permeate all rungs of social hierarchy. I know many in the athletic "A" popularity rung that use a whole slew of drugs, and regularly hear about others in the "E" popularity that do the same. I'm probably somewhere in the middle, a self-proclaimed member of the intelligentsia class, but also not horribly unpopular (or physically repulsive, if i do say so myself).
However, I don't do these things, but as a member of a "B-C" rung, have been asked to, and have seen many not unlike myself fall victim to such temptations, and even be arraigned for dealing X, heroin, crack, shrooms, and others once they hit college.
Overall, I agree quite thoroughly with this article, and see myself in many of the comparisons; however, when the author says the "freaks" are freaks, and the "stoners" are an attempt by the said groups to create a separate subclass for themselves, I-at least in my experience of 17 years-must disagree.
In my school, the popularity comes first, the drugs are not always too slow in following.
Respectfully,
A Pompous Geek-MacGoldstein
Help a college student
I go to a school for nerds. There I'm popular enough to date the homecoming queen :).
I belong to the ______ generation.
I've got little perception of myself, but from my own experience. popularity comes from group concessions-the ability to reconize that we are stronger as a group therefore sometimes up is down and left is right and that's acceptable as long as you don't become a putz or get used too much. Nerds love truth/are pragmatist (this may not be a perfect analogy but it fits). Usually have a base that goes back 500 years of logical thought.
I don't consider myself a nerd. I'm no good in math with numbers (probably had something to do with that tongue depresser shoved down my throat till I vomited during algebra *joke*).
My interests lend themselves in geek/selfish fashion. I've been muscle bound after a few years of service but I hated it, I enjoy being invisible, people seem to lie to you alot less. Right now I wouldn't change a thing other than a better paying job.
This was a great read. Very interesting, and I think it has more than a kernel of truth to it.
However, I disagree with the premise that the sole reason that some teenagers are popular while other are nerds is the differential focus of these two groups. While it might be true that the nerd contingent puts less effort into dressing right and behaving right than does the popular contingent (I know that was true for me when I was in high school), I think this is as much a function of ability as of desire.
To use the analogy of the soccer player: while it is true that someone who practices more will play better than someone _of similar ability_ who does not practice, it is NOT the case that everyone has the same ability. Shifting sports, while I might make my foul shot better with more practice, there's just no way I'm ever going to play like Michael Jordan - I just don't have the ability. Likewise, after 9 years of piano lessions I was a pretty good piano player _from sheet music_, but I'm still tone deaf and I'll never play by ear.
Similarly, popularity (or charisma, if you prefer that term) is a talent, just like athletic ability, mathematical ability, or musical ability. Some people have it, some don't. Examples: Bill Clinton. Leave aside your politics for a moment. Even those who hated his politics found themselves, after speaking with him directly, mesmerized and enthralled. (There was a fascinating profile of him in Vanity Fair describing this phenomenon shortly after the GWBush inauguration - read it.) Similarly, Steve Jobs and the "reality distortion field."
I've seen this ability in action, once so profoundly that it truly amazed me. I had the opportunity to see a high-ranking US government official in a meeting where data was presented, by experts, in a field that he could not possibly have had any knowledge whatsoever. (I was present as a flunky, and had opportunity to observe the dynamic in the room.) After the data was presented, I watched this individual literaly take charge of the meeting in a split second, and direct all these experts at tasks in their own fields - and these expert (and relatively confident [arrogant]) individuals took this direction like it was the most natural thing in the world for them to do.
Here's the converse: Asperger's Syndrome. Forget the recent (stupid) Law and Order episode where a serial killer turned out to have Asperger's Syndrome, and read the article in Wired (about a year ago) about the very high incident of this disease in (surprise) Silicon Valley. For those who missed it, Asperger's Syndrome is a (possibly mild) form of autism; among the hallmarks of this neuropsychiatric disorder are: obsessional focus on areas of interest and inability to process non-verbal cues, such as the facial and body experssiveness known to convey the majority of content during human interaction. Many such individuals also have superior mathematical ability.
Do the math: you've got an individual highly focussd on areas of special interest, coupled with difficulty at "reading" other people, leading to faulty interpersonal relationships - prescription for a nerd! This syndrome is felt to be more prevalent among, for instance, engineers - highly focused on work to the exlusion of personal relationships - in part because they are so mysterious and hard to understand, because they just don't get what is going on with the other person.
In sum, while I think there's a lot of truth and insight in the original article regarding the social structure in middle school / high school, I think the segregation into "haves" and "have nots" is far more dependent on varying ability in different areas than on conscious or unconscious choices to focus on intellectual vs. other pursuites.
...actually read the whole article?
(Oh, I guess I'm a nerd, because I just read a 7,000-word article from start to finish. And enjoyed it.)
To everyone who says that not all smart kids are unpopular: the author recognizes that. He says: "Unless they happen to be very good looking, or great natural athletes, or have older siblings who are popular, they'll tend to become nerds." Note all the exceptions.
To everyone who says that truly popular kids don't bother picking on nerds: again, the article says that. "Most of the persecution comes from kids lower down, the nervous middle classes."
To everyone who pointed out that popular kids feel crappy too: guess what. The article says: "Life in this twisted world is stressful for the kids. And not just for the nerds. Like any war, it's damaging even to the winners."
I would agree that the author errs in completely dismissing the effect of hormones, and the fact that high-school kids are in an inherently chaotic transitional phase of life. But before you make stock replies or accusations of stereotyping, please read the article. Or else you're the one who's stereotyping.
I wasn't talking about Japanese culture as a whole. My main point was: intelligence isn't as important to American kids. I do understand a little more about Japan than what cartoons tell me, and I understand that Japan isn't utopia, but the basic principle is that the Japanese do place a lot more emphasis on how good your grades are. Japanese students as a whole spend a lot more time studying and Japanese parents put a lot more pressure on kids to get those grades. The simple fact is that being smart doesn't automatically make you a social outcast in that society.
Views of people through the media are often exaggerated, but often a basic reflection of that society. Look at Saved by the Bell. The popular guy with the cute hair always saves the day, and the nerds are all complete ignoramuses. Look at nerds anywhere in American culture. Nerds on TV are always the comic relief or the bad guy. It's not a perfect representation of how they're really treated, but when these shows become popular, it means people aren't insulted by those depiction.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Yeah...I wasn't the most handsome, well-dressed, social person. I liked D&D, Sci-fi, computers, Broadway musicals, Heavy Metal and books. I didn't care about fashion (once I got out of the 8th grade - parachute pants, camo, etc...
I started to think about the different groups of people and who I didn't get along with, etc... From what comes to mind there were
jocks - got along with them for the most part. Was on track and x-country for a year. Sure...there were insults, but nothing worse than what my office mate and I exchange in good humor. Not the kinda people I'd normally hang out with, but not advesaries
burnouts/dirtbags - The people who wore flannel, smoked, drove old cars that were always being worked on, pissed off at the world, long hair, short skirts, etc... Didn't know that many of them, of the ones I knew, didn't have a problem with them...I liked metal and Led Zeppelin, so I had some common ground. Not to sound condescending, but seems more of them had severe family issues at home - I did not (we lived in a mountain town about an hour out of NYC) so their issues were not mine.
Freaks - (thinking of Freaks and Geeks) Here are the people that liked the Cure and Depeche Mode before it was cool to. The early adopters of piercings, punk haircuts, etc. Different - usually the more artsy type. Knew quite abit of them (hell...small mountain town - not many to begin with - half were on the fencing team) Cool smart people - just sometimes tried too had to be different just to be different.
Preps - These were usually the more popular ones, and as another post mentioned, there was a reason...they tended to try to be nice to other people. Sure...they didn't call you on a friday night to come hang out with them, but they were at least nice enough. Usually the ones more involved with things like yearbooks and stuff. Knew my fair share of them - no problems there.
"The Others" - I don't know what to call these. They are the people who weren't quite gone enough or whatever to be a burnout. They weren't quite ambitious enough to be a prep and be involved. They weren't unique enough to be a freak and geek. These are the ones that were full of themselves...usually didn't do that good in class, didn't play sports, didn't do anything extracurricular, seemed to almost be the ones that couldn't be placed into any other group. Always talking about who was gonna kick whose ass, one of the ones I know in this group kept stealling the neighboors car to go joyriding. Grown up bullies? Rotten apples? I don't know quite how to describe them.
:
This is the only group I can think back that gave me grief in high school The ones as others mentioned would be the first to try and tear you down if you knew the answer to something in class, if they gave you a smart ass remark and you responded they would then launch into more "oh yeah..fucking dork." as their most advanced retort.
These are the ones that as best as I can tell are some still working the same jobs they had in high school or in management positions at a fast food chain, etc... Basically out of the limited sampling of people from all the groups that I know what they are doing now, this is usually the group that has done the least with their life.
To summarize
As a geek there was only a small subset of the students in the various groups that made my life somewhat of a hell...and it wasn't that bad now that I think of it (depressing back then though!) I'm sure others have had it better or worse, but as someone else said, it's what you make of it. After high school, all that bullshit didn't matter - I think that's what seperated the freaks and geeks from the rest - they kinda knew that even though they may take some crap, all the stuff the others worry over doesn't matter. Get to college and there are small cliques like high school - but most of them seemed to be those trying to hang on to their glory days and by the end of freshmen year, most of them are gone anyway.
Now I'm married, own a house, have two kids, friends with all the neighboors from all walks of life, make a shitload of money and people sometimes envy the fact that I work with computers...go figure.
And out of all those years, I have just one regret - that one girl I was good friends with that I never asked out. Talking to her years later, turns out I should have, etc... Cest la vie.
damn nerd!
To understand the majority of motivations of a secondary student we must look at primitive man. What are the goals of primitive man:
1. Survival
2. Procreation
3. Control over their environment and peers (promotes survival)
All people strive towards these goals every day to varying degree. The majority of students in secondary school are interested in the shortest path to these goals. They go to school to socialize in an attempt to better position themselves for 2 and 3. This could be termed popularity.
Thus, every student at the school is seen as competition for societal control and procreation. Everyone faces the same hostility that so-called nerds face, however nerds make no attempt to mitigate it. Nerds are people see all the posturing as futile. They don't want in on the contest to be the top primate. I hate to say it but there is a definite intellect barrier. Asking why a nerd doesn't get involved in social circles is like asking why Jeffrey Daughmer didn't feel remorse when cutting people up. They just don't see the point. Nerds have an "i'll win later when I have the advantage" attitude.
This doesn't mean the nerd is intentionally avoiding socializing. Their minds are just running programs in the background just like everyone else. Thus once the "win" threshold is crossed in the nerd's mind, they immediately go into overdrive mode. Get them out of the school society, give them lots of attention and suddenly the become King Caesar. The opportunity for societal gain is too good to pass up. The advantage has been gained.
Basically in nerdese:
non-nerd is to zerg rush as nerd is to battlecruiser
By the way, I agree totally with you fail man. The best thing about being popular in high school are the many good natured relationships that exist long after highschool. It also bagged me the hottest Latin chick in school (who I am still happily with), but that's a different story. =)
WTF?!? This is somehow "Insightful"??
I think the mod you're going for it "+1 Sarcastic", people.
Conformity is bad, though bathing and smiling are positive things... hmmm, "sell-out"... I don't think the original poster meant for this to be taken seriously.
Oh, and by the way, congrats to Mr. Probst on confusing Slashdot moderators... not like that's *too* challenging... (wink)
Common sense says: Don't be yourself. Pretend to be interested in sports. Hide your chess set. Deliberately give wrong answers in class so you don't look too smart.
Oh brother. If that's streetsmarts, I'm glad I had booksmarts instead. I may have gotten relentlessly tormented by the non-nerd kids, but at least I had some integrity.
"On my darker days, I like to think I did something good. It's reasonable to presume that if she survived high school, she survived university, and found her way to cubicle-bound conformity along with the rest of us."
:)
:)
You can't predict the future, and you can't change someone else's life. You can only do what you feel is right. "Right" is a relative term - I did what I felt was "right" once for a friend once more than a decade ago - telling him where I felt his life was, and what I felt he should do about it - and he blew his brains out with a 20-gauge the next morning.
Another friend I advised on "right", a few years before that, has become a very successful entrepeneur and retired already, long before I ever hope to.
I think what you did was good. Advice is easy to give; even when it's "right" - or accurate - it doesn't mean that the other person will be able to incorporate it into their worldview the way you see it. Sometimes they take it a bad way, sometimes it changes their whole life for the good. You can't predict it, you can't throw equations at it, you just have to put it out there, to the best of your understanding, and hope that they understand what you're trying to do.
That's the problem with compassion. Sometimes it can have unintended consequences.
That certainly should not stop anyone from trying. Giving your best, to someone you care about, is the greatest gift you can give. Even if it means remaining silent; even if it means hurting them.
There is no 'try'. Do, or don't do. If you don't 'do', you will always regret it, because you'll say to yourself "I didn't."
Yes, Yoda said that
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
As a nerd kid, I did not whine about being unpopular. I didn't want to be popular; I wanted to be left the hell alone by the jackasses who made a hobby out of tormenting me.
Whining had nothing to do with it.
well, to start out, i only read the first 1/4 of the article. either way, in my school (highschool mind you not secondary) it's different. first off, graham is kinda not in touch with the youth i assume. things have changed. i was listening to the oreilly factor one day and bill pointed out that the kids who used to be rebels (i.e., the fonz from happy days) used to be looked at with wonder but not with popularity. this has recently changed, since the rebel is now popular. (err, the fonz might not be a good example for this but it reiterates my point..)
either way, at my school, the nerds are totally allied. there's uniform and structure within our organization. and we have some pretty strong guys. (mentally and physically. surpisingly enough, there are a few guys who can bench more than almost anyone in the school, but refuse to use their power even when confronted...) umm, so we are pretty organized and shit, and no one fucks with us. its great. i can see what graham was getting at with the nerds being unpopular, but really...within our fairly large group (about as large as the "populars") we are popular. and we could kick the shit out of the populars.
fjeer nerdtopia.org (the living proof (ok not so living, domain's no longer used but the forum was used by like 50 nerds at once..) of nerd organization which leads to inner popularity)
May not be anyone still reading or posting about this article anymore, but I'll throw my $0.02 in anyways...
My friends and I were big into computers since about 3rd grade. We were also consistently on honor roles, in NHS, etc. And honestly I'd say I fit into class C or perhaps even B, especially my last 2 years of high school. For one, a lot of the "popular" kids ended up in NHS and I have no doubts earned it. And for another thing, a lot of the people who were snobbish, mean, etc, etc. to me years back actually grew up a lot (as did I, cuz face it we've all been insulting to others at some time or another) those last 2 years.
And while I don't know if I'll go to my reunion because I actively oppose dancing for religious reasons, a part of me still wants to go just to say "Hi" to a lot of those people. Any "I gotta go back to rub my success in their face" feelings I used to have left a long time back. Because ultimately success being measured by money you make, job position, how "hot" your spouse is, etc, etc. doesn't measure happiness or *true* success. I've known people in "lowly" jobs as far as most people would be concerned who are some of the happiest people I know. I attribute much of that to religion too, but I won't get into that here.
Simply stated, get over it, dwelling on the past and how you can rub your "success" in other people's faces, is just as childish and stupid as those who gave you a hard time in school.
That's my $0.02, feel free to take it to heart or ignore it completely.
I was the lowest of the low... i was a AD&D player. Battletech, 40K, Star Frontiers, whatever.It served as a imagination "shell" for me. I think it has a lot to do with nature vs. nurture. In nature, the big guys get to push the little guys around- most animals will bear me out on that(ignore the bad pun). Nurture is more of an intellect recognizing the value of other intellects, and supporting the differences. Why the shell you ask? Well, my class president was the son of a local brickmason, and the senior prank was to wall off the remedial classrooms. Because those attending these classes were "obviously" second rate human beings, and were not worthy of being added to the class. Oh yes, i had MUCH reason to be a friend to these prize-winning members of humanity. You may detect sarcasm. The police had to be summoned SEVEN (7) times to my 10 year reunion for fighting. Late 20 something men with families.... I define my HS years as hell on wheels. But it did make me tough, and perhaps a little cynical. I didn't give a shit about them then, and i care even less now. So, i think the lesson here is to be involved with your kids life (HELLO!). And for god's sake get your kid(s)in a better school.
and if you find a girl that thinks its just as sexy. dont give that shit up you lucky bastard
In all the ramblings of Linux vs Windows (that was WAY off topic huh?), I don't think I saw a reference to the dumb nerds. A what? Yes you read right! An un-intelligent nerd. I know I had a few friends back in school who fit the typical Erkel description (with differing races of course) but couldn't score 20% in the averge class test - BUT the important thing to notice is: they weren't liked either! However, there are some nerds, who were just really *NICE* people, that everyone liked regardless. Strange world huh? As for me, heck, I'm one of a kind. The biggest stud frown down under - I impress the chicks at clubs with my laptops - compiling JSP's in under a minute. It goes a little something like "Hey babe, type your name in the form, then click submit" *types her name in* is gorgeous, can I take you home? Works for me! God I'm good. -- Illogical_Simby[Nerg Gigolo]
Apparently my appendage goes here
I can't believe it. Over eleven hundred comments on a story talking about nerds & unpopularity. don't get me wrong, the article is good; but too many nerds with too little self conscience are probably going to /. /. itself
And what tenuous connection are you trying to draw between knowledge of economics and company profitability?
Now I was certainly protected from "all that" all through highschool and well into university, however this has resulted in a new problem: I feel like my life is boring because I missed all the pointless and banal experiences. I have a friend who got married a year into university. Why? Because she had all the "experimenting" she'd need in highschool. Getting it out of her system allowed her to jump straight to adulthood. Whereas I'm floundering half-way...
One of the kids that used to bully me from gradeschool to highschool is now in jail because he beat an old woman for her purse, a la GTA3 style. I'm glad I won, and not addicted to crack.
I completely agree with the author of that essay about everything he said. It amazed me as I read it, illustrating my exact views on school right now. I'm a senior in high school right now, I've seen all these flaws he brings up clearly since entering high school. It's like being alone, even if you talk to your friends about it, you never know if they agree just to shut you up or because they actually realize what you're saying and see what's going on the same as you. Perhaps I'm lucky in a sense, having realized how the system really works early in high school, I've learned to play it perfectly. I will admit, I am one of the biggest slackers in my school, but only because I see the work as utterly pointless and a waste of my time. I do just enough to get by and please the parents and at least a couple of my teachers. I see the social system is nothing but a brutal no-holds-barred (except as by school rules in an insignificant way) popularity contest for nothing, a 'zero sum game' as the author says... Being in the second semester of my senior year, being at school is literally a joke and a waste of my time I've decided. I had exactly enough credits to graduate before I even started my senior year, with at least 1 study hall every year. I still need to finish 1 complete required science credit this year, that's the only thing holding me back. The real kicker is that my one class I have to pass to graduate is a freshman-level introductory course, 'Earth Science.' It's exactly like going back to grade school for 1 period of the day! No offense to my teacher, he's a great guy and really cares about kids in his class, but the class is set up like all my grade school science classes were. The class follows no coherent curriculum, we instead do seemingly random in-class 'labs' that a fourth grader should be able to do. We've skipped around from weather to space to finding the volume of rocks through displacement... The entire class is set up to be fail proof, you would have to actively try to do bad in that class. And people really do. Everything is graded on some imaginary scale in my teacher's head; turning in a blank paper with your name on it will surely net you at least some credit for exerting even that lack of effort. Every quiz or test has no more than 10 questions, and if you do bad the first time, there is always a retake the entire class is required to take unless you got an A the first time. How ridiculous is that?! Honestly... The class is also filled with random extra-credit 'competitions...' For example, the first week of class our teacher had this water filled top that you could get to spin a good while. We had a class wide competition and whoever got it to spin the longest got extra credit. These opportunities are a weekly occurance at least, I think it's ridiculous. Most of the kids in my class are freshmen or sophmores, a good portion of them I honestly wonder to myself on a daily basis how they advanced beyond 5th grade. There is a thriving population of kids in my school whom I wonder about. It's simple, the system is set up to pass everyone through as quickly as possible regardless of how well they are picking up the material. Most techers I've had don't care even the slightest bit about their students. They see their job simply as to present the course material however they choose regardless of how well everyone actually comprehends it, and pass their students on to the next teacher. The earth science class I just decribed is a model illustration of this, except that I really think the teacher cares but has just given up in the upstream battle of teaching a decent and honestly educational class. I don't even want to get started on what a joke some of my other classes are... Going to school is just a running though the motions of doing the bare minimum to get by. It is because of this lacking in the content of courses that I've determined GPA really is nothing more than a determination of how much of a slacker you are. Anyone can go to high school with proper course selection and a willingness to put forth a relatively small amount of effort and can earn a 4.0. None of the people in my grade who take more advanced courses that pose somewhat of a challenge (who coincidentally are my friends) are in the running for valedictorian, maybe saluditorian (I apologize for any terrible spelling here). Those with nice perfect 4.0's are in all classes equivilent or below the difficulty of my Earth Science class. My cumulative GPA for freshman-junior year is a 2.7something. Not because I'm stupid, but because I slack off in digust at the mindless assignments given to me, it bores me to death doing them. This year I'm getting about a 3.7 or 3.8, only due to the decline in difficulty of my classes. I do possibly less work than I have previous years, yet I'm doing my best yet according to my GPA. Not that an ACT score is a difinitive determination of how 'smart' you are, but I would like to point out that I got a 33 on my ACTs; to my knowledge nobody else in my whole class has scored higher. It's just a determination of your ability to go through the motions. Relatively little real ability is needed to score what is considered a 'decent' score, somwhere in the lower 20's. It takes a bit more to get a 30 or above. The only good thing I see in the ACT is that it's scores are fairly accurate in seperating out the kids who go through the motions in the easiest available courses to get a 4.0 from the people who take more challenging courses and don't get that pretty petty 4.0 even after actually putting forth some level of effort as some do or simply laughing off the joke that is schoolwork as I tend to do. I enjoy a good challenge and am more likely to work hard at one than I am at something terribly too easy and far below my real capability. I honestly find it hard to pay attention in many of my classes due to their utter simplicity.
Treat learning social skills as you would any tool you can use to manipulate your environment. I am proud of being able to socialise comfortably with people I would cheerfully shoot, for in order to have the advantage of enemies one must have self-mastery.
Bully is a cheap word to keep school officials from having to deal with violent criminals in their school. Why is a person who extorts money, hits adults, threatens people, etc. and considered a criminal treated better than someone who does all those things to children? Because if school officials treated them like the violent criminals they are, they would lose the cash they make by allowing him to stay by simply saying "kids will be kids, stick up for yourself, that's just how boys are".
It's one thing to be beat up by a bully. It's another to be beat up by a bunch of nerds. Guess what just happened to you?
Someone hates these cans.
Okay, I sure looked like the stereotypical "Big Dumb Jock". 6'7 235lbs. played footbnll HS and College. The football team was in the top 20 one year, but the institution was in the top 5, academically (it helped having 1400 college boards). I didn't stuff anyone into any locker, and actually prevented abuse of that sort. No one knocked my magnetic chess set all over the place so I had to pick up the pieces. Jr High school was miserable for me. RTFM-> There don't and didn't seem to be any manuals that any teen (or proto-teen) would read. That age is a tough time for anyone.
As a nerd going through highschool right now, I find that the only way to be ignored by the socially superior is to make myself less appetizing bait for the social middle class. I do this by making myself seem crazy, therefore any open threats made to those who choose to test my limits will be taken seriously :-) Of course those who know me well enough know that I'm not THAT evil...
showering once every two weeks? wearing the same pants for six months? Ye gods, man. You aren't a nerd, you're a bloody animal. Shit, even my cat licks his own ass once a day. I'd bet that even your crust is crusted over.
I'm sorry, but despite what you might think, people ARE avoiding you like the plague. I know some dingy hippies, but even they change their fucking pants more than twice a year. Absolutely disgusting.
Let me guess, you're a virgin? If not, I REALLY don't want to know what kind of girl would allow your unwashed penis anywhere near her. The stench must fill the room.
As someone with a HECS debt approaching A$20,000, I would have to disagree with you that the government practically pays for you to get a degree. That may have been true in the perion between 1972 and 1985 (or whenever HECS was introduced) when we had a truely free education system, but it ain't no long. Also it is arguable that we don't really have Universities in Australia anymore (since the Dawkins Educational Reforms), but that is another matter.
There's nothing wrong with being smart. If anything, smart is attractive. Tall, good-looking, AND smart? Smart is not a bad thing. What's not attractive is making other feel dumb.
One thing I've come to realize is there are three levels of intelligence:
1. Stupid. Doesn't know anything, so he doesn't say anything.
2. Knows enough to think he knows everything. Won't stop talking. Stereotypical nerd.
3. Knows enough to realize he doesn't really know much at all. Speaks when appriopriate. Understanding.
I'm not claiming to be the 3rd case (probably more like 2.5), but the point remains. If you're truly intelligent, you should know how to speak to others in a manner that makes them want to speak to you again!
Second point: Intelligence and success in life (however you define it) are two different things. Coding is a skill, proficiency in math is a skill, but so is being sociable, remembering people's names and hobbies at a party. If anything, business success is more dependent on communication skills than anything else.
Some people are born with athletic ability, some are born with people skills, some are born with an extra helping of brains. Why does the fact that you got brains instead of brawn make you superior?
-One- of the problems with nerds being targeted as outcasts is that its all based on perspective, and at young ages, meaning anytime before you go off to college, you only have your own personal perspective.
...as soon as I started caring less about how other people saw me, and more about how I saw myself. Though I know I probably had less friends at school, I certainly wasn't without them.
I met my best friend when I was 14. He was so wacky and wierd people didn't even call him a faggot, that's how lost for words they were. He, and I most certainly weren't popular at school at least.
But I learned from him one of the most important things, if someone doesn't matter to you, why should what they think of you matter to you?
Call me crazy, but I think popularity comes from not giving a crap about what others think.
yes, but he's simply stating fact :) anyway, what you call elitism, I would call standards; the difference you see, is simply that those with standards are willing to let anyone who meets those standards in. Elitism on the other hand, tends to preclude anyone from entering based on unchangeable characteristics :)
:) most nerds/geeks don't really give a shit about this in the great scheme of life... we eventually find others of substance and ignore the man-apes from that point on :)
:)
put another way, I never met a geek/nerd whatever that upon meeting someone else with (applied) intelligence, didn't strike it off immediately. versus the normal people of course, who discriminate socially on everything from looks, birth to sexual orientation and beyond.
anyway
Paul
Definately laughing his ass off
big screen TV
surround sound set up
alphabetical anime DVD collection
any pr0n
Do not:
mention sports
mention computers in any depth greater than "I work with computers" or to recommend the purchase of a Dell or a Macintosh
mention how women find you unattractive
Do:
ask questions about her
listen to them
sympathise with her plights
be ready to provide technical support with making derisive comments about technical skills (right: "ok, that ought to do it." wrong: "you have two System folders! What the fuck did you do, you retard?")
Assuming you have an ok job and hygene, you are now officially interesting to single girls older than 24. Whether or not the trade off is worth it is up to you, though it's worth mentioning that once you land the girl, you can slowly bring out the sports/computers/home electronics talk (keep the Anime well hidden...).
Also, if you only can do one of the above things, keep your bathroom immaculate. That is the #1 criteria by which you are measured by girls. In fact, casually dropping the fact that you can eat off the floor of your bathroom will probably get girls to ask you out.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Me personally, I always have been real into computers and other nerdly behaviors, but in school I was pretty popular. I was on our moarning news and was just seen as the cool guy by everyone for some reason. I think a lot of it has to do with how you carry yourself. I always looked realitively cool (6' 2", weight proportionate to height, well kept, and a black leather trench coat that everyone dug) and was pretty laid back, and everyone just seemed to think I was just some cool guy. I never had a lot of friends, but everyone knew me and liked me. One nice effect of this was that whenever I'd start going off about space time or my theories on the universe or anything like that, they'd actually listen and take what I said to heart. One of my favorite times was when the girls soccer team captain (a otherwise ditzy blond girl) and one of the girls from the swim team (see above, now in burnette) said they wished they could have thought like I did.
I also knew many of the more nerdly kids, and it's safe to say most of them brought any type of abuse upon themselves. The nerdly kids really just stuck out like sore thumbs, and were unfortunitly abused often. Nothing major, like none of them ever really got their asses kicked or anything, but their high school lives were more painful then they should have been. I mean, most of them weren't to bad, but they're were a few even I wanted to hit when they started babbeling endlessly about VB or Dragon Ball Z or any of that. The best thing though was when one of the more jocky kids would let it slip they did some nerdly things, and then try to cover it up as fast as possible.
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
when it comes to female nerds, Female nerds don't get stuffed in lockers and stuff that I know of, actually Im in some AP classes and half of them are hot, but its not easy to get them to have sex wit you, most Male nerds seem socially stupid, not female nerds and they are smart about not being with the stupid (darhar) football players because it seems like they can live without them unlike us guys who want to be with any hot girl weather they are stupid or not. its also rare to find female nerds in my high school that enjoy computers (launguage, and stuff like that) But when it comes to ugly i dunno who has the most troubles girls or guys.... im just bringing upp ,more questions for me.
When you opened your eyes for the first time in this world you were alone. The world will take from you all it can. The only answer is to take from the world what you want. Because in the end when you close your eyes for the last time you will be alone. You don't owe anyone anything. No parent, no person, no god, and no devil. You came in alone and you will leave alone. There is nothing you can accomplish to escape. Once you realize this humans become only a thing of pity. Like a fool shouting his own importance on an empty stage in an empty theater.
I went to a Russian highschool till my junior year (there are 11 classes in the Russian system)graduated, and then attended an American highschool for part of a junior year, and graduated from senior.
/sister nerd, get them to take karate.
I can tell you that the American school systems sucks really bad as far as getting students united socially.
First, classes in Russia consist of 30 people or less, and every class is your homeclass- that is, you take the same classes with a group of 30 people. Clasees are called Class A, B, C etc. There are usuall about a 100 kids of the same age in all the classes (a 100 of juniors, a 100 of freshmen, etc)
And unless you move out of town, you're with those people for 11 years of your life.
That means that most of the people in your class are friends. That also means that a lot of times kids from your class will stick out for you against bullies from other classes.
I remember how half of the students would go to smoke behind the school- nerds and jocks alike.
But you see, there is no public sports in Russian schools.
Somehow they don't think public sports are important to a person's education.
Sure, there's physical ed, but you don't get to be popular just because you run around with some stupid ball.
All in all, i enjoyed going to a Russian highschool much more. I believe the descibed system provided for better social skills - and saved me the ridicule of jock terrorism. My advice- if you have a younger brother
And teach them to knock those bullys out. Get them a stun gun if you have to.
Being expelled for that stun gun is nothing compared to the high they will have from winning over some dumb bully.
I remember some kid in the American school tried to bully me, and i just told him- "listen, i'm Russian. You hurt me, i will destroy you and your family."
And i meant it. And he knew i meant it.
Fight for your rights to be a nerd.
Nerd power!
--- Nothing but Blood and Kosmos
Speaking for nerds everywhere, I'd politely suggest you read the articles linked to in the original post. You seem to have missed the point. I consider myself both a nerd and well-balanced (positive acceptance of the former is indication of the latter.)
As for being a nerd, you're posting on Slashdot. Have you ever read the site's byline?
And always remember to maintain your sense of humor.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
I blame the totally unnatural structure of highschools for the persecution of nerds. In the ancesttral environment where we *and our brains and behavior) evolved, each individual spent every hour of every day around a diverse, tightly-knit group of close relatives and friends. Children of all ages and people of 3 or even 4 generations were continually interacting with one another.
Fast forward to the modern highschool, and you have NONE of that: surrounded by thousands of peers, not only the same generation but exactly the same age. The mental machinery that evolved to help us integrate into the family/tribal unit ends up dividing those highschool masses into tribes on the basis of individual traits whose merits would have been valued by others in the ancestral environment - it ends up being adolescent tribal warfare, and everyone suffers.
Where I live (Elverum, Norway), being a nerd AND being popular is not a problem. I am quite a big nerd (at least all the people I know consider me so), and I have always considered myself everything but unpopular.
After years of watching american television series, I've always wondered why nerds are so unpopular, because if there's anyone I relate to in those TV-series, it's the nerds/geeks.
It's probably because "the nerd stamp" doesn't mean that much in Norway...
Well, during the dot-com "bubble" it was cheaper to give kids titles of "Director" or "CTO" then to pay them money!
We get a big laugh where I'm working now (a big, evil, old media company) when we get resumes from dotcom kids who don't realize they'd have a better chance if they took "CTO" off their resume and tried to pitch themselves as a Perl programmer.
However, as someone who's in "management" I assure you that I don't work 1/4 the hours for twice the pay. It's a greuling job.
Best Buy can have you arrested
You realize that there was SO MUCH potential for a good "In Soviet Russia ..." comment, but you passed it up.
:-)
Damn European geeks.
"In Soviet Russia girls want geeks!"
holy crap there is a lot of replies, first-hand evidence that slash/doters. really are unpopular, who would have thought.
:P
anyways where are my cool nerds at? can't we be popular as hell and still know our computer shit like in the movies? oh well maybe i'm just perfect. but it's okay i still love my fellow nerds
p.s. nerd (i prefer the term 'smart') outlaw bad crazy dudes who live their lifes in what could be described as a stupid way are often really the most brilliant and creative.
After testing, Sensei took a bunch of us out for beer and wings. Nice guy. Very loud, very smart in a Buddha-meets-Jim-Belushi kind of way. One of the junior students, who is kind of a sanctimonious, attention-seeking little guy, said something to the effect of "I don't think I should go to the advanced classes. I feel like I'm holding everyone back. I... I... I..." Sensei put down his beer, and said, "You think you're being humble, you think you're making yourself more worthy of attention by saying this. Fact is, this is your ego talking. You become so concerned with how inferior you are that your training suffers as a result. In fact, you become inferior because you think you are. So go to the advanced classes. Feel stupid. Screw up. Transcend your ego, and get down to business. Forget about 'you'. Think about what needs to be done and do it."
And this, friends, is how we all must be. We need to stop martyring ourselves to the lions of popularity and public opinion. We shouldn't "apply our intellects to playing the game." If we do that, we become the calculating, soulless PUA's and PHB's. We need to learn that the people who seem to cross social boundaries effortlessly do so beacuse they act as if those bounds do not exist.
Think about the last time someone, say, bumped you in the hallway. Did you brush it off, thinking, "maybe they were in a hurry"? Or did your ego take over, spinning the incident into a larger tapestry of us-vs-them, nerds-vs-jocks social conspiracy, all directed at keeping YOU down? If it was the latter, you need to reexamine how you relate to the world, and find a healthier way to do it.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
...on the other side. If you ask her, maybe she'd say she regrets it. That she should have saved herself more for that special relationship. I have certainly heard that argument myself. Sex is NOTHING, without love. It's a fun toy for love, not a goal in itself. You don't even need to have sex in a real love-relationship. Do not get suckered in into the hopeless fantasies of others, and commercial society. Most Highschool sex is boring, but people think that this is how they "must behave". Much like they have to wear certain clothes and put on lipstick. It's really sad, not to be envied.
;-O
Forget the past, drop the future. You don't live there, you are living NOW *SNAP!*. Become alive!: People won't find you boring, you will relate to people better and finding a girlfriend will become natural. She'll probably find you though, if YOU just open up YOUR eyes..
The best way to get a girlfriend, is to believe and behave like you don't need a girlfriend. To have fun without clinging.
Worked for me:
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
My experience has been that the elite schools can be worse than the public ones.
I experienced the Lord-of-the-Flies "mercedes edition" firsthand at an elite, wealthy college prep school in the midwest (which will remain unnamed). There were three types of kids that went to that school:
The kids who were incredibly bright (they were poor, but maxed out the entrance exams)
The kids who were athletes.
And the kids whose parents bought their way in.
Absolutely the cliquiest place I've ever seen... most of these kids started in the same prep-school pipeline together from 1st grade onward, and it was impossible to break in. Also, the politics were pernicious and nasty. If you were getting picked on by some kid whose dad was a fortune 500 CEO, the school would do nothing about it, particularly if your dad was some kind of small-fry (ie. just a doctor or small-fry businessman). Watching the school look the other way was an unpleasant eye-opener. The administration blindly backed the teachers, and denied any problems existed, even when the teachers were frankly abusive to students. I WAS the bottom of the ladder... nobody lower. Unfortunately, my parents were too involved in some other problems of their own to deal with mine, so I failed out on purpose just to get the hell out of there. The only thing worse than a bully is a spoiled-rich, politically-protected bully... and I had to deal with a school full of them. Not fun.
The public school I subsequently attended was a very different affair. Where I had been high-average at the college prep school, I ended up with the highest ACT/SAT scores in my public school of 2500 students. I also had a much larger pool of people from which to choose friends, and I chose the "hoods." A hood would never stab you in the back for one more shred of popularity... they were nothing if not loyal (and many of them were actually great guys).
I survived by keeping to myself (whenever the jock-types would let me... sheesh... some of those maggots just couldn't leave well enough alone). I had enough sense not to antagonize people, but making them look stupid was often my only retaliation for their snide remarks and cruelty, so I used it. Yes, it sometimes hurt me more in the end, but ask any Prisoner-of-War how important those "small victories" are against their captors. The answer: pretty damned important. You have to keep resisting to the bitter end... if you give up, you die.
I was socially inept, but had enough insight to realize it, and didn't put myself in situations where that handicap could become a liability.
That's all 20 years ago for me now... but I can still remember some of those people if I really try. The angst is gone, and I wouldn't go out of my way now to skewer one of those people (it wouldn't be worth my time). And yet, I can certainly understand the desire (expressed by multiple people in this discussion) to gig one of them, just to return the favor. There's something deeply satisfying about being the agent of karmic retribution.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
...both correct and wrong at the same time.
EVERYBODY should "own up" to the problem. It isn't anyones "fault". I'd even argue that the bullies are the ones who can be called "socially inept".
The call for taking responsibility goes to ALL, for everything. Even those who are not in school. Anything less is as ignorant and ineffective as finding "blame".
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
The assumption that anyone who is athletic and popular is a few pennies short of a buck upstairs ?
That's just like saying that someone who wears coke-bottle-glasses and doesn't do sport is hyper-intelligent.
As usual, vague generalisations have been used to support someones argument.
So this guy got picked on at school ? - get over it and move on.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
> This carries over into adult life as well, which is why geeks don't go to clubs
:) I don't go to clubs because clubs suck; overpriced alcohol, cheezy (ghetto) women and of course, the complete inability to have a decent conversation over the 16" subwoofer pounding next to your ear :)
:) And of course, be urself.
:P )
Bullshit
Really, you're not missing out on anything - clubs are heavily over-rated.
anyway, re: ur comment about certifying status of women; I would agree to the extent that most (ignorant) men depend on a woman's opinion of another man to judge him a man. Coming from a society that is heavily run this way, I can tell you completely it is a crock of shit; my only judge on whether or not a man's a man is by how he conducts himself, certified either by observation or other (trusted/authenticated) men.
Put another way, women are famous for their ability to overlook obvious severe character flaws in men, and ergo, cannot be trusted as
a judge of character regarding men. Certes, I certainly would never trust a man to do whats right if he continiously (in the face of obviously correct behavior) kowtows to the wishes of the women in his life. I prefer men who have the integrity to tell a woman off when she is wrong, rather than suck up to her for a bit of pussy.
The reverse is also true; I prefer women who are confident enough to speak their mind regardless of what others think. Those are the women that are worth their weight in gold....
Guess what, you're *not* going to find them hanging out in any clubs.
So my luckless friend, I say to you this:
Decide what you want in a woman, then go where they congregate
Given enough thoroughput, you're bound to be successful (if nothing else, statistically speaking
Perhaps, but perhaps not :)
:)
:)
I think ur missing the point of the article;
geeks do not feel the need to change their interests to suit others, and to being social,
geeks *are social*; just with other geeks.
Anyway, the impetus to become a bully is simple
motive: anyone different
opportunity: anyone who doesn't stick up for themselves with a 2x4.
Sadly, a lot of said people are geeks (by virtue of the fact they don't socialize with others in their class, and of course, opportunity [read: the bullies can]).
Having said that, I don't think they are to blame (as you do). I think the people who are truely guilty are the bullies themselves...
And their behavior has nothing to do with ur 3 rules to a popularity or whatever u were attempting to commmunicate as a good way to keep from getting ur ass kicked
Truman said it best, talk softly and carry a big stick.
The mechanism of a group whose actions are without are immediate real consequenses made me think that large companies are just the same! They are too large to fall over because of one stupid decision, and it actually becomes possible to promote people who are doing a bad job, but rank high in the bureaucrats' management development schemes (actually these are popularity charts since these contain the opinions of other bureaucrats). Hence lousy management!
I believe the phrase "turnabout is fair play" applies to this situation.
Keep in mind... the bullies are the original oppressors in the vast majority of these situations; most geeks just want to be left alone. Simply stated, the bullies started it, and foolishly, since they are sometimes ill-equiped to thrive in the long-term game.
Sometimes fate deals the bully a nice tall glass of bitter medicine later in life. The fact that a geek is glad to see it happen doesn't make him elitist; it may just mean that he can appreciate the irony of the situation. Now, He'd be out of line to smugly rub the bully's nose in it; that's a bit petty, and hardly necessary... the bully can taste the irony on his own.
Who isn't glad to see their oppressor get his comeuppance? On the other hand, I'd say there's something wrong with someone who obsesses about it, or makes it their life's mission to be the hand of geek justice... but a private chuckle at someone getting a taste of their own medicine?
Hardly elitist.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I was a nerd in high school. Sure I was persecuted, but learned from the experience and am MUCH better at dealing with difficult people because of it.
It may be true that nerds are too preoccupied with their studies to worry about being "cool." That is understandable. However, using this as some kind of excuse that exempts one from having to deal with society is just a cop out.
rolldeep
I am, by no stretch of the imagination, a lady's man, but I imagine lumping the three billion members of "opposite sex" under one stereotype is counter productive.
I'm beginning to suspect that "they" are as diverse as "we" are.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
No matter how much effort you put into being the most popular person in your high school, after the four years are up, you wind up back at square one.
Think about it. No matter how popular the jock/cheerleader might be, they are living the highpoint of their life. Driving a used/parent's car, living with parents, making minimum wage, curfew. For most of them, their best achievement in life is to be the most popular kid in their school. When they graduate, the winners of the popularity contest are announced, they wear a crown for a night, and then are promptly forgotten.
A geek realizes that high school is a very minor part of his/her life. Throwing away a chance at future six figure income just to please a bunch of kids that you will never see after you finish high school is moronic.
I for one didn't let anyone beat me up. I may not be superman, but if someone tried to fsck with me, they still got themselves a bloody nose. When you're trying to make a stand against bullies, it's not about how strong you are, it's how you react to them. If you stand there, shaking, you can be sure you get beaten up. If you get into fighting posture, no matter how rediculous it may look (heh.), then they know they can't just beat u up without getting smacked in the face themselves. And often enough, that's enough to make them leave.
But then, my experiences are not that of an american teen and I understand the situation in the US schools is a lot worse than here in Germany....
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
High school is tough. Its is going to be awful for everyone (basically).
In other words, high school is (basically) not unlike a part-time prison. But you would know that if you took time to read the actual article, which is focused on the wrongs of the education system rather than on assumed guilt of nerdsm populars, or 'hormones'.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
The relative difference between the smart and the average kids is much bigger in the US, causing the "nerd" problems. I've heard arguments that the egalitarian US system is actually a useful educational experience for kids. I don't buy it. Kids are happier and learn better if they are not feeling they are an outlier (on either end of the scale), otherwise they spend a lot of time trying to be like the average kids.
Sure, there are downsides to splitting kids up too: it is difficult to predict a kid's development at 12. But this is mitigated by the fact that the smartest/worst kids can change school after a year.
Egalitarity is a noble intention. It doesn't work very well in highscool.
This sig is just as redundant as the rest of this posting
In Russia, similar problems have YOU!
Speaking as a Grade 9 Australian (To be specific, Tasmanian), I felt compelled to write up my view on the matter...
In my school (a public one) we never use the term 'Jock' - because in our school there are probably 70% jocks (and so are called normal) 25% normal, nice people, and 5% geeks. I have to say that there isn't much in the way of physical abuse for us because we've adapted to the environment, here's how...
Not many people like us, mainly because they hear us using a language they don't comprehend (4 people in my grade know what linux is, no one else has even heard of it.) and so we tend to socialise, meet new people - and then be shunned by them once they befriend a jackass. So we've learned to just act normal, just like ourselves. If anyone starts to piss us off, we just drop into out 'geek lingo'. You'd be surprised just how fast they move away.
We've made quite a few friends over the past few years or high school. We started off with just the 3 of us (wich was still pretty l33t) now we have 'connections' all through the school - the school sysadmins, school website maintainance, hell, even the principal hold us in good favour!
In short, Geeks need to stick together, and at least try to make a few buds, otherwise when the battle comes, you have no allies.
--------
Rye Bean (anyone know what the big deal is with that 'Wu-Tang' stuff?)
I found this article really interesting, mainly because it made me think about the American schoolsystem.
I grew up in Sweden, and I spent my first 11 schoolyears there. We had some popular kids, and we also had some kids that everyone disliked. However, we only really had three groups. Popular, middle, hated. I would say that popular and hated might have accounted for 10% of the students, and the remaining 90% ended up in middle.
This article made me think that maybe the problem with this whole popularity thing is something that can be solved by the school / schoolsystem. In Sweden they constantly work on the wellbeeing of all students. It doesn't seem like they care about this at all in the US.
You will always have more and less popular kids, but it seems to me that the US schools are like India or something.
In India, the lower you are, the less rights you have. In US schools, it seems like the less popular you are, the less people you can associate with, and the less parties you can go to.
In Mexico you don't have a concept of nerd as such, first of all because people with computers are in a very small minority, secondly most young people at that age are more worried about starting to make a living than they are about finding reasons to ridicule each other.
Having said that I also think it is related to cultural differences. In Mexico the intelligent person is respected, culture and knowledge is seen as a positive trait that is encouraged. Many writers, poets, scientists belong to the "intellectual" elite and are constantly consulted and interviewed.
In my very personal anecdotal evidence I can say I never faced the treatment to which US nerds are submitted. I was president of my class, went to many parties, had loads of friends, but also used to read loads of books and to talk about these weird things called computers. Nobody ever rediculed me or any one of my likeminded friends for pursuing this esoteric stuff in spite of being studying in one public school notorious for gang activity.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
When I was going to school, I went to a tough high school (well by Australian standards anyway, no metal detectors or anything). Being one of only five anglo-saxon people in the school, I soon learnt how to interact with all of the different groups.
Sure I had my problems, but I worked them out by standing my ground, and not letting anyone push me around. This is something that the kids who get pushed to the outer need to understand. Don't let anyone push you around because you are different. Trust me I learnt this the hard way, being the tallest kid in school at year eight, a book worm and having lived over seas for much of my child hood really gave me a whole heap of baggage to deal with.
"I would rather have a child eho challenged himself and got B's, then one that took the easy couses and got A's."
What is easy? Do you play a musical instrument, run the 100m in less than 11 sec, can write you own compiler, write poetry, understand Newtonian physics and participate in a public debate?
Everybody has weak and stronger points. Why would you prefer to droll and waste precious time in something you are not good at when you could be perfectioning those abilities that are easier and probably most pleasurable to you>
No little Mozart, don't play the fscking piano, try to dicover differential calculus instead.
No little Newton, stop those mathematics you are doing and write a poem.
No little Churchill, no more debates at school, no you have to paint a landscape.
Well. Duh!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
We often falsely assume that, throughout history, all change equals progress.
Maybe by recognizing that social conditions for fulltime mothers, highschool kids and prisoners are very similair, and leading to these destructive popularity contests, that we can go about make some real improvements.
To me, during my stay, the whole jock-nerd-geek argument came up and seemed like utter insanity to me at the time. Granted, popularity issues are of all ages and all times, but the way it got polarised gave me a real culture shock.
Personally, I would agree that competition cannot be avoided at school and maybe it shouldn't be either (as it's not representative of The Real World (TM)). BUT, where things go wrong is where you start binning people into a very small amount of extremely stereotypical groups. I found that this confused a lot of my class-mates: I couldn't seem to make a "choice" of what group I wanted to be in. I liked sports and could kick multiple jocks' asses at times, but I also took advanced math classes and such. To really mess people up, I also liked to date AND was in the school play. Go figure.
So here's my 2 cents: If you don't feel like you want to be a "slacker" (which I think is a category that supersets all of the others), don't have yourself labeled and filed. Try to spread your interest. Go for the high-tech, but don't spend hours on irc or random kernel compiling, use that time to do some sports (preferably something off-beat like climbing or such), develop cultural interest, have sex! It IS possible to change your character (been there, done that) and even your (bad?) looks don't need to be a show-stopper.
Mess with people that try to make you into a nerd/geek/jock/whatever (yes, this also applies to geeks that try to make you out as a jock). Not everybody will get it, but those that don't generally tend to avoid you (not as in "you're not popular, I'm not going to talk to you"), which is better than the alternative.
There is such a thing as none-of-the-above. Live the paradox and have fun doing it.
Mod up already!
i think this needs to be put on the front page of slashdot. "its not me, its the rest of the world!"
You prolly do not get this because .... Your a suit ...
That made no sense.
Some people make no sense.
It might be my imagination, but I remember computer programmer being a really nerdy and looked down upon profession until Bill Gates was named the richest man on the planet. Since then it appeared to me that it then got grudging respect from even Joe Bloggs in the street.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
When I ws in highschool about 6 years ago now, nerds were not unpopular because we had what I would like to call hybrid nerds. I myself was smart and liked computers and technology just like the rest of the /. crowd here, but instead of just burying my head in books and learning about the wonders of the internet I joined sports teams, was in the most popular group in school, and carried on in life with my head up high. Our group had 2 smart people/jocks, which included myself. A deranged soon to be serial killer, a pervert, an even bigger pervert, and a hockey player who is now an electronics technologist. We all got along because we had a common thread that we all enjoyed. Partying. I think that all nerds, jocks, preppy boys, whatever are all the same at the end of the day, because when it comes down to the line, we all throw up after drinking a few 2-4's of good Canadian beer. Look at the time... (7:42am), gotta get my first one of the day in...
What I noticed about nerds in high school (I was a stoner, almost as bad) was the incessant need to show how smart they were. Always correcting others in conversation, especially on obscure points. And with that Comic Book Guy tone of voice. It's not really about how smart, it's about social interaction.
When I was a victim of this social structure, way back when, I and the other nerds decided that the cause of our situation was the fundamental and inherent stupidity of the "average person". In other words, the average "Joe", with an IQ of 100, a total lack of individuality, and empowered by ingrained superstitions IS one stupid Mot*er F*c*er.... We also decided to do something about our situation, while fighting back and having fun doing it. We snuck in to locker rooms to unsharpen the hockey team's skates before matches. We sent crap bombs, powered by springs to bullies. We once glued several textbooks shut, but they didn't notice till the end of the year when it was time to turn them in. So now I am an adult...., at least I am supposed to be, but I still have this total distrust, disgust, and total lack of respect for the "average joe".... You know, the one who votes for wars, burns crosses on southern lawns, reaps victims as he drives while totally imbibed with beer, thinks all intellectuals are pansies, beats his wife during the Super Bowl because she dared interrupt his "concentration".... Many reasons were indeed given for the nerd persecution problem in the article, but I believe it is much more simple. There is a problem because virtually the majority of people in the world, especially in America's part of it, are truly stupid.
"Where I grew up, it felt as if there was nowhere to go, and nothing to do. This was no accident. Suburbs are deliberately designed to exclude the outside world, because it contains things that could endanger children."
"Growing up it all seems so one-sided,
Opinions all provided,
The future pre-decided,
Detached and subdivided
in the mass production zone.
Nowhere is the dreamer
or the misfit so alone..."
- Rush, "Subdivisions"
Chuck Norris: Socialism == a thousand years of darkness.
"I didn't really grasp it at the time, but the whole world we lived in was as fake as a twinkie. Not just school, but the entire town. Why do people move to suburbia? To have kids! So no wonder it seemed boring and sterile. The whole place was a giant nursery, an artificial town created explicitly for the purpose of breeding children."
This insightful paragraph explains why things can go so horribly wrong for kids growing up in the suburbs. Adults think they've created an ideal world for kids, and kids are bored and lost in it.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
The world needs more Philosopher/Computer Programmers!
Simpsons did it!
Public high school is a concentration camp for the mind. Few enjoy learning after going through it.
We should grasp any straws we can to escape it, even otherwise lame things like vouchers or home schooling.
This isn't necessarily so. I believe that going to a private school increased my exposure to people who are different from me. In the public schools in my county, kids formed cliques based on race, nationality, income, and religion. At my small, private school we had a diverse group of people, but there weren't enough of us to make those kind of cliques. As a result, I got to know people as friends and classmates instead of stereotypes of their categories, while my friends in public school all socialized with people who were exactly like they were (white Presbyterian clique, upper-middle-class Asian clique, etc.).
My little high school world was not ideal. There were still popular and unpopular people, etc. But I don't think I was ill-prepared for the diversity of the real world because I went to a private high school. (Of course, college was another matter...)
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
Amen to that -- I was picked on mercilessly because I was a physics geek in high school, and was 6 feet tall, 150 pounds.
So I joined the Marine Corps, as a Fleet Marine (1st Bn, 4th Marines, Westpac), got into a raid unit as a mortarman/company radio operator, and learned a lot of fairly cool commando-type stuff. I also bulked up significantly; I was about 240 when I got my discharge, and I'm up almost to 300 nowadays (I'm not particularly fat, either, although I could stand to lose some weight).
I don't recommend this course of action, particularly -- the USMC is a painful place for a nontraditional, free-thinker type, trust me, I know -- but being able to break a bully in half over your knee is a VERY comforting thing.
You can't tell online, without being able to see me, but I fill an entire doorway now, and my shoulders are so wide sometimes I have to turn sideways to enter smaller doors. On the plus side, no one ever picks on me anymore. On the minus, it breaks my heart, because I know I'll never be slender again so long as I live (you can't get rid of bone and muscle, once you've built it up). And, being psychologically able to kill, which is something that is pounded into every Marine, may or may not be a good thing. A little faustian maybe.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I wasn't trying to suggest men depend on women to validate them as men, just as socially acceptable. The two are mutally exclusive. Women like to show off their man to their girlfriends. And generally, if the girlfriends think the guy is a dud, he gets the ejection seat...because he is geeky.
Been there, done that... best advice I can give is learn to play a musical instrument very well (I chose guitar), get a band together, and learn to kick the living shit outta anyone who gives you any trouble. You won't be able to beat all of them but you'll be able to make sure they never want to go through that again. (I weighed 120 pounds when I graduated from high school, but by then, nobody screwed with me).
I am mostly intimidated by the women in my age group, I think that's my biggest problem. They smell the fear, HAHAHA!
Wil has a posse!
I grew up in a small town in Indiana. I had the double whammy going: smart and without a lot of money. (Remind me to rant about _The Bell Curve_ one of these days.) I couldn't wait to get to college and make something of myself. But while I was pretty sad through most of school, the happiness I have now completely outweighs it. I live in Austin, a much larger and more diverse place, and I've found true friends. My career isn't what I thought it would be earlier, but it's enough to keep the roof over my head and give me time to do interesting stuff like theater. And I have an amazing husband who refused to let me believe I was uninteresting, unattractive, or otherwise unworthy--after about 5 years, it started sinking in. A piece of advice to those of you have or are going to have kids yourselves: think carefully before you immediately flee to a suburb. I think it would've helped it I had gone to a larger school, where the odds were higher of meeting others like me and I could have had some opportunities a small school didn't offer (broadcasting equipment, languages other than French or Spanish, etc.). The point of TNG's "Tapestry" was that all the pain and mistakes in your life help make up who you ultimately become, and I try to look at my past the same way. Anyone who says that high school was the best time of their lives ... man, I pity them.
I did. I came up with this:
MBA Salary Survey
I quote:
Management Consultant (MBA): $89,200
This is during the height of the dot-com boom. Not exactly six figures. No where on that page does it state that a first-year MBA gets $100K+. What part of WRONG don't you understand? You made a little mistake yourself, partner. You forgot about high unemployment, and a dude on the internet who's willing to call you a liar.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
Many of the negative comments on the article seem to originate from the belief that competition is a normal part of life, and nerds are just the unfortunate losers who didn't try hard enough to outsmart those around them. I call this the conservative viewpoint.
The competing view, taken by the article I believe, is that schools should work harder to guarantee a safe environment for kids. I call this the liberal viewpoint.
I hope others find this categorization interesting because it points out how the issues in high school are reflected in many parts of adult life, too.
I went to a very large high scool. There were definitely some nerds there who were popular among the other nerds. The nerds had their own heirarchy. Hard to explain that using the author's logic.
And, no you don't know anyone 25 years old that makes six figures, and works for someone else.
Now this I find QUITE funny because I am 22 years old and have been making... well, lets say a "comfortable" 6-figure salary working for someone else since I was 19. It has only been recently that I decided to quit and start my own gig.
And before anyone starts thinking that I just knew people so that is how I got where I was... I should let you know that I was actually homeless for three months in Chicago when I was 16 and I have NEVER known anyone at any company I worked for before working there. Nobody got me where I am but me.
So yes, while you may not know any 25 year old people who make that money, you just met a 22 year old who has been for 3 years.
No hard feelings on my side... I understand you're an old man and think you know everything (just like us kids.)
This term was first used on page 47 of If I Ran The Zoo by Dr. Seuss which was first printed in 1950. The photo came with an illustration, listed right between the Nerkle and Seersucker.
The Nerd was 100% anthroid, angry, peculiar, and diminutive, with a large bushy head, and twiddling its thumbs in contemplation.
All of these McGrew zoo creatures were pulled from the far corners of the Earth, exotic sounding locations which supposedly harbored some uniquely strange beasts.
"Our table was populated by complete nerds, cases of delayed pubescence, and recent immigrants from China."
- Graham
"I'll hunt in the mountains of Zomba-ma-Tant
With helpers who all wear their eyes at a slant,
And capture a fine fluffy bird called the Bustard
Who only eats custard with sauce made of mustard.
And also a very fine beast called the Flustard
Who only eats mustard with sauce made of custard."
- Geisel
The whole book is filled with exotic alien beasts which are beyond comprehension. And that's where people fail to connect with nerds- nerds are aliens communicating beyond their *collective* comprehension.
The social network is also a living, unspoken form of self government, like God and television. Nerds are anarchoterrorists from Zomba-ma-Tant, threatening stability. In order for each person to maintain their known and familiar position in the group, each is obligated to enforce the protocol of the collective idiom.
(Nerds do it too.)
--
If anybody did that I would beat the crap out of them. Most people don't realize that some geeks are actually ninjitsu masters. In fact some little 11th grade "jocks" tried to do the same to me. They now avoid me avidly.
I think, reading this thread, it seems that people are using it to victimize themselves. Its been 4 years since high school for me, and i'm not going to tell a success story worthy of springer, but I can tell you, i've stopped holding grudges, and I think some people on this thread havent. That's what college is supposed to be, people, a time to expand your abilities, not hide out and write shell code for linux. You can do that when you're 40. What you CAN"T do when you're 40 is be viewed as a potential sex partner but a ditzy blonde with a push up bra. So go to the gym, roll up your sleeves, and say stupid things that make people laugh. Then go home and write code. Or only spend your time doing one thing, and judge people by how they perform on the one thing that you actually excel at, because that's what it seems alot of people are doing lately.
"Also do you actually know why they had to impose Age restrictions on employment? Do a little reading on the Coal Mines and Mills back in the nineteenth century. It is not a good thing for children - and thats what they are - to be working. Hence the need for Social Services "snooping" as you so objectivly put it."
I see no reason to sit on the fence (which you mistakenly call "objective"). I oppose child labor bans. I consider them an ill-concieved solution to a problem that no longer exists.
I find the "dark satanic mills" argument without merit. Sweatshops and child labor are what happens when any country goes through an industrial revolution, when the populace is poor, the technology is rudimentary, labor is cheap, and price is the consideration that trumps all. Left to the free market, this fairly quickly creates a wealthy "middle class", which then drives the old sweatshops out of business with a preference for quality as well as cheapness, and lacking the economic need to send their children to work.
Before this point child labor laws (if they exist) are ignored and openly flaunted; after this point they are redundant.
If the child labor laws went away tomorrow in the USA or Europe, nobody would employ five-year-olds in huge cotton mills or down coal mines. You could simply never collect up that many children willing to forgo education, nor make money with the wages, safety, and working conditions they and their parents could demand. "Satanic mills" were a very transient phenomenon in the industrialized west, and will be in the developing world too - in those countries where wealth accumulation is possible and the market has not been smothered in red tape (ie: not in most of the semisocialist dictatorships of the poorer countries).
Let me tell you my view of things:
.45 over/under derringer under my nose to freak me out one day... Then turned around, dumped out the bullets into his father's bureau drawer, and showed me the empty gun saying what a pussy I was. But, I saw the hollowpoints that had been there before. Nice, for a ten or eleven year old kid, huh? But that's New York for you.
All my life, I've been one of the smartest kids in whichever school I've been in. I'm not saying this as a brag, but to frame the post: when I was 12, the state said my IQ was 138; later, when I took the SAT, I scored in the top two percent across the board. And, this was the OLD SAT, back in 1987, when it was significantly harder than it is today. I'm in Mensa, for what that's worth, and I'm a senior Programmer/Analyst. I think, I'm a pretty good one.
All my life I've been picked on without mercy -- until that is, I spent two unhappy years in the United States Marine Corps learning how to kill people. That seemed to change the balance of power quite a bit (for those who are wondering, yes, I got an honorable discharge, as a Gulf War vet, yes I was a Fleet Marine, Infrantry, and yes, I got it early -- long story).
I never consciously did anything to deserve the abuse, except trying to do well in school. But, that sometimes is enough. The other students hated me for it, for making them look less smart in comparison, for knowing answers they didn't know. Some of the teachers even hated me; I remember my fourth grade teacher humiliating me in class after my statement that ice ages were a periodic phenomenon (it was innocent, we were talking about it at the time). She told me very sternly that there was only "one great ice age". Then she brought over the "science teacher" who backed her up on that. It was amazing to me; I knew for a FACT that there have been several ice ages. In fact, she later admitted to my mother, during a parent-teacher conference in which my mother put her on the spot, that she didn't really know whether there were one or many, but she wasn't going to let some kid get the better of her. Typical.
Or I could tell you how my english teacher, an abusive asshole who was known for striking his students physically, gave me an F on an english paper for using the word "alas". He said, "Sixth graders just do NOT use the word alas!" So I used it in a sentence, and he sent me to the principal's office for being a smartass.
I could tell you how many times I was physically attacked by other kids, humiliated in various ways, hit and struck and threatened, how one guy pointed a
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. The teachers were mostly hostile, the students were mostly hostile, and life was a living hell. I don't want to hear any crap about how it's just the system that makes this happen, or how the kids aren't actually evil. Let's make no bones about it. Most of the kids going to public schools are mean little bastards, plain and simple. And, the teachers don't care, so they have a free rein to do as they please. If you're smarter than they are, and you make them feel small, no matter how unintentionally you do it, you're going to be the target of their pathetic, cruel vengeance. And, that's what this is all about. Vengeance, for being smarter or more interested in studying. It's not about envy, it's not about desire. It's about hatred, and vengeance.
In high school, I lucked out: my parents had had enough of watching me get abused in the NYS public school system, so as of the eighth grade I went to a private school populated by rich kids. They picked on me a little, not so much for being smart, as for being poor. They made fun of my clothes and my virginity, mostly -- they were going to all these cool parties, doing drugs, drinking... I was home studying, and this made me suitable for teasing. But, thank God, it was nowhere near as bad as it was in public schools. Most of it was pretty harmless, and some of it was good-natured. And, I never got beat up by anyone. In fact, one of the only real problems I had was all the leftover hostility and paranoia from my years in the public school system!
The only really awful thing that happened to me in high school was a continuous torment by Jessica, who was supposedly the prettiest girl in the school (actually, she wasn't, but she was very pretty). She knew I liked her, so she tormented me continuously, trying to set me up for hideous pranks... For example, one time she tried to trick me into taking my clothes off with a dozen students hidden behind a door nearby -- I didn't fall for it, thank God. I opened the door and embarassed her little audience. Another time, she nagged me into taking her to a public dance in my junior year, and then didn't show up, so I had to listen to my "friends" Mike and Kevin take odds from people, bookie-style, as to whether she's going to show up. But even that wasn't that bad. Just kind of annoying, and hurtful. It was nothing like the beatings I had to deal with in public school.
I had a long and unhappy childhood, and the first ten years of my adult life were unhappy as well. I am not inclined to forgive any of the people who tormented me, nor am I inclined to write off their abuse as "just the structure of the system" or "something nerds get because they don't want to be popular". Abuse is abuse; the torment I received ultimately turned me into the crazy, celibate hermit I am today. And, I'll tell you, a society that vilifies people simply for being smarter, or a little more shabbily dressed, doesn't really deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt. Is high school like prison? Sure. Are the students like inmates? Sure. Does this mean that basic human nature, unrestrained, is cruel and vicious? Perhaps. But these are not excuses!
Sometimes I think I'll be alone until the day I die. I really only want to date someone who is in the same boat as me; I don't want to think about ever dating someone who, back in high school, was one of the abusive types I loathe so completely. My only hope is to hook up with a woman who in high school, was neutral (didn't associate with any cliques really, and didn't pick on anyone). I don't think it's going to happen, so I keep to myself, I work on my PC, and I program. It sustains me; my machines are better companions than any person (aside from my parents, who have always loved me) has ever been. I might buy a dog at some point. German Shepherds and Rottweilers are pretty smart, loyal, and friendly.
As a final thought, MY kids (if, that is, I ever have any) are going to private school as of grade six. NO FUCKING WAY are they going to put up with what I put up with. And, I'm going to dress them well, and teach them about what I call "social camoflage". If they can't fit in because they're smart, at least they'll be able to fake everyone out and get out with their skins (and minds) intact.
Just my two cents.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
No, they start a dot com, hire the same nerds they picked on (you), work you 70+ hours a week, pay you half your salary in stock options, then make millions by cashing out their stock options before the company folds, leaving the nerds with stock option toliet paper, RSI, and no money.
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
Sorry, but I'm older than you, and really do know better.
Can't teach an old dog new tricks, eh? Ignorant old bastard.
Even fresh-out-of-school doctors don't.
A fresh-out-of-school pharmacist can easilly make six figures. Granted they may have to work in a city that they don't want to (for example, the small towns no one wants to live in). Pharmacists can finish school at age 24, then do residencies for about a year, and are ready to make their six-figure salary by age 25.
Trying to call people liars over something that is totally believable? You're just an uninformed schmuck. You made an ass of yourself, and quoting some web page isn't going to get you out of this one. You forgot to quote an important part of the web page:
These salaries vary with firms and with the region of the country you are in.
True, except all of the truly successful dot-com hucksters were nerds themselves (i.e. Mark Cuban). Traitors!
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
Ohio FREAKING State?! Now if OSU (a fine school, I'm not knocking it) graduates make $89k, how much do you think Harvard or MIT MBAs make? I'm assuming you live in some suburb somewhere, and are basing your judgements on that.
Secondly, even if we accepted the spurious notion that Ohio State MBA grads make the same as everyone else, including Harvard and MIT, even then the number of $89k is an AVERAGE. Some people make more than that, some make less, and since they're only $11k less than $100k, it's fair to assume that some of the graduates are making into the six figures.
Yet you claim NO non-self-employed 25 year old will be making $100k+. I know people who do. The statistics show that they exist as well. You know you're wrong, I know you're wrong, anyone else following this knows you're wrong. Just admit it.
I have been on both sides of the coin, the bully and the bullied. heh. I was born large and strong and with a fairly technical mind, and my growing-up experiences made me a little weird maybe, into scenes or culture not well received by the school glitterati. Yet sometimes my own frustration (and adolescent opportunism) etc. led me to be the aggressor ... I fall squarely into either coming off as "smart" to people I speak with, or some ignorant giant to those who just know me by sight or are mildy acquainted. Girls have been just as dual for me - some think I am way too BiG for em (not like I am obese or even tubby, just really tall and large) or that I am not typical enough for them to relate to (music taste, culture shock, ideological difference etc.) or they are just plain intimidated to talk to me. It hasn't been all bad by a long shot, that's not what I mean, but I just wanted to say that there are people who can't fit into either the usual herd (and don't want to) and also don't fit into the nerd scene (and don't want to).
Carpe Diem!
He forgot to put in one very important point. All the popular people know that in the end they will be losers or at least not as succefull as the nerds in the real world. Therefore they get their hits in while they can because once they graduate the next 40 years of their lives will be under control on the nerds! So obvious to me.
If it's an average, probably just one kid from OSU graduated and then won the Powerball for like a hundred bajillion dollars, and the rest of them are making around $25,000 a year in their starting level salaries. Averages can be deceiving, man.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
We'll have to rewrite some major economic theories to solve this one - we have to put dumb teenagers and jocks into R&D and coding jobs to give them something useful and important to do. However Corporations always act to maximise their profits, which would mean that these inexperienced teenagers would be the last people they'll think of hiring for important positions.
Looks like American corporations will have to make children a priority instead of $$Profits. We must pass a law that will force all corporations to have a 10% teenage workforce which will do the same jobs as the adults, that'll fix it.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
I hear you, but be prepared to have kids sooner rather than later...
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
The article rings a bell for me. Not only do I remember thinking everyone else must be from another planet in 7th grade, I remember thinking in 10th grade how stupid it was that homework was all thrown away in the end.
I told my dad it would be better if students could actually accomplish something, maybe write programs or fill out living trusts. He asked, "What could students do so well that we wouldn't have to throw away the results?" I wasn't sure how to answer that.
So. What purpose can high school and junior high school students serve? Especially nerds, who as the article points out, would really like to be doing some real work, not just makework homework?
I can't help but notice a few common threads among all of these posts. For one, high school was a horrific, life altering experience for most of us. Kids were cruel and brutal, teachers didn't care, and maybe even joined in themselves. We have all stuck our heads into a computer, because it was easier to figure out compared to people. We could have control over something, in a world where everything seemed out of control.
I also notice that this seems to be true for those over 30ish. The younger ones, claiming to be in college now, seem to say they had little or no problem. Maybe the schools really have improved a little, that would be good. But I also notice, for each of us that went through hell, including me, that we all switched schools to survive. And again, there are success stories - decent jobs, educated people, much more enlightened about the world, sensitive to others, and civic minded. With all of our crutches and scars, it looks like we all came out pretty good after all. You won't be alone forever. Just get out there and smile, and when you take the time to get to know someone, you might find out that the same things happened to her.
It's weird, reading all of these responses I realize how easy life is for me... for the record, I'm in high school right now. I program. I work at an ISP... and everyone who knows that I'm good with computers thinks that it's cool. Maybe I'm lucky that I can talk to girls and stuff, but reading all of these responses really opened my eyes to how hard it is to be on the most bottom rung... I consistantly try to befriend people from all the groups in the school, and I think that being a theater geek AND an art geek AND a computer geek together give me the necessary cross-section of expierences to make social situations workable. I'm also lucky because the football team in my school hasn't won more than 3 games per season in over a decade, and this is the first year they hit 3. The jocks have no power. It's the annoying people who, as other people have said, will smack me on the back of the head sometimes or push me in the hallways that I write off as assholes, get pissed at, and promptly forget about. I can't even remember any of their names, they're like faceless blobs to me... but maybe they're the ones that I should be more friendly with. Blah.
The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life- the terror of art. -Franz Kafka
Getting picked on in school can be very serious, mostly for some of the reasons that people mentioned earlier, such as the lack of a purpose of the school. That void creates its own hierarchy.
Chimpanzees also have a hierarchy. The stronger chimps might laugh at a smaller chimp or they might challenge or strike them to prove their dominance. When this happens in a group, it can be all the more intensified because of the individuals acting in a group mentality.
The easiest, most obvious targets are sought out first. That doesn't mean a target that would garner sympathy from the other kids, but a target that the other kids are ambivalent towards and is also weak and perhaps isolated.
In middle school, I was thrown into the dumpsters outside and in high school I was punched, got my ears boxed, had books knocked out of my hands, hair pulled, etc.
I wasn't ugly, but rather I represented a lot of things that these people didn't have.
Over all, the experience was necessary and molded me into a more sociable, more "acceptable" person.
Certainly, I resented teasing and so on, and perhaps this led me to develop a superiority complex based on insecurity. And that would give subconscious signals to others to attempts acts.
I adopted a zen-like attitude towards incidents and didn't get upset or vengeful. It may have been better to strike back from time to time. However, I think this has made be more balanced.
Nevertheless, these guys are cretins and have suffered various nefarious fates due to their own shortcomings.... prison, stuck in the same place they were born, etc.
When I was in high school, I made fun of people who used "there" when they should have used "their".
. . . actually, I still do.
I hope so; being alone isn't that much fun. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of time for gaming, programming, and anime, but still... It would be nice to have someone else around, you know?
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Most geeks avoid confrontation and cower away from enemies rather than engage them. This is because most geeks lack several things:
1) Confidence
2) Social ability
3) Self-esteem (some)
The first is a killer. I don't care who tells me different...CONFIDENCE gets you popularity...it gets you friends, it gets you jobs, it gets you girls, it gets you anything you could want. Most geeks don't bother with appearances, and are simply too inept socially. They also have little commonalities with the "dumber folk" and thus have even less of a chance of making headway socially. Well, in places like high school, appearances and attitude matter most as far as popularity goes.
I come from Trondheim, another city in Norway, and it's about the same deal here. We don't have any jocks per se, but it's about the same deal with people who smoke, drink, have new girlfriends every week etc. But these people hang on IRC, come on LAN-parties and do other geeky stuff. This makes it a lot harder to identify the geeks. We geeks usually run Linux, arrange the LAN-parties and sit with our laptops during the breaks. The popular kids still look down on us, though.
You didn't go into the MBA program. Rather, looking at your site, you decided to go into the small businessman route. Kudos, it's more work than I ever want to do. You have taken the ONLY real route to getting loaded while under 30, and its obvious that luck, hard work, and others have made your success possible. You're a rarity, an exception that demonstrates the rule. MBA's get paid shit if they work for someone else.
Just so you know... you are correct about the MBA thing. The website is actually more of a hobby and not the "my own thing" I was speaking of before. I actually own a company that provides free broadband to apartment complexes. My point earlier was that I have been working for other people Accenture specifically and making a very comfortable 6-figure salary.
:-)
But really, who cares? I understand that I am probably not a common case, but I am proud of the fact that I am where I am. I just wanted to let you know that we DO exist. hehehe Ok, I'm all done.
People at my school don't dislike me because I'm smart, or because I dress differently from them. People dislike me because I'm a know-it-all jerk. An arrogant one sometimes. Same goes for the rest of my nerdy friends. We're all seniors; the way I've seen it, at this point most people have outgrown their old methods of judging people by how they look, and instead sort prospective friends in two ways: their personality, and how helpful it would be to oneself to befriend them.
Thus, the friendly kids, the ones who can tell a good story or help someone else out in a jam, are befriended by the popular people, the rich kids and the hockey team, and aren't beaten up or tripped. The kids with a lousy attitude toward other people, and are extroverted about it as well, are going to catch a lot of grief throughout school. Being different or looking different is not their fault, but high school is a hostile environment that one has to adapt to in order to thrive. Everyone knows how cruel kids can be. It's not right, but students know what they're in for, and if one chooses to buck the crowd, they're asking for what they get, unfortunately.
You drink too much coffee, I drink too much stout.
If so, I daresay that Ayn Rand would have had kittens if she knew that one of her villains was walking the earth.
An 'observation of the intellectual prowess of the majority of the "popular" social group' made by people who felt like outcasts from them is hardly worth the keystrokes used to communicate it.
1) Just because they used their mental capabilities to explore things that were different from you does not make them stupider. The fact that they don't know anything about physics or computing doesn't mean they didn't think about other things.
2) How the hell would you know how smart someone was unless you spent a lot of time talking to them openly? Why would someone on the football team talk about how much he enjoyed calculus with someone he couldn't even stand to look at?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
We don't go to those extremes in america either, it's just that Paul Graham is halucinating.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This has seemed obvious to me for some time, but for *some* reason your average geek seems to be resistant to this hypothesis: you were not an outcast because you're smart, you became smart because you were an outcast. There's something about you, maybe a slight physical disability, maybe a certain social incapacity, that made you run from the other kids and crawl inside your head.
Dear self:
Religion is a myth devised to keep the masses in line. Avoid anyone calling themselves 'brother' or 'elder' or wanting money to teach you what god wants. If it brings guilt instead of happiness, it WRONG.
Don't be so arrogant as to think that just because the average wasp believes that some guy hung up on a cross is going to save them that other forms of spirituality aren't valid.
Moreover, if you don't innately believe it, don't try to convince yourself it's true. Have faith in your own inner voice.
Don't feel guilty about sex. . . . . it's natural.
Give all of yourself in you relationships and expect the same. Be completely honest w/everyone. Everyone is responsible for their own emotions.
Most of all, divorce is not the end of the world.
I made six figures last year at the age of 24. I didn't work for a dot com and I don't have an MBA. This year I came in just shy of six figures (98K salary and I took a capital loss). I started as a contract programmer and worked my way up in three years working for the same company.
Also, I do have friends from high school and college that are making more than me. Two own their own companies (one self made, the other aided by his father).
One thing to do, and I recommend this to the High School student, is to try to get summer intern positions getting real work experience. People don't shy away from paying big bucks to young people if they have comparable experience to the 30+ crowd.
actually, i just turned 13 in july 2002. so really all i have to say is, 8th grade rocks, high school sucks.
--the bubblemeister
by the way, if you don't belive me, see www.gnowhere.com. that's me!
"I know I'm coming off as a troll, but seriously. Read this through and think about it. No one likes an arrogant asshole."
My Mom likes me. HA.
I've always been a half-geek, but that has never meant I was up for abuse. Peace and harmony, yes, but everyone has to do their part.
"You have to learn to fight so you never have to".
I've had very few fights in my life, all of them triggered by bullying. I won some (even by pulling hair or biting), and really suffered the ones I lost.
Throughout the years I've trained in several martial arts, but have kept away from grading or competitions (too geek for that).
I've always hated fights, but I make every effort to be as successful as I can be if I'm ever forced into one.
So, please train a bit, and, when the bad guys are out to get you, put up a fight, even if just once in a while. No one likes to get hit on the nose, kicked on the nee, or bitten, no matter how big they are. In all likelihood, your first fight will be your last for a reasonable while.
Bullying is terrorism!
Yours truly, vowing for peace, but willing to kick the but out of a bully any day!
Geeky Anonimous Coward
When I was in middle school, I was a complete outcast. I was just starting to get into computers, and I was slightly athletic (baseball, basketball) but I was pretty socially inept. The other kids made me an outcast.
So, when it came to high school, I made the decision to take a fresh start. I abandoned the few friends/aquaintences I had from middle school, and set out to meet a new set of friends. I joined the Science Club, and eventually various student government leadership organizations.
The school I was as was large enough that I could have a significant social group of like-minded individuals who became pretty close friends. Some of these people are still my best friends to this day - over five years later.
My point is this - Life is what you make of it. There will always be "sportos, jocks, motorheads, bloods, geeks, and dweebs" based on other's social perceptions. But if you let those stereotypes hold you down, you have no one to blame but youself for not having friends. (Unless you are Ferris Bueller...)
Get out and meet people: Comb your hair, take a shower, get some decent clothes and go to new social venue. If you are even a modestly interesting/fun/unique person, you will be suprised by the people you will meet and the things you can do.
<div class="unrelated.offtopic" style="funny">
Grace: Sportos, jocks, motorheads, bloods, geeks, dweebs,etc. They all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude."
Ed Rooney: "He interferes with my ability to effectively govern this student body."
"Makes you look like an ass is what he does, Ed."
"Thank you, Grace. I think you're wrong."
</div>
this sig is a highly rehearsed improvisation
I, for one, can _guarantee_ I'm making (at least) double what the "bullies" from my high school (as many) are making (I still know many of them....)...was it worth it? Hell yah! I love my job(user application programming), not to say I wouldn't love being a pro. footballer (like one), but then, I sucked at high school ball..... At any rate, I am happy with my "chosen path" and I wouldn't trade it for much...(OK...300m$ powerball, maybe :P), so I say....the job and money don't make the man, but the job+good money+being happy, do!
--M
--minuo
Yes, I want to go to a school where there is a "inverse" bell curve where short of never showing up, never doing any work and simply not ever taking the tests I will pass.
Ooh, mommy, mommy, what I have now doesn't work in this extremely
unlikely circumstance, so I'll just throw it away and write something
completely new.
-- Linus Torvalds
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