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."

Comments

Helpful?

[saintlupus]

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

Re:Helpful?

[Frymaster]

wait a minute... i have to take responsibility because the football team stuffed me into a locker? that sort of "blaming the victim" mentatlity has lead to some serious backlash in the past.

Re:Helpful?

[Lothar]

Quote from the article:
> Few smart kids can spare the attention that popularity requires. 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.

It doesn't say that you can't be both - however it seems to be the fact that the majority of ners doesn't fall into both.

As for getting picked on. Once it starts it is very hard to stop for as long as you are in that place ( school ). One tends to be branded forever.

Re:Helpful?

[Computer!]

It seems the kids who get picked on the most are those who think quietly to themselves, "They are all stupider than I!"

Oh, yeah? In my school, disabled kids got picked on. Foriegn kids got picked on. Kids that weren't very athletic, or bright, or rich got picked on. Kids with bad skin, or greasy hair, or a birthmark got picked on. Did these things really not happen at your high school, or are you just pretending they didn't?

Re:Helpful?

[gmack]

Learning to comunicate is one thing.. having to dodge jerks is quite another.

By my final year of highschool I had mastered the social structure enough to avoid most of the problems but even then a simple thing like playing chess was considered asking for trouble.

I can't count the number of times I had to hunt around the school floors for bits of my magnetic chess board because some idiot couldn't stand the fact that we were doing something they couldn't get and found boring and felt an extreme need to interupt the game by knocking the board over.

I was not arrogent I treated others well, bathed regularly, used deoderant and dressed neatly. I really don't understand why I as the nerd should have to take any of the blame whatsoever.

Re:Helpful?

[JordanH]

• I seem to recall that the people who took the most shit in high school were always the whiny, elitist, "I'm-smarter-than-you" types.

You are really a piece of work.

First, you prejudge the article without reading it.

You know, where you say:

And I'm sure its going to do nothing but reinforce lots of negative stereotypes and Katz-style whining.

Now, you blame the victims for being whiny, elitist, "smarter-than-you" types.

I don't know, maybe my experience was odd. When I was in High School, the nerds stayed as far away from the types who might pick on them as possible, but were accosted anyway.

What I seem to recall is that those who inflicted violence on nerds were also those who told sexist jokes, treated women as objects and had the least tolerance for the mentally handicapped. How's that for a generalization? I think it's an honest portrayal, though.

In any case, I fail to see how someone's whiny, elitist, "smarter-than-you" attitude could ever justify physical abuse.

• Provoking a bear twice my size by poking it with a stick doesn't make me a victim when it mauls me. It makes me a fool who should have watched what he was doing.

We're not talking about bears or other wild animals here. We're talking about physically abusive people.

In the adult world, someone who responds to perceived slights with violence is not excused away.

Give us an example of what these abusive nerds were doing to provoke these poor jocks? Oh my gosh, did they whine? Did they act smart in Science class? Well then, they had it coming to them!

No wonder we have such trouble with education these days. Anyone who acts 'elite' is targetted for violence.

I suppose when a woman gets beaten by her husband, you would want to check the wife to make sure she wasn't being whiny. She might have it coming to her, right? At least, that's how you remember it? The wives who got beaten usually are asking for it?

elitism...

[TechnoVooDooDaddy]

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....

Re:elitism...

[Xthlc]

I agree. I think that, while there is often a strong one-way correlation between nerds and smart people, the inverse is not necessarily true.

Some of the smartest people in my high school were NOT nerds. True, they didn't take some of the ridiculous college math courses that we nerds did. However they did get straight-As and took AP courses in the natural sciences, history, calculus, languages, etc. They were usually involved in some kind of varsity sport that had a low jock-factor (like tennis or soccer). While they were popular, they seemed to float above the social hierarchy, never taking part in the beatings or humiliation but never exactly seeking a nerd with whom to hang out. They generally got ridiculous scores on their SATs and went on to the Ivy League.

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 . . .

Re:elitism...

[ATMAvatar]

Some of the smartest people in my high school were NOT nerds. True, they didn't take some of the ridiculous college math courses that we nerds did. However they did get straight-As and took AP courses in the natural sciences, history, calculus, languages, etc.

Don't confuse good grades with intelligence. Many people in my school's top 10% or even top 5% were dumb as bricks. For example, perhaps half the girls I knew in my honors/AP classes got pregnant immediately after starting college and had to drop out.

At the same time, though... I must admit that my high school didn't have near the "if nerd then pariah else jock" aspect to it as some other schools. Many of the genuinely smart people were very social, even if most of the jocks were... well... stereotypical jocks.

Not always unpopular

[Vollernurd]

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.

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 /they/ knew) "Ignore them and they'll soon get bored."

i'm not even trying to be an ass here....

[smd4985]

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 ;) .

Re:i'm not even trying to be an ass here....

[EggMan2000]

First of all your High School class must have had like 1200 'popular' kids.

Second, why are we (and I mean we) still trying to measure ourselves against these people? I finished High School in 1993. In the past ten years my values have grown up. I am no longer jealous of the cars their parents bought them, or the nice clothes, or how many friends they had.

I don't care that they all sell fucking insurance somewhere in suburbia now. and if they are happy, good for them. If not, too bad. I think I am doing ok, but I compare myself to real peers not my peers from 10+ years ago.

Re:Laughing Last

[saintlupus]

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

Big assumption

[Longfinger]

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.

Re:Big assumption

[BethLogic]

Sometimes, people just decide they don't like you and work to make the six years of junior/senior high hellish.

Just before junior high I moved to a new school. I knew I was smart, but I also knew that I wasn't alone. There were a lot of smart people at my school. It was the other smart kids (girls) who picked on me. I don't think I was any more socially inept than your average 12 year old girl, but I did march to the beat of a different drummer. And that, more than anything else, is what gets you singled out at that age. Oh, and the girls can be so much worse than the boys. Sure, I never got put in a locker, but the psychological tourture is worse.

Fast-forward a decade or so... I'm well-adjusted, well-employed, and most of all, happy. Some how I managed to get through high school without changing to their beat. In fact, I pride my self in my (increasing) geekiness. And they have gone on to live their cookie cutter lives, attending the same colleges as everyone else, finding the same jobs and dating the same kind of men. Not the life I would have wanted.

I guess the moral here, for those of you still trying to get through it, is find a few like mind people to be friends with and stick together. Some day you'll end up in an interesting job, knowing interesting people and that will make the struggle worth it.

Re:Not as Smart as You Think You Are

[MKalus]

The smarter bears washed on occasion, and learned to carry on a conversation.

I think the problem is that "smart" the way it is mostly defined is "booksmart" and that is nothing that really just happens, anybody can be booksmart if they just put their mind to it.

I guess the big problem still is that people never really defined intelligence in the first place and this "The more intelligent people like us" makes me wanna puke mainly because this elitist thinking is why people do despise us as well, heck who wants to feel dumb? No one, and who wants to feel weak? Exactly no one again.

A little bit less telling yourself how great you are and a bit more admitting that even YOU are not perfect (despite your high IQ) would go a long way I would guess.

Of course that's all academic my HS time was hell as well.

Nerd != Smart

[gosand]

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.

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.

Re:Nerd != Smart

[protohiro1]

Hear hear! I was #1 whiner/complainer in high school. The popular kids do this and that blah blah blah. And I was right, it does suck to be a geek or a nerd in high school. But high school is tough for everyone. My girlfriend was a popular kid in high school...and her stories make me really glad I wasn't. The fact is that when you are 16 your hormones make you crazy...everything is the end of the world. Every insult is a life ending moment. Every crush is the one true love that could change the earth.

The great thing about being a geek/nerd in high school is that you end up being protected from all that. Thankfully the emotional rollercoaster took place for me in my head, and my only real response was to listen to Pinkerton real loud. I could have instead been popular and given the oppurtunity to drink my problems away, to get some random girl pregnant because my chemical addled brain thought I was in love. I could have had the choice to turn a low self esteem compensation into a fatal drunk driving accident instead of just playing the cymbals louder.

I think that nerdiness protected me from myself by keeping me locked in a reletivley pointless and banal experience, that still managed to feel earthshattering at the time. High school is tough. Its is going to be awful for everyone (basically). If you are still in high school I would make your goal to get out alive, don't take things too seriously and try not caring about the popular kids. They are just as stupid as you are. Some of them will end up not growing up and going nowhere. Other might end up actually growing up and being just normal people...or maybe even your friends.

The Nerd Myth

[mikosullivan]

Allow me to take this opportunity to state that the whole nerd mythology is a load of crap. The stereotype of the smart but bullied science nerd is no more accurate than the universe of other racial, sexual, whateverual stereotypes out there.

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 in /. about how society perceives technology and technologists are largely based on these stereotypes.

Re:What ??? Impopular, me ???? No way.... linux ro

[Computer!]

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.

Re:Well, where to begin

[mao che minh]

I don't know about all of that. I wasn't unpopular by any means in highschool, and I remember there being plenty of really smart kids that came to all of the parties and stuff. In fact, the top 5 or 6 students of my class (you know, those 5 or 6 girls and guys that are always class president, straight A students without even trying) were very popular. I used to see at least one of them every weekend when I was out. These people, even though they were extremely bright (one, a guy named Scott I think, even works at IBM as a programmer now, so his pal told me the other day) and "geeky" found it easy to integrate socially.

The real geeks were not the extremely bright, but rather the extremely akward. The punk rockers, the goth kids, the vampires (who were usually also homosexual), the over-excited white guy that acted black but had no black friends, the "only thing I'm good at is sports" guy, the group of fat girls that tried to dress provactively, the surfer wannabes, the skater wannabes, et cetera. Most of the geeks weren't very bright at all, and certaingly weren't elitist.

You guys are SO missing the point...

[sheyal]

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!

Re:What ??? Impopular, me ???? No way.... linux ro

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

one of my few regrets from HS

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

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.

It's a lot simpler than that.

[DunbarTheInept]

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.

Re:People like to be ignorant

[kgarcia]

I'll bite.

People like knowing things. They love aqcuiring new knowledge, and learning about things. I've explained many things to 'bev' from accounting, and she understands them ok as long as I explain in terms she can understand. If you tell her "Your TCP/IP protocol couldn't interface with the samba server, But I found out that you mis-configured your network settings, so I set up DHCP to connect to the correct DNS server and now everything works ok". Of course she's gonna gloss over.

Everyone has their area of expertise. I'm sure bev could go off about the Financial reports and tax law so fast I would be flat on my ass, but she still takes the time to slowly explain things to me so I can understand them. Do the same for them. You'd be surprised. Just because we have knowledge 3 levels above someone, doesn't mean we have to speak to them 3 levels above their understanding.

sheesh

personal experiences

[slux]

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. :)

Re:Ill tell you.

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

What advantage is there to being popular? I mean really?

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!

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.

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.

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 will stop ranting here, but I should point out that the essential lack of intrinsic value in most computing work these days outside of the research and some OSS community projects is what has lent me to switching from an IT career to a teaching one ( including teaching IT at university ). Computing is just a means to a result. Don't forget that.

Just some thoughts.

Re:dishwasher?

[lugonn]

What if you washed the dishes in the restaraunt and were still a geek? I've had every job you can imagine; construction, fast food, office boy, factory...but I wouldn't say that made me stupid or less intelligent. It was what I could handle while working my way through college.

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.

It does hurt.

[HanzoSan]

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.

Re:Ill tell you.

[HanzoSan]

Well, I dont know if i agree that you get stronger by being hurt. I think it damages you, and weakens you while making you appear stronger. By being numb it weakens you in other ways which you wont understand until you grow older, by numb i'm saying emotionally numb.

Re:It happens for more reasons than just nerdiness

[gsfprez]

omg - t0quer and i lived the same life.

Most of the time, when i was under 5 foot tall thru my freshman year of HS, but even worse in Jr High (7-8th grades) i was mercilessly picked on.

The most typical things for the normal kids to do to me - the kid in the highest math and science clases - as well as in the band were...

-pushing me into the uniral while using it.. and i don't mean a shove on the shoulder - i mean pushed in full force as i pissed on myself with my feet off the ground
-throwing wet toilet paper (dirty, sometimes) at me when using the urinal
-flattening my tires on my bike
-stealing my bike and putting it in a tree or on top of a storage shed
-p.e., as you can imagine, was the best. generally pushing me into trees, down hills (lot oa hills on the runs) and i would have to do my best to outrun the jocks when we'd do the long runs in the "hidden" areas - where the teacher couldn't see us from where he was.

but the most common were name calling and slapping me on the back of the head... all .. the... time...

teachers didn't care. Even when i finally got permission to keep my bike in the school's office, they still didn't listen when i told them.

In high school, it wasn't AS bad... but it was still there, but that was mostly because i holed up in the band room every minute i wasn't in class.... that really helped a lot.

but there were the times that big guys would come to band practice on the field, waiting for a break and the teacher gone... i had to hit one guy once with my trumpet to get him away from me.

but i can honestly say that i OFTEN thought about shooting the bullies. I wanted to, but didn't, because i knew i'd be in trouble. I spent a lot of time daydreaming in easy classes about it, though.

Like t0quer, i am now married to a wondeful woman, who's not only hot, but very athletic (but 5'2"... so she never got too far in sports seriously) and really wonderful.

i no longer dream of shooting them... i do wish that there was a way i could help these kids out tho, today... i'm concidering setting up a free service for kids like this to give them hidden cameras, hidden mikes... and then setting them up with lawyers to sue the fucking losers that do this to kids like i was... and have the proof...

if you weren't one of these kids - you have no fscking idea what its like to be one.. the daily mental. but oftentimes, the constant physical beatings or abuse (almost never enough to cause serious injury, unfortunately) is something to really behold.

I also feel for and i really really do understand and don't blame kids like Kip Kinkle... that shot the kids that were constantly harassing him, both physically and mentally. I don't blame him even a little because i can see his life.. i lived it...

no one helps you
no one believes you
everyone gives you fucking useless advice like "just ignore them" or "just avoid them"

if that's all the help you give a kid like this - then no shit - of COURSE he's going to go around shooting his bullies! He SHOULD! He has no other recourse.

if you've ever told a kid this about a bully - you're part of the fucking problem... because YOU didn't help... these kids don't need advice.. they need to know that they aren't going to get their asses kicked at school by the inbred loser kids tomorrow. They need to know that school isn't just where they get beat up every day.

If you're an adult - you have to DO... ACT... PERFORM MECHANICAL action to fix the hell that this little geek is living in.

i do know that my life duing those 4-5 years really did shape me.. i joined the military because i wanted to help people that couldn't help themselves, even though i'm not big enough to do it as a soldier - i did it as a nerd (engineer on classified space programs).

Now, i'm hoping to help kids like me.. by actually helping them. Today... where they are now.

don't EVER take lightly what a small kid tells you about what's going on in school. You really really don't understand unless you've been one.

Re:Ill tell you.

[octalgirl]

when a girl from the "C" table who demonstrated she was deliberately faking wrong answers on the tests to lower her grades, lest she end up at the "D" table

This has always been far too common in young girls - it is un-cool to be smart/look smart/act smart. Schools have struggled with this for years, and have improved greatly in some areas like more sports for girls, and special programs to get them involved in technology. Unfortunately a lot of parents still don't get it though, and the trend for the most part continues.

I don't care who likes me and who doesn't.

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.

If being what they are means being like them, I wanna be as much unlike them as I can be.

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.

I like to think I did something good.

I'm thinking you did something very good. If only every high school girl - and boy for that matter - could be given that lecture by a peer - there would be a lot less confused teenagers mulling about.

Nerds picked on ME

[pirula]

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.

There is not even an honest need for school

[Julian Morrison]

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.)

An analysis

[Ironpoint]

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

We need to get over ourselves.

[jlseagull]

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.