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

Re:Ill tell you.

[Tackhead]

> 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.

It's a hard concept to communicate, too - that you don't want to be popular, because you don't see "popularity" as anything worth having.

I was a nerd/geek at the "D" table. My most fucked-up high school memory was 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) confided suicidal thoughts to me.

As I recall, my response (what the fuck, any statute of limitations has long since past, it was long ago that it probably was legally OK for students to just deal with shit like this amongst themselves, and hey, I was a minor and therefore too dumb to know what I was doing :) was something like this:

"You went through the trouble of making two sets of answers - one for me to read, and the ones you ansewred on the multiple choice test - so I could know you weren't bullshitting me. Fine - we'll compare answers when we get the tests back, and then talk."

(After the marks came back, and her "real" answers were almost 100% right, and her actual score was in the 70% range)

"OK, you weren't bullshitting. You told me you were thinking of wasting yourself because nobody liked you when you were smarter than they were, and you asked me how I put up with it. Well, OK, no bullshit - I don't care who likes me and who doesn't. I stopped giving a shit what the rest of 'em think back in public school, because every time they insult me for showing 'em up in class, it just proves I'm better than they are. "

"Not different, BETTER. I don't wanna be like them. If being what they are means being like them, I wanna be as much unlike them as I can be."

"Now finally, this suicide stuff. Life sucks for me, too. So I'll see your test answers, and if you're not bullshitting me, I'm gonna do what I think is 'wrong' thing - I'm not gonna rat you out like our parents and guidance idiots have all told us to. If you wanted to get ratted out, you picked the wrong nerd, and you'll have to find someone else. But in return, you're going to do what you think is 'wrong' -- you're not gonna off yourself for the crime of being smarter than the rest of the fucking morons in this class, no matter how badly you want to - because IT'S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO DO."

"You wanted to know how I dealt with it, there it is - you're the one who's gonna have to choose whether to live or not. I can't stop you either way, but I choose to live because I don't wanna give them the satisfaction of knowing they beat me."

I have no idea what happened to her; other than that she kept her end of the bargain. I didn't know her that well to begin with and we never really spoke after that; all I know is that she didn't off herself in the remaining four years of high school and graduated with "B+" grades just sufficient to get her into university, though she was probably capable of "A"s.

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.

On my lighter days, I reflect back on the "better" part of the rant and realize that that going to university is a wonderful cure for nerd megalomania. Nothing like sitting in a room with 130 people and being told "Most of you were A+ students in high school. That ends here. You're still just as smart as you were six months ago, but you're in a room of people, all of whom who are also just as smart as you were six months ago, or they wouldn't be here." in your first Calculus class, and then having the prof prove it to (all of) you, over and over and over and over again :)