eh I hate this kind of Ender's game self-victimisation. Nerds aren't unpopular because they're too smart for school and all the athletic jocks envy them, they're unpopular because they act like nerds. That's not a passive thing happening to someone, it's something that people actively act like.
Obviously one can be highly intelligent in school and not be nerdy, everyone knows people who are intelligent as well as popular have a healthy social life.
Nerds never did well in school because they're often smug as hell, think they're the brainy protagonist of some sort of TV show envied by everyone else, but in reality not even that clever. That's a bad combination. The nerds are no different than the goth kids, or the punks, or anyone else who conjures up an identity in high school to declare themselves the moral centre of the universe. It's unpopular because it's immature.
PG addressed the point about envy and he does not argue that envy drives unpopularity. Regardless, I'm with you on your first two paragraphs, but not sure I agree with all of the last one.
In my opinion, the "act like nerds" part likely comes from temperamental traits such as social anxiety, higher sensitivity, etc. For identifying with "being smart" (whether they actually are, is debatable) I would argue it is at least partially as a result of intellectualization being their go-to defense mechanism to cope with uncomfortable emotions (e.g., social ostracization/bullying).
In other words, nerds likely become nerds as a result of being unpopular/ostracized, not the other way around.
So, I wrote a comment almost identical to yours, but here's some thing I think get lost from that perspective.
> That's not a passive thing happening to someone, it's something that people actively act like.
The way we act IMO is not a choice. Very few people would actively choose to be uncharismatic, since it would be almost purely negative. Same with intelligence, athletics, music, ect. some people are geniuses, some people have learning disabilities, and there's gray area in between.
The "incel" tendency to blame it on a birth defect is dangerous and toxic, but it's also wrong to act like people are actively deciding to do these things, and are to blame for being bad at something that comes naturally to most people. It would be like blaming a dyslexic kid for being unable to read, and telling them it's their fault they don't just read like the rest of us. Grow up and pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
> Nerds never did well in school because they're often smug as hell, think they're the brainy protagonist of some sort of TV show envied by everyone else, but in reality not even that clever
I agree, but this ignores how tolerant people are of obnoxious personalities. I've met plenty of "cool" people that are just the worst. I simply do not understand the appeal and are 10,000x the shithead the nerds are. Sometime it's baffling how they even have friends, they're so toxic, and actively harmful to be around. I get it if the person is so charming, but often times they're clearly not. That person is a toxic asshole, but nobody cares... of course we know over time less people will stick around them; yet it's still somehow a better bet than acting a bit nerdy.
I think the main argument here is that it takes work to be popular. A "nerd" is simply someone who chooses to neglect that. I used to not comb my hair, not iron my shirts, and wear my pants a little high.
You're close to something though - a nerd thinks they're too important to put effort into being popular. In a world where everyone shampoos, combs their hair, puts on deodorant to please others, that seems quite snobbish.
Struck a nerve? Not a nerd? Confusion about terms?
Most people spend large part of their effort on popularity contest. Nerd is somebody that even if he/she would like to take part in the contest they value other, more intellectual exercises. They end up underdeveloped socially because they don't have as much experience as somebody that spends most of their time partying, socializing or avoiding study or work to be able to party and socialize.
> Nerd is somebody that even if he/she would like to take part in the contest they value other, more intellectual exercises
No, nerds are the people who lost the general popularity contest and then started one in a parallel universe. Almost nobody is more competitive about status than subcultures internally, almost like a middle-finger towards society at large.
This shows in video game competitions, programming language and editor wars, literal startup company competitions. I mean nobody is more vicious in their status fight than the stereotypical nerd-turned-techbro fighting for the attention they didn't get in high school. A lot of famous tech people literally fight like they went into a sort of delayed puberty in their 20s and 30s.
This comes through not just in this essay but a lot of Paul Graham stuff, the kind of "you bullied us in high school and now we're rich!" subtext.
I think the parallel universe is created prior to losing the popularity contest, by sheer force of mutual interests.
And I don't see why nerds are more viciously competitive than other groups, your examples can be easily matched with ones from non-nerd universe. You hardly see an editor war actually turning violent.
It doesn't matter (a lot) how this happens initially.
Once the person stops participating in the mainstream popularity contest they are necessarily going to be left behind and it is going to affect their persona.
I know both types of "nerds". Ones that became nerds after not being popular and ones that were never interested.
I, for example, started my journey to being nerd before the contest. I started reading books when I was 6 and by the time I was 7 or 8 I would be spending large most of my time either reading books or searching through books in the library. I would be coming back home with bags full of books once a week. I never went to preschool and I never had any peers (other than my siblings) to interact with before I started spending most of my time reading. By the time I went to school I was not interested to compete with other kids for anything and I was quite ok being left to my own interests.
I also know people who turned as a mechanism to cope with their apparent loss in the contest. But in my mind that's not strictly "nerd". Nerd is somebody who does what they do because they want to do it and not for some other reason like popularity in their field or as an advantage at work. People who turn to other things as a mechanism to cope typically are less passionate about what they are doing, at least that's my observation.
I think that issue of people in this discussion is that they treat relationships with peers solely as competition. If that is your only framework for thinking about people, of course you will have few friends. Among other things, you quite clearly are not interested in them and project own insecurities on them.
Plenty of social and popular people have and interests as nerds and have them because they like them. But self identified nerds, who by own words never really interact with them more are interested to, do seem to imagine that such thing is not possible.
Well, to make my point, we do often see (e.g.) a soccer cheering crowd war turning violent.
To be fair, even though my wording has allowed for the possibility, I have never seen or heard about an editor war turning violent. I did see more than once nerd arguments gathering enough heat that it granted a "jury".
Obviously one can be highly intelligent in school and not be nerdy, everyone knows people who are intelligent as well as popular have a healthy social life.
Nerds never did well in school because they're often smug as hell, think they're the brainy protagonist of some sort of TV show envied by everyone else, but in reality not even that clever. That's a bad combination. The nerds are no different than the goth kids, or the punks, or anyone else who conjures up an identity in high school to declare themselves the moral centre of the universe. It's unpopular because it's immature.