Why nerds are unpopular

[Stefu]

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Yes, it's long, but I found it quite interesting.

[Al B. Sure!]

I only read the first few paragraphs and he's wrong... i know plenty of 'popular people' who are pretty damn smart. they might not have the time to be studying all the time but they still got brains


thanks

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
I only read the first few paragraphs and he's wrong... i know plenty of 'popular people' who are pretty damn smart. they might not have the time to be studying all the time but they still got brains


thanks

If you had read the rest of the article, you would see that he addresses that.

Guess we know which category you're in!

[Al B. Sure!]

i should also note that some of the stupidest people i know were horribly nerds... one boy sits around making the sounds of rifles shooting and pretending he's shooting a gun at the cieling. he's a complete moron... a teacher asks him a basic question in class and he sits there with no response. he's a nerd and don't know ****.

and there's also those people who is too stupid to take showers...


thanks

[Flubber]

His choice of words are self-fulfilling though . . . The fact that he equates smart with nerd when everyone knows that nerds are unpopular (is it not part of the defining characteristic or a nerd to be unpopular ?)

What he seemed to get right was the fact that "nerds" are usually the people that work harder at scholastics than they do at the basic social and conformist skills necessary to fit into teendom. I went to a very small school and the nerd of the class was not the person with the highest grades (necessarily) .. it was generally people that combined higher grades and some other non-popular attribute. The smartest kids often were among the most popular.

[MRT144]

or too self isolationist to take showers. my friends roommate in college is that way. he watches nothing but british comedies on PBS and refuses to bath more than once a week. My friend even went to the RA to complain and the RA told him to take 3 showers a week. this guy also has a huge stack of asimov novels.

[Dis]

Albert I think he would be a geek not a nerd. There is a difference

[Pekka]

mrt144, man you have to do something about that. People need to shower . Save your buddy. Say that if he's not going to shower more, I'm coming over with sauna games, and I'm not taking any prisoners

Seriously, I guess I wouldn't lie too much if I was to say I belonged to those more popular types, but I was also little nerd, and hanging out with nerds because the popular types didn't know anything about computers which I was fascinated by.. So it worked good, no one teased me because I was hanging out with nerds too, but it took more than a little to get accepted to their computer discussions and game etc software trading and so on.. But I believe our schools are not that bad places, some categorizing is going on, but nothing too serious. Small classes etc.. people need to get along.

But I'm telling you, it's a lot harder to get into those nerdie type of communities! They really measure you, and even more so if you play sports and hang out with those types.. I didn't get any pressure from sport guys, but those damn nerdies.. gave me hell..

[Dis]

I was a cross between a nerd, and a freak (stoner type specifically). I was a neak

[Agathon]

He is right that an obsessive interest in anything other than clothes, puerile music, the rest of pop culture and "popularity" is viewed as weird. I guess I would have counted as halfway between a "nerd" and a "stoner" on his account (though neither quite fits). I used to deliberately cultivate unpopular obsessions just to see what people would do. It was quite fun to watch the almost pre-programmed responses.

I don't like meeting up with people from my high school - not because I don't get on with them - I do. But because the ones that weren't "nerds" seem to me to be already dead. They have no real interests and almost no care for anything other than their immediate surroundings. It's very sad.

[Al B. Sure!]

what is a nerd exactly? And what is a 'popular' person?

[Az]

A pretty good summary of things. (This coming from school's lower middle class )

[Vesayen]

Stefu-I read the whole thing and I agree WHOLEHEARTADLY with the author-he basically summed up my life and how I felt about my childhood heh(short of the part about suicide.....yes I was often very angry/depressed but I never contemplated suicide).

[Dis]

OK I'm actually reading the article now. I'm a quarter of the way through and I don't agree. I do not agree being popular takes that much work.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Sums up my view of secondary school quite well. Pity I can't get any royalties.