
Why Nerds are Unpopular (2003) - danso
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
======
imc
My main problem with this essay is the idea that the 'nerd' is a "few steps
ahead" already.

I think this stems from pg's confusion of intellect (which he notes is not
scalar but discusses it as if it is anyway) with 'nerdiness'. The nerd is no
better (or generally, even that much smarter - many of the non-marginalised
people will grow up to be just as bright and successful), they are simply
marginalised for being different. And they have not created a judgement free
utopia within their own circles either; their social constructs are every bit
as abusive and oppressive to those who are different as the ones that
marginalise them.

Nerds were never better, or smarter. They just weren't given the same
opportunities to be as cruel.

The true evidence against the 'nerd' being superior is the society that
they/we have created where we are in the majority. Look at the technology
industry and look at how we all are desperate to conform. Look at the people
who are different to what we consider normal/cool/popular and look at how we
treat them.

As pg notes, people lash out/oppress/marginalise when they are insecure in
their position. Perhaps people should try to truly understand how that has
shaped the technology culture we have today.

~~~
nahname
I wonder if some of us are turning tech startups into the high school we never
had.

~~~
michaelochurch
_I wonder if some of us are turning tech startups into the high school we
never had._

Insightful.

I'd take this comparison further. The depiction of high school in the media is
that the popular kids ("jocks") bully the nerds. In reality, the jocks and the
popular kids and the bullies are mostly disjoint sets. Jocks work too hard at
their athletic pursuits to _also_ work their way into the popular crowd.
Popular kids aren't really interested in bullying the people at the bottom;
they'd rather not associate with them at all. They're indifferent.

It's usually mid-range kids trying to become popular who are the worst
bullies. It rarely actually works that way for them, but that doesn't prevent
them from doing it.

In the VC-funded startup world, the VCs are the popular kids. They don't
intentionally bully women or older programmers or non-conformists or non-Kool-
Aid-drinkers. They just don't care. The bullies are the ex-nerds, promoted
into startup middle management, who think they're going to be going to be
skiing with Peter Thiel in a year (but, in the mean time, they have to beat
"the team" into making this deadline). Of course, they're almost always wrong.
The popular kids in the VC-funded world tacitly accept the cruelty and
cultural failure, but they're not the ones actually doing it.

~~~
didgeoridoo
This definitely matches my high school experience. The "jocks" were basically
the nerds of the physical realm. There was a distinct male/female difference,
though.

On male side, the jocks were respected by the popular kids (because the girls
loved them), and feared by the bullies (because of their physical size).

On the female side, however, the jocks ended up creating their own little
isolated world, much like the female nerds. Now that I think of it, this may
have been because female athleticism doesn't bestow the same social standing —
men don't prize female strength & size, and female bullies don't operate by
physical strength (they're much more... psychological).

Fortunately, there isn't this same gender dynamic in the real world. Right?

~~~
spiritplumber
One interesting thing is that physical ability has nothing to do with it
unless it's associated with a popular sport.

In HS, I made a bit of money doing construction on the weekend (it beat
waiting tables) for a year -- needlessly to say I bulked up a lot. Still
couldn't play soccer worth a damn, though, and this was in Italy so soccer is
a huge deal.

I went from "kid who it is safe to bully" to "kid who beat the shit out of
three older kids in full view of half the school after they keyed his
scooter", but it didn't make me any more popular. It did get idiots to leave
me alone, though.

The principal was pretty awesome about the whole thing -- he saw the whole
thing go down, had everyone involved get into his office, yelled at the other
three kids for provoking me, and after sending them home and telling me to
come in, actually congratulated me on my victory. Only got a disciplinary note
in that trimester's report card for this, no suspension or anything.

------
tpeng
Nerds are unpopular for a lot of different reasons. This essay seems
incomplete.

Probably the biggest reason is that nerds don't make any attempt to fit in.
While this may seem like the same as popularity, it's not. Popularity is the
goal, fitting in is a prerequisite. Many nerds don't even realize this. Some
realize it but value their independence over popularity.

Another reason is that nerds are simply lacking in social skills. Social
skills are learned, not innate, and they take a great deal of effort,
intelligence, and awareness. The essay to some extent acknowledges this but I
think it makes excuses that sound a lot like sour grapes. "Sure, we're bad at
social skills -- but only because we don't care so much about them!" I think
if we are all honest with ourselves, most of us would love to be good at both
social skills and our intellectual/scientific/engineering pursuits.

Another big reason is physical attractiveness. If I could make the rules,
being good looking wouldn't matter as much as it does. But I don't make the
rules and it matters a great deal to most people. Good looks help with social
skills too because good looking people get more practice. Over time that
advantage builds up. This is why you don't see a lot of really good looking
nerds, even though many good looking people are in fact quite intelligent.

Another reason is movies/TV. Hollywood stereotypes really affect people's
perceptions of outgroups a great deal. What movies gets wrong about nerds is
this: they correctly display the negatives about nerds (extreme social
awkwardness) while completely glossing over the positives (brilliance). This
is because most actors and screenwriters are not brilliant (other than perhaps
in an artistic sense). So to the average person who learns about people from
movies, nerds seem like average intelligence people who are really weird.
Again, if I made the rules, people wouldn't be affected by media. Nobody
thinks they are, but nobody thinks they are affected by advertising either,
yet it's a half trillion dollar industry.

TL;DR: There are a lot of reasons why nerds are unpopular. And "because we
don't want popularity" is not one of them.

~~~
Jugurtha
Ditto. I was, and am a nerd. In junior school I was on the popular side,
despite being shorter than the most popular dudes (partly because I was smart,
I was dressed sharply and I was a cool kid: Everyone loved me ('tough' kids
because I didn't treat them as "less intelligent brutes", smart kids because
we were on the same level, and those in between because I knew how to talk to
them). Plus the two most popular girls were in my class and had frequent cat
fights for me(Gotta love women, they may want you, but they crave for
validation more than anything)).

In High-School, my friend and I were amongst the most popular: We spent our
days missing classes and playing basket ball and football, we got used to our
"fandom". We were known to the Administration by first names. And of course,
when you were seen around a lot, people knew who we were (even years after).

But to come back to the point: I have been blessed and lucky in my life. I did
sports (Judo (since age 6 or so to 17, competitions with lots of people,
trained with many boys and girls in my club, both my age and older), football
(many, many people cheering at your feats helps), basket ball, running,
working out (body weight only)).

But I was also pretty cute, dressed nice, and was clean. These points lack to
a lot of nerds (Cuteness isn't something you can change, but you can take
showers and dress respectably).

I was also blessed in the sense that I hang around girls since I could
remember, like since I could talk. _And_ I hang with a clique of older girls
and guys who had me, and few other girls and boys my age with them, so I had a
_lot_ of socializing way before I got to high-school. Having girls have a
crush on you wasn't a big deal, it was all part of normal.

So it's not the same thing, when you already had thousands upon thousands of
interactions with people, and if you only talked with one friend or something.

There are things they _can_ do, though, and it's not to be popular per se, but
if I were like those kids who had it hard growing up (like being mocked or
stuff like that), I would ask myself questions and hack it. It's not even to
fit in or something, but taking showers and dressing okay doesn't make you
less smart.

~~~
jquery
> Ditto. I was, and am a nerd.

Popular, boastful, not bullied, dressed sharply, pursued by popular women,
played popular sports, social butterfly, good looking, many friends. Yet you
attribute your "fellow nerds" lack of such to their lack of effort and claim
you would "ask yourself questions" and "hack it". Nerds have a name for such a
type: douchebag.

~~~
Jugurtha
You have a point. Though I've always tried to help the most socially excluded
people by introducing them to people, and getting them into groups, and making
their "weirdness" disappear in front of people by not locking onto it, or
making them self conscious.

Countless guys shredded their shyness and got a social life by me doing this,
not because I pitied "the poor guy", but because I felt nobody had to live
like this, or go through life this way. But I'm probably a douchebag, anyway.

------
webwright
PGs essays ring very true to me, but not this one.

"So if intelligence in itself is not a factor in popularity, why are smart
kids so consistently unpopular? The answer, I think, is that they don't really
want to be popular."

What about the athlete that wants to dedicate themselves to their craft? The
beautiful actress that practices acting and singing all day? They are
(usually) effortlessly popular. Not to mention that there are generally some
popular kids who are really freakin' smart.

Sociobiology is a big part of this. For zillions of generations, human beings
were stack-ranked by specific qualities-- strength, external signals for
health/viability, social dominance/leadership, etc. Young kids grow up and
start this ritual-- unpredictably, they are probably less sophisticated and
more driven by instinct than adults. And they're meaner.

I also wonder if kids latch onto and develop the parts of themselves that they
can be good at. Everyone plays soccer for the first time. Some kids excel and
get more interested. Others look around, realize that they suck compared to
their peers and lose interest. Nerds realize very early that their path to
praise and recognition might not be the one that the "tribe" broadly rewards,
but it's better than nothing.

~~~
mercer
> What about the athlete that wants to dedicate themselves to their craft? The
> beautiful actress that practices acting and singing all day? They are
> (usually) effortlessly popular

Actually, I get the impression that top athletes and singers can be really
weird and even socially lacking (on account of having spent insane amounts of
time getting good at what they do).

They might be popular not because they're socially skilled, but rather because
they're good-looking and/or fit, and because their skill is considered cool.

The fact that we're seeing more and more 'cool nerd' stereotypes just as nerdy
stuff is becoming more mainstream would support that.

------
rsp1984
This is one of PG's most misunderstood essays. The title is to blame as well.
It should rather be called "What's wrong with the school system" since the
essay's main point isn't about Nerds and what distinguishes them from the
rest. At the core of the essay is much more the truth about our modern school
system and about the lack of perspective and proper incentives therein. As PG
rightfully points out this leads to the creation of sick social hierarchies in
which the bullies and psychopaths have the upper hand. His comparison of
schools to "part-time prisons" is right on the money. In my opinion it is one
of PG's strongest essays and it really influenced the way I think about my
time in school today.

~~~
jseliger
_Probably the biggest reason is that nerds don 't make any attempt to fit in_

Weirdly, a lot of people don't seem to read it closely. I pointed out an
example of that here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7760388](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7760388)
.

When I taught a couple of PG's essays ("What You'll Wish You'd Known," "Lies
We Tell Kids") I saw a lot of cursory readings that were not compatible with
the text—and those misreadings are similar to the ones in this thread. There
were also a fair number who called him "arrogant," though when I'd ask for
textual examples of arrogance I would rarely get anything. The arrogance
comment always baffled me, because he seems no more (or less) arrogant than
anyone who writes anything and images that someone else would want to read it.

------
scotty79
That bizarre US popularity contest ... other countries don't seem to be hit as
hard by that ... Maybe that's just because they have no football players and
cheerleaders in the sense US has them?

If you elevate dumb activities to such esteem that you even tend overlook such
thing as rape of school kids by school kids ... It can't result in healthy
subculture.

------
psycr
I thought these two paragraphs were a fantastic side note:

 _Around the age of eleven, though, kids seem to start treating their family
as a day job. They create a new world among themselves, and standing in this
world is what matters, not standing in their family. Indeed, being in trouble
in their family can win them points in the world they care about.

The problem is, the world these kids create for themselves is at first a very
crude one. If you leave a bunch of eleven-year-olds to their own devices, what
you get is Lord of the Flies. Like a lot of American kids, I read this book in
school. Presumably it was not a coincidence. Presumably someone wanted to
point out to us that we were savages, and that we had made ourselves a cruel
and stupid world. This was too subtle for me. While the book seemed entirely
believable, I didn't get the additional message. I wish they had just told us
outright that we were savages and our world was stupid._

------
aquadrop
US schools seems to be a horrible place. And that's encouraged by the system,
like choosing king&queen couples or the fact that sports activities are
worshiped mindlessly.

~~~
sehr
> US schools seems to be a horrible place.

There are _many_ schools spread across a huge region. Lumping them into
together is asinine.

> choosing king&queen couples

Lots of kids don't care about that, and it isn't that big of a deal.

> sports activities are worshiped mindlessly

This isn't exactly a high school specific thing, sports are 'worshipped
mindlessly' all over the globe.

Every school is different. At ours the football team blew, the band kids were
cheerleaders, decathletes, stoners and bros, cliques didn't exist in the
classical sense of the word, and the school spirit was pretty rockin'. All in
a public school in one of the poorest, most unemployed areas of California.
Trying to bring them all in under one banner of 'US High Schools' is pretty
odd

~~~
pekk
> sports are 'worshipped mindlessly' all over the globe.

But usually not in schools, because schools are actually for education.

~~~
thesimpsons1022
you serious? have been to certain colleges with division 1 football or
basketball teams?

------
MarcScott
I didn't want to be popular at school, because I was an introvert. During our
lunch break, I was far happier spending my time with a very small group of
friends, or sitting on my own with a book. If I had wanted to be 'in' with the
popular kids, I would have had to expend enormous quantities of energy
engaging with them, trying to be humorous, attempting to care about their
lives.

I don't think being a nerd in anyway correlates with intelligence. Introverts
tend to spend more time in solitary pursuits such as reading, programming and
watching movies. For this reason they tend to become highly skilled or
knowledgeable in niche areas. Extroverts tend to spend more time socialising
and hence develop and excel when it comes to social skills. I've met plenty of
stupid nerds in my time, and some stunningly intelligent 'popular' people.

When it comes to sports, I know plenty of introverts who are amazingly
skilled. They tend to stay clear of activities such as football or other team
sports simply because they are introverts. I have black-belts in Karate and
Tae-kwon-do. My brother likes to run marathons (not competitively, he just
runs 26 miles when ever he feels like it). Other introverts I know are amazing
climbers or paddlers. These activities are all solitary, or rely on one's own
skill rather than that of team-mates. They don't tend to attract the attention
of others as much.

Introverts don't really want to be popular. Introverts also don't want to be
bullied. Introverts would like some attention from the opposite sex.
Introverts would like to be respected for their accomplishments. To gain those
things, however, would require socialising on a grander scale than they feel
capable of and hence they are branded as nerds.

~~~
mercer
Interesting. It took me until well into my twenties to realize and then come
to terms with the fact that maybe I was having trouble being as social as my
peers because I just didn't enjoy it as much.

Once that happened, I solved most my issues with 'socially capability' by
seeking out specific kinds of socializing that I _did_ like.

Turns out there are plenty of people just like me, but they either never
bothered to enter the 'normal' social circles I desperately tried to enjoy
being part of, or they came to know themselves quicker.

------
TimJRobinson
I was in 10th grade when this article first came out and I enjoyed it so much
I printed it off to share with my other geeky friends at school.

I think the biggest takeaway and what teenagers most need to understand is
school isn't the real world. So many teenagers have a rough time in high
school because they take it so seriously and believe it's how the rest of
their life is going to go.

Like other nerds I was bullied and teased about being a nerd but having that
perspective and knowing that all I had to do was ignore the others and focus
on my friends and my work and in a few years it would all be over helped me
tremendously.

------
mschuster91
The biggest joke is: probably a lot of these bullies out of PGs past ended up
in low-paying jobs, being jobless or worse. All while PG moves and makes
billions of dollars.

If your only abilities are to be a mean, stupid asshole... then well, you'll
be lucky to get a job flipping burger patties. Everything other requires
intelligence and knowledge, which most of those bullies just had left behind.

Smart kids usually get the payback for their sufferings later on. Or, to
rephrase, karma's a bitch.

------
autokad
didnt finish it, it got to more 'everyone else is crazy and we know whats up'
attitude at a certain point. nerds are unpopular not because being popular is
a full time job that requires all attention, but because they over devote time
to things that yield no further return and ignore things where small effort
could go a long way.

i also disagree with the writer's premises on why it happens in school and not
in the adult world. i dont think its because the world is so large, but the
opposite: social connections became so small. this is why today with facebook,
you see people resorting back to high school popularity behaviors.

------
nonce42
The article omits a huge factor: In American culture, you are not allowed to
say you are smarter than someone else, and nerds typically violate this rule.
Thought experiment: turn to your officemate and explain why you are smarter
than they are - it's not going to go well. Saying that you're richer, thinner,
or more athletic is also arrogant, but I think putting down someone's
intelligence is especially cutting.

I saved myself a lot of trouble in high school by never explicitly saying I
was smart (even though it was obvious). If someone started shoving me and
saying "You think you're smarter than everyone else", I'd say something like
"No, not really. I just do well in school", and they would happily go on their
way. (I'm sure this wouldn't work for everyone, and I don't mean to generalize
too much. Also, this was my actual view, not just something I said.)

I hypothesize based on this and other articles that Paul Graham went out of
his way to make sure people knew how smart he was, which would explain why he
ended up at the "D" table. This seems more likely than the article's
hypothesis that nerds spend all their time on being smart and just didn't have
time to be popular. (Seriously, look at athletes who are practicing at 6am -
they are the ones who are spending all their time on their craft.)

------
graycat
No, there's more to it than PG explains:

In particular there is

T. Berry Brazelton, M.D., _What Every Baby Knows._

The author is a pediatrician in Boston and has been popular in shows on child
care on PBS. He looks phenomenally insightful with babies and children, e.g.,
easily knows more in a few minutes about a baby than its mother knows. I got
the book wondering what the heck I knew as a baby but no longer do (remember,
people do not remember what they knew as babies).

Well, in the book, from memory, he says,

"When a child is rejected by its peers, the reason is always that the child
has anxieties, these show and make the peers feel uncomfortable, and then the
peer reject the child."

That's it "always". So, nerds? They have anxieties. Why? Maybe the anxieties
are part of their drive to pay special attention to nerd interests.

Also, from my experience, now that I understand more, I was more popular than
I knew: Girls were reluctant to show any interest for various reasons
including fear of being rejected. To make it with girls, have to be a little
like a salesman, that is, be willing to put up with some rejection. Then the
boy looks more confident, less 'needy', and that is attractive to girls. Also
for girls, don't expect them to be as 'active' as might want and, instead,
just ask them for things. E.g., basically just ask them, say, to bake you a
batch of oatmeal cookies. ASK for some little thing: Then there is a good
chance that they will rush to do that little thing in hopes of getting back
some praise, approval, affection, security, etc. Besides, might get some good
cookies and maybe more!

------
dengnan
That's interesting. To my experience, in Asian countries --- at least in
China, popular students are usually those who with higher grades. Physical
education is only considered as a very small part of the school and usually
not an important one. That's probably why Asian students are not as
tall/strong as their U.S. (may be Europe?) peers.

~~~
watwut
I do not think school social structure influences how tall you grow.

~~~
rgbrgb
In the long run it does [1].

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection)

------
rquantz
_If I could go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main
thing I 'd tell him would be to stick his head up and look around. 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._

I think there's some effort now being put into trying to reach kids who are
trapped and miserable in the school hierarchy, and letting them know that this
little world is not the real world. This, in essence, is what the It Gets
Better Project is aiming for, and I think it's the gist of a lot of anti-
bullying efforts. I think there's only so much you can do to stop bullies
themselves -- their behavior seems largely sociopathic. But maybe you can stop
other kids from being complicit, including the ones who are targets of
bullying. If the victim understands that the bully is only king of an anthill,
that robs them of some of their power.

------
lukasm
I was going to high school in Poland and the popularity was irrelevant. I was
surprised when I saw a Hollywood movie about kids in high school that want to
be popular by any means. Possibly, that's the outcome of celebrity culture yet
to be established in a postcommunist country.

To digress kids in China won't hang out with you if you have bad grades.

~~~
pekk
The whole world seems to misunderstand this, but Hollywood movies about High
School (with 20-something actors in them) are not representative of actual US
High Schools any more than Harry Potter is representative of British schools.

~~~
_random_
"Harry Potter is representative of British schools" \- it kind of is
representative of exclusive old boarding schools though.

------
arrayjumper
I couldn't complete it. I usually like pg's stuff. But this read like self
serving bull.

~~~
imjustsaying
The beginning was somewhat trite and demode (understandable given 2003) and I
got this same thought.

While I usually hate to skim, I decided at that point to skim a handful of
paragraphs, and near the end, he tied the beginning in very well to what he
was really trying to say at the finish.

------
mschuster91
The biggest joke is: probably a lot of these bullies out of PGs past ended up
in low-paying jobs, being jobless or worse. All while PG moves and makes
billions of dollars.

Smart kids usually get the payback for their sufferings later on. Or, to
rephrase, karma's a bitch.

------
dropit_sphere
I'm a little ashamed to admit that this essay was what got me into
programming. I found it, thought, "wow, this guy is really smart," read his
Lisp essays, and, well, the rest is history.

But I've had a lot of time to think about it since. And one thing PG never
_really_ defines is what makes a nerd. The definition I've settled on is:

1)smart 2)working 3)provides no immediate value (usually this is because they
are working on something too "smart" for most people to understand)

[http://calculatedbravery.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/on-
nerds/](http://calculatedbravery.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/on-nerds/)

~~~
freework
The word he means to use is "me". He says "nerd" in its place in the article.
He's writing about why he wasn't popular in school.

------
webwielder
Nerds have actually won. Comic book and reddit culture is completely
mainstream, bordering on oversaturation. Tech startup founder-programmers have
replaced rock stars and professional athletes as the idolized figures of young
males everywhere.

Now that they're the popular ones, I imagine many nerds find the taste of
victory to be surprisingly bitter. Raging against the jock machine is a lot
more fun than being the machine.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Tech startup founder-programmers have replaced rock stars and professional
> athletes as the idolized figures of young males everywhere.

This is just a sign that you're trapped in the adult nerd bubble. Spend some
time with the normals, and you'll see that mainstream culture in 2014 is no
less vapid than it was in 2004, 1994, or 1984.

~~~
mschuster91
If you're going after net revenue, well then young tech startup founders _are_
idols.

Millions and more millions of cash, more than your average rock band...

~~~
Dewie
If we're going by average rock bands, we might as well go by average startups.
Isn't it true that your average startup failed/will fail?

------
j2kun
> sometimes, particularly in university math and science departments, nerds
> deliberately exaggerate their awkwardness in order to seem smarter.

As a graduate student in mathematics, I have been told to dress down and make
my talks more difficult to follow (particularly for job talks; they say it's a
bad sign if anyone in the room is still following by the end).

------
jacknews
So that's who invented the humblebrag

------
spiritplumber
I thought that "being popular" meant people constantly poking me to help them
with stuff, so I felt popular in high school and college. Not necessarily a
bad thing, but it doesn't prepare you for consultant work, because it leads to
underselling your skills.

------
HillOBeans
This. Much of what Paul recounts is what I experienced in school, particularly
in Junior High. The problem is, by the time I got to High School, my grades
had begun to suffer because of my anxiety over the bullying, and I never
really recovered my academic prowess until college. But that prevented me from
getting some scholarships, and probably put me on a different career path that
I'm still regretting today. When my focus shifted to popularity over
academics, things did improve, and the bullying subsided. Part of me wishes I
could put my adult self back into my adolescent body and redo those years with
the perspective I have now.

------
destroyewski
that point that nerds don't want to be popular was a bit mindboggling , but i
think this is an important point, i never thought about it but i kind of agree
and now it feels a bit obvious. i tried socialising for two weeks at my start
at university, but i found that when i hung around people i constantly thought
about the books i could read or the stuff i could do on my computer so i
really didn't respond to anyone anymore until they stopped asking. so i made
the effort not to be included even though i knew the formula how to be
included. surely this is just one singular point of view. but the question is,
would nerds really be happier if they were included in stuff they most likely
don't care about?

------
pvdm
"How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie cures all. Self-
Esteem and physical exercise for healthy balance. Not so hard to figure out.

------
tomphoolery
"It gets better" \- Louis CK

~~~
bostik
If we're pulling out quotes discussing this essay, then I'll take a swing at
the statement near the very end.

"If life seems awful to kids, it's neither because hormones are turning you
all into monsters (as your parents believe), nor because life actually is
awful (as you believe)."

"If life was half as good as we are led to believe, newborn babies would be
laughing when they enter this world." \-- _no idea who said this_

I confess. I am a cynic to the bone.

------
thesimpsons1022
I don't think that being smart intrinsically makes people hate you in school.
There were plenty of people in my school who were smart(including me) that
weren't considered nerds or bullied. In fact, the kids who were bullied for
being "nerds" at my school weren't even smart. More likely, they either had
awful social skills and dressed and acted weird. Or, they had some weird hobby
like playing card games during lunch in highschool. And lets not forget, if
you're a school with a bunch of smart kids, you can make friends with them, so
nerds aren't smart people, they are really just socially handicapped people.

