
Why Nerds Are Unpopular (2003) - tempw
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
======
gavman
Looking back, the thing I wish someone in middle/high school pointed out to me
is how _temporary_ it is. Day in and day out it's your entire life and you
think it goes on like that forever, and then one day you graduate and _poof_
it all disappears. I remember the day after I graduated it sunk in that I'd
never be in that world again and this huge feeling of relief and excitement
washed over me...and then I remember feeling so stupid for being so blind to
the fact that high school ends and you leave that world behind. But while
you're in the middle of it--and for me even right up until I graduated--it
really did feel like it went on forever.

~~~
gthtjtkt
> it really did feel like it went on forever.

It does go on forever.

The only difference is that the "opt out" option is unlocked after high
school, but opting out has consequences. Even if we don't want to admit it,
there's a lot of truth to the phrase "It's not _what_ you know but _who_ you
know".

I hung out with plenty of nerds in high school, and most of them took solace
in the belief that they'd eventually be laughing all the way to the bank while
the jocks were flipping burgers. It's one of those things you keep repeating
to make yourself feel better even when you suspect it's not true (kind of like
people who say "I could've been popular if I wanted to").

Turns out they were wrong, and I'm guessing it's because popular people are
able to use their superior social/networking skills to easily find job
opportunities (and promotions), while nerds struggle to find the courage to
answer the phone when the interviewer calls.

~~~
derekp7
Except there is also another dynamic at play. At least in my case, after high
school I was completely transformed into another person. Part of it was that
at my job, I was working around adults. So I got into the habit of acting like
an adult, and having a different set of concerns. So I really came out of my
shell at that time.

The other dynamic, is turning 21, where you can hang out at establishments
that serve alcohol. Which helped with the social anxiety -- so from my mid
20's on, I didn't have any of the issues that I had back in high school.

------
jmkni
It took me too long to realise that a lot of the popular kids where also
smart.

They just had social skills as well.

It's much easier to tell yourself that other people don't like you because you
are smarter than them than it is to work on yourself.

~~~
diminoten
It's sad that people tend to think of life as some kind of DnD character
creation, where people have the same points but allocated in different ways.

Instead, some people just have more points than you, and just because they
have more points in charisma, doesn't mean they also don't have more points
than you in intellect.

I've heard, even on this site, people deride management and C-suite types as
"dumb" or "the popular kids", and in the same breath worship "that guy in the
room"[0] but the stark reality is quite different from this fantasy.

[0] [https://blog.codinghorror.com/dont-go-
dark/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/dont-go-dark/)

~~~
formerly_ta
I'd go even further than that. They're not independent variables, but instead
are highly correlated. High achievement in one area means you're more than
likely to be above average in another.

------
jff
This article is in the same vein as that execrable Lisp article that showed up
today: "Alas, poor brilliant misunderstood me, cursed by my genius and
unwillingness to ~play the silly games of the lesser people who surround me~"

~~~
gthtjtkt
_" I was too busy studying to be popular!"_

> Few smart kids can spare the attention that popularity requires.

Just like all those quarterbacks who were too busy with football practice to
waste any time honing their social skills. Oh wait...

~~~
eropple
There is a lot more overlap between "smart kids" and sports than a lot of tech
folks want to admit, too. In the (small) town in which I grew up, the honors
students were the smart kids were the popular kids were mostly playing sports.

There were a lot of self-anointed "computer nerds" and others who were
_bookish_ and _not popular_ , but not necessarily _smart_. (Most never left
that town, while the football-playing honors kids are almost all at least
bachelor's graduates and never go _back_.)

~~~
DubiousPusher
Interesting. Couldn't be more the opposite where I'm from. Which probably just
means that anecdotes make poor indicators.

------
marsrover
If you've ever spent 5 minutes talking to a programming (most likely a nerd),
you don't need an article to tell you why they're unpopular. From my
experience, most nerds are completely condescending and complete assholes.

Maybe it's time us nerds to look at ourselves and take a little blame instead
of shifting it off to everyone else.

~~~
stcredzero
_From my experience, most nerds are completely condescending and complete
assholes._

There's definitely a subset of nerds that are like this. Don't waste your time
with that subset.

------
otikik
I was a _HUGE_ nerd at highschool and I disagree with this article completely.
I think nerds are unpopular at highschool because their intelligence is
incomplete.

You see, Abstract thinking is only one of intelligence's dimensions. It will
make you good at things like Math or Science. But there are other aspects. The
one which is relevant to the article could be called social skills, or
empathy. Successfully navigating human interactions takes a non-trivial amount
of mental processing.

Some kids become popular "by default" (the rich guy. The prettiest girl).
Others are naturals at social skills, just like some are naturals at Math. For
the rest of us, the only option is getting better at it via practice.

In my case, I actually remember using the scientific method to improve my
social skills. I formulated hypotheses, and tested them on my (extremely
limited) social circle. Small talk was really difficult at first, until I
discovered that teenagers love talking about themselves (I felt like I had
discovered the fifth platonic solid with that one.). So I just asked them
things about themselves and assumed the easier role of a listener instead of a
"real speaker".

Gosh, I was such a nerd.

These days, I find that social skills complements my abstract-thinking
intelligence in my job. I think empathy makes me a better programmer. I can
totally spot code which was written by the socially challenged.

~~~
orangea
> I can totally spot code which was written by the socially challenged.

That sounds very interesting to me. Could you elaborate?

~~~
otikik
Hum. It is difficult without delving into specifics.

When I write code I'm always asking myself questions about future code
readers. "Is this understandable enough? Are the identifiers concise? Is the
intent of this method clear?". If I must spend 15 minutes on a dictionary
looking for the exact name for an abstraction, I do so.

Code written by someone without empathy reads to me like its author has mostly
asking himself questions related with functionality: "Does this work? Is this
fast enough? Am I using an up-to-date API?". You get lots of names with 'info'
or 'data' or 'manager'. Several things named the same way. The same thing
named different ways in different places. Long methods, with tangled
dependencies. Classes hiding inside other classes' methods. "Clever" code
which uses obscure language features in non-standard ways. Etc.

Mind you - I _also_ think about functionality, speed, etc. But most of my
mental processing is dedicated to thinking about future maintainers.

------
Anderkent
This is part because the smart kids are told they go to school to learn
things. That's obviously not the case; school is a horrible environment for
transmitting knowledge and skill.

I for one never figured out that school was there to learn to socialise until
far too late. My parents obviously meant well, and I hold no grudge, but if I
was told when I was 10 or 12 to focus on the subjects I liked rather than try
to do well in everything, and spend the rest of the time making friends and
having fun and _paying attention to other people_ , I'd probably be just as
well off in terms what I actually retained, and much better off in social
skills.

~~~
CM30
Sometimes I suspect this probably applies to college/university as much as it
does school. Yeah, the degree is nice to have, but making connections with
people in a similar field/with similar interests seems like it's a heck of a
lot more useful in retrospect. Especially if your interests are in starting a
business or other venture and you need cofounders.

------
ktRolster
Oh yeah, thanks for the reminder. I'm glad I'm not in high school any more.
After high school I found there's a bigger pool of people, and I can read a
math book for _fun_ (as an example) without people looking down on me for it.

In fact, I know people who do the same thing. It's great. We respect each
other.

------
ChemicalWarfare
One of the things that is pretty apparent but is not discussed much is
maturation. "Nerds" are typically slow to hit puberty, get at the bottom of
the pecking order since essentially it's like kids competing with the grown
ups and then by the time they graduate it's too late to "make up" for it.

Reunions are actually quite entertaining to observe from that perspective -
you'd see things like a tall and athletic "nerd" standing next to a short
skinny-fat "jock" and wonder "what happened?"

------
n0us
I don't remember nerds or unpopular kids being any smarter than the popular
kids and for the most part it was the other way around.

~~~
stcredzero
There's been some co-opting. The same thing happened with Punk back in the
day, apparently.

------
partycoder
All social animals have the concept of social rank.

Rather than popularity I would rather translate that to: "why nerds are ranked
lower in the human social structure". Now, to answer that, you need to
standardize in a definition for nerd.

Nerd for some is about superficial traits, whereas for others it is only a
descriptor for personality traits, for others it is about intellectual traits,
whereas for others it is about interests.

I think the answer lies on how humans, or generalizing, greater apes, rank
each other. For example: if you went hunting, who would you take with you in
descending order?

------
cousin_it
Being unpopular in school often means being bullied or ostracized, so we
should be especially wary of victim blaming, which I sadly see in many
comments here.

I was bullied for a while in school, though it wasn't in the US, and by the
end of school I was quite well-liked. The advice I'd give to my younger self
would be a) to get serious about some explosive sport like boxing or
sprinting, b) to get fast and on point with words. I could've easily spared a
few of my endless videogame hours for that, I just didn't know it would help
at the time.

------
glangdale
This article is a memoir dressed up as sociology. I don't doubt that it's a
true statement of the way Paul Graham felt about his high school, but a great
deal of it seems like arrant nonsense when applied more broadly.

The other thing that rubs me the wrong way about this article is the rather
sanctimonious tone about nerd behavior, as if every nerd's "smartness" is a
beautiful quality ("I want to make computers and rockets!") rather than, well,
a pretty normal desire for a certain type of achievement wrapped up in a
desire to impress in a _different_ social hierarchy. I went to a school with a
lot of nerdy types and there was a hierarchy among the nerds too, with people
spending a lot of time putting on displays about how much smarter or funnier
or hipper they were than the other nerds and reaping Nerd Popularity. I think
the sanctimonious attitude is actively mischievous; I met many nerds in
university who seemed to feel that they could do no wrong as they were clearly
One Of The Oppressed Class and went on to do ugly things to weaker, lower
status people whenever they could.

Part of the reasons that nerds are 'unpopular' is that they often can't resist
trying to ensure that everyone around them knows just how much smarter the
nerd is, regardless of whether they are. We started hitting this phenomenon in
the mid-90s, where the ability to program a computer or some minor knowledge
of science led to nerds proclaiming themselves experts on Every Damn Thing
(art, politics, philosophy, urban planning, ...).

------
Jtsummers

      Alberti, arguably the archetype of the Renaissance Man,
      writes that "no art, however minor, demands less than
      total dedication if you want to excel in it." I wonder
      if anyone in the world works harder at anything than
      American school kids work at popularity. Navy SEALs and
      neurosurgery residents seem slackers by comparison.
      They occasionally take vacations; some even have
      hobbies. An American teenager may work at being popular
      every waking hour, 365 days a year.
    

This almost seems hyperbolic for the time, but I wonder if it isn't more true
today with the way social media is omnipresent. Extending the popularity game
from just rumors and who's sitting with who, to who you're taking selfies with
and posting photos from the hot party this weekend. Not just playing the
popularity game while around others, but even at home in your own private
spaces, arranging things for photos and making videos and posts.

~~~
nosuchthing
It's not really _more_ true, as most people, kids even, are able to see past
those facades.

------
Animats
The 1983 version of this, from Playboy, now hosted on an MIT web site.[1]

[1]
[http://mit81.com/baker/sites/default/files/technodarlings.pd...](http://mit81.com/baker/sites/default/files/technodarlings.pdf)

------
jaimex2
I always pinned this on being introverted and nothing to do with smarts. I
could be popular with effort and actually being outgoing but it was exhausting
and I would quickly find myself getting annoyed at popular people. What they
did and talked about just wasn't stimulating.

------
DubiousPusher
I also came to see the latter years of grade school as a kind of petty game.
At the time it fed into a bit of subconscious nihilism but I was always
optimistic about the future and getting on with my life.

If I could tell myself anything though it wouldn't be what PG recommends here.
It'd be,

"Good for you; you figured it out. It's a petty game that has no real
consequences. You have more time and ability to shape yourself into whoever
you want to be than you're ever going to have again. Make the most of it. Live
it up."

------
bitL
I think it's an optimization in the world to enable its further progress. If
you want to achieve something great, you need to go through adversity that
will test you to your utmost capabilities. High school, as it is largely
irrelevant, is a great place/time to do it. Treat it as a testing ground so
that you can get used to these obstacles on your way to greatness. Then please
don't fall into the trap of taking satisfaction in the misery of others that
had fun during high school but hell afterwards.

------
randomname2
Today in 2017 this is not as true anymore as it was in 2003

------
dwe3000
The problem I had when I first read this article and still do today is the
terminology. I am probably being overly picky, but I remember reading a
categorization that differentiated between geeks, nerds, and dweebs. I still
think it is possible to be a geek and be popular, or at least, "above" (more
socially acceptable) the social circle of nerds or dweebs.

------
bananabill
[http://i.imgur.com/CyFyMRL.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/CyFyMRL.jpg)

~~~
elastic_church
this is satire, right? such that you know none of this is anything to brag
about?

I know bottle service girls that would get kicked out of every tech convention
solely for making some boring accountant-that-learned-ruby uncomfortable, who
are more experienced in "the blockchain" than the introverted asperger folks.

~~~
bananabill
Yes it's satire

------
mcguire
There's an awful lot of over-generalization here. This would be more
convincing with some empirical data.

~~~
coldtea
Like what? "23.478% of male nerds don't have girlfriends", "studies have shown
nerds to be in the 20% percentile of popularity", etc?

~~~
mcguire
Sure, that would be good.

------
overcast
Fast forward fourteen years from when this was posted, and now everyone is a
self proclaimed "nerd" of something. Half naked women on Instagram, holding
video game controllers, while attending a sold out ComicCon.

~~~
coldtea
Meanwhile, the actual nerds are still as unpopular as ever. It's just that the
niche comic book culture spun off blockbuster action movies -- and everybody
plays videogames. But the actual over-studying, learning minutiae, having
isolating hobbies, being introverted, etc, part is not shared.

~~~
overcast
Until money comes around, and then all bets are off.

