After living in the US for nearly 2 decades I am still amazed at the fact that Americans belittle and make fun of people who are experts in certain fields and go as far as calling them names. When I was a kid in USSR I participated in a club called "Юный радиолюбитель" (similar to amateur radio hobbyist) where kids from 9 to 16 made electronic gadgets, radios, games and etc from publicly available schematics. I remember how fascinated everyone in my class was when I talked about the stuff I worked on. When I came to the US, still as a teenager, I was mocked as a geek or nerd. It is the oddest thing and still makes no sense to me.
1. Popular or "cool" people. Anyone who is not "book smart".
2. Nerds, geeks, etc. People considered to be smart.
There are people who somehow manage to belong to both sides. But its very clear cut. Everything you do is defined by that. I don't know how it came about, but have noticed that it came to be during the early 20th century. If you look back at media from around after WW2 ended (late 40s and 50s) it starts to become used in movies and television. Popular people are into sports, cars, etc. Nerds are science types.
I experienced both sides in high school. In my experience, the popular side was more concerned in having a good time than anything. They wanted the attention. The nerds were generally better people all around. Nicer when you got to know them. I was a nerd who did sports and somehow ended up in between. But then decided to go full "nerd". The right choice because those friendships have lasted.
> 1. Popular or "cool" people. Anyone who is not "book smart".
Except lots of people in this group are book smart, and even recognized as such by their peers in this group. It just isn't seen as dominating who they are.
> 2. Nerds, geeks, etc. People considered to be smart.
I would say that nerds, geeks, etc. as distinct from "popular" are defined more by perceived (from the "popular" perspective) overattachment to niche intellectual pursuits.
There is a very loose correlation with perceived smarts here, but its quite possible to be perceived as geeky/nerdy without being perceived as smart, and vice versa.
Also, you leave out (3) the very wide group of people who are neither particularly popular nor perceived as geeks/nerds.
American heroes are defined by Hollywood. The #1 trait being - they get the girl. This Darwinistic prerogative of American Individualism has been the defining factor of our hero worship. If you don't fit the description, you are lesser.
Tech is introducing "the ability to change the world" as a competing concept to biological evolution. Thus, we are seeing nerdy entrepreneurs slowly added to the lexicon of hero worship.
Ford Madox Ford quotes a saying from the north of England: When land is gone and money spent/Then learning is most excellent.
The Prince of Hanover who just caused a shakeup in the Gottingen faculty said "Professors, dancing girls, and whores: you can hire them for money anywhere." (Except, as it turned out, when the professors have names like Grimm and Humboldt, maybe you can't.)
No doubt one could multiply the examples. If America is at all a special case, it is probably because things traditionally changed faster here, and yesterday's learning might not apply to today's situation.
Although I'm very much Australian, my wife is Russian and her mother is a teacher. During a visit to my wife's small city, we attended some kind of summer show at her mother's school, which had students from elementary to high school levels.
There were some great dances performed by both girls and boys, of all ages. Some of the dances were rather "feminine" by the standards I was used to (I'd say ballroom maybe?) and I asked my wife and her mother whether the boys had issues with teasing or bullying. They actually seemed genuinely confused about why dancing would lead to teasing/bullying (their answer of course was no, there was no harassment).
In my rural Australian high school there were a few boys who danced (and numerous girls) and the prevailing attitude seemed to be that "masculine" dancing like break dancing was cool and totally okay while "feminine" dancing like ballet would have you treated like an outcast, teased and bullied.
I'm not sure whether the attitude I encountered in Russia is particular to my wife's region (North Caucasus) or all of Russia but it was quite interesting to see just how different things were.
Not only that, but as somebody who was actually a nerd before it was popular, I'm terrified of the "coolification" of geekiness. As an actual awkward social misfit, I'm pretty sure that if nerdiness actually becomes trendy, I'll be uninvited from the "club". It used to be that, at the very least, there was a place for me because I could read hexadecimal and recite the TCP header format. If computer programming becomes any "hipper", I won't even have a place here.
Anecdotally, I feel that it's mostly because of stereotypes that nerds are socially awkward. In American culture, there's a lot of emphasis on being popular.
Yes, just looking at the replies here, it seems that everyone wants to shoehorn themselves and other into categories. I am a nerd in many ways, but I am also plenty of other things.
Here is another thing that still amazes me in the U.S - making fun of old people just because they are old (and not for any other reason). This isn't as common elsewhere as it is here, at least in my experience.
