Why nerds are unpopular (this is lengthy)
- Thread starter Darkauthor81
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Ugh, couldn't bear to get through all of it. Read about half way through. It may be a disservice to the article, but to be honest, this article is a disservice to "nerds" all around.
Look, nerds are picked on because they don't have the social skills required to "mingle" with other people. Its as simple as that. For whatever reason they may not have these skills is another thing entirely. I knew the nerds in my school, they were deemed nerds the moment everyone laid eyes on them. The way you're eating your sandwich, all hunched over, with your arms tight against your body, looking around as you devour your sandwich as a squirrel would with some piece of trash on the ground.
The nerds definitely want to be popular, sacrificing intelligence for it? I'm not sure anyone would really do that to be quite honest, but I'm pretty sure they'd give up a lot of other stuff to be accepted. But I know for damn well it isn't because they're pre-occupied with other things.
Look, I wasn't hugely popular, but I saw enough of the popular side to know what it feels like. Its a great feeling, but I was able to hang onto my nerdiness and actually be RECOGNIZED for it. That was the ultimate feeling in the world for me. You know what I did recently? I went to Comic Con this weekend and dressed up as Big Boss from MGS3. Did I get ridiculed by any of the popular kids? No. Did everyone think it was awesome and give me props for actually having the balls to do something like this? You bet your ass they did.
There is no need to make up excuses for nerds, because thats all I saw this essay as. If you're a nerd, great, be one, but don't think that we hate you because you're smart or something. We don't like you because you don't know how to interact with other people. Simple. As. That.
Look, nerds are picked on because they don't have the social skills required to "mingle" with other people. Its as simple as that. For whatever reason they may not have these skills is another thing entirely. I knew the nerds in my school, they were deemed nerds the moment everyone laid eyes on them. The way you're eating your sandwich, all hunched over, with your arms tight against your body, looking around as you devour your sandwich as a squirrel would with some piece of trash on the ground.
The nerds definitely want to be popular, sacrificing intelligence for it? I'm not sure anyone would really do that to be quite honest, but I'm pretty sure they'd give up a lot of other stuff to be accepted. But I know for damn well it isn't because they're pre-occupied with other things.
Look, I wasn't hugely popular, but I saw enough of the popular side to know what it feels like. Its a great feeling, but I was able to hang onto my nerdiness and actually be RECOGNIZED for it. That was the ultimate feeling in the world for me. You know what I did recently? I went to Comic Con this weekend and dressed up as Big Boss from MGS3. Did I get ridiculed by any of the popular kids? No. Did everyone think it was awesome and give me props for actually having the balls to do something like this? You bet your ass they did.
There is no need to make up excuses for nerds, because thats all I saw this essay as. If you're a nerd, great, be one, but don't think that we hate you because you're smart or something. We don't like you because you don't know how to interact with other people. Simple. As. That.
I'd like to say this. I go to an all guys high school and we tend to have a far more lax social caste. I'm definitely a nerd, but I have a lot of friends at school. One of my friends who is also quite nerdy is friends with most of the football team.
Society loves hierarchy.
The amusing thing abou hierarchies is that everyone involved keeps the entire thing intact. You might hate the system, but your hatred only reinforces and confirms it.
That said, I find it quite amusing as an outside observer. Continental (European) high schools, or at least the Dutch ones, have a far less rigid hierarchy; and even that one simply fades from 'hierarchy' to 'cliques' during high school. A reason for this might be the lack of insane competitiveness American high schools seem to have. We don't (really) do 'high school sports', so a caste of 'jocks' is non-existent. Cheerleading is considered to be absolutely ridiculous, so 'we' don't have those ones either.
'We' are just that more egalitarian.
The amusing thing abou hierarchies is that everyone involved keeps the entire thing intact. You might hate the system, but your hatred only reinforces and confirms it.
That said, I find it quite amusing as an outside observer. Continental (European) high schools, or at least the Dutch ones, have a far less rigid hierarchy; and even that one simply fades from 'hierarchy' to 'cliques' during high school. A reason for this might be the lack of insane competitiveness American high schools seem to have. We don't (really) do 'high school sports', so a caste of 'jocks' is non-existent. Cheerleading is considered to be absolutely ridiculous, so 'we' don't have those ones either.
'We' are just that more egalitarian.
Well, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head with a sledgehammer 
Although, at the moment I'm learning martial arts (in school), so if someone DOES try to start a fight with me, a swift knee to the bollocks should stop them, and even then a second shot (elbow to the ribs/jaw) might put them down well and proper.
Hoping that doesn't happen, I'd rather not get nto fights.
Although, at the moment I'm learning martial arts (in school), so if someone DOES try to start a fight with me, a swift knee to the bollocks should stop them, and even then a second shot (elbow to the ribs/jaw) might put them down well and proper.
Hoping that doesn't happen, I'd rather not get nto fights.
In Jr. High, I developed an intollerance for popular kids & everything they stood for, comparing them to the irritating little twits who got killed off in horror flicks. I even took to bullying just them instead of random people (I was a raving ***** when I was in elementry school). I was notorious for biting people, which apparently lead to me being the one geek in highschool no jock or preppy picked on. This one girl named Kendal tried, but I ripped out a goodly portion of her hair & scrathed-up her face. I also helped some other girls glue the mens' gym lockers shut & booby-trapped their toilets & urinals.
Ah how much I agree with you.Mr.Pandah said:
I actually read the whole article too, it really doesn't change much in tone.
Don't bother me? I know everything?Impposter said:
i don't mean to speak for everyone but YOU seem to be the one that thinks they know stuff.
i have never had this stage of which you speak, and if i ever came close that was quickly stopped by a ponder at how microchips work, what made the big bang, or why people like Justin timberlake/bieber. (both sound like girls wtf)
perhaps more on topic, part of the reason I'm not popular right now is that i refuse to find spectator sports even vaguely worthy of interest.
i mean really, if each week a couple of movies were made with a similar cast of people, an(ideally) almost identical set, the same props and it had no real developments apart from the occasional injury or goal, you would think people mad for paying to watch these movies in cinemas, and yet tickets can go for many times the price of seeing avatar in glorious imax 3d.
I just don't get people.
i think perhaps you are in some cases mixing up a lack of social skills with unused social skills.ravensheart18 said:
i many cases, i know perfectly well how to be a tool pretender relate-able with the native fauna. I just plain don't want to fit in/hang out with people who talk almost exclusively about men kicking a ball around a piece of grass (not to mention an innate interest in the outcome of this), and yet i get blank stares like I'm some sort of retard when i announce something of actual interest, like a breakthrough in quantum computing for example.
Also:
nice deflection on the 3000 post thing.
you would think the game would get in the way of the socializing, what with being unable to hear the voice of people near you.ravensheart18 said:
you would also think people could have fun without inducing harmful amounts of alcohol (IE >0),
but perhaps they are trying to dumb themselves down so the "social events" are more bearable.
ive only ever been in three different schools in my life time (im currently 17) and those were my primary school (5-11 years old) where people didnt care how popular you were.
my secondary school (12-16) where the school numbered a size of 150 pupils and 14 of those were in my year and my smallest class had me, the teacher and two other pupils so there wasnt really any popularity hierachy there due to lack of size and if you tried ostracising someone you would get ostracised by the entire group. that being said i still felt lonely there since there was no one else there that had the same interests as me because music and sports wern't high up on my list of favourite things
now im in a boarding sixth form college (16-18) where since this college doesnt hesitate to kick out failing students its ranked as one of the best colleges in england in terms of grades (96% pass rate in law last year for the lower year with 45% or something like that getting A's for their overall AS year) and this school has anywhere up to 2000 pupils if i remember correctly. im getting B's in my subjects yet i feel like the dumb one here which was the complete opposite in my secondary school since i was always seen as the smartest one there.
afaik there is very little bullying here as well
btw i was in a british forces school in cyprus for secondary and primary school and am in england now
my secondary school (12-16) where the school numbered a size of 150 pupils and 14 of those were in my year and my smallest class had me, the teacher and two other pupils so there wasnt really any popularity hierachy there due to lack of size and if you tried ostracising someone you would get ostracised by the entire group. that being said i still felt lonely there since there was no one else there that had the same interests as me because music and sports wern't high up on my list of favourite things
now im in a boarding sixth form college (16-18) where since this college doesnt hesitate to kick out failing students its ranked as one of the best colleges in england in terms of grades (96% pass rate in law last year for the lower year with 45% or something like that getting A's for their overall AS year) and this school has anywhere up to 2000 pupils if i remember correctly. im getting B's in my subjects yet i feel like the dumb one here which was the complete opposite in my secondary school since i was always seen as the smartest one there.
afaik there is very little bullying here as well
btw i was in a british forces school in cyprus for secondary and primary school and am in england now
Seeing as how you got defensive and not really refute my point, I think you make a good example of what I am talking about. When I say "I know everything", I meant what you know about you and how you are per se than what you know about technology, universe, and who? timbieber?RadiusXd said:
I apologize if you found what I said offensive. That wasn't the intend. It's just like a
mini-game of life like mid-life crisis. People go through that. Doesn't mean everyone does.
So you think that you are unpopular because you have no interest in sports and movies are going down the toilet because they seem to come out of some factory line making the same things? Well, maybe you are not popular because you don't have a good attitude about things and you seem to criticize everything? Everyone has good and bad thoughts with almost everything, pro and cons. But if you live thinking all cons, it gets people down and no one wants that. With a little imagination and a good attitude, you can make mundane, boring things fun. And who doesn't like fun? Just takes effort and attitude.
I... I want to find the man that wrote this. Shake his hand. And give him money.Darkauthor81 said:
Clearly, he's a genius, or at least one of the adults who actually cares about the fact that school makes people miserable.
Not weird, just cruel and hateful pits of hell.Danzaivar said:
OT: I consider myself halfway between popularity and nerd-dom. That being said, I hate school. Both because of the asshats that are asshats, and because of the fact that school forces people to be asshats, including (and something I'm not proud of) at one time, myself.
Really interesting and well thought out. I think you definitely got a good grasp on the two main camps of popular e.g. sports/cheerleaders and nerds but i'm interested to hear what you (or anyone else) thinks are the other groups in a school. I know that at mine we had kids that were essentially mini-thugs who took hard drugs (as opposed to cannabis) and the arty/musician's etc as well as the sort of drifters who went from group to group.
I was fortunate enough to be good at music, drama, languages, history, psychology i.e humanities and I was pretty good at science (particularly biology) and I.T. the one thing I was crap at (and still am in many ways) is maths. I really go blank when I see numbers to the point where I was placed in the bottom set for most of my school career. Not only was I patronised by my teacher but also despised by my fellow students who were not impressed to see a 'geek' in their midst. To some degree though I sympathised with their complete apathy for learning. We had four teachers in our first GCSE year and three in our final, every teacher treated us like we had severe mental difficulties and often just covered material over and over again. All of them truly despised their job and resented being given the 'thick' kids to teach. As such I ended up spending most of my maths lessons catching up on homework from English, reading a book, or writing music. I'm just wondering if anyone else ever felt entirely let down by the system to the point that, despite a desire to learn, you just gave up and did other things?
I was fortunate enough to be good at music, drama, languages, history, psychology i.e humanities and I was pretty good at science (particularly biology) and I.T. the one thing I was crap at (and still am in many ways) is maths. I really go blank when I see numbers to the point where I was placed in the bottom set for most of my school career. Not only was I patronised by my teacher but also despised by my fellow students who were not impressed to see a 'geek' in their midst. To some degree though I sympathised with their complete apathy for learning. We had four teachers in our first GCSE year and three in our final, every teacher treated us like we had severe mental difficulties and often just covered material over and over again. All of them truly despised their job and resented being given the 'thick' kids to teach. As such I ended up spending most of my maths lessons catching up on homework from English, reading a book, or writing music. I'm just wondering if anyone else ever felt entirely let down by the system to the point that, despite a desire to learn, you just gave up and did other things?
I go to a private school, in Australia, so we don't have such a popularity split. I mean, we have the really unpopular people, but there are those who don't give a shit about that and they hang out together, then you have the 'popular' people, who range from athletes to ladies-men to the slightly arrogant, semi-stereotypical black students. Then you have groups like mine somewhere in the middle; very few members are well-loved (we each have our base of hate-dom), but apart from a small group we can all mingle a bit with everyone else. And even though we all hang together, we are all wildly different. Just as a small example, in my group, there is me (an agnostic-atheist, insightful, sort of benevolent nerd), one of my best friends (an artistic rugby player, also the greatest ladies man in the school, and smart but lazy, as in, he understands even the hardest concepts I can think of when he tries, but he normally doesn't), my Anglican friend (he's agnostic anglican, and we frequently discuss philosophical and relgious topics in great depth), and aother one of my friends doesn't get involved in anything in school (except I think cricket ... maybe), he isn't good at academics and his sense of homour is entirely different to mine. That is only four out of about twelve, so yeah, the class system in my school seems to have malfunctioned some time during the late eighties.