Tuesday, December 28, 2004

why nerds are unpopular

I was a nerd... in high school I didn't care about being popular, and actually actively disliked most "popular" people for their materialistic and generally "fake" personalities. I did have a brief time in eighth grade when I wanted to be popular; I distinctly remember it. Other than that, nope. High school was great because I was such a cross-breed of subcultures that I got along with people in just about every group of people. I was a band geek, and a heavy metal freak (a "stoner" - but my angle was, I was a stoner that didn't get stoned - so I didn't alienate the straight-edge crowd, either). I was "smart" and had the usual nerd friends too. It was quite a bizarre social life, when I look back on it.

why nerds are unpopular - Amidst a tangled web

"A few months ago a lunch discussion at work centered around bullies and nerds in school. The group consisted entirely of engineers and it seemed that all of us had been picked on in school, to one degree or another. This article in Wired Magazine provides insight into Why Nerds Are Unpopular.

The main crux of the article is that “most smart kids don’t really want to be popular.” He explains, “there was something else I wanted more: to be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something, but to design beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. In general, to make great things.”

It’s an interesting explanation."

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