"you need to be smart in order to be a part of the group"
This is a wrong assumption, because there are people who are smart but are not (computer) nerds.
Why People Don't Like Nerds or Programmers (In School)
11–20 of 148 posts
Re: Why People Don't Like Nerds or Programmers (In School)
#12"you need to be smart in order to be a part of the group" This is a wrong assumption, because there are people who are smart but are not (computer) nerds.
the argument "you need to be smart in order to be part of the group" is the not the same as "being smart means you are in the group".
Re: Why People Don't Like Nerds or Programmers (In School)
#13I'm sorry that's complete BS. Yes there are arrogant nerds and especially more on the internet where the 'geeky' have held sway for longer. But the simple fact is that as noonespecial pointed out, the sporty 'popular' will be more confident in a group of nerds than the other way around because there is no risk for them. The nerds can't make their day-to-day life in school a living hell.
Re: Why People Don't Like Nerds or Programmers (In School)
#14what a sad, angry little man...
Re: Why People Don't Like Nerds or Programmers (In School)
#15seems as if he has a problem with introverts
Re: Why People Don't Like Nerds or Programmers (In School)
#16Many good points but missing one important observation. The cliques in school are hierarchical in nature. All groups may be exclusive toward other members but a band geek cannot make a jock's life miserable as a pastime. Members of each clique can torment those in the "lower castes" with virtually no social cost for those actions. For fun, to fit in, because daddy never hugged them, whatever. The Nerds and programmer…
Once you eliminate the jocks and cheerleaders, the hierarchy actually seems to disappear. The nerds still try to be alienated for the most part, but the without the focus on sports, I find that all the other cliques just become 'different' instead of one being higher than the other. That might just be at my school though.
It all has to do with the perceived attractiveness of the group members, especially those composed primarily of females. If they attractive people are spread out among groups, the cliques are separate but equal. If they're concentrated, the cliques become hierarchical.
A desired group can basically set the hierarchy by what they define as attractive.
Most people don't actually want to leave the social group that they're in, as pg observed in one of his essays. The one exception is when their group is specifically a lesser version of another, usually the hangers-on.The nerds may really like programming and have no desire to play sports -- but they would love to date the attractive girls from any group.
The verbal and physical abuse in the system comes from members of a group which has attractive members of the opposite sex trying to keep down the others. For example, the jocks know that the nerds would like to date the cheerleaders, and so the jocks act to keep their supremacy.
It's high school, it's all about sex, what did you expect?
Re: Why People Don't Like Nerds or Programmers (In School)
#17I think he makes a good point in that nerds tend to exclude themselves, but I think it's a defense mechanism from being rejected. Believe me, when I was in jr. high and high school (more than 20 years ago, now) I wanted to "join the crowd" badly. I wasn't allowed in, and I felt awkward every time I tried to join in. I just didn't fit the social milieu. I didn't feel the need to exclude others (there's a difference between this and excluding yourself). If someone else wanted to be my friend I gladly accepted them. So I don't get this whole thing about how "nerds exclude everyone else." That wasn't my experience.
Re: Why People Don't Like Nerds or Programmers (In School)
#18> Cheerleader come over and ask about programming? Shot down. Invitation to a study group? Rejected. The most bitingly ironic comes when a person in a group of nerds gets an invitation to a party. If you’re one of the more social people in your scene, try it. Invite an anime person or a programmer - one of those people - out to an event. Chances are you’ll be declined. There’s every possibility you’ll be rejected impolitely.
I agree completely that nerds do this. I did this. But I never did it to be "elite", or to keep the other person "below" me. Instead, I always assumed that the cheerleader (or whomever it was) was playing a very nasty practical joke on me—that if I accepted, they'd laugh in my face and wander away, or worse, I'd show up at the party to find myself a scapegoat for some random act of civil unrest previously committed that night by the partygoers. And yes, I even made friends only with other nerds—but only because I could tell, by the fear they showed toward the other groups, that they were a prey, not a predator, species, and were thus unlikely to harm me if I associated with them.
(If you can't tell, I was bullied for my entire elementary school life before entering high-school; I imagine I would have had quite a different outlook otherwise. Thankfully, by grade 11 or so, the concept of "clique" had dissolved in my high-school, so I did get to discover what a mentally-healthy high-school experience was like.)
Re: Why People Don't Like Nerds or Programmers (In School)
#19"you need to be smart in order to be a part of the group" This is a wrong assumption, because there are people who are smart but are not (computer) nerds.
the argument "you need to be smart in order to be part of the group" is the not the same as "being smart means you are in the group".
On its own yes. But in the phrase used:
"Cheerleader come over and ask about programming? Shot down. Invitation to a study group? Rejected. The most bitingly ironic comes when a person in a group of nerds gets an invitation to a party. If you’re one of the more social people in your scene, try it. Invite an anime person or a programmer - one of those people - out to an event. Chances are you’ll be declined. There’s every possibility you’ll be rejected impolitely. The whole concept of the nerd clique is based on elitism: you need to be smart in order to be a part of the group."
I've read once about a cheerleader who became a rocket scientist.
The article is based on wrong assumptions. People don't reject you because you belong to a "smart" group but rather because "computer nerds" tend to lack social skills (at some point in their early life at least), that make seem akward. or themselves reject specific attitude/people who they don't feel combatible, so it's a human behaviour thing that you should expect that those you reject they will reject you.
Re: Why People Don't Like Nerds or Programmers (In School)
#20This is rambling and seems to be entirely empirically false. On top of it makes a vice out of "nerdiness" and a virtue of "coolness" ("uncool asshole") without any sort of argument to back it.