Why Nerds Are Unpopular (2003)

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.

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.

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.

true but some of that is a reaction to how they were treated when they were younger. My cousin once remarked to me, that when I was younger I used my sense of humor as a way to reject people before they could reject me. Sounds like a self defeating behavior that arose randomly. Then I lost 130 pounds and discovered some people are treated better on the average and far less often rejected.

I suspect a lot of unpopular kids internalized the lessons of their unpopularity, became bitter, and began to engage in behaviors which made them more so and rationalized it for them. On some level it changed to a choice they had made.

+1 to this.

Those first few days after mandatory education was over were a really weird and surreal moment for me @ 18 years old.

Schooling is this period of your life where the routine of going to school, homework, school holidays etc are pretty much the only thing you know, but then suddenly it slams into the buffers and it becomes irrevocably over.

In the UK system you usually spend 7 years with the same cohort of kids up to 18. It felt to me like a lot of social "baggage" gradually accrued over time - you built up this persona/reputation/expectation that defined what sort of person you were, how you acted, what sort of friends you kept, what you liked to do etc. It seemed to me that you unconsciously lived-up to this view that others had about you - people thought you were a smart kid/popular kid/sporty kid/nerdy kid, and so you acted like one.

Once school was over though those expectations from the others about who you were and how you acted just evaporated and you were free. Kids would be well-served to be reminded about this! Everything changes after school.