"Why Nerds are Unpopular": Interesting Article

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Something has been bothering me about this issue.

Just what, exactly, are these “social skills” that nerds seem to lack?

msmith357 mentioned “abrasive personalities”, but in my own experience, nerds by and large are generally friendly, respectful of others, and otherwise easy to get along with. The people in the “in crowd” on the other hand, seem engage in behaviors that are downright reprehensible. Picking on, making fun of, even outright physical assaults of people who are perceived as “different” seem to be OK things to do among their peers. I’m also finding that, at least in workplaces (and in a college level class) where the average age is on the low side of thirty-five, this kind of thing seems to carry over. Often it is someone who, if the work place were a high school, would have been the class bully (and I have experienced overt bullying behavior in the workplace) seems to be favored by managers (at least the forty-five and under ones), and even end up with the promotions. Even if they aren’t favored, their behavior seems to draw a “look the other way” attitude from higher ups.

A slightly offbeat sense of humor can draw severe castigation, but behavior that is outright offensive to coworkers and customers alike seems to be tolerated or even rewarded, providing the person doing it is part of the “socially skilled” group.

I’ve not seen this problem in workplaces where there was a lot of ethnic diversity, or where most of the lower-to-mid level managers were starting to get into the “senior citizen” category.

From where I’m standing, it doesn’t seem so much that nerds lack social grace so much as the larger more popular group has developed an idea of how a person should look, dress, and behave that have nothing to do with whether you’re clean and neat or with how you treat other people, and the nerds don’t march in lockstep with that idea.

If “following along with the crowd” or “being/acting like the others” is the definition of social skills, well, I’ll do without them, thanks.

I’d rather wear clothing that I feel comfortable in and looks good on me, use proper English, and treat people with respect and kindness.

42

I didn’t go to a really stratified high school, but the people I’ve known (both in high school and after) who were unpopular (although not necessarily smart) are those who lack the ability to read other people’s cues- they don’t pick up the hint that they’ve been talking about their favorite subject way past the point where anyone else is interested , they don’t understand that I’m trying to end the conversation and end up following me almost into the bathroom stall,and they have no concept of personal space move forward when someone backs up to increase the space. Three coworkers I’ve had come to mind as I write this , and I realize those three have something else in common- all three give off an air of believing that they are smarter and know more than anyone they are talking to. One guy is constantly saying " I’ve forgotten more about X than you’ll ever know, and another’s favorite line was “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again” as if he were the final authority on everything. Gee, I wonder why nobody wants to sit with them at lunch time.

The lack of social skills don’t justify physical assaults or picking on nerds at all. But there really are two different issues- people getting assaulted or picked on is one thing, and people being more or less ignored and not having many friends is another. They don’t always go together.

43

The ability to strike up a conversation with strangers, in my particular case. I’ve become much better at meeting new people since high school. Instead of waiting for folks to start talking to me at a party, I begin a conversation with them. What msmith537 wrote bears repeating:

Related to this, the ability to make small talk. It can be inane, but it greases the axles of social interaction.

Projecting confidence. Too much of this can come across as arrogance, but too little makes you seem mousy and insecure.

Also, I think a lot of “nerds” make the assumption (I know I did) that someone who dresses fashionably and follows popular culture must be shallow. An untrue and unhelpful assumption, to say the least.

44

That’s because are looking at them as an adult viewing a bunch of children. Middle schoolers have their own reality to deal with. They don’t view themselves as dependent children. They are starting to become independent and have their own friends, interests and lives away from their parents. Except for the nerds, that is. As a teenager, you should be starting to become independent, even if it means defying your parents.

Most people don’t want to “put out for just anyone” regardless of how they look. Ugly people aren’t attracted to other ugly people. That’s why “cool” people are cool. They have an easier time meeting the opposite sex. They have more of a selection. Would your self esteam be higher if you could hook up regularly with people you were attracted to or if you had to settle for the dregs?

Also, girls often develop problems because they misinterpret boys desire for a piece of ass with genuine affection. Sex has more of an emotional attachment for women. They want the boys to like them so they put out, the boys only like them because they put out, the girls feel bad so they put out more so the boys will like them, etc…

An ability to converse casually. An ability to strike up conversations with strangers. An awareness of when they are acting retarded. A lack of insight into what would make them more likeable. A desire to set themselves apart from the mainstream.

Some people are “nerds” because they are timid, quiet and shy. Some people are “nerds” because they are abraisive and annoying. Neither trait is particularly positive.

I consider myself relatively polite and respectful. I also have a low tolerance of people taking advantage of me, disrespecting me or embarassing me with their behavior.

One day our secretary was telling me how she had to put up with a manager who would toss wads of paper over her head into her trash barrel, hitting her with his airballs. It occured to me that I would more likely be the one throwing paper wads than I would be the one getting pelted by them. Probably a big reason why I make the big money (relatively speaking) and she files my paperwork (when she gets off her fat stupid ass).

Nerds tend to be more judgemental of other people than the “popular” kids. It’s a defense mechanism that allows them to give themselves an excuse for people not liking them.

Some things a person can’t help like looks or natural athletic ability. Some things a person can - like not acting like a smug jerkoff.
As a general rule of thumb:
Smart is better than stupid
Attractive is better than ugly
Outgoing is better than shyness
Boldness is better than timidness
Assertivness is better than passivity
Inclusion is better than exclusion.
Fitness is better than sloth
Wealth is better than poverty
Success is better than failure

This will help you when trying to figure out what is “cool”.

45

Either the above is a response that completely ignores what I actually said (which was that middle school children are better off not having sex because they are too young), or you are attempting to suggest that the only way for a young person to become independant is to start having sex. If the latter, well…dude, that’s twisted.

And when it comes to nerds, most do a pretty good job of developing interests and friends apart from their parents. Most parents would never sit down for a nice game of AD&D with Junior, and most would much prefer that their children be popular and have “normal” friends and interests rather than be big ol’ geeks. Nerds are frequently asserting their independence just by being nerds.

I knew people in school who persisted in their geeky interests even though their parents really wanted them to become football players or prom queens. Some parents even believed that their children’s hobbies were putting them on a path straight to hell! One friend of mine returned home after being away for the summer and discovered that Mom and Dad had ransacked her room and burned her “evil” collection of roleplaying games and comic books. Even in college I knew a young woman who had to carefully “parentproof” her laptop before returning home for the holidays, lest they discover that she was defying them with practically every click of her mouse! This may not be the “cool”, James Dean-esque kind of parental defiance, but it is rebellion, and it’s not as superficial as just getting a nose ring or something.

46

So, according to msmith357 it is ok to throw wads of paper at the secretary if the secretary is overweight.

OK, now explain this. Up into the sixth grade, I was fairly popular both in school and around the neighborhood, because I did actually have that combination of brains and good looks. Then my parents moved us into a more rural area and… talk about culture shock… It took about a month for me to become the most unpopular person in school. I was picked on by kids I didn’t even know. A particular group of girls pounced on me early on and basically told me how to walk, dress, talk, and act if I wanted to be popular in my new school, created a fictitious “club” with “initiation rituals” I needed to perform, then went around and told the rest of the school that I had kissed the chalkboard, among other strange things (of course not bothering to mention that they had put me up to it in the first place). Junior high was just as bad, because these girls (along with others from the grade school) told the tale of my social undesirability to the student body at large, so I never really had a shot at making friends.

When I was pulled from the school to a fund’ist Baptist school, my lot improved. I wasn’t exactly popular, but I wasn’t ostracized either. Seemed like a lot of the students were in a state of quiet rebellion against the "no rock music, movies, or dancing) restrictions that created a bond among us that made the group less exclusionary because in the “us against them” game, “them” was the restrictive administration of the school. I formed a circle of friends that was peripherally attached to the popular group, and I was accepted with no qualms.

Back to public high school, where I immediately found myself in homeroom with a girl from middle school who had managed to claw her way up about as high on the social hierarchy as a girl could get without actually being on the cheerleading squad and… instant pariah, just add rumors. I was ostracized just because a girl who was considered “cool” by her peers had declared me socially undesirable.

Junior year of high school we moved again, and I found myself in a larger, more urban, less socially stratified hight school. I had basically given up. My looks went to hell because I hadn’t learned to like my naturally wavy hair, a situation made worse by the fact that my hairdresser father refused to let me grow it long (which would have been much more attractive), so when it would reach a certain length, I would develop “horns”. So, I would plaster it down with gel, which looked even worse, but I really don’t think at that time it was an apperance issue for me so much as a control issue. But even then I wasn’t ostracized. By the second semester, I had formed a circle of friends (mixture of nerds, and freaks), then, having found a measure of acceptance among my peers, I learned to accept my hair. At that point, I think I had acheived a measure of popularity. The nerds and freaks thought I was cool, everyone else just thought I was weird, but since I had escaped from the “different is bad” mentality of the smaller high school, being weird was OK. Also, since nerds and freaks weren’t looked down on, we didn’t have that defensive mentality that regarded the more, uh, popular(?) kids as shallow. The various groups didn’t segregate ourselves the way they do at a lot of other schools. We just sort of gravitated into the groups of people we felt comfortable with but nobody deliberately avoided contact with anyone else, or picked on anyone else because they were lower on the social heirarchy.

There was actually one (very small) group that I did have problems with. There was a clique of a half-dozen poseur girls- they would show up for school in Iron Maiden concert shirts because they were into this rebellious chic mode. I attempted to strike up conversations with these girls and was soundly rebuffed. They made fun of the way I talked ('who taught you to say" insert phrase containing words of more than one syllable?), threw M&M’s at me in study hall, and generally annoyed me. I learned to ignore them fairly quickly.

If you weed out the people who are truly obnoxious, I think unpopularity is more a function of the culture of the school or workplace you are in. There is difference between choosing not to hang out with someone because they are rude and deliberately ostracizing someone because their interests and personalities are different from what is considered normal.

What really bothers me the most about this issue is that it seems that in schools and workplaces where this neverending popularity contest is in play is that being outright mean or cruel to other people does not seem to lower anyone’s social standing. Being verbally abusive to the new guy/girl at work is ok. Even unprovoked physical assaults are OK in high school.

I have deveoped a theory about why these high school-type social heirarchies seem to be carrying over into the workplace, where they seem not to in the past.

In earlier generations, usually there was a stay at home mom, so for at least part of the day, kids had to learn to interact with adults, and learn their ideas of acceptable behavior from adults. Also, the teachers had grown up in a world where they were surrounded by adults, which had a tempering effect. The kids could make each other miserable at school, but they knew on some level that this kind of behavior wouldn’t fly in the adult world. With succeeding generations, kids are being taught by teachers who grew up in the student-formed social heirarchies as the older teachers die off or retire, which means that there is less tempering influence by adults who have learned to act like adults and to some extent model adult behavior, so the high-school clique has become the social norm, where in earlier centuries or even decades, it would be expected that as people entered the adult world they would have to learn to work with dfferent kinds of people and pesonalities. So, yeah, Joe may be a bit odd, but he’s a nice guy, and a hard worker.

Now it doesn’t matter that Joe is a nice guy and a hard worker. Joe is a bit odd, and the high-school clique mentality is still intact on the job, so if the lower-level workers don’t make Joe’s life so miserable that he quits, they’ll fnd a way to convince the boss, who may be nothing more than an an overgrown high-school student herself, that Joe ought to be fired.

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burundi and msmith537 both gave some good examples. The ability to know when you’re annoying someone is a big help. Some people don’t have the ability to turn the smugness factor down, others just don’t know how to cool it - some nerds come off as way too excited just to be having a conversation with someone. A little confidence doesn’t hurt. A lot of people I went to high school with probably think I’m much more timid than I am. Around some types of people and in certain situations I stumble much more, so those people get the impression that I’m nervous and mumble a lot - as opposed to the rest of the time; when I’m around friends or people I’m comfortable with, I never stop joking and I’m very forthright with my opinions.

48

You seem to be missing the point of what I am trying to get across here. I’m not talking about the general populace avoiding people who don’t seem to pick up on the nonverbal cues that their behavior is annoying (classic symptoms of Aspberger’s Syndrome, but that’s several other threads.) I’m not talking about people having a hard time making friends because they are shy or somewhat lacking in confidence. I’m definitely not talking about people who are smug- from what I’ve seen, the smug seem to find themselves a higher place in the social heirarchy due to a willingness to put others down.

I’m talking about groups of people actively ostracizing and even abusing others simply because their interests, mode of dress, and general personalities don’t fit in with some kind of social norm. People who are capable of having a converstaion on a reasonably wide range of topics, who if not particularly out going, are at least fairly friendly toward others, who treat others with respect (and that includes respecting someone’s personal space) and try to be helpful whenever possible. People who, in a different type of setting have little diffculty forming social bonds and friendships.

I’m also talking about the fact that it seems to be acceptible behavior inside the more “desirable” social circles to engage in cruel and outright abusive behaviors toward people who are outside that circle, for no reason than because the person is not part of that particular social circle. The fact that it seems to be OK to use verbal abuse and bullying to try to force a coworker to quit their job if they don’t seem to fit into a particular mold, and, failing that, use rumors, gossip, and false accusations to make it appear to the people with hiring/firing power that this person is an undesirable person to have in the workplace.

The high-school social mentality is slowly but surely seeping into the adult world of work. This means that people can potentially be deprived of their means of making a living because they don’t “fit in” at the workplace according to some junior high-school definition of “normal” that their coworkers and, increasingly, managers never outgrew.

49

No, I think you might be missing the point. From your perspective, you see a bunch of kids. You know that they shouldn’t be having sex at a young age and probably shouldn’t be drinking and smoking either. Kids don’t see that. All they see is that kids who are well liked seem to be doing stuf like having sex, going to parties, drinking and smoking and doing other stuff while they are basically doing nothing but studying after school and are ignored by their peers.

First of all, I don’t consider “nerd” to mean everyone who’s not in the top 1% popularity bracket. I consider nerds to be social outcasts incapable of socializing with anyone other than other social outcasts.

What? You think that this is a new phenomenon? The only diference between the high school world and the adult world is that the participants are older, fatter and balder.

Perhaps because we are mostly a service economy now, there’s less tangible performance metrics so managers are increasingly forced evaluate based on “soft” attributes like “leadership”, “enthusiasm” and whatever. I’ll bet you anything that the worst worker bailing cotton at the cotton mill 100 years ago was ridiculed pretty harshly.

It’s not appropriate workplace behavior. However, since she is overly opinionated, lazy and gives attitude whenever I ask her to perform a job-related task, I have little sympathy for her.
Girl nerds are very different from guy nerds.
Girls seem to value prettiness and fashion sense in their companions. A girls who falls below the threshhold of what is considered acceptible levels of grooming is ridiculed and threatened with oastracism from the group.

Guys on the other hand, form more easygoing friendships.

At my college, sorority rush consisted of 8 days of basically parading in front of the sororities in a variety of outfits. Fraternity rush by comparison lasts almost the entire semester and invovles weeks of hanging out with freshmen guys in order to figure out who we would actually want to live with.

50

In middle school? I never attended, knew anyone who attended, or even ever heard of a middle school where “the popular kids” were all having sex, smoking, and drinking. This is behavior engaged in mostly by troubled kids…including more than a few who are considered to be social outcasts.

Well, you’re using a stricter definition than either kids themselves or the author of the article then. You’re also using a definition that applies to a very small group of people. Very few outcasts are actually incapable of socializing with anyone aside from other outcasts, they just aren’t allowed to. That’s what makes them outcasts. After a few years of ostracism they may genuinely no longer know how to socialize with “normal” people of their own age (how can they know what interests their peers or what behavior is acceptable if no one will have anything to do with them?), but this is hardly their fault. And even if they really can’t socialize with anyone except other outcasts, I don’t see the difference between this and football players who can’t socialize with anyone but other football players and cheerleaders. At least they’re socializing with someone.

It wasn’t until college that I met any “nerds” who were truly incapable of normal social behavior – two or three people who were clearly suffering from severe psychological problems (one almost certainly had Asperger’s Syndrome, another was either a pathological liar or schizophrenic). They were tolerated, largely out of pity, by the campus “geek squad”, but they weren’t really socializing even then. They just couldn’t do it. I suppose it’s possible that some kind of therapy or medication might have helped them, but I suspect that they were already in treatment.

I can understand not wanting to be friends with people like this – their company was not in any way enjoyable. I had to speak harshly to one on two different occasions because her behavior was actually interfering with my work. But what I don’t understand is acting as though such “nerds” became this way through choice or that they deserve contempt and abuse because of it. No one asks to be mentally ill.

51

One thing that guarantees you won’t be looked on favorably is being an insufferable know-it-all. It doesn’t matter whether you are right or wrong, although having an arrogant, know-it-all personality dramatically increases your chances of saying something stupid. The type of person who sees every question as an opportunity to demonstrate his superior intellect and general importance, instead of simply a request for information, is not the kind of person most people want to have over for dinner.

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[aside]Since I attended a 4000 student high school, the Prom Queen and the people voted Most Popular in the yearbook were total :confused: to me and all my friends. :slight_smile: [/aside]

However, from reading the other people’s posts, reflecting on school, and dealing with people in my career I believe it the popularity of a person is directly related to how much that person benefits the people around him or her. It becomes no surprise that an average or below-looking person can become popular if s/he’s rich, is friendly and engaging, throws parties, can get drugs/sexy bodies/test answers for you, has a nice car … etc.

On the other end of the scale, the ‘nerds’ are people who actually have a negative effect on everyone by being obnoxious. (True, it is also the case that a shy, timid person will often by nature be obnoxious to a bully, and he will usually pick on the quiet person… but often in the presence of his friends, thereby increasing his popularity by having entertainment value to the people around him. :mad: ) I think it’s putting too kindly to say that nerds only “lack social graces”. I say they are usually resentful and cowardly, act superior, and don’t realize that they are making everyone nauseous with their body odor. I don’t think that booksmarts have much correlation to nerdyness, other than that nerds will probably have more time alone to do their homework. :smiley:

FWIW, as proof of my nerd expertise I had the position of “smart kid” in school growing up, I have a BS in Computer Science, I play miniature wargaming, love anime, and post to Internet message boards. :slight_smile: Whenever someone tries to mock my more geeky hobbies, I’ve learned to bravely fight the good fight and love even those people. Don’t LET them bully you, and honestly stop caring about what others think if what you are doing is right!

-k

53

Let me just add that nerds grow up to be adult nerds and they are just as annoying. My office is 100% nerds. 25 year old, buck-tooth, dork glasses wearing, cheesy joke telling, obnoxious laugh, sexually imature, lame-o workaholic nerds. A couple of them come back from a business trip to Amsterdamn and they think they are all “crazy” because they drank a little too much. Come back with stories about smoking hash all week and banging prostitutes, then maybe I’ll consider you “wacky” and “zany”.

Office happy hours are incredibly painful. Aside for having to be in a group that I am embarassed to be with socially, they are so incredibly boring. While iritatingly chatty in the office, they just clam up in public as if they are afraid of the other patrons in the bar.

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I don’t think anyone’s saying that you should have to like and/or hang around nerds or other social outcasts or whatever. The problem is that in many middle schools and high schools, it is not merely ostracization, but abuse. As in bullying, slander, and ridicule. I was definitely in the lower half of the popularity bracket in high school, but at least the place was sane enough that the outcasts were just left alone, not bullied. That’s all I would ask of the popular crowd; leave the nerds et al alone. Bullies really disgust me; I knew a weird-looking nerdy kid from another high school who went through absolute hell because he had been adopted as a pet target for one of cliques there. I can understand why some would stoop to violent revenge via a school shooting or whatever. If the entire world they know is school, and if school is hell, well, they may as well impose a little bit of hell on their tormentors, no?

(not that I agree with vengeful nerd shootings, but that it makes some amount of sense given a limited perspective on life at that age)

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msmith537
Right on target.

A couple of weeks ago my office had a get-together evening at the local bar. One of the most nerdish guys made complete fool of himself by spilling his beer on an attractive woman. The woman’s boy friend didn’t seem very amused by this and was about to stomp my co-worker, when I intervened. To my big surprise the nerd choused to run away as soon as I stepped in.
One thing I can’t stand is cowards. This, I think, is another factor why some people are not accepted. People need to be able to trust each other in times of trouble and difficulties. You don’t want to surround yourself with cowards that constantly need to be saved and wont return the favor when it is you that needs backup.

56

This sums up the whole reason why nerds are unpopular in one sentence. Their elitist attitude.

My ex-best friend is a huge nerd, and he exemplifies this perfectly. He once told me, “Remember, [Popular Kid] will be pumping our gas someday.” They hold this attitude that someday, they’re all going to be rich and successful, while the popular kids will be crackheads.

Holding dissenting opinions also will make you unpopular in high school.

57

Amen brother. My fraternity house (due to a well meaning but incompetant rush chairman) was about 50/50% “normals” and “nerds”. Unfortunately even most of the normals tended to be on the average to small side (we had a lot of really big seniors graduate the previous year). Whenever there was trouble (townies, rival fraternities) the dorkus malorki would sort of fade into the woodwork. They would keep the house locked up like a fortress. Basically, just projecting weakness.

They would also be the ones wearing the biggest letter shirts and acting the most annoying in public.

58
  1. Happy hours are painful.
  2. You’re embarassed by your group.
  3. And they’re boring.

And you go with this group because…?

59

Office politics mostly. I consider it part of my job to at least give an appearance of socializing with my coworkers. Kind of like going to the company picnic at your bosses house.

Part of work is socializing with coworkers or clients who you wouldn’t hang out with socially. I remeber at my last company, we used to work with these guys from another consulting practice within the company. They would always come over to us at social events with the same stupid “oh…I don’t know if we are supposed to be hanging out with you guys…haw haw haw” joke. If they were just an analyst, I would usually tell them “I didn’t ask you to come over here in the first place”.

Nerds are as bad as meatheads. The only diference is that they try to bully intellectually instead of physically. As with any bully, there is just something satisfying about kicking the crap out of them, especially at their own game.