Why nerds are Unpopular
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
It is the introductory essay from Paul Graham's book Hackers and Painters, a collection of essays that he's written and posted on his site.
I just read it after following a link in a Fark thread on schools. Fascinating stuff, especially considering how he accurately describes and puts to words things that have been bothering me since, well, middle school. While granted I think there were points in my school life where I fluxed between being a full blown nerd and one of the more middle range students on the social structure, I'd have to say that somehow by the end of it all I ended up being able to brute force my way through a certain segment of the social strata. I will never dilude myself, I was never popular, never accepted, but at least I found a place where in the midst of that insanity we call school, where I was content. I think the single most memorable thing about the way our social structure turned out was that, at the time, the group I associated with (and to some degree still associate with) became not popular, but at least netural between the separate factions of the extremely polar school. We were like Switzerland in the midst of a proverbial World War. We both had a voice and could instigate the push behind it, the irony though was that by that point none of us cared.
-J-
It is the introductory essay from Paul Graham's book Hackers and Painters, a collection of essays that he's written and posted on his site.
I just read it after following a link in a Fark thread on schools. Fascinating stuff, especially considering how he accurately describes and puts to words things that have been bothering me since, well, middle school. While granted I think there were points in my school life where I fluxed between being a full blown nerd and one of the more middle range students on the social structure, I'd have to say that somehow by the end of it all I ended up being able to brute force my way through a certain segment of the social strata. I will never dilude myself, I was never popular, never accepted, but at least I found a place where in the midst of that insanity we call school, where I was content. I think the single most memorable thing about the way our social structure turned out was that, at the time, the group I associated with (and to some degree still associate with) became not popular, but at least netural between the separate factions of the extremely polar school. We were like Switzerland in the midst of a proverbial World War. We both had a voice and could instigate the push behind it, the irony though was that by that point none of us cared.
-J-