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Why Nerds are Unpopular

When we were in junior high school, my friendsmarter. John Nash so admired Norbert Wiener
Rich and I made a map of the school lunchthat he adopted his habit of touching the
tables according to popularity. This was easywall  as  he  walked  down  a  corridor.
to do, because kids only ate lunch with
others of about the same popularity. WeAs a thirteen-year-old kid, I didn\'t have
graded them from A to E. A tables were fullmuch more experience of the world than what I
of football players and cheerleaders and sosaw immediately around me. The warped little
on. E tables contained the kids with mildworld we lived in was, I thought, the world.
cases of Down\'s Syndrome, what in theThe world seemed cruel and boring, and I\'m
language  of  the time we called \"retards.\"not  sure  which  was  worse.
We sat at a D table, as low as you could getBecause I didn\'t fit into this world, I
without looking physically different. We werethought that something must be wrong with me.
not being especially candid to gradeI didn\'t realize that the reason we nerds
ourselves as D. It would have taken adidn\'t fit in was that in some ways we were
deliberate lie to say otherwise. Everyone ina step ahead. We were already thinking about
the school knew exactly how popular everyonethe kind of things that matter in the real
else  was,  including  us.world, instead of spending all our time
playing an exacting but mostly pointless game
My stock gradually rose during high school.like  the  others.
Puberty finally arrived; I became a decent
soccer player; I started a scandalousWe were a bit like an adult would be if he
underground newspaper. So I\'ve seen a goodwere thrust back into middle school. He
part  of  the  popularity  landscape.wouldn\'t know the right clothes to wear, the
right music to like, the right slang to use.
I know a lot of people who were nerds inHe\'d seem to the kids a complete alien. The
school, and they all tell the same story:thing is, he\'d know enough not to care what
there is a strong correlation between beingthey  thought.  We  had  no  such confidence.
smart and being a nerd, and an even stronger
inverse correlation between being a nerd andA lot of people seem to think it\'s good for
being popular. Being smart seems to make yousmart kids to be thrown together with
unpopular.\"normal\" kids at this stage of their lives.
Perhaps. But in at least some cases the
Why? To someone in school now, that may seemreason the nerds don\'t fit in really is that
an odd question to ask. The mere fact is soeveryone else is crazy. I remember sitting in
overwhelming that it may seem strange tothe audience at a \"pep rally\" at my high
imagine that it could be any other way. Butschool, watching as the cheerleaders threw an
it could. Being smart doesn\'t make you aneffigy of an opposing player into the
outcast in elementary school. Nor does itaudience to be torn to pieces. I felt like an
harm you in the real world. Nor, as far as Iexplorer witnessing some bizarre tribal
can tell, is the problem so bad in most otherritual.
countries. But in a typical American
secondary school, being smart is likely toIf I could go back and give my thirteen year
make  your  life  difficult.  Why?old self some advice, the main thing I\'d
tell him would be to stick his head up and
The key to this mystery is to rephrase thelook around. I didn\'t really grasp it at the
question slightly. Why don\'t smart kids maketime, but the whole world we lived in was as
themselves popular? If they\'re so smart, whyfake as a Twinkie. Not just school, but the
don\'t they figure out how popularity worksentire town. Why do people move to suburbia?
and beat the system, just as they do forTo have kids! So no wonder it seemed boring
standardized  tests?and sterile. The whole place was a giant
nursery, an artificial town created
One argument says that this would beexplicitly for the purpose of breeding
impossible, that the smart kids are unpopularchildren.
because the other kids envy them for being
smart, and nothing they could do could makeWhere I grew up, it felt as if there was
them popular. I wish. If the other kids innowhere to go, and nothing to do. This was no
junior high school envied me, they did aaccident. Suburbs are deliberately designed
great job of concealing it. And in any case,to exclude the outside world, because it
if being smart were really an enviablecontains things that could endanger children.
quality, the girls would have broken ranks.
The  guys  that  guys  envy,  girls  like.And as for the schools, they were just
holding pens within this fake world.
In the schools I went to, being smart justOfficially the purpose of schools is to teach
didn\'t matter much. Kids didn\'t admire itkids. In fact their primary purpose is to
or despise it. All other things being equal,keep kids locked up in one place for a big
they would have preferred to be on the smartchunk of the day so adults can get things
side of average rather than the dumb side,done. And I have no problem with this: in a
but intelligence counted far less than, say,specialized industrial society, it would be a
physical appearance, charisma, or athleticdisaster  to  have kids running around loose.
ability.
What bothers me is not that the kids are kept
So if intelligence in itself is not a factorin prisons, but that (a) they aren\'t told
in popularity, why are smart kids soabout it, and (b) the prisons are run mostly
consistently unpopular? The answer, I think,by the inmates. Kids are sent off to spend
is that they don\'t really want to besix years memorizing meaningless facts in a
popular.world ruled by a caste of giants who run
after an oblong brown ball, as if this were
If someone had told me that at the time, Ithe most natural thing in the world. And if
would have laughed at him. Being unpopular inthey balk at this surreal cocktail, they\'re
school makes kids miserable, some of them socalled  misfits.
miserable that they commit suicide. Telling
me that I didn\'t want to be popular wouldLife in this twisted world is stressful for
have seemed like telling someone dying ofthe kids. And not just for the nerds. Like
thirst in a desert that he didn\'t want aany  war, it\'s damaging even to the winners.
glass of water. Of course I wanted to be
popular.Adults can\'t avoid seeing that teenage kids
are tormented. So why don\'t they do
But in fact I didn\'t, not enough. There wassomething about it? Because they blame it on
something else I wanted more: to be smart.puberty. The reason kids are so unhappy,
Not simply to do well in school, though thatadults tell themselves, is that monstrous new
counted for something, but to designchemicals, hormones, are now coursing through
beautiful rockets, or to write well, or totheir bloodstream and messing up everything.
understand how to program computers. InThere\'s nothing wrong with the system; it\'s
general,  to  make  great  things.just inevitable that kids will be miserable
at  that  age.
At the time I never tried to separate my
wants and weigh them against one another. IfThis idea is so pervasive that even the kids
I had, I would have seen that being smart wasbelieve it, which probably doesn\'t help.
more important. If someone had offered me theSomeone who thinks his feet naturally hurt is
chance to be the most popular kid in school,not going to stop to consider the possibility
but only at the price of being of averagethat  he  is  wearing  the  wrong size shoes.
intelligence (humor me here), I wouldn\'t
have  taken  it.I\'m suspicious of this theory that
thirteen-year-old kids are intrinsically
Much as they suffer from their unpopularity,messed up. If it\'s physiological, it should
I don\'t think many nerds would. To them thebe universal. Are Mongol nomads all nihilists
thought of average intelligence isat thirteen? I\'ve read a lot of history, and
unbearable. But most kids would take thatI have not seen a single reference to this
deal. For half of them, it would be a stepsupposedly universal fact before the
up. Even for someone in the eightiethtwentieth century. Teenage apprentices in the
percentile (assuming, as everyone seemed toRenaissance seem to have been cheerful and
then, that intelligence is a scalar), whoeager. They got in fights and played tricks
wouldn\'t drop thirty points in exchange foron one another of course (Michelangelo had
being  loved  and  admired  by  everyone?his nose broken by a bully), but they
weren\'t  crazy.
And that, I think, is the root of the
problem. Nerds serve two masters. They wantAs far as I can tell, the concept of the
to be popular, certainly, but they want evenhormone-crazed teenager is coeval with
more to be smart. And popularity is notsuburbia. I don\'t think this is a
something you can do in your spare time, notcoincidence. I think teenagers are driven
in the fiercely competitive environment of ancrazy by the life they\'re made to lead.
American  secondary  school.Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance were
working dogs. Teenagers now are neurotic
Alberti, arguably the archetype of thelapdogs. Their craziness is the craziness of
Renaissance Man, writes that \"no art,the  idle  everywhere.
however minor, demands less than total
dedication if you want to excel in it.\" IWhen I was in school, suicide was a constant
wonder if anyone in the world works harder attopic among the smarter kids. No one I knew
anything than American school kids work atdid it, but several planned to, and some may
popularity. Navy SEALs and neurosurgeryhave tried. Mostly this was just a pose. Like
residents seem slackers by comparison. Theyother teenagers, we loved the dramatic, and
occasionally take vacations; some even havesuicide seemed very dramatic. But partly it
hobbies. An American teenager may work atwas because our lives were at times genuinely
being popular every waking hour, 365 days amiserable.
year.
Bullying was only part of the problem.
I don\'t mean to suggest they do thisAnother problem, and possibly an even worse
consciously. Some of them truly are littleone, was that we never had anything real to
Machiavellis, but what I really mean here iswork on. Humans like to work; in most of the
that teenagers are always on duty asworld, your work is your identity. And all
conformists.the work we did was pointless, or seemed so
at  the  time.
For example, teenage kids pay a great deal of
attention to clothes. They don\'t consciouslyAt best it was practice for real work we
dress to be popular. They dress to look good.might do far in the future, so far that we
But to who? To the other kids. Other kids\'didn\'t even know at the time what we were
opinions become their definition of right,practicing for. More often it was just an
not just for clothes, but for almostarbitrary series of hoops to jump through,
everything they do, right down to the waywords without content designed mainly for
they walk. And so every effort they make totestability. (The three main causes of the
do things \"right\" is also, consciously orCivil War were.... Test: List the three main
not,  an  effort  to  be  more  popular.causes  of  the  Civil  War.)
Nerds don\'t realize this. They don\'tAnd there was no way to opt out. The adults
realize that it takes work to be popular. Inhad agreed among themselves that this was to
general, people outside some very demandingbe the route to college. The only way to
field don\'t realize the extent to whichescape  this  empty life was to submit to it.
success depends on constant (though often
unconscious) effort. For example, most peopleTeenage kids used to have a more active role
seem to consider the ability to draw as somein society. In pre-industrial times, they
kind of innate quality, like being tall. Inwere all apprentices of one sort or another,
fact, most people who \"can draw\" likewhether in shops or on farms or even on
drawing, and have spent many hours doing it;warships. They weren\'t left to create their
that\'s why they\'re good at it. Likewise,own societies. They were junior members of
popular isn\'t just something you are or youadult  societies.
aren\'t,  but  something  you  make yourself.
Teenagers seem to have respected adults more
The main reason nerds are unpopular is thatthen, because the adults were the visible
they have other things to think about. Theirexperts in the skills they were trying to
attention is drawn to books or the naturallearn. Now most kids have little idea what
world, not fashions and parties. They\'retheir parents do in their distant offices,
like someone trying to play soccer whileand see no connection (indeed, there is
balancing a glass of water on his head. Otherprecious little) between schoolwork and the
players who can focus their whole attentionwork  they\'ll  do  as  adults.
on the game beat them effortlessly, and
wonder  why  they  seem  so  incapable.And if teenagers respected adults more,
adults also had more use for teenagers. After
Even if nerds cared as much as other kidsa couple years\' training, an apprentice
about popularity, being popular would be morecould be a real help. Even the newest
work for them. The popular kids learned to beapprentice could be made to carry messages or
popular, and to want to be popular, the samesweep  the  workshop.
way the nerds learned to be smart, and to
want to be smart: from their parents. WhileNow adults have no immediate use for
the nerds were being trained to get the rightteenagers. They would be in the way in an
answers, the popular kids were being trainedoffice. So they drop them off at school on
to  please.their way to work, much as they might drop
the dog off at a kennel if they were going
So far I\'ve been finessing the relationshipaway  for  the  weekend.
between smart and nerd, using them as if they
were interchangeable. In fact it\'s only theWhat happened? We\'re up against a hard one
context that makes them so. A nerd is someonehere. The cause of this problem is the same
who isn\'t socially adept enough. Butas the cause of so many present ills:
\"enough\" depends on where you are. In aspecialization. As jobs become more
typical American school, standards forspecialized, we have to train longer for
coolness are so high (or at least, sothem. Kids in pre-industrial times started
specific) that you don\'t have to beworking at about 14 at the latest; kids on
especially awkward to look awkward byfarms, where most people lived, began far
comparison.earlier. Now kids who go to college don\'t
start working full-time till 21 or 22. With
Few smart kids can spare the attention thatsome degrees, like MDs and PhDs, you may not
popularity requires. Unless they also happenfinish  your  training  till  30.
to be good-looking, natural athletes, or
siblings of popular kids, they\'ll tend toTeenagers now are useless, except as cheap
become nerds. And that\'s why smart people\'slabor in industries like fast food, which
lives are worst between, say, the ages ofevolved to exploit precisely this fact. In
eleven and seventeen. Life at that agealmost any other kind of work, they\'d be a
revolves far more around popularity thannet loss. But they\'re also too young to be
before  or  after.left unsupervised. Someone has to watch over
them, and the most efficient way to do this
Before that, kids\' lives are dominated byis to collect them together in one place.
their parents, not by other kids. Kids doThen  a  few  adults  can  watch all of them.
care what their peers think in elementary
school, but this isn\'t their whole life, asIf you stop there, what you\'re describing is
it  later  becomes.literally a prison, albeit a part-time one.
The problem is, many schools practically do
Around the age of eleven, though, kids seemstop there. The stated purpose of schools is
to start treating their family as a day job.to educate the kids. But there is no external
They create a new world among themselves, andpressure to do this well. And so most schools
standing in this world is what matters, notdo such a bad job of teaching that the kids
standing in their family. Indeed, being indon\'t really take it seriously-- not even
trouble in their family can win them pointsthe smart kids. Much of the time we were all,
in  the  world  they  care  about.students and teachers both, just going
through  the  motions.
The problem is, the world these kids create
for themselves is at first a very crude one.In my high school French class we were
If you leave a bunch of eleven-year-olds tosupposed to read Hugo\'s Les Miserables. I
their own devices, what you get is Lord ofdon\'t think any of us knew French well
the Flies. Like a lot of American kids, Ienough to make our way through this enormous
read this book in school. Presumably it wasbook. Like the rest of the class, I just
not a coincidence. Presumably someone wantedskimmed the Cliff\'s Notes. When we were
to point out to us that we were savages, andgiven a test on the book, I noticed that the
that we had made ourselves a cruel and stupidquestions sounded odd. They were full of long
world. This was too subtle for me. While thewords that our teacher wouldn\'t have used.
book seemed entirely believable, I didn\'tWhere had these questions come from? From the
get the additional message. I wish they hadCliff\'s Notes, it turned out. The teacher
just told us outright that we were savageswas using them too. We were all just
and  our  world  was  stupid.pretending.
Nerds would find their unpopularity moreThere are certainly great public school
bearable if it merely caused them to beteachers. The energy and imagination of my
ignored. Unfortunately, to be unpopular infourth grade teacher, Mr. Mihalko, made that
school  is  to  be  actively  persecuted.year something his students still talk about,
thirty years later. But teachers like him
Why? Once again, anyone currently in schoolwere individuals swimming upstream. They
might think this a strange question to ask.couldn\'t  fix  the  system.
How could things be any other way? But they
could be. Adults don\'t normally persecuteIn almost any group of people you\'ll find
nerds.  Why  do  teenage  kids  do  it?hierarchy. When groups of adults form in the
real world, it\'s generally for some common
Partly because teenagers are still halfpurpose, and the leaders end up being those
children, and many children are justwho are best at it. The problem with most
intrinsically cruel. Some torture nerds forschools is, they have no purpose. But
the same reason they pull the legs offhierarchy there must be. And so the kids make
spiders. Before you develop a conscience,one  out  of  nothing.
torture  is  amusing.
We have a phrase to describe what happens
Another reason kids persecute nerds is towhen rankings have to be created without any
make themselves feel better. When you treadmeaningful criteria. We say that the
water, you lift yourself up by pushing watersituation degenerates into a popularity
down. Likewise, in any social hierarchy,contest. And that\'s exactly what happens in
people unsure of their own position will trymost American schools. Instead of depending
to emphasize it by maltreating those theyon some real test, one\'s rank depends mostly
think rank below. I\'ve read that this is whyon one\'s ability to increase one\'s rank.
poor whites in the United States are theIt\'s like the court of Louis XIV. There is
group  most  hostile  to  blacks.no external opponent, so the kids become one
another\'s  opponents.
But I think the main reason other kids
persecute nerds is that it\'s part of theWhen there is some real external test of
mechanism of popularity. Popularity is onlyskill, it isn\'t painful to be at the bottom
partially about individual attractiveness.of the hierarchy. A rookie on a football team
It\'s much more about alliances. To becomedoesn\'t resent the skill of the veteran; he
more popular, you need to be constantly doinghopes to be like him one day and is happy to
things that bring you close to other popularhave the chance to learn from him. The
people, and nothing brings people closer thanveteran may in turn feel a sense of noblesse
a  common  enemy.oblige. And most importantly, their status
depends on how well they do against
Like a politician who wants to distractopponents, not on whether they can push the
voters from bad times at home, you can createother  down.
an enemy if there isn\'t a real one. By
singling out and persecuting a nerd, a groupCourt hierarchies are another thing entirely.
of kids from higher in the hierarchy createThis type of society debases anyone who
bonds between themselves. Attacking anenters it. There is neither admiration at the
outsider makes them all insiders. This is whybottom, nor noblesse oblige at the top. It\'s
the worst cases of bullying happen withkill  or  be  killed.
groups. Ask any nerd: you get much worse
treatment from a group of kids than from anyThis is the sort of society that gets created
individual  bully,  however  sadistic.in American secondary schools. And it happens
because these schools have no real purpose
If it\'s any consolation to the nerds, it\'sbeyond keeping the kids all in one place for
nothing personal. The group of kids who banda certain number of hours each day. What I
together to pick on you are doing the samedidn\'t realize at the time, and in fact
thing, and for the same reason, as a bunch ofdidn\'t realize till very recently, is that
guys who get together to go hunting. Theythe twin horrors of school life, the cruelty
don\'t actually hate you. They just needand  the  boredom,  both have the same cause.
something  to  chase.
The mediocrity of American public schools has
Because they\'re at the bottom of the scale,worse consequences than just making kids
nerds are a safe target for the entireunhappy for six years. It breeds a
school. If I remember correctly, the mostrebelliousness that actively drives kids away
popular kids don\'t persecute nerds; theyfrom the things they\'re supposed to be
don\'t need to stoop to such things. Most oflearning.
the persecution comes from kids lower down,
the  nervous  middle  classes.Like many nerds, probably, it was years after
high school before I could bring myself to
The trouble is, there are a lot of them. Theread anything we\'d been assigned then. And I
distribution of popularity is not a pyramid,lost more than books. I mistrusted words like
but tapers at the bottom like a pear. The\"character\" and \"integrity\" because they
least popular group is quite small. (Ihad been so debased by adults. As they were
believe we were the only D table in ourused then, these words all seemed to mean the
cafeteria map.) So there are more people whosame thing: obedience. The kids who got
want  to  pick on nerds than there are nerds.praised for these qualities tended to be at
best dull-witted prize bulls, and at worst
As well as gaining points by distancingfacile schmoozers. If that was what character
oneself from unpopular kids, one loses pointsand integrity were, I wanted no part of them.
by being close to them. A woman I know says
that in high school she liked nerds, but wasThe word I most misunderstood was \"tact.\"
afraid to be seen talking to them because theAs used by adults, it seemed to mean keeping
other girls would make fun of her.your mouth shut. I assumed it was derived
Unpopularity is a communicable disease; kidsfrom the same root as \"tacit\" and
too nice to pick on nerds will still\"taciturn,\" and that it literally meant
ostracize  them  in  self-defense.being quiet. I vowed that I would never be
tactful; they were never going to shut me up.
It\'s no wonder, then, that smart kids tendIn fact, it\'s derived from the same root as
to be unhappy in middle school and high\"tactile,\" and what it means is to have a
school. Their other interests leave themdeft touch. Tactful is the opposite of
little attention to spare for popularity, andclumsy. I don\'t think I learned this until
since popularity resembles a zero-sum game,college.
this in turn makes them targets for the whole
school. And the strange thing is, thisNerds aren\'t the only losers in the
nightmare scenario happens without anypopularity rat race. Nerds are unpopular
conscious malice, merely because of the shapebecause they\'re distracted. There are other
of  the  situation.kids who deliberately opt out because
they\'re so disgusted with the whole process.
For me the worst stretch was junior high,
when kid culture was new and harsh, and theTeenage kids, even rebels, don\'t like to be
specialization that would later graduallyalone, so when kids opt out of the system,
separate the smarter kids had barely begun.they tend to do it as a group. At the schools
Nearly everyone I\'ve talked to agrees: theI went to, the focus of rebellion was drug
nadir is somewhere between eleven anduse, specifically marijuana. The kids in this
fourteen.tribe wore black concert t-shirts and were
called  \"freaks.\"
In our school it was eighth grade, which was
ages twelve and thirteen for me. There was aFreaks and nerds were allies, and there was a
brief sensation that year when one of ourgood deal of overlap between them. Freaks
teachers overheard a group of girls waitingwere on the whole smarter than other kids,
for the school bus, and was so shocked thatthough never studying (or at least never
the next day she devoted the whole class toappearing to) was an important tribal value.
an eloquent plea not to be so cruel to oneI was more in the nerd camp, but I was
another.friends  with  a  lot  of  freaks.
It didn\'t have any noticeable effect. WhatThey used drugs, at least at first, for the
struck me at the time was that she wassocial bonds they created. It was something
surprised. You mean she doesn\'t know theto do together, and because the drugs were
kind of things they say to one another? Youillegal,  it was a shared badge of rebellion.
mean  this  isn\'t  normal?
I\'m not claiming that bad schools are the
It\'s important to realize that, no, thewhole reason kids get into trouble with
adults don\'t know what the kids are doing todrugs. After a while, drugs have their own
one another. They know, in the abstract, thatmomentum. No doubt some of the freaks
kids are monstrously cruel to one another,ultimately used drugs to escape from other
just as we know in the abstract that peopleproblems-- trouble at home, for example. But,
get tortured in poorer countries. But, likein my school at least, the reason most kids
us, they don\'t like to dwell on thisstarted using drugs was rebellion.
depressing fact, and they don\'t see evidenceFourteen-year-olds didn\'t start smoking pot
of specific abuses unless they go looking forbecause they\'d heard it would help them
it.forget their problems. They started because
they  wanted  to  join  a  different  tribe.
Public school teachers are in much the same
position as prison wardens. Wardens\' mainMisrule breeds rebellion; this is not a new
concern is to keep the prisoners on theidea. And yet the authorities still for the
premises. They also need to keep them fed,most part act as if drugs were themselves the
and as far as possible prevent them fromcause  of  the  problem.
killing one another. Beyond that, they want
to have as little to do with the prisoners asThe real problem is the emptiness of school
possible, so they leave them to createlife. We won\'t see solutions till adults
whatever social organization they want. Fromrealize that. The adults who may realize it
what I\'ve read, the society that thefirst are the ones who were themselves nerds
prisoners create is warped, savage, andin school. Do you want your kids to be as
pervasive, and it is no fun to be at theunhappy in eighth grade as you were? I
bottom  of  it.wouldn\'t. Well, then, is there anything we
can do to fix things? Almost certainly. There
In outline, it was the same at the schools Iis nothing inevitable about the current
went to. The most important thing was to staysystem.  It has come about mostly by default.
on the premises. While there, the authorities
fed you, prevented overt violence, and madeAdults, though, are busy. Showing up for
some effort to teach you something. Butschool plays is one thing. Taking on the
beyond that they didn\'t want to have tooeducational bureaucracy is another. Perhaps a
much to do with the kids. Like prisonfew will have the energy to try to change
wardens, the teachers mostly left us tothings. I suspect the hardest part is
ourselves. And, like prisoners, the culturerealizing  that  you  can.
we  created  was  barbaric.
Nerds still in school should not hold their
Why is the real world more hospitable tobreath. Maybe one day a heavily armed force
nerds? It might seem that the answer isof adults will show up in helicopters to
simply that it\'s populated by adults, whorescue you, but they probably won\'t be
are too mature to pick on one another. But Icoming this month. Any immediate improvement
don\'t think this is true. Adults in prisonin nerds\' lives is probably going to have to
certainly pick on one another. And so,come  from  the  nerds  themselves.
apparently, do society wives; in some parts
of Manhattan, life for women sounds like aMerely understanding the situation they\'re
continuation of high school, with all thein should make it less painful. Nerds aren\'t
same  petty  intrigues.losers. They\'re just playing a different
game, and a game much closer to the one
I think the important thing about the realplayed in the real world. Adults know this.
world is not that it\'s populated by adults,It\'s hard to find successful adults now who
but that it\'s very large, and the things youdon\'t claim to have been nerds in high
do have real effects. That\'s what school,school.
prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. The
inhabitants of all those worlds are trappedIt\'s important for nerds to realize, too,
in little bubbles where nothing they do canthat school is not life. School is a strange,
have more than a local effect. Naturallyartificial thing, half sterile and half
these societies degenerate into savagery.feral. It\'s all-encompassing, like life, but
They have no function for their form toit isn\'t the real thing. It\'s only
follow.temporary, and if you look, you can see
beyond  it  even  while  you\'re still in it.
When the things you do have real effects,
it\'s no longer enough just to be pleasing.If life seems awful to kids, it\'s neither
It starts to be important to get the rightbecause hormones are turning you all into
answers, and that\'s where nerds show tomonsters (as your parents believe), nor
advantage. Bill Gates will of course come tobecause life actually is awful (as you
mind. Though notoriously lacking in socialbelieve). It\'s because the adults, who no
skills, he gets the right answers, at leastlonger have any economic use for you, have
as  measured  in  revenue.abandoned you to spend years cooped up
together with nothing real to do. Any society
The other thing that\'s different about theof that type is awful to live in. You don\'t
real world is that it\'s much larger. In ahave to look any further to explain why
large enough pool, even the smallestteenage  kids  are  unhappy.
minorities can achieve a critical mass if
they clump together. Out in the real world,I\'ve said some harsh things in this essay,
nerds collect in certain places and formbut really the thesis is an optimistic one--
their own societies where intelligence is thethat several problems we take for granted are
most important thing. Sometimes the currentin fact not insoluble after all. Teenage kids
even starts to flow in the other direction:are not inherently unhappy monsters. That
sometimes, particularly in university mathshould be encouraging news to kids and adults
and science departments, nerds deliberatelyboth.
exaggerate their awkwardness in order to seem



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