http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

thoughtful article on middle school/high school social hierarchies

I posted this when I had only read the first third of it. “Thoughtful” is only the beginning. This thing is sublime.

I think I went to an interesting high school in this regard – fellow Wayzata alumni can chime in on this but I recall there being plenty of intelligent people who were in the “popular” crowd, and plenty of absolutely moronic people who were fairly “unpopular”.

I’ve always kind of attributed that to it being a relatively wealthy district where success didn’t just mean being on the football team, and to the sheer size of the school. I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but I’d be interested to hear thoughts from Andy and Art (and any other Wayzata folks who may lurk through) on this.

(it should perhaps be noted that I, also, have not yet finished reading the whole thing).

Post updated by Adam on 2008/07/19 12:13

Just read it (in its entirety). My thoughts:

1) I’m not sure I buy the argument that nerds are unpopular because they don’t work at it as hard as other kids. He’s saying that because you studied math or read science fiction in your spare time, you had less time to focus on being popular and fitting in. I think that anyone with an activity in high school has limited time. Whether it’s basketball, drama, math club, or student council, you’re all busy. Hell, I had tons of free time in high school (even outside of my SF reading), I didn’t spend it studying anything, and I still wasn’t cool. On that note, I was probably more towards the freak side of the spectrum with a heavy dose of nerd, but still.

2) I also don’t necessarily believe that intelligence correlates inversely with popularity. I knew a lot of kids who were popular AND smart in high school. I don’t think that being smart makes you a nerd… nerds aren’t just smart, but instead nerds are those for whom being smart is their identity. You can play football and still pull a 1500 on your SATs.

3) The points he makes about school being largely a meaningless holding pen are dead on.

Double post. Stupid box.

Post updated by cameron on 2008/07/19 18:01

Hmm.

Do you think that the essay is somewhat dated?

I think it’s somewhat biased, not dated. I mean, it was written by a self-proclaimed D-table kid. Sure, he might have floated up and down through the table ranks, as he saw them, but if you start as a D-table kid I think you always kind of carry that with you. He was clearly a hardcore nerd, and I think that his argument sounds a lot like he was trying to justify his place in the social hierarchy (as he saw it).

That’s another thing. He and his buddy ranked the tables by popularity, but I think that the high school social landscape is far more complex than he makes it out to be. His rankings were what they were, but they were totally subjective. He didn’t stop to consider how the random girl sitting at one of the “B tables” might rank the popularity of the tables in the room. The question isn’t one of, “How popular are those kids over there?”, but rather, “Who are those kids popular with?”, right?

I don’t believe that the jocks are unanimously popular with everyone just by virtue of their chosen activity. With people who like sports and their friends? Okay. Sure. With some of the girls? Yeah. I mean, to be a football player, you have to be in great shape. Girls are only human too, and you certainly weren’t chasing after any fatties in high school (I’d guess).

But the band kids are cool with the band kids, and the goths are cool with the goths. It’s all about number distributions, IMO. If your school is overwhelmingly jock-y and wannabe jock-y, then yeah. You’re gonna suffer if you identify yourself as a nerd. The people who are going to be the least picked on are the ones who are going to be able to cross-pollinate the most and get the most people to like them, so as to not be viewed as unpopular. In other words, the kids with the social skills to make friends in multiple groups (which people who identify themselves as nerds tend not to have).

I’d actually argue that there are a few factors that can contribute towards popularity:

1) Physical Attractiveness: When you’ve got it, you’ve got, and people want to like you. Doesn’t really matter how you identify yourself.

2) Intelligence: Seriously. I think that if you’re smarter, most people tend to like you better. This is true, however, only if you can be humble about it.

3) Personal Magnetism: People who genuinely listen to other people, communicate well, smile a lot, and are supportive of others tend to be liked.

I think most people can swing a pretty high score in at least one of those three (people the essayist would identify as C, low B), and the popular people usually carry two (solid Bs). The really popular people (those who are liked and respected by the MOST people) will generally be those who have a smattering of all three attributes (the A’s) unless your school is heavily predisposed towards a certain kind of activity (football in rural Texas, for example), in which case your participation in that activity would push the normal A’s to B’s and elevate people who would normally be B’s or even C’s to A’s artificially. I might also be persuaded that physical attractiveness is more heavily weighted than the other two.

If you consider that “nerds” are generally 1) unattractive, 2) unusually smart, but not humble, and 3) not great communicators, it’s not too hard to figure out why they’re not popular.

I think you’re more right than he is, especially in high school, but IIRC middle school was pretty much a shit hole.

Yes?

The idea I had with the previous post is that social savagery may have been more intense in the decades previous to the ones during which we attended school and that consequently we had an easier time of it.

^^ I was just going to say that I feel like middle school is a little different than high school.

Good old FLake HS was too huge for anybody to care. And pretty much everyone was really uninvolved and all of our sports sucked yada yada. While there definitely were clearly defined popular kids (who weren’t dumb, but who sure weren’t as smart as the smartest of us) nobody really gave a shit about them, except for their closest friends and wannabes. I was sure in a few too many AP classes (and speech team!) to be super cool, but it’s not like popular kids were dicks to any of us. Everybody coexisted pretty well while keeping to their own circles. At least that’s how I remember it.

So I think he might be a little biased. Not every h igh school is a stereotype. Middle school, however, seemed especially cruel.

Interesting to note, also, that there may well be a significant difference in age between those of us on antibox and the guy who wrote this article. Perhaps it’s a generational thing?