Why Nerds are Unpopular

Paul Graham wrote an article on this topic from an American viewpoint and I think the situations is similar in Australia but not yet so intense as in USA.
Point 1: Everyone in the school knows exactly how popular everyone else is. 2. Being smart seems to make you unpopular and your life difficult. 3. So, he asks,”Why don’t smart kids make themselves popular?” After all, they are smart enough to work out how to beat the system” 4. The asnwer he thinks is they don’t want to be popular enough. 5. Being popular takes a lot of time from other interests. It affects how you live and move and dress, how they exude charisma, and listen to music, attend films, watch videos, play sport, and use the internet etc etc. It takes a lot of time and basically the nerds want to be smart more than to be popular. Yes, they would like to be popular, but not enough to let their smartness run down. It is not a conscious decision at the school stage so they still feel bad about not being popular but they want more to make a difference, to counter wrongs, to design beauty, to write well, to understand people better, to program computers, to wonder and experiment and to read deeply and widely. Being smart enough to do all those things is more important than temporary popularity.

As I see it they are more mature at the same age and they are able to see the big picture and take long term stances and plan long term actions. Given that the average nerd learns at 140% the rate of an average person, by their teens they are years ahead in their thinking. Judging them against others their own age does not make sense. In Australia it is quite similar to this. One of our daughters, a tall girl, was celebrating her 11th birthday. My tennis partner said, “How old is she today?” I said,’She’s 11.” My partner said “Thank goodness. I always thought she was bit on the slow side as I imagined she was about 16.” And this about a girl whose Geography teacher said when she was actually 16, “She is the most gifted student I have ever taught.” She had been underestimated due to her choices and her height. I am always amazed at how much nerds know when given the chance to show it in a non-threatening environment.