Paul Graham wrote today’s most-linked-to article: Why Nerds Are Unpopular. He also responded to some comments.
Alberti, arguably the archetype of the Renaissance Man, writes that “no art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it.” I wonder if there is anyone in the world who works harder at anything than American school kids work at popularity. Navy SEALs and neurosurgery residents seem slackers by comparison. They occasionally take vacations; some even have hobbies. An American teenager may work at being popular every waking hour, 365 days a year.
…Nerds don’t realize this. They don’t realize that it takes work to be popular. In general, people outside some very demanding field don’t realize the extent to which success depends on constant (though often unconscious) effort. For example, most people seem to consider the ability to draw as some kind of innate quality, like being tall. In fact, most people who “can draw” like drawing, and have spent many hours doing it; that’s why they’re good at it. Likewise, popular isn’t just something you are or you aren’t, but something you make yourself.
The article is very long but carefully reasoned out, if (understandably) biased towards contemporary conditions at US schools. In the response to comments, he writes:
From my experience, I’d say that while some smart kids may be borderline autistic, this can’t by itself explain the smart/nerd correlation, because there are also plenty of nerds who are very talkative. Indeed, one of the most characteristic nerd flaws is an addiction to newsgroup posting.
Coincidentally, just yesterday I re-took Wired‘s Autism-Spectrum Quotient Test, owing to a discussion among Macmania Magazinecontributors. I scored 37 (out of 50), which definitely puts me well over the “borderline autistic” threshold. (In contrast, many of the less-technically oriented contributors scored in the 9 to 15 range). This correlates well with similar tests I took on Asperger Syndrome sites.
In my own case, my social disabilities were so pronounced that I wasn’t even aware of the fact that I was unpopular at school. The absence of two prominent factors in Graham’s article – girls and football – may have contributed to that unawareness. My school wasn’t coeducational at the time, and sport activities were much less organized than in the US. My unpopularity meant that while I was never asked to play soccer (or any other team sport), I concentrated on table tennis, going on to win several titles later at the university level.
Another cultural difference is the emphasis given to the anti-intellectual biases that pervade American culture. (English is one of the few languages where “smart” and “wise” are derogatory). While my grades certainly were quite good in some subjects (math, physics, chemistry) in my last school years, they always were terrible in others (languages, history, religion), so that wouldn’t have been a factor even in the US. Any derogatory comments I heard at school were usually based on physical appearance, my social ineptness, or on the fact that I was German. Interestingly, Graham comments favorably on teenagers in Italy, although I personally believe teenagers nowadays are the same in any western country.
I remember reading somewhere that the very concept of “teenager” was invented in the 20th century. (Anybody knows the reference?) And, as Graham says, this correlates to the fact that teenagers aren’t put to work (or even allowed to work) anymore… the fast food industry is the only outlet for them. In so-called “primitive” societies, one went through a rite of passage around puberty and emerged as an adult, able – and even compelled – to work, marry, and so forth. No such rites remain in western societies, the American ritual of getting one’s driver’s license being a feeble and ineffective remnant.
As a result, today’s adults are little more than “children with a mortgage”.
