Having interests and vocabularies that are alienating to people who struggle to keep up can often do just that.
> Nerds are unpopular in forced social settings like secondary schools because they're huge assholes, the kind of people that even 25 years later write essays about how really it was everybody else's fault that nobody got along with them.
Get over your grudges, seriously. I bet the people who used to make fun of you don't even remember why. They'll run into you someday in the grocery store and go "Hey man, what's up? How's life?" Now you can either make a new friend, or stay in middle school where you still get picked on for your terrible social skills.
Even 'dumb' people can smell a douche from a mile away. Probably better than the socially ill-equipped "nerds".