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Comment by Dalziel | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry that's complete BS. Yes there are arrogant nerds and especially more on the internet where the 'geeky' have held sway for longer. But the simple fact is that as noonespecial pointed out, the sporty 'popular' will be more confident in a group of nerds than the other way around because there is no risk for them. The nerds can't make their day-to-day life in school a living hell.

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What's the risk for nerds?

When I developed the attitude I've got now, the one that accepts my faults and doesn't immediately get nasty, the change in people was almost immediate. Most people really would rather like you than dislike you, and the instant you start accepting them, they start liking you back. The people who are real jerks and tormentors drop it after it stops affecting you - and that doesn't mean your responding harshly or ignoring it, it means your ignoring the fact that they're attempting to be tormentors. If you ask a bullying jock a question about his sports team, and start just talking to him about the stuff he does, they're completely nonplussed, and after just a little bit, they start treating you like a normal human being.

There is an imaginary risk, and I agree with you that it's terrifying as hell to think that people are against you. I've been there. But it's not a real risk, and once you overcome that nonexistent worry - and that's absolutely not an easy thing to do - you realize that nobody is any more at risk than anybody else.

> What's the risk for nerds?

The risk, of course, is that they'll screw something up and the tormentors will continue to torment. These are generally socially awkward people we're talking about. You're being rather silly to suggest that someone who isn't at home in social situations to begin with and has been ostracized for pretty much their entire life is not at risk of real failure in a social environment.

I'm glad that you were successful in your social ladder climb. But you are pretending that _everyone_ will be successful. It's simply not a foregone conclusion - there are losers in this game, even among those who try their hardest not to be.

> you realize that nobody is any more at risk than anybody else

This is so very false that I don't even know where to begin. Are you saying that there are not real advantages and disadvantages in social situations? Can you not see that the captain of the football team is way less likely to be harassed than the math dweeb?

It's a false dichotomy, because people don't care if you're socially awkward. I personally love shy people. Lots of people do. So I know the fear exists, but it's a false fear. The risk is nonexistent because social failure doesn't mean what nerds think it does.

Can you not see that the captain of the football team is way less likely to be harassed than the math dweeb?

I'm saying that if math was cool and football wasn't, the captain of the modern football team would probably still be really popular. He might be really into math. I know the sorts of people who were football captains, and they're inherently likable partly because they're not obnoxious assholes in the same way. They're the sorts of assholes people like.

As I said earlier: when a football player joined a group of nerds he'd start talking to us and we'd all start to really like him. If I joined a group of football players I would turn quiet and snappy. If I was willing to risk being more social, I have no doubts that I'd have been accepted.

Everybody who attempts to climb the social ladder succeeds, because people above you really would prefer you climb up.

You've got a lot of living to do if you believe all that, pal. Particularly that last sentence.

I've been invited to meet people I respect deeply because they liked some of the stuff I did. One of my close friends opened for Kimya Dawson; another friend of mine won a national poetry award. I find that the people I know who have succeeded are the people who don't doubt for an instant that people want them to succeed, and I have seen no reason to doubt that. The sorts of people who are bitter enough to push down lower people are the sorts of people who themselves are not really high up.

> I find that the people I know who have succeeded are the people who don't doubt for an instant that people want them to succeed

This is not the same as "Everyone who attempts to climb the social ladder succeeds", what you are saying here is more like "Everyone who succeeds at climbing the social ladder attempts it". The latter is true, the former is what I objected to. You are ignoring the people who attempted and failed.

We could have a whole lengthy discussion about this, but I still disagree. I think that success is easy enough that somebody who's willing to try and try again will succeed sooner rather than later.

Here is the terrible, unvarnished secret behind much of my nerdy outcast existence in high school:

I generally found many of my peers boring as hell.

I tried going to a "get hammered in the middle of the woods" party (yes, it was that kind of high school), but I didn't drink, and no one was doing anything especially interesting, or saying anything especially interesting, and it was boring as hell, but everyone else being inebriated were oblivious to the dumbfounding level of boredom surrounding them, making it all the more frustrating.

So, I guess it really comes down to my not wanting to drink that resulted in my anti-social nerdiness. It was not until college that I found actually interesting people doing actually interesting and fun activities, without benefit of mind altering substances.

I was in the same boat as you. I still find most people boring. Yesterday I wrote a post about misanthropy that I think was a lot better than this one.

I'm still at the point where I just don't like most people, especially in groups. It's a problem that I struggle with. I hope to figure out how to make things better - some people I know can find interesting parts of anybody - but I won't pretend like I know the solution to this problem.

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