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Growing up, I think the reason I as a nerd was unpopular was: 1) Lack of a sense of style: I did not give any thought to dressing well until I took a UX design class in Junior year in college. Before then, I thought of it as something utterly frivolous.

2) Lack of common conversation topics: I wanted to talk about military history and politics and physics. Very few people in elementary and high school were interested in that. So I got very little practice in conversation skills.

3) Not just of social skills, but knowledge of how to learn social skills: I had been painfully aware since 3rd grade that I lacked "social skills", but I really didn't know what these were or how to learn them. I did read How to Win Friends and Influence People in Jr. High, but it taught me little about how to hold a conversation. Even to this day, I don't actually know how to go about gaining social skills or what those skills actually are. Just one month ago, I learned that there was a skill to conversing so as to make sure everyone present had the context to understand the conversation and wouldn't feel excluded. If I'm now 24 and only just now realized this, what other things have I missed?

Why might nerds in general have the problems I had? #1 takes money, which kids don't have until starting age 16. #2 sort of defines nerdiness: if you have this set of interests you're a nerd. If other people have these interests, you're lucky. #3 is hard because it must be learned by a means that are different from academic knowledge or a fandom's canon. You can't really read things[1] and tinker with things and work through problem sets to figure out. Near as I can tell, you just have to have a lot of social interaction and be very aware and attentive to people as you do so.

[1] There are some books and blogs that are useful:

- How to Win Friends and Influence People (general; a classic)

- What Every Body is Saying (Body language)

- Dr. Nerdlove (dating)

- Cpt. Awkward (dating & other relationships)

- Getting to Yes (negotiation)

- Difficult Conversations (understanding emotional impact of words)

For #3, I strongly recommend Leil Lowndes's How to Talk to Anyone. It directly addresses those ways to make people comfortable that are typically not plainly laid out. Everything is in easy to digest chunks, the book can be read nonlinearly, and it's held up over time.

A few years ago I cracked it open again after having it read it very carefully many years before that. I was shocked how many techniques I had internalized to the point that I thought they were my own ideas, but paging through the book reminded me how much I learned. Thanks Leil!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/007141858X?pc_redir=1400207054...

Just got the audiobook. Seems pretty good. Thanks!

>I did read How to Win Friends and Influence People in Jr. High, but it taught me little about how to hold a conversation. Even to this day, I don't actually know how to go about gaining social skills or what those skills actually are.

Here's a few things I picked up along the way:

1) Regarding small talk, don't be afraid to talk BS inconsequential stuff. Not every conversation has to be productive or have a deeper meaning.

2) As you say, everybody in a conversation has to feel included. If someone from in your company is not familiar with a subject, narrow it down and provide context, or drop it.

3) Avoid being too preachy and teacher-like. It's OK they don't know X fact, even if you feel everybody should know about it (e.g someone not knowing who Bob Dylan is or that the web is not the same as the internet). Also, unless they look deeply interested in you explaining it, they probabky are not.

4) Laugh at other people's jokes, even if they are not that good. Put in a few jokes yourself, especially some that don't require special knowledge. Not all jokes have to be inside jokes (something we nerds usually are guilty of).

5) Empathy trumps everything. Try to feel the other's pain. Discussing thermodynamics or Haskell is good, but if the other guy is currently concerned about his health problem or just had a spouse abandon them, talk about that too. That includes conversations between nerds too.

"Probably the biggest reason is that nerds don't make any attempt to fit in" is very similar to what Graham writes, and is actually compatible with it:

The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about. Their attention is drawn to books or the natural world, not fashions and parties. They're like someone trying to play soccer while balancing a glass of water on his head. Other players who can focus their whole attention on the game beat them effortlessly, and wonder why they seem so incapable.

Even if nerds cared as much as other kids about popularity, being popular would be more work for them. The popular kids learned to be popular, and to want to be popular, the same way the nerds learned to be smart, and to want to be smart: from their parents. While the nerds were being trained to get the right answers, the popular kids were being trained to please.

I'm just surprised we're not talking about changing the PSS (Popularity Style Sheets) on A-E.

Or are we? I noticed this immediately, before even reading the pg article (OP), I saw this post and knew that it was instigating a counterpoint, only to re-brand the point in a different set of words.

> If I could make the rules, being good looking wouldn't matter as much as it does.

It actually doesn't. And you probably look better than you think you do, because if you were unpopular in high school you were not "groomed" to be beautiful. So you may not realize how beautiful you actually are.

From what I've seen, here's what seems to matter most (in no particular order): Money, self-confidence, and doing something interesting with your life.

If you're rich, confident enough to ask girls out on dates (comes with practice, "fake it till you make it" is the name of the game here), and you're doing interesting things that you can talk about passionately, some beautiful person is going to be with you at some point. It's inevitable. Being "good looking" is less about actual physical traits and more about how you carry yourself.

Studies show that people who are on the "good looking" side of the spectrum have distinct advantages over the rest of us. Taller men, men who are more "handsome" and have more "manly" features (e.g. chin, deep voice, etc.) consistently have advantages in negotiations for jobs, pay, status, etc. A casual search turns up a plethora of articles covering everything from getting interviews to pay to grades in school (here's one near the top, just as a starting point: http://www.businessinsider.com/beautiful-people-get-more-job...).

Being "good looking" is more about actually having physically "good looking" features than anything else you mentioned. What you mentioned are things the rest of us can do to try to compensate for a lack of physical attractiveness.

"Beauty is only skin deep" — "Looks only go so far" — and the plethora of other cultural restrictions on "beauty".

As is always pertinent to this discussion:

    Do we worship the Gods because they are beautiful, or are the Gods beautiful because we worship them?

We could generalize this to those interests that particularly come from reports of these demographics, and subdemographics. Or we could go abstract into architecture: Xer functions, functions which are more "readable" or have more "examples"; or classes which have more "features" consistently have advantages in negotiations for place in a codebase, frequency of reuse, event-state participation.

Actually, "beauty" is bone deep. If you don't have the bone structure, doesn't matter if the skin is perfect.

Unfortunately, we don't choose our image.

This is a nerdy thing to chime in, but: that doesn't establish a causal relationship. Attractive people might simply have more self confidence, which leads to more money and success with the opposite sex.

I know I've seen an interesting study that shows that at least part of the height income gap disappears if you account for teenage height. I.e. a man who was 5'4" as a teen and 5'10" as an adult is more similar in income to someone who was 5'4" all their life than someone who was 5'10" all their life. That's hard to explain in a model where beauty at the present moment is a larger determinant of income.

>This is a nerdy thing to chime in, but: that doesn't establish a causal relationship. Attractive people might simply have more self confidence, which leads to more money and success with the opposite sex.

It doesn't matter if it's causal or not, the fact that the correlation exists is enough to show "good looking people have it better".

5'10" all their life? Must have been a hell of a childbirth...

A lot of people don't realize that there's an investment in physical attractiveness. People who are generally considered physically attractive have invested more in their appearance.

Your genes are only maybe 25% of the picture. Having good hygiene, being well-dressed, having a nice haircut, and carrying yourself confidently ("swagger") can get you pretty far toward the attractive end of the spectrum. These things take time, money, and practice, but they really affect the way people perceive you.

exactly, you can't control how you were born, but there is plenty you can control. This includes how you smell, how your teeth are, and what your hair looks like. Trust me, just getting these down will put you above most people.

edit: also, how you dress.

Agreed. In part 'we' (US) have a cultural mythos that intelligence (or nerdy smartness) and social skills are antithetical to one another. There's also a frequent assumption that social skills are innate. Sure, some people master social skills more quickly. But nerds and nerd-caregivers need to understand that social skills serve a purpose and can and should be trained. I think of it in game theory terms / cost-benefit analysis - advantages vs. disadvantages of having (no/limited) social skills. [The same stereotypes and problems with implicit bias and nerds are also commonly true with regards to physical fitness.]

> Social skills are learned, not innate

They're a combination of both.

How much of our skills are learned and how much is genetic ability is an old debate ("nature vs. nurture"). I come down quite hevily on the learning side: You can remove half the brain of a person and if you do it slowly or early enough he will grow up into a quite normal human. I mean, even walking is mainly a learnt skill!

It's very dangerous to assume too much about genetic pre-dispositions - most commonly they are just assumptions & they're dangerous.

But isn't assuming that something is a combination of both the least dangerous kind of assumption in this context?

I agree with you. Social interaction is the one thing no one has ever been able to 'scientifically' figure out. Otherwise we could all just read some books and be good at socializing.

There's people with just born 'charisma', the entertainers, the storytellers,the comedians, the incredible sales people.

And it's a spectrum of people who have this innate social ability from the terrible to the genius socializers.

No matter how many books people read they will never be as quick witted as Robin Williams or as empathetic as Oprah.

"I agree with you. Social interaction is the one thing no one has ever been able to 'scientifically' figure out. Otherwise we could all just read some books and be good at socializing."

"No matter how many books people read they will never be as quick witted as Robin Williams or as empathetic as Oprah."

Think about it: you can't get good at programming just by reading books. And programming is logic based and requires much slower reaction times etc than holding a conversation.

You can definitely improve your social skills by reading and more importantly practicing. Once you can pick up if somebody is interested and engaged with what you are saying you can try all sorts of conversation skills to try and find patterns to how they work.

And again just like programming you cannot simply expect that because you are good at writing webapps (talking to a particular social/cultural/age/gender group) that you will be good at writing embedded systems.

There is a natural tendency (or lack of it) towards being a social person. I have two kids, a boy and a girl (6.5 and 2.5). They are both smart for their age and very verbal, and of course raised in the same home, and share most of their genetic traits.

But you can already see that my son is a geek (well, what might "save" him socially is that he's tall and athletic), and my daughter is probably going to be popular. She simply has a better natural grasp of how people interact, and is much more interested in interactions, than say, imagination games. They are both very charming and outgoing, but you can already tell she has or will have better social skills.

There is probably also a snowball effect at play, too - if you have a tendency to be social, you might develop stronger social skills, etc.

I would expect the "snowball effect" to be pretty strong, especially for social interactions. Given a day where you tend to seek social interaction vs. a day when you tend to shy away from it, you can get a very different number of (practice) interactions.

There's a lot that can be learned by paying attention to other people and trying to understand what they're thinking. The earlier that someone who's not naturally adept at it realizes that this is important to pay attention to, the earlier they get better at social skills. Some of that can be highlighted for little kids while reading (story) books; paying attention to and asking questions about why the characters do the things in their interactions highlights the idea that other people do things for reasons, and that you can guess what they are (the guessing well is a skill).

> But you can already see that my son is a geek (well, what might "save" him socially is that he's tall and athletic)

You can tell how tall a boy who is 6.5 years old is going to be as a teenager/adult?

not with absolute certainty, but, a. a boy who's at 95 percentile height probably won't be short, and b. he has my genes and I'm pretty tall, and so are males on his mother's side.

I think an example is in order because this really hits a spot on this cultural analysis debate that I think everyone is missing. We often lean on the side of innateness which the theory that we want to prove has a domain whose scope is really big — "innateness" is the formulation of words necessary to describe the phenomenon within the speech genre underway. The point behind Chomsky sentences is that truth plays a role in language, all language, even scientific language, which is not always necessarily and sufficiently conditioned by the morphological construction presently being given attention, or what can we call an object of intention. So, the point here is that lots of theories exist, but regardless of their linguistic narrative, they tend to fail at larger orders of abstraction.

There are two absolutely perfect examples.

1. Most families don't celebrate Mother's Day.

2. Cross-country runners are breed, not born.

1 not only is a combination of both, but we behave very often as if it were false. We have such a trait in virtue of an innate quality, namely of having a mother. Yet we all learned not by any conscious effort to warn ourselves from the principle; it's part and parcel of our "innate" characteristic.

With 2, I often hear this expressed in terms of geological factors. Does the environment at any given time contribute to the innate material our theory describes?

Where do you see "hipsters" fitting in to all of this?

There has, obviously, been a huge influx of "hipsters" into the software industry as of late. And I think they're very distinct from "nerds".

I define "nerds" as those with an interest in technology, science, mathematics, and perhaps science fiction. "Hipsters" are different, however, because they have limited interest in such things, but instead focus on design, aesthetics, fashion, trends, "obscurity", social media, and so forth.

Yet there is a lot of overlap in the areas that you mention. Take the lack of social skills, for example. In the case of "nerds", this often seems to be because they just don't relate well to other people. But in the case of "hipsters", it's more about having an inherently obnoxious attitude and personality. Just look at the severe backlash that is common when a large number of "hipsters" migrate into established neighborhoods, for example. Even dealing with them in professional workplace settings is unpleasant.

In terms of physical attractiveness and appearance, we see "hipsters" going out of their way to look as weird and "unique" as they possibly can. They wear clothing that purposefully clashes. They intentionally style their physical in ways that will make them stand out, in the oddest way possible. Even so-called "nerds" can obviously tell that something is out of place with these people's appearances.

The television/movie representation of these people is perhaps the most interesting. We've seen people who are clearly "hipsters" being mislabeled as "nerds" in sitcoms and other media, for example. That Sheldon character from that American sitcom is a good example of this. His social obnoxiousness is far closer to what we typically see from "hipsters" than from "nerds". And the so-called "Reddit culture", for example, may have involved "nerds" at the very beginning, but they were very, very quickly overwhelmed by "hipsters". "Hipsters" have defined Reddit's culture for years now.

It will be interesting to see how the dynamics of this plays out over time. Even if they've co-existed so far, I expect to see more hostility towards "hipsters" from "nerds". As odd as it may sound, I think that "nerds" tend to have more in common with society at large than "hipsters" do. And I think that society at large is starting to strongly see "hipsters" as greater outcasts than "nerds" are.

You'd think after reading the article you're commenting on on, you'd refrain from a pointless rant about how you marginalize a certain "type" of person because of their looks and interests, which are different from yours.

As such, I think you're tilting at windmills here and have proven not to be above the kind of people PG is railing against. He uses the example of poor whites being racist against blacks. Are "hipsters" the only people you feel you can demonstrate superiority over? That's the only reason I can come up with for your post.

I didn't read the article, and I wasn't responding to it. I was responding to what tpeng wrote.

I'm merely making observations about the situation we have today. I think there is, indisputably, a rather distinct "nerd" culture. I think there's also a distinct "hipster" culture. Recently, we've seen more interaction between them within the software industry, and more interaction between both of those groups with society at large as software has become more widespread and integral to everyday life.

I'm not sure why you're apparently taking this so personally, or why you think my personal opinion of "hipsters" and "nerds" is relevant. This is all about looking at the big picture that currently exists, basically all of which me and my opinions have absolutely no influence or control over.

I'm not taking it personally at all. I simply dislike excessive generalization and unnecessary stereotyping of people, which you are clearly guilty of.

If you consistently have a problem interacting with certain people in the workplace, might I suggest looking inward for both the cause and the solution to that problem?

"Nerds" and "hipsters" are both rather distinct groups of individuals, and within each of these groups the individuals share a number of traits in common. Given that the traits are quite specific and isolated, it's not at all a case of generalization.

As a professional, I work with whomever I have to in order to complete the tasks at hand. But given how many of my fellow colleagues with all sorts of jobs and all sorts of background have similar problems with "hipsters", I'm quite sure the problem is not with me, and it is not with my colleagues, either.

Obnoxiousness and ego just happen to be two of the traits inherently associated with "hipsters". I can't help that, my colleagues can't help that, and even the "hipsters" themselves can't help that. It's just who they are; it's a big part of what makes them "hipsters".

Obnoxiousness and ego are also traits you possess in spades.

There is really no need for you to engage in petty personal insults like that just because you happen to disagree with what I wrote earlier.

If you wish to discuss this further, please return to the topic at hand.

Rather than comment on your categorizing or ranting, I'll try to comment on an observation that I do think is partly accurate.

I believe nerds became 'cool' right around when computers became 'normal'.

In my youth, around the time where social issues started becoming important (teenager), computers were commonplace enough that most people knew how to use them, but they were by no means cool. Most of my peers had MSN messenger and a hotmail address, but gaming on a pc was uncool, spending significant time on the thing other than aimless chatting was uncool, and programming was extremely uncool.

Now, I get to help my younger siblings and their friends 'coding their site'. They're on reddit or 9gag, and grew up with Digg, Diggnation ('cool' boozing skater-ish dudes podcasts). They have phones with apps and chat throughout the day. They game a lot and might even try D&D. Computers are normal and almost cool now (although oddly there is a limit to that that I mistakenly cross in conversation regularly).

There was a time where this angered me a bit, because I felt like the thing everyone judged me as a 'nerd' for is now suddenly cool and they took it from me.

Now I realize that it's pretty awesome that something I'm REALLY good with has become so succesfull that cool people want in on it. I can, and do, use that to my benefit.

Ditto. I was, and am a nerd. In junior school I was on the popular side, despite being shorter than the most popular dudes (partly because I was smart, I was dressed sharply and I was a cool kid: Everyone loved me ('tough' kids because I didn't treat them as "less intelligent brutes", smart kids because we were on the same level, and those in between because I knew how to talk to them). Plus the two most popular girls were in my class and had frequent cat fights for me(Gotta love women, they may want you, but they crave for validation more than anything)).

In High-School, my friend and I were amongst the most popular: We spent our days missing classes and playing basket ball and football, we got used to our "fandom". We were known to the Administration by first names. And of course, when you were seen around a lot, people knew who we were (even years after).

But to come back to the point: I have been blessed and lucky in my life. I did sports (Judo (since age 6 or so to 17, competitions with lots of people, trained with many boys and girls in my club, both my age and older), football (many, many people cheering at your feats helps), basket ball, running, working out (body weight only)).

But I was also pretty cute, dressed nice, and was clean. These points lack to a lot of nerds (Cuteness isn't something you can change, but you can take showers and dress respectably).

I was also blessed in the sense that I hang around girls since I could remember, like since I could talk. And I hang with a clique of older girls and guys who had me, and few other girls and boys my age with them, so I had a lot of socializing way before I got to high-school. Having girls have a crush on you wasn't a big deal, it was all part of normal.

So it's not the same thing, when you already had thousands upon thousands of interactions with people, and if you only talked with one friend or something.

There are things they can do, though, and it's not to be popular per se, but if I were like those kids who had it hard growing up (like being mocked or stuff like that), I would ask myself questions and hack it. It's not even to fit in or something, but taking showers and dressing okay doesn't make you less smart.

To summarize it: It's great to be a nerd, as long as you're not nerdy.

Nerdy makes your life miserable. Nerd doesn't.

Anyone who's good at something is a nerd, there's no way around it. But you can be a nerd and be cool, which makes you even more frigging cool.

Off your ego trip yet?

Depends. Got off your self defense mechanism yet?

Maybe you can read what I wrote and try not to put the image of the faces of the douchebags you hated in high-school and college imagining me. Maybe you'll read it another way.

I'm a decent guy, and have shown no hostility, have I.

> Ditto. I was, and am a nerd.

Popular, boastful, not bullied, dressed sharply, pursued by popular women, played popular sports, social butterfly, good looking, many friends. Yet you attribute your "fellow nerds" lack of such to their lack of effort and claim you would "ask yourself questions" and "hack it". Nerds have a name for such a type: douchebag.

You have a point. Though I've always tried to help the most socially excluded people by introducing them to people, and getting them into groups, and making their "weirdness" disappear in front of people by not locking onto it, or making them self conscious.

Countless guys shredded their shyness and got a social life by me doing this, not because I pitied "the poor guy", but because I felt nobody had to live like this, or go through life this way. But I'm probably a douchebag, anyway.

That's a whole lot of meaningless bullshit talking about how awesome you were to get to a single line of relevancy.

The point was making the point PG wast trying to make: That you can the social "thing". That you can be one of the guys for whom things matter, who doesn't take pride to be completely out, who's not proud of not understanding a topic, and yet, have a decent social life.

And it wasn't a lot of meaningless bullshit about how awesome I was, I said that I was who I was because I was lucky to hang around people from whom I learned how to navigate in society, but here I am, getting vitriol for sharing something, someone who might not have had this chance might find useful.

I was, and am a nerd.

You keep using that word...I do not think it means what you think it means.

Not to toot my own horn, but I was able to open an email account, alone, in less than a day.

I don't need to tell you that you must be able to power on a computer to do that, which is on a whole other level.

That must count for something. No?

I'm glad to see the spirit of Eric S. Raymond writing being kept alive.

I "love" how this got voted down, but replies attacking you personally weren't. That said, this sentence cracked me up "I hang with a clique of older girls and guys who had me"... sorry :P

While I don't mean to say your post is arrogant, because I don't feel it is, I want to leave this here:

"Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change." -- Frank Lloyd Wright

:D Doesn't take a genius to see my English is funny.

However, I assure you it's not hypocritical humility. I'd go with honest arrogance.

The things I say serve to give context. I wonder if I must give the info then give the context, or give the context before the info. I chose the latter. Unfortunately, the context triggers such strong reactions from people who have suffered as children, that they read the context with biased eyes: This guy's an asshole, let me own him on HN.

It's funny too to see ad hominem attacks by people on the very topic about nerds not being popular and bullied. Kind of ironic and makes me think: If these guys were so rough with their finger muscles on a keyboard, I wonder what they'd do if they had strong biceps if I were to be in front of them.

Anyway, thanks for having a cool head.

PS: I upvoted every single one of the posts attacking me before I replied to it. I figured they voiced their opinions on me, which deserved an upvote.