This article is a memoir dressed up as sociology. I don't doubt that it's a true statement of the way Paul Graham felt about his high school, but a great deal of it seems like arrant nonsense when applied more broadly.
The other thing that rubs me the wrong way about this article is the rather sanctimonious tone about nerd behavior, as if every nerd's "smartness" is a beautiful quality ("I want to make computers and rockets!") rather than, well, a pretty normal desire for a certain type of achievement wrapped up in a desire to impress in a different social hierarchy. I went to a school with a lot of nerdy types and there was a hierarchy among the nerds too, with people spending a lot of time putting on displays about how much smarter or funnier or hipper they were than the other nerds and reaping Nerd Popularity. I think the sanctimonious attitude is actively mischievous; I met many nerds in university who seemed to feel that they could do no wrong as they were clearly One Of The Oppressed Class and went on to do ugly things to weaker, lower status people whenever they could.
Part of the reasons that nerds are 'unpopular' is that they often can't resist trying to ensure that everyone around them knows just how much smarter the nerd is, regardless of whether they are. We started hitting this phenomenon in the mid-90s, where the ability to program a computer or some minor knowledge of science led to nerds proclaiming themselves experts on Every Damn Thing (art, politics, philosophy, urban planning, ...).
The other thing that rubs me the wrong way about this article is the rather sanctimonious tone about nerd behavior, as if every nerd's "smartness" is a beautiful quality ("I want to make computers and rockets!") rather than, well, a pretty normal desire for a certain type of achievement wrapped up in a desire to impress in a different social hierarchy. I went to a school with a lot of nerdy types and there was a hierarchy among the nerds too, with people spending a lot of time putting on displays about how much smarter or funnier or hipper they were than the other nerds and reaping Nerd Popularity. I think the sanctimonious attitude is actively mischievous; I met many nerds in university who seemed to feel that they could do no wrong as they were clearly One Of The Oppressed Class and went on to do ugly things to weaker, lower status people whenever they could.
Part of the reasons that nerds are 'unpopular' is that they often can't resist trying to ensure that everyone around them knows just how much smarter the nerd is, regardless of whether they are. We started hitting this phenomenon in the mid-90s, where the ability to program a computer or some minor knowledge of science led to nerds proclaiming themselves experts on Every Damn Thing (art, politics, philosophy, urban planning, ...).