Popularity and Trends

In middle high, my buddy Rich and I developed a popularity map of the school lunch tables. It was simple since youngsters only ate lunch with peers of similar popularity. We gave them an A-E. Football players and cheerleaders sat at tables. E tables had kids with moderate Down’s Syndrome, whom we nicknamed “retards” at the time.

We sat at a D table, the lowest you could go without seeming odd. We weren’t being honest when we gave ourselves a D. To claim otherwise would have been a falsehood. Everyone in the school knew how popular we were.

During high school, my stock increased. I hit puberty, learned to play soccer, and founded a scandalous underground journal. So I’ve seen a lot of popularity.

I know a lot of nerds who agree that being clever and being a nerd go hand in hand, and being a geek goes hand in hand with being popular. Smart people are disliked.

Why? That may appear weird to a student today. The reality is so overpowering that it’s hard to envision it any other way. But it may. At least not in elementary school. It doesn’t hurt you in real life. Neither is it so in most other nations, I believe. In a normal American high school, being clever is likely to be a hindrance. Why?

The answer lies in rephrasing the query. Why don’t brilliant kids become famous? If they’re so brilliant, why don’t they figure out how popularity works and overcome the system?

One theory is that brilliant kids are disliked because other students envy them for being smart, and nothing they do can change that. Wish. If the other junior high students envied me, they hid it well. The females would have broken ranks if being clever was really a desirable trait. Girls admire men that males envy.

Smarts didn’t matter much at the schools I attended. Kids didn’t love or hate it. They would have loved to be smarter than average, but knowledge was valued significantly less than physical attractiveness, charm, or athletic ability.

So, if intellect doesn’t affect popularity, why are brilliant kids always unpopular? I believe the explanation is they don’t want to be popular.

I would have laughed if someone had told me that back then. Being disliked in school makes youngsters sad, and some commit themselves. Saying I didn’t want to be popular would have been like saying I didn’t want a drink of water in the desert. Sure, I wanted fame.

But I didn’t do enough. I wished to be smarter. Not only to perform well in school, though that helped, but to design beautiful rockets, write well, and program computers. To create wonderful things.

I never attempted to separate my desires and weigh them. A smarter person would have been more significant to me. I wouldn’t have seized the opportunity to be the most popular kid in school if it meant being averagely intelligent.

I doubt many geeks would suffer from their unpopularity. The idea of ordinary intellect sickens them. But most youngsters would accept. For half of them, it’s an upgrade. Who wouldn’t give up thirty points in return for being liked and respected by everyone?

That, I believe, is the issue. Nerds have two kings. They want to be popular, but they want to be smarter. And being popular isn’t something you can do in your own time, especially in a competitive American secondary school.

possibly the Renaissance Man’s model, argues that “to flourish in any art, no matter how modest,” absolute concentration is required. I’m not sure anybody tries harder than American school students at becoming popular. By contrast, SEALs and neurosurgeons are slackers. They take trips and have interests. Every day of the year, an American adolescent may strive to be popular.

I don’t intend to imply they do it knowingly. Teenagers are continually on duty as conformists.

Fashion, for example, is very important to teenagers. They don’t dress to be trendy. They dress well. But whom? To the others. In practically everything they do, from attire to how they move, other kids’ views define what is appropriate. So every attempt they make to do things “correctly” is also an effort to get popularity.
Nerds are unaware. They don’t comprehend that popularity is earned. Most individuals are unaware of how much success relies on ongoing (sometimes unconscious) effort. For example, most people appear to think drawing is natural, like height. In truth, most individuals who “can draw” like sketching and have spent a lot of time doing it. Popularity is something you create yourself, not something you are born with.

Nerds are disliked because they have other concerns. Their interests are literature or nature, not parties and trends. It’s like attempting to play soccer while holding a glass of water. Other players who can concentrate only on the game easily defeat them and wonder why they appear so weak.

Even if geeks cared about popularity as much as other students, it would be harder for them. Like nerds, popular kids learnt to be popular and aspire to be popular from their parents. The popular kids were taught to please while the geeks were taught to obtain the proper answers.

So far, I’ve been mixing clever and geek as if they were interchangeable. In actuality, they are just context-dependent. A nerd lacks social skills. But “enough” varies by location. In a normal American high school, coolness standards are so high (or at least so specific) that even the most uncomfortable person will seem awkward.

Popularity demands a lot of attention from clever youngsters. Unless they’re attractive, naturally athletic, or the siblings of popular kids, they’ll be geeks. That’s why clever people’s lives are worse between 11 and 17. It’s a different world than before or after.

Previously, parents ruled children’s life, not peers. In primary school, kids worry about their friends’ opinions, but this isn’t their whole lives.

Around eleven, youngsters tend to start regarding family as a job. They construct a new world among themselves, and it is their place in this universe that counts. Being in trouble in their family might get them points in their world.

The issue is that the world young kids build is first pretty basic. Lord of the Flies is what happens when you let a bunch of eleven-year-olds loose. We read this novel in school in America. Probably not a fluke. Someone probably intended to remind us that we were savages who had created a terrible and foolish world. I didn’t get it. The novel was convincing, but I missed the point. I wish they had simply informed us we were savages living in a foolish planet.

Nerds would tolerate being ignored if it meant they were not popular. In school, being unpopular means being aggressively persecuted.

Why? Again, anybody presently in school may find this question odd. How could it be otherwise? But they may. Adults seldom punish geeks. Why do it?

Due to the fact that teens are still partly children. Certain torture geeks like some spiders’ legs. Torture is hilarious before conscience.

Kids bully geeks to make themselves feel better. Treading water lifts you up by pushing water down. In every social hierarchy, persons who are insecure of their place would strive to underline it by mistreating those below them. I’ve read that impoverished whites in America are the most anti-black.

But I believe the major reason other students hate geeks is to get popularity. Popularity is about more than just looks. It’s about alliances. And nothing gets people closer than doing activities that bring them closer to other prominent individuals.