why do the learned and highly-educated put up with mocking from the general public? why do you let them call you nerds, geeks, weirdos etc? if nerds are the ones in higher positions in society and they also make more money as well as make the majority of the rules, then why do you put up with it? why are you not outraged?
Often, the people who are called names are the ones who already have a media profile. The ones doing the name-calling are often unknown and have little opportunity to disseminate their views. Everybody has a right to express an opinion, provided that any harm caused is not so excessive as to make the expression illegal. As for highly-educated people, I think that many of them realise that those who resort to namecalling are mostly less educated and are jealous of those with influence or learning. They will tell you that they have no need of fancy book learnin', because they learned everything they need to know in the University of Life. But it's really just sour grapes. There are plenty of people without a good education themselves who still value education and want better for their children. They are happy to recognise and give credit to those more educated than themselves, and a content in having other skills that people in ivory towers don't have. Finally, as to being outraged, it's really water off a duck's back to be insulted by somebody who obviously doesn't share your particular advantages. You can see the insult for what it is. Returning fire, by the way, is just lowering yourself to the level of the person doing the insulting. It's a bad look, which is why many people try to rise above that kind of crude behaviour.
I just saw on the tv news this last week that a football player "accepted" a contract that will pay him 20.28 million US dollars a year guaranteed for 7 years to play football. He certainly is in the 'higher positions' and 'makes more money' part, but I will bet that he is no 'nerd'.
Every advantageous positive trait usually comes with a negative trait that slightly offsets the advantage, so no one ends up with an absolutely perfect life. In American culture, and presumably throughout the West, a common way of expressing jealousy of people with an obvious advantage is to accentuate the complementary negative trait as if to say that it's a poor tradeoff that one is better off without. Nerds and geeks are not merely highly-educated people; that group also includes doctors and lawyers, who are generally accepted socially--the former because we need them, the latter because they can sue us. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Nerds and geeks are either technicians in an arcane discipline that laymen can't come close to understanding, such as (these days typically) information technology, or career academics in the byzantine world of scholarship, which laymen also can't understand. Both subspecies of nerd are stereotyped by social ineptitude, poor physical strength and coordination, unfamiliarity with popular culture, disdain for small talk, and a resulting difficulty in relating to the opposite sex. Note that I said "stereotype" and that stereotypes have no strong correlation with reality. Many if not most laymen know this, if perhaps not consciously. Reinforcing the stereotype allows them to feel smug about their own situation: I may not be able to debug a blank monitor screen/read Chaucer/understand the terms of my subprime mortgage/help my kid with his math homework/vote intelligently, but I live a (when I'm drunk enough) happy life surrounded by people who (claim to) love me so I'm (until I declare bankruptcy) better off than you are, you geeky nerd. In America I don't hear "weirdo" used in quite this way. A weirdo is usually someone with conspicuous and genuinely bizarre habits and/or opinions that make him unpopular--or even vaguely scary--among the people around him. But if, where you live, "weirdo" is synonymous with "nerd" or "geek," then your people probably have some other word for what we call "weirdos."
Let us define the word Nerd first... A person who, although having good technical or scientific skills, is introspective and generally introverted. That should help to understand who they are better than what you think they are.
It's a matter of balance. Most people who excell in academia fail in other areas; social, physical, hygenic applications to name a few. There are plenty of highly educated people none would dare call a nerd. Than you have your socially in-ept computer game playing nerds. Mostly other attributes for the most part, being educated ussually has nothing to do with it.
but this seems to be a matter of relativity. what many would consider social skill may not really be but since it's defined by a majority, then they would set the parameters. maybe those socially inept computer nerds could even be more caring and considerate but because they are and the majority isn't, they are labeled 'socially inept'.
Uh, excuse me but that's the whole point. Social skills are what the majority in your era and community define them to be. If you can't get along with most of the people around you then, by definition, your social skills are impaired. That's one of the most important things you're supposed to learn when you're growing up.
so if people think making fun of or discriminating against homosexuals is okay or if you are one and don't accept it, then that is considered impaired social skills in that group. if one group uses slang or off color innuendos and if you don't speak like them, then it could be considered impaired social skills to that group. there are people who have been ostracized because they did not conform to what was socially acceptable or expected but that did not mean they weren't social. they just may not have fit in with that group or that society at the time. what i mean is what is called socially inept has more to do with adaptation to a group's values which may, in some cases, be technically antisocial in some way.
They are outraged, that's why they have taken the power, the nerdpower.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
When the best someone can do is dribble out barely cogent sentence fragments that include a perceived insult about being intelligent the best thing to do nod and smile nicely. Particularly if said imbecile outweighs you by half and his testosterone saturated, emotionally stunted mind is addled with frustration due to the fact that he can't get an A in math class by pounding his forehead against the textbook. After all, the poor beasts are merely broadcasting the insecurity they feel when their identity is challenged by those who do not fit the formative gender models frozen in their minds. ~Raithere
Even assuming the premise that nerds are generally in positions of power, nerds decidedly do not utterly dominate popular culture, where the labels are made. no one does. Even the jocks and cheerleaders have negative stereotypes they must battle. Pretty people are often assumed to be stupid. No one lives in a world free from name-calling.
It would be a sad, boring world if they did. Or perhaps a more cohesive one? In my part of the states 'nerd' isn't really considered an insult. :shrug:
You know that scene from Fight Club? Nerds keep the ship afloat- we keep the lghts lit, we keep the roads running, we exist to serve you. Don't fuck with us. We run the ship. Signed- The nerds
uuuuh, no not really, on the contrary maybe in the u.s. i don't know but who's not liked , is the person who is very educated, and like, treat others as inferior, or, like if he knows everything,while if someone think that he knows all, then he don't know anything Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! that's what i think,
why? are you called a nerd? well, here actually, it's interresting to talk about many things like, global warming for example, masonery, the mysterious things Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! etc... i don't think people hate those things or treat people who are ineterrested as nerds, well, not here, i don't know about you in u.s. i thought it's just in movies, and, they show nerds as boys who wear big glasses, and, always carrying books, and etc...
and since the facebook boom, i mean, since most people now have facebook, they are more opened, and easier to find what they want to know. Just the pidagogic education, the school education, is good, and, don't leave us ignorants or think arabs live tents with cammels or africans live in forests and japanese are samories or, robots...
