Bullies Pick on Nerds to Become Friends With Each Other
Group attacks hurt more than a lone bully, and the most popular kids usually do not bother to join in.
paulgraham.com · Why Nerds are UnpopularPaul Graham, an essayist looking back on his unhappy years in American middle school and high school, starts with a puzzle most students never ask. If awkward smart kids can grow up to be left alone as adults, why are they actively persecuted as teenagers?
His answer, as he puts it, is that popularity is about alliances. “Attacking an outsider makes them all insiders.”
Graham argues that popularity is only partly about being attractive on your own. It is much more about building partnerships by staying near classmates who already rank high. Shared dislike, he argues, ties people tight. He compares students to a leader who drums up a foreign threat to distract from trouble at home. Pupils too can invent a target when none exists. Picking a brainy outsider for mockery lets those above him tighten their own ties.
That, he argues, is why the worst treatment comes from groups, not from one cruel child. Ask former outsiders, he writes, and they will say a pack hurts more than even the cruelest solo tormentor. If it is any consolation, he adds, it is nothing personal. Those children who link up to taunt someone act, in his account, no differently in motive than men meeting for a weekend hunt. They simply want prey to pursue.
Graham says some cruelty is simple immaturity before children develop a conscience, and some is status anxiety, like staying afloat by pressing the water down. But the organized picking on comes, in his account, not from the very top and not from the very bottom. The best-known students leave awkward classmates alone, he writes, because they have no need for that kind of put-down. Most harassment comes from the anxious middle, which is large because popularity narrows at the base, rather like a pear. Winning favor means keeping away from disliked classmates, and associating with them costs standing. He recalls an acquaintance who liked brainy classmates in high school, but she avoided chatting with them openly for fear classmates would tease her. “Unpopularity is a communicable disease,” Graham writes.
Questions people ask
Do the most popular kids really stay out of bullying?
Often, yes, though not always. Researchers find that high status students may direct or encourage aggression to protect their position, but leave the physical confrontations and name calling to lower status followers who want to prove loyalty. That fits Graham's point that bullying is mostly work done by the insecure middle to get closer to the top.
Why does being friends with an unpopular kid carry a penalty?
In closed groups like middle schools, status is contagious because other kids judge you by whom you spend time with. Studies call this association stigma, and adolescents enforce it tightly because friendships are public signals. Befriending a rejected peer can lower your own ranking, so even kind kids keep their distance to protect themselves.
Does this kind of bonding through a common enemy happen among adults?
Yes, though adults usually have work and other shared goals that provide less cruel ways to bond. Office gossip, hazing in teams or fraternities, and political campaigns that single out an outsider all use the same mechanism. The difference is that adults can leave the group or find a new one, while schoolchildren usually cannot.