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Comment by andrewvc | Hacker News Reader

Well, as great as being polite, articulate, and compassionate is, those attributes don't (necessarily) add up to cool in school. I don't think that's something parents can really teach.

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Perhaps I'm alone in this but I learned in high school that, to a certain degree, being "social" is the art of social manipulation. I'm sure some people are so endlessly outgoing (or attractive, that can minimize any kind of personality requirements) that they can actually "be themselves" and be immensely popular, but the truth is that I don't think most people hold that personality trait. There's a certain amount of lying that's necessary to be social in American high school and its perfectly possible to learn it and still be a "geek," but it requires careful study and introspection. More than anything, you'll need to change your personality depending on who you talk to. Some people seem to acquire this talent easily, others have to put in more effort. If you do, however, you can become popular, which is really just another way of saying that you've discovered how to become relatable to a large group of people (which I'm not sure is possible without a heavy dose of social and image manipulation).

I think the essence of being cool is having a sophisticated understanding of what is going on around you. High school geeks often find their environment tedious and can't be bothered to invest a lot of effort into figuring it out.

This is the thesis of PG's "Why nerds are unpopular", and having lived that life, I can assert he's right. Being polite, articulate, and compassionate doesn't hurt you in life -- and neither does intelligence -- but when it comes to "coolness" I think awareness of your surroundings is the most important key.

Bang on! Most people just want to be liked, if you go through the social motions of liking someone then they'll like you, if you share social norms with them even better.

Relate to their social norms and echo their values where you can with out compromising your integrity. Plato does a great job of talking about this with his Cave allegory, when you go back down into the cave you need to respect that in the cave remembering the names of the shadows is important, else you will be put to death. (Or in the real world have no friends).

This is spot on. I was a "band geek", more specifically an "orchestra dork", in high school, and a computer science nerd as well. Not exactly the most popular combination. My attitude in high school was mostly not caring about being popular, and I didn't make any effort to identify with people I considered to be unlike me. I had other friends, in the music program, who were sociable and could identify with the less academic oriented crowd and they did fine. I gained a lot of this awareness in college and actually went on to be my fraternities social and rush chair, and what changed was that I gained a more acute awareness of people's social interactions and put in the time to figure out the college social situation. This isn't always a huge priority of nerds, or they just haven't gotten there yet: they may be so advanced in one aspect that the social skills haven't quite caught up yet. However, I disagree that all these geeks will go on to inherit the world: if they don't EVENTUALLY gain those social skills and recognize how valuable they are, they won't get anywhere near as far as they can. There is some ridiculous statistic like some 60-70% of all senators/presidents were Greek (frat and sorority life), and I think this speaks less to the value of the greek system and more to the fact that people who place value on interacting with other people and communicating go farther than those who don't.

If every parent raised children that are polite, articulate, and compassionate, being marginalized in High School wouldn't mean much, would it?

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