I'm stepping into a tangent off the 2nd shitty sketch, but do you agree with the "middle school bullied kid = loser" paradigm ?
I'm sure plenty of Motte-folks got bullied through school. So did I. I have my reasonable theories on why it happened to me. But, I don't agree with the "loser" paradigm. In my school, losers were ignored, quickly formed their own group and then stopped interacting with the rest of the class.
What was your 'bullying' journey like and what do you think put you in the cross hairs?
I'm stepping into a tangent off the 2nd shitty sketch, but do you agree with the "middle school bullied kid = loser" paradigm ?
I disagree Middle School Bullied kid is automatically a Loser under the definition I gave of a loser (low IQ, low athleticism). But sometimes he is, and sometimes he isn't; more often than not kids in the Loser quadrant but north of the 45* are bullies to kids I put in the True Nerd quadrant. And hell, from what I've seen bullying can equally be targeted at a star athlete for racial reasons or a valedictorian for jealousy reasons or anybody at all for no reason at all. Being bullied doesn't really tell you much about someone, especially absent the context of their school.
I offered that example for someone with neither athleticism nor intelligence because it's hard to think of a famous one off hand other than boo-light culture war examples; even Leo Bloom doesn't really fit, but the best I could think of in a minute. One of the problems of thinking about people at a population level is that that quadrant becomes practically invisible to us, we don't even think about them. The primary point of the loser quadrant is to demonstrate the idea that people might identify as nerds or jocks, while not actually being very athletic or very smart, it's just the best they've got to go with. A lot of kids with average-to-below-average intelligence latch onto the "bullied misunderstood brilliant nerd" narrative to salve their wounds, when in reality some of their bullies are smarter than they are. It's a sad, blackpilled fact of life.
What was your 'bullying' journey like and what do you think put you in the cross hairs?
I wouldn't say I was particularly bullied in middle/high school, I was more in the category of "ignored." I was known for being hyper bookish overly political and anti-war, I wore an m65 surplus army jacket to school every day and had long hair; the stereotypical middle school bullies mockingly nicknamed me "Weed Man," ironically I wouldn't touch the stuff until after I was married, but "Weed Man" beat the other nerds on the bus they nicknamed things like "Fucking Faggot" and "Shitbreath" right? Most of my isolation was, in retrospect, self-inflicted; I latched on to identities and narratives that required me to play the loner bookish nerd, if I were min-maxing another playthrough I would have skipped out on playing WoW or MTG or going to death metal concerts at dive bars in middle/high school and joined the football team instead when they didn't cut anyone, but at the time I sort-of thought joining the football team required you to be an asshole moron which I didn't want to be. I would figure it out at 18 or so, and from there my life has been much better. I was flat out bad at being a teenager.
I apologize if the use of the term "Loser" had negative or traumatic associations for your past. What term would you use to refer to people who really have nothing going for them?
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Notes -
I'm stepping into a tangent off the 2nd shitty sketch, but do you agree with the "middle school bullied kid = loser" paradigm ?
I'm sure plenty of Motte-folks got bullied through school. So did I. I have my reasonable theories on why it happened to me. But, I don't agree with the "loser" paradigm. In my school, losers were ignored, quickly formed their own group and then stopped interacting with the rest of the class.
What was your 'bullying' journey like and what do you think put you in the cross hairs?
I disagree Middle School Bullied kid is automatically a Loser under the definition I gave of a loser (low IQ, low athleticism). But sometimes he is, and sometimes he isn't; more often than not kids in the Loser quadrant but north of the 45* are bullies to kids I put in the True Nerd quadrant. And hell, from what I've seen bullying can equally be targeted at a star athlete for racial reasons or a valedictorian for jealousy reasons or anybody at all for no reason at all. Being bullied doesn't really tell you much about someone, especially absent the context of their school.
I offered that example for someone with neither athleticism nor intelligence because it's hard to think of a famous one off hand other than boo-light culture war examples; even Leo Bloom doesn't really fit, but the best I could think of in a minute. One of the problems of thinking about people at a population level is that that quadrant becomes practically invisible to us, we don't even think about them. The primary point of the loser quadrant is to demonstrate the idea that people might identify as nerds or jocks, while not actually being very athletic or very smart, it's just the best they've got to go with. A lot of kids with average-to-below-average intelligence latch onto the "bullied misunderstood brilliant nerd" narrative to salve their wounds, when in reality some of their bullies are smarter than they are. It's a sad, blackpilled fact of life.
I wouldn't say I was particularly bullied in middle/high school, I was more in the category of "ignored." I was known for being hyper bookish overly political and anti-war, I wore an m65 surplus army jacket to school every day and had long hair; the stereotypical middle school bullies mockingly nicknamed me "Weed Man," ironically I wouldn't touch the stuff until after I was married, but "Weed Man" beat the other nerds on the bus they nicknamed things like "Fucking Faggot" and "Shitbreath" right? Most of my isolation was, in retrospect, self-inflicted; I latched on to identities and narratives that required me to play the loner bookish nerd, if I were min-maxing another playthrough I would have skipped out on playing WoW or MTG or going to death metal concerts at dive bars in middle/high school and joined the football team instead when they didn't cut anyone, but at the time I sort-of thought joining the football team required you to be an asshole moron which I didn't want to be. I would figure it out at 18 or so, and from there my life has been much better. I was flat out bad at being a teenager.
I apologize if the use of the term "Loser" had negative or traumatic associations for your past. What term would you use to refer to people who really have nothing going for them?
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