Nerd v. Jock

[C.C.]

In my opinion, one of Chris Hardwick's biggest failings is that he clings so steadfastly to the outdated nerd/jock rivalry stereotype. I find this both absurd and infuriating.

My first problem with this is that he treats nerds and jocks like the two are mutually exclusive. As though nerds cannot play sports and jocks have no brains. Any fair-minded person should see that this is not true. I, for one, am firmly in both categories. I am a nerd, but I was also all-conference in football. These two things merged together when I was recruited to play football for Harvard. Which just goes to further my point. Harvard has an assload of jocks. You cannot become a high-level athlete without the ability to home in on that one thing and attempt to master it, which happens to be Hardwick's definition of a nerd. So this is clearly a false dichotomy.

My second major complaint is that he sets this up as some sort of antagonistic relationship. Outside of television and the movies, I don't believe this to be true. As neither jocks nor nerds are monolithic cultures, there are a spectrum of people in each group. Within each group there are assholes. Jock assholes tend to use their physical abilities to intimidate or harass others. Nerd assholes use their superior intellect to make others feel worthless. The vast majority of each group are not assholes. Additionally, nice jocks and nice nerds may often be friends. My circle of friends in high school included the quarterback, the valedictorian, the starting lineup of the basketball team, the starting lineup of the academic team, and the class officers. Now, several of these overlapped, but the point is that this group was not divided by jock/nerd. The only common threads were the year in school and that everyone was an achiever. More importantly, I was never aware of any bullying along jock/nerd lines. While I'm sure there was bullying, my recollection is that it was more often within a subset of people rather than one subset against another.

And when bullying is a jock picking on a nerd, it may be more personal than general. I was bullied in middle school. At that point, I was not playing any sports outside of gym class, since my school lacked a football team, so I was very much viewed as a nerd. The people who bullied me largely fit jock stereotypes. However, my best friend, who was at least as nerdy as me and physically smaller, was not bullied. I have two theories for why this is. The first is that my friend and I had very different personalities. I knew that I was the smartest person in that school and let everyone else know it. I know that I made people feel bad by declaring I was smarter than they were (while true, it was still very rude). My friend, on the other hand, was very smart, but did not show off in the way I did. So that may be one reason why we received different treatment. My second theory is that my friend had grown up in this small town, while I had only recently moved there. I imagine this contributed to why I was bullied and he wasn't.

TL;DR - Jock/nerd is a false dichotomy. Bullying doesn't happen because jocks hate nerds.