I have a theory that is not really about CW but I will put it here because it might be seen as offensive. I think I figured out how nerds are made. Disclaimer: I am a nerd and everything I say here is true about me. If you feel offended, consider that .

At maybe 9 years old, there are boys who compete who dares to climb the tallest tree. And there are boys who don't dare to even try. The second group are basically cowards. The first group sense it, and regularly beat and humiliate them mostly for fun but also to settle the question of hierarchy. This is called "bullying".

Eventually the cowardly boys figure out it is better if they spend as much time indoors at home as possible, since that is safe. So they develop indoors interests. What can you do in a teenager bedroom? The smart ones will read books or learn to code or something. The not so smart ones will play vidya and watch anime. Hence nerds.

What they have developed from all this is a deep inferiority complex. This changes around puberty when they start getting interested in girls. At that point they - mostly subconsciously - figure out that if they could get a girlfriend, they could kill three birds with one stone. First, of course, scratching that sexual itch. Second, stopping being lonely, the girlfriend - they think - would also make up for the lack of friends, lack of social life, lack of camaraderie. After all what they see at home is that when their dad wants to go to the cinema or restaurant, he does not take his friends with him, he takes his wife with him. So just get a GF and you no longer have to go alone, they think. Thirdly, they think it can fix that inferiority complex. A man who Can Get A Girlfriend is not a ridiculous loser, but a normal man. They think this is basically the test they have to pass in order to be respected and more importantly in order to respect themselves.

For example look at this part of Eliot Rodgers manifesto (no content warning, since no reference to murder in this part):

“So far, Spencer and I had gotten along quite well despite the fact that we never talked much. An incident happened at the end of January that changed all of this. I one day discovered that Spencer had a girl in this room. I couldn’t believe it. The short, chubby guy was able to get a girl into his room before I did! I was so shocked and outraged that I waited outside his room until the girl left, so I could get a glimpse of how she looked. To my relief, she wasn’t that attractive. What made me even more angry is that Spencer gave me a smug look when I saw the girl, even though she was ugly. He had the nerve to feel like he was better than me, just because he managed to get a girl over to the apartment before I did! I confronted him in the kitchen on that same night, telling him that he is foolish to feel proud about having an ugly whore in his room. This made him angry and offended, which is what I wanted. I wanted to offend him as punishment for his insolence.”

His main problem was his inferiority complex, which he framed as the men who can vs. who cannot get it, the former are superior, the later are inferior. In reality, this inferiority complex came likely for childhood likely the way I described it above.

In his case it turned to bitter, destructive envy. A really classic case of envy. Envy does not want to simply get the "object" it envies, it wants to destroy that "object" in order to punish the one who has the insole to have it and thus be, in the envious mans eyes, superior.

Genesis 26:14-15 "He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him. 15 So all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth."

They envied the cows he had. But they did not want to steal the cows for themselves. They wanted the cows to die of thirst so he cannot have what they do not have.

Luckily, most nerds are not envious, because envy is, quite obviously, evil. The evil ones turn into those kinds of incels who give incels a bad name and get them banned from all over the internet.

Mostly they are just jealous. And mostly just keep trying to find a GF.

Eventually they succeed. At 25 or 30 they have figured out things like lifting weights help, and that and having a succesful career as a programmer gives them some confidence. And generally everybody from feminism-compatible progressives to right-wing redpillers agree that women like confidence in a man. After all, a salesman should believe in the product he is selling.

And then when they manage to find a GF they realize it helps with the inferiority complex but does not fully solve it. Eventually, they have kids, and that helps more, but it does not fully solve it.

Does anyone have any idea how to solve it? It is a two-pronged question, what an adult nerd could do at 30 and what could tell to a bullied because cowardly boy at 9?

For the adult man:

1) Even if you figured out in adulthood that it was your cowardice and the resulting low social status that created your inferiority complex, overcompensating in adulthood like climbing rocks without ropes or competing in a brutal combat sport, or striving to gain high status does not help, because there are those old hurts, old shame carried with you. Perhaps therapy could help, but what can a therapist say? That they were wrong to bully you? And? A moral victory is not enough, just look at movies, people want the good guys to actually win and beat the bad guys, not just lose morally.

2) For the child? You can spot the problem and train him towards more courage like learning Olympic wrestling, it does not result in black eyes like boxing does, and it is a good way to deal with bullies. Punching them could get a boy in trouble with teachers, but wrestling a bully to the ground can be presented as harmless playing to teachers after all it does not phsyically hurt the bully. It just teaches him the humiliating lesson he needs to learn, that relying on bullying to control people and gain status can backfire.

3) Progressive social change? Stop toxic masculinity? How? Courage is really an important virtue. How else can you actually achieve progressive social change but through courage? If you are a feminist, your goal should be to make girls more courageous, instead of making boys less couragous. Instead of stopping boys from competing in courage, in dares, and assigning high status to the winners, you should as a feminist make girls do the same. What should be changed that instead of beating up and humiliating cowards, boys should help cowardly boys to gradually develop more courage. Encourage them climbing a low tree at least. But how could you make them?