I've decided that personal anecdotes might actually be the best way to go here:
I don't think that its "not cool" to be smart, but its that a high intelligence, unfortunately, most often comes with social awkwardness at a young age
I had a bit of a 'shaky start' when I was younger, with some diagnoses of, of all things, developmental difficulties and mental retardation. Once that had been rectified, I turned into the misunderstood precocious know-it-all who couldn't shut up. And I don't think I was able to personally relate to anybody for most of my school life. The friendships that I formed were either bound entirely by circumstance or exploitative (with me being the one exploited), and I guess it was a rather lonely existence. In this case, it really wasn't cool to be smart because, well, I alienated everybody through my desperate attempts to demonstrate such as something to be valued by.
By the time I got to high school I was spending all my days alone in the library. I took a particularly antisocial turn in the latter stages of that, and by the end of school and when I got into university life, I'd finally discovered the joys of talking to people that one could relate to- perhaps also because by this time one is more along the way to navigating the identity minefield, but I daresay that due to my history, I was quite late in doing this. Shortly after it became quite clear that I was bipolar and since I haven't taken to medication yet, the mood swings can completely change my conception of who I am- often in one state I completely forget what I was like in another, which can result in variability in how 'introverted' or 'extroverted' I am.
The way I see it, the more friends someone wants, the less self-esteem they have.
These days I'm motivated to make friends wherever I go- I prefer not to make many but the ones that I do make are those that tend to view me as a confidant. Why is this? Because owing to my utter failure as a child to relate to anybody under any normal standard of socialisation, I (and this may be unusual) studied and analysed the skill and made it a way of life later on. Trust me, I'm still a little bit weird now, but people see me as welcoming rather than threatening because of the way I present myself. One might claim that I've '
ut on a mask' but in my case, this 'mask' became something else- that which you feel you pretend to be may still change you.
In this case I'm going to have to partially agree that the quote above has some bearing in some cases- in my case I know I am constantly preoccupied with what people think about me (a habit, though I try to manage this), and so it seems that in a way, being able to relate to people on such a personal level is some kind of validation, or even vindication from my past.
I think why some people are shy (or at least me) is that with strangers, you don't really know what to talk about, and if you go up to the person, not knowing who they are they might get a 'wtf are you doing, go away' sorta look so you, and to just avoid the whole awkwardness, you just avoid talking to them. Or sometimes you might know the guy and your interest are so far apart that you just don't want to be with that person.
Some people tend to be drawn to interests that are not mainstream (I'm one of them). In the real life dominated by popular culture and the idiot-box, this tends to be the case- in fact this is why the internet used to be full of 'geeks' and 'nerds' until it became fairly ubiquitous. One of the reasons I started learning how to relate to people in real life was in fact because I learnt that, zomg, I really wasn't a social failure according to people I could
actually relate to online.
As well as working out identity, one also has to work to find an environment they find themselves confident in.
Also, once again, I will mention the importance of skeletons in the closet. Stigma and a fear of judgement (on topics like sexuality, for example) can really put a damper on one's ability to socialise.
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Okay, point of the story is to raise a few questions, the main one being 'what is self'? We're talking about these generalisations but I feel that some are assuming the constancy of certain traits. Others appreciate that there's a certain dependency on history and environment.
The one universal assumption we've made here is that "it's rewarding to socialise" in some way or form. In what ways would you hold this to be true?
