Nerds are unpopular, admitting they really are and care about being popular, because they mostly don't believe in luck, faith, higher beings and what common people usually think it's important in life
A nerd won't think yoga it's good because yoga is popular on Instagram, a nerd believes exercise is important, regardless of the cool factor
People don't like being told "your beliefs are based on fashion" and will rule nerds are as "not interpersonally aligned".
Truth is they are usually right
Cassandra was a nerd, Trojans believed she was unpleasant and were defeated by a wooden horse
Also: being popular sucks, many intelligent people prefer other achievements in life
Since we are generalizing, being popular is awesome. And, objectively better than not being popular.
I guess I'm not intelligent.
I'm talking about the fact that being popular in school has nothing to do with objectively having a good life
Usually people good in sports are popular in high school because have more confidence, it doesn't mean they'll be happy adults
Nerds are not popular because they aren't looking for easy solutions, but to master something
It requires sacrifice and trying to be popular is the most useless of the distractions
I guess that's another of the cultural differences between US and Europe: the pinnacle of our life is way after school and who was or wasn't popular back then is not important when you reach adulthood