Intelligence Equals Isolation

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"Being the smartest kid in class is like being the only kid in class." —Dr. Spencer Reid, "Elephant's Memory", Criminal Minds

This trope is about characters or people, mostly but not necessarily in college, who are very smart and suffer for it, being unable to relate to the mundane worries and shallow personalities of their comrades, as well as being bored out of their skulls by the mandatory classes. Nothing is as depressing as having to correct the teacher, except not doing so for fear of the teacher getting mad. Sometimes they use Obfuscating Stupidity, but if their parents demand grades, and get them, their classmates can get jealous, which can lead to bullying of various sorts. Too often Truth in Television.

Depending on which neuroscientific theory one subscribes to, the trope name is quite literal: Those with more intelligence have a higher rate of disorders of some kind that can factor heavily in inducing social isolation. This is especially true if they attend a school with separate programs for people with those disorders, such as students within the autism spectrum (regardless of what specific disorders they show), taking tests separately from other students along with extended time. While beneficial, that practically makes this an institutionally-enforced situation!

When this intelligence is combined with a talent for manipulation, and possibly some good looks, you get an explosive mixture: add some Applied Phlebotinum or an Artifact of Doom and you might get a Magnificent Bastard, with the potential to be a very interesting X-tagonist. If, in addition to that, they are benevolent and feel compelled by their intelligence to improve the world, you might get a very effective Well-Intentioned Extremist who thinks Utopia Justifies the Means, and who might become a Knight Templar. If, instead, they are a Nietzsche Wannabe, beware: high intelligence leads to questioning, and, in Morals, when you find out there aren't any readily made answers, you might settle for "there aren't any answers at all, so just do what you want"... With enough Motive Decay, can become an Omnicidal Maniac and a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.

Note that this is not just about popularity with others, although that's certainly part of it. There are examples of smart people who are popular with others but still feel that their intelligence isolates them. It's pretty difficult to find common ground when your thoughts are too complicated to explain to others, after all.

A form of Blessed with Suck. Compare Eating Lunch Alone and Broken Ace. May or may not include elements of Loners Are Freaks. Often used as a justification for why Dumb Is Good: dumb people may be made fun of, but they won't be hassled and harassed for it. Contrast with Gentleman and a Scholar, when a smart guy is well-liked and lacks none of the social graces.

Examples of Intelligence Equals Isolation include:

Anime & Manga

• Ami Mizuno from Sailor Moon was the smartest girl in all of Japan, but until Usagi recruited her as Sailor Mercury, she didn't have any friends at school. All the kids thought she was an arrogant know-it-all, but she was just shy and reserved. See what her fellow students` say about her:

"Ah, Mizuno-san got the first place again! "She always shows off about her good grades, but she doesn't get that she's getting such a bad rep!"

• L, Mello, and Near of Death Note. Light is the "well-liked and admired but feels very alone" variant. Maybe even the author - he certainly likes this trope.
  • Well, the writer certainly states that he "did well at school" and that he doesn't "leave [his] house very much" in How To Read 13.
• Ren Hiyama of Lost Brain. His sidekick Haruhide Shitara too.
• Sasuke Uchiha of Naruto could have been described as this even before his family was murdered. Which obviously only exacerbates the effects of what he goes through as he had apparently the barest of social interactions for years afterwards and had nowhere to direct his pain but towards his training and revenge. Which arguably led to even more of this trope.
  • Except he's never actually been terribly smart. Focused, and brighter than Naruto, but if you ranked genin team 7 in terms of smarts he'd clock in at third, and if you ranked the rookie nine by them he'd probably come in fourth. He's a 'genius' because he's good at learning ninjutsu, not because he's smart.
    • Kakashi and Itachi were also geniuses on these terms, although they appear to have been prodigies in terms of their reasoning faculties as well. Orochimaru had brains and talent.
• Lelouch "Lamperouge" of Code Geass. Admittedly, it's also due to his issues with letting people get close to him stemming from his traumatic childhood experiences.
  • ...And the fact that he's undercover 95% percent of the time, not to mention his criminal Alter Ego once the plot starts. Actually, when it doesn't interfere too much with his plans or comes without too many strings attached, he does have a good time with his friends.
    • His disaffection with everyone and everything (including his pal Rivalz) in episode one is this mixed with philosophical disdain for the society he belongs to. Which causes him to go try to help out a wrecked truck that everyone else is just taking cameraphone pictures of. Which gets him mixed up with terrorists and an Apocalypse Maiden who gives him superpowers. Which starts everything.
• Narutaru's Tomonori Komori and Naozumi Sudo.
  • Also, Hiroko Kaizuka. Then she became the victim of very cruel bullies...
• Towards the end of Zettai Karen Children, it turns out that Minamoto was like that when he was a kid, due to being a Child Genius... he just wanted to go to a normal class and have normal friends, but his obvious superiority 'bothered' people, so he was put into a Special Education Program. This revelation puts a whole new significance to the lengths he went to to give The Children a chance to go to school like normal children.... basically, he gave them the childhood that was denied him.
• The human lead in Gash Bell—he'd basically stopped going to school or caring about anything else because his fellow students were so hostile to his smarts. Except the one student at the absolute other end of the smarts scale, and he hadn't learned to appreciate her yet.
• Tamami in Mahoraba.
• Sakurako Amamiya has been the textbook brainy loner ever since she's been drawn into the madness of Psyren, shutting herself from everyone so as not to let anyone else be damaged by it. We know she hasn't always been like this because, just as she is introduced, Ageha remembers a time when, as a child, she was much more joyful and open to the world.
• Yukimitsu from Eyeshield 21. His parents forced him into Cram School and he became extremely sheltered, envying the sports teams from his room. Due to his years of being in school, he lacked physical strength, and could never play for more than half a game.
  • But no worries here. Because of his awesome eyesight and brain power, he's able to find the perfect option route, a place no one is guarding.
• A recurring trope in Monster, where both the protagonist and the villain feel solitude and isolation despite the physical presence of others. In Johan, this is manifested in an extreme way in his "Landscape of the End" (though, admittedly, there are factors aside from intelligence that figure in here).
  • Nina/Anna and Johan are a little unusual: their natural intelligence and trauma-induced solitude don't seem to be related. Runge would fit this trope better, but even in his case it's not really intelligence but workaholism that isolates him, to the point that his family abandons him. Until the end, where he's in contact with his kid again..
• Keiichi from Higurashi no Naku Koro ni is shown to experience this in flashbacks. He's promoted to the advanced class when his grades suddenly go up, but then the bullying begins...
• Ishida Uryuu of Bleach, while also the indubitable Insufferable Genius, qualifies. Before getting involved with Ichigo & co., there is zero indication that he has any friends, nor that he EVER has. Part of this is a result of his acting like a jerk because it's "cool" / to keep people away, but he wasn't always like that. Add seeing ghosts to the brain, and it's no wonder he's a loner.
• Satoshi Hiwatari from D.N.Angel is a 14-year-old college graduate who goes back to middle school so he can follow the main character. Although he's greatly admired by the girls in his school because of his cool, aloof attitude, most of the boys think he's a Creepy Child because of how adult he seems, and he rarely relates well with others. Of course, like many examples on this page, part of his problem is that his background has also made him desperate not to let anyone too close for fear of losing them, like he lost his mother.
• Nemuro from Revolutionary Girl Utena was a Professor by the age of 18, and completely friendless. His fellow students planned to use his intelligence and throw him away once their project is complete. He was so withdrawn that he was described as a "computer-like man". The tropes is somewhat subverted with Miki, a Teen Genius who is pretty popular amomg his peers.
• Averted by Miyabi "Professor" Oomichi of GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class . As her nickname means, she is much more knowledgeable in art theory than an arts-stream high school student and is also highly talented, but she has her share of friends.
  • She herself also defied this trope in in the chapter about typography accreditation. She is likely to get higher a higher level of typography qualification (Class C or even B, compared to her classmates' D), but decided to just get a Class D instead because she still wants to be with her friends.
• Hiroki Sawada from Detective Conan Non-Serial Movie Phantom of Baker Street. Either his school system couldn't quite deal with the child who would be studying grad school in MIT at ten, or he was given a highly accelerated homeschooling. Either way, he is friendless against his will—which cumulated to his Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds status in the movies, because he just wanted to have friends.
  • Shinichi, before being shrunk, was a milder case. While he wasn't openly shunned by his peers, it's mentioned sometimes that teachers and classmates found him arrogant and hard to approach, and sometimes are amazed that Ran ever managed to befriend him. I.e., his former teacher Akiko Yonezawa remembers Shinichi as being unnaturally snarky and full of himself while in elementary school, Ran refers to him as "that mystery Otaku" when she's very upset with him, and Sonoko openly wonders "What Does She See in Him?" in regards to Ran herself.
• Mikael from Tenshi ni Narumon is a textbook example of an intelligent loner - in the first season, he is mostly seen alone with his Book of Chaos and only occasionally talking to Noelle. In the second season, it's slightly subverted, but only because Raphael makes him go out more and actually interact with people (well, in this case, just Noelle's family]. Still, his favourite pastime seems to be... studying. His isolation doesn't do him much good, as evident later in the series
• In Tokyo Mew Mew, Ryou Shirogane experienced this in his childhood. His only friend back then was Keiichiro Akasaka, who worked for Ryou's father, and who befriended him at his boss's suggestion. It doesn't help that Ryou is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold whose jerk side is more easily seen.
• The anime short Kigeki is about a mysterious swordsman who lives alone in an isolated castle and reads books all day. It's explained that in the past certain knowledge was forbidden and many books were burned, so moving into the castle was the only way the swordsman could get to read in peace.

Comic Books

• Batman is often shown with a dismissive attitude towards other heroes, as if they were children playing at adult matters. He even kept the fact he had worked out ways to defeat all the superheroes (in case they ever went out of control) from them. They did not appreciate it.
  • In all fairness, Batman *did* have a good reason for creating a contingency plan considering that members of the Justice League colluded in erasing a portion of his memory after he walked in on them mind-wiping Dr. Light. Eventually parts of the memory returned and Batman was naturally outraged, as he considered his mind to be his one safe place and they stole that from him.
  • Superman in at least one storyline was a willing accomplice, by making Batman the custodian of the last known kryptonite on Earth. Batman was the only hero Superman trusted enough to keep a supply around in case he himself got out of control. For that matter, Superman is the only other hero Batman genuinely respects.
  • Though it is shown that Bats has crippling intimacy issues due to the whole "shaping my entire life around having watched my parents' murder as a child" thing, so it's not just intellect for him.
  • He still counts though, if only when he was a kid. After his parents died he grew up in a big hurry, and flashbacks of his childhood after it happened show him as too serious and somber to play with other children.
• Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four has sometimes been shown as so smart that he feels even his loved ones can't really understand him. Fortunately he overcame it enough to romance his wife and love his son. This still happens, tho.
  • Allysa Moy, an old friend of Reed's, tries to seduce him with this trope as the friends Reed surrounds himself with just aren't on her and Reed's level. Reed doesn't give a damn.
• Both of DC's "Mr. Terrific" felt isolated enough due to their genius to attempt suicide at one point (only to turn into heroes instead).
• Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias in Watchmen, who was so brilliant as a child that he was accused of cheating on his schoolwork and who later has a reputation as the "smartest man in the world". The version of the character in the graphic novel seems comfortable and resigned with this status, but in the movie there are a few indications that he is in fact very lonely because of it, and turned to his historical interests as a distraction:

"I guess you could say I've always been alone. I mean, they say I'm the smartest man in the world, but the truth is I've often felt stupid at being unable to relate to anybody. Well... anyone living, that is."

• Tom Thumb of the Squadron Supreme is clearly the smartest member of the team and the resident Gadgeteer Genius, but he's socially isolated from everyone else, often overlooked or belittled, and spends most of his free time in his lab instead.
• It is often hinted that this was a factor in Loki's Freudian Excuse in The Mighty Thor, where he was a lot smarter than other Asgardian children but less physically able. He was more likely to be reading or practicing his magic than training in combat with his peers.
  • Of course, some of those hints came from Loki himself, who is an Unreliable Narrator

Films -- Live-Action

• Real Genius

Chris Knight: When I was three years old, I balanced my father's checkbook. They sent me to school and fired their accountant. My father was so intimidated, he stopped speaking to me. My teachers disliked me because I was smarter than they were. My classmates hated me because I broke the bell curve. Sound familiar? My mother dressed me in white shirts, hush puppies and a briefcase, guaranteeing that no girl would ever talk to me.

• Max Cohen, the mathematical genius in Pi. Max's quest for the universal number that holds the key to the mathematical basis of nature has left him utterly disconnected from the rest of humanity, to the extent that he even fears leaving his apartment if he could run into someone.

Literature

• Harry Potter has Hermione in the first book, until she, Ron and Harry become friends. Her intelligence, and her slightly condescending attitude led to most people disliking her. Subverted in every book after that.
  • Word of God states that Albus Dumbledore was like this for most of his life.
• Sherlock Holmes is a classic example of this. His genius often causes him considerable frustration when dealing with other people, (including the official police force) and as a result he prefers to follow his own route to a solution. He chooses only those case which truly interest him intellectually, and involves only those people who are useful for his current case. Aside from his brother Mycroft Holmes and his loyal friend Doctor John Watson, he spends most of his time alone, broadening his eclectic range of knowledge. When he feels he has nothing to work on his brilliant mind becomes a burden, sometimes driving him to seek a drug-induced stupor as an alternative to the mundane. Mycroft and Dr. Watson appear to be the only two people whose company Holmes actively seeks out, and who are able to tolerate his often acerbic or dark moods, while maintaining a genuine liking for him. Although Holmes does express admiration occasionally for individuals who present above average intelligence (in his opinion) he doesn't seem to have any close friends outside of Watson and Mycroft, and appears to prefer isolation.
  • Mycroft is even MORE of this, to the point of being a Flanderization. He prefers his own company to the extent that he started a club whose members are forbidden to speak to each other.
• In the early '40s science fiction story "Judgment Day" by L Sprague De Camp, a scientific genius has discovered a principle that will make weapons on the scale of A-bombs (which hadn't been fully invented yet) possible. Most of the story is a flashback to his unhappy life of being unpopular and bullied and lonely. He decides to publish his discovery, expecting it to lead to humanity destroying itself.
• Raistlin in Dragonlance, whose exceptional intelligence sets him apart from other characters (although his loneliness is also because, well, Ambition Is Evil and Being Evil Sucks).
  • He also sets himself apart deliberately, because he resents that his extreme physical frailty makes him heavily reliant on others.
• The Aesop of Flowers for Algernon.
• Artemis Fowl's only friends are his bodyguard and a small group of subterrainina (technologically advanced faeries). Technically, there's also a one shot Mary Sue character who hasn't been mentioned since her first appearance. It's said that he's "bamboozled" every IQ test sent his way and driven several psychiatrists gibbering back into their own wards.
  • It's shown that he does have the capabilities and charisma to actually charm people and hold down relationships, he simply doesn't bother because he doesn't respect other people - a fact pointed out by one of the few Psychiatrists able to shut him up. More a case of Arroance Equals Isolation.
• Ender's Game, full stop. It probably doesn't help that his teachers are deliberately encouraging the isolation...
• This is something of a theme in the Tiffany Aching-arc of the Discworld novels. Witches are without exception isolated from the people they help, and must constantly work to keep from getting a God-complex, or simply going mad from loneliness, a condition known among them as "cackling". The primary cure is to keep associating with other witches who know what you're going through.
• There's a bonafide Child Prodigy who becomes one of The Baby Sitters Clubs charges. Naturally, she's paired with Claudia Kishi.
  • Implied for one girl in a camping "episode": She doesn't join the girls' activities and prefers to read by herself; likewise the other girls don't talk to her. She comes into her own when the girls get lost on a hike and if I recall correctly she saves everyone because the book she was reading was about the outdoors and she was the only one who knew how to read the trail markers. Sadly the last we hear of her is her mother telling the counselor that she definitely won't be back next summer.
• Most of the people exiled from the society of Brave New World have high intelligence, due to their frustration with the shallow nature of their society.
• The two protagonists of Muriel Barbery's The Elegance Of The Hedgehog.

Live-Action TV

• Surprisingly, Sherlock actually downplays this trope a bit compared to the source material, as he doesn't display frustration with people of ordinary intellect so much as outright disdain, showing borderline Nietzsche Wannabe tendencies at times. The end of the first series, however, hints that he might be capable of more human feeling than he lets on.
• River Tam of Firefly was very much this during her younger years. She corrected the teachers often, and no one understood her, leading to her not being invited back to class. And then the Academy happened.
  • Arguably, Simon had a lesser degree of this, as he also has trouble relating to others and being sociable. It became much worse after he chose exile from "civilized" society to rescue his sister.
• Dr. Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds can attest to this trope - he graduated from high school at age twelve and on at least one occasion was tied naked to a football goalpost and mocked.
• Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle makes this the focus for the first few seasons, before getting past it.
• House. And not just the title character either.
• T.J. Henderson from the show Smart Guy was too young to fit in with his fellow high-schoolers and could only relate to kids his own age around basketball and other non-intellectual activities (which usually resulted in disaster of some sort). Other smart kids were out of the question too because they were nowhere near as sociable or well-adjusted as T.J., tending to be dipped fully in Intelligence Equals Isolation by virtue of being too stereotypically arrogant to care about reciprocal friendships.
• Toby and President Bartlet on The West Wing.
  • C.J. tells Toby, "No one likes people who know everything," to which Toby responds "So I've discovered in my life."
  • President Bartlet asks Toby "You think the strike against me is nobody likes the smartest kid in the class?" in "Hartsfield's Landing." Subverted when Bartlet takes this and uses it to win the election despite the MS scandal.
• Alex in Modern Family is asked by her sister, "Do you want to be smart or do you want to be popular?" Unfortunately, in that particular episode anyway, she caves. One episode even had her parents nagging her to study less.
• Hannah from Todd and the Book of Pure Evil is largely isolated from her fellow students due to her intellegience. In Invasion of the Stupid Snatchers, a student who was turning the rest of the school into idiots with the book questions whether being smart has made her happy, and whether it wouldn't be better to be as dumb as him.
• Subverted in Carrusel. Maria Joaquina and Jorge may be brilliant students who have trouble making friends... but the reason for their difficulty has nothing to do with intelligence- it is due to Maria Joaquina and Jorge being snobbish and condescending towards other students not as wealthy as they are. Maria Joaquina gets somewhat better after a while, as she's subjected to Break the Haughty and becomes the Lovable Alpha Bitch afterwards; Jorge keeps being haughty and snotty until almost the end instead.
  • Averted by Daniel, who is the top student in the class and comes from an upper middle class family- though nowhere near as wealthy as Maria Joaquina or Jorge- yet has many friends and is the leader of La Patrulla Salvadora.
• Both Frasier and Niles Crane, who were bullied severely and persistently throughout their childhoods and, as their father notes, never made many friends, which is partly why they are so much more close-knit than most successful adult siblings.
• Dr. Brennan on Bones, most definitely
• Gil Grissom on CSI, often thought of as a bit of a recluse while he was team leader. He did become close to the others on the team; a family dynamic showed up as time went on, though it took six seasons for Sara to finally break down the walls he'd put up and form a romance with him.
• Brick Heck on The Middle, who's always looking for opportunities to read
• On Leverage, Nate shows how difficult this really is. It is directly pointed out during the "Boys Night Out Job" that he really doesn't have any real friends apart from the team and his ex wife.

Radio

• Ed Reardon of Ed Reardon's Week lives under a self-imposed version. He believes the world is an asinine, puerile place that panders to the lowest common denominator and compensates by shunning the company of nearly everyone but his cat.

Theater

• In Sunday in The Park With George, there are two instances of this trope: Georges, a straight example of this, bordering on Loners Are Freaks - his genius is misunderstood, and he frequently drives people away with his eccentricity and stubbornness. Then, George-his-grandson appears to be social, amiable, and friendly enougBlessedWithSuck. Compare Eating Lunch Alone and Broken Ace. May or may not include elements of Loners Are Freaks. Often used as a justification for why Dumb Is Good: dumb people may be made fun of, but they won't be hassled and harassed for it. Contrast with Gentleman and a Scholar, when a smart guy is well-liked and lacks none of the social graces.

Video Games

• Iris in Rosenkreuzstilette becomes a complete sociopath because of this.
• Pokémon Diamond and Pearl gives us two separate descriptions of Cyrus as a child that tell us that he was both highly intelligent and that he shunned people and preferred machines.
• Purge in Space Channel 5 Part 2 is a Teen Genius who's lived alone with his robots ever since he was 9. This has made him crazy.
• In Tales of the Abyss, Jade Curtiss shows many of the symptoms. In the manga and anime flashback scenes, it's made even more evident - by the time he's an adult, he seems to have adjusted a little better, mostly by becoming a Deadpan Snarker. And even then, he doesn't have many friends before he gets adopted into the party.
  • Although in Jade's case it's a bit more complicated, since it's implied he was something of a violent sociopath when he was younger and only mellowed out because of the influence of his teacher.
• It's not really overt, but in Final Fantasy VII, the Crisis Core prequel, Sephiroth feels isolated because of a combination of his superior intelligence and power. The only ones he feels at all close to are Angeal, Genesis, and possibly Zack, who went through similar experiments, and are still nowhere near his level.
  • There are probably people just as smart as he is around, although most of them aren't very powerful and nobody can kick as much ass as he can, but neither of those are the root of the problem. The problem is that everyone else—including his few friends—had relatively normal, relatively happy childhoods. Genesis and Angeal grew up as best friends in the town of Banora, and finding out that they were created by Shinra genetic tinkering (and are dying of it) sets them tailspinning. Sephiroth grew up in a laboratory under the tender loving care of Professor Hojo. His socialization skills are understandably nearly nonexistent.
    • The idea of not being human still freaks him out, mind. That he isn't, entirely, ultimately does not help things.
• Inverted in Persona 3 and Persona 4: doing well on your exams improves your school Social Links accordingly.

Western Animation

• Lisa on The Simpsons, depending on the mood of the writer. In earlier seasons Lisa had a best friend called Janey and had quite a lot of friends, but they got pushed aside and forgotten. The latest episodes show some of those friends, Janey included, but they tend to push Lisa away whenever she shows her smarts.
  • One episode has Homer's I.Q raised to slightly above average levels, and suffers from this, although it allows him to bond with Lisa. He ends up choosing blissful ignorance over the social stigma he'd caused—but was smart enough to write a heartfelt letter to her beforehand, apologizing for taking the easy way out and admiring her strength and courage.
  • This trope is played straight to the point that Lisa flat-out made a graph stating the negative correlation between happiness and intelligence.
    • And broken by the fact that Homer never made an effort to put his high IQ to good use: he isolated everyone by virtue of spoiling movie endings, disillusioning people of hard-held beliefs and basically being a Jerkass with a high IQ.
• Jimmy on Jimmy Neutron. He actually purposely made himself stupid in one episode to end his misery, but the machines accidently set his intelligence so low he became a complete moron.
  • Jimmy is a mixed bag. Sometimes intelligence isolates him, often he sets the (horrible) events of the plot in motion causing him to be isolated, sometimes the characters realize they need his intellect &/or like him more than they let on, and sometimes he's just an insufferable genius.
• Daria. This was more prevalent in the first season, after that the show became much less about "Daria vs. the idiots around her"
  • Commented on in "Boxing Daria".
• Brainy Smurf. (Brainy borders on a Know-Nothing Know-It-All, mind you, which doesn't help.)
  • Actually he is shunned not because of his intelligence but due to his overblown ego, contrasting with Papa Smurf, who is both intelligent and easy-going.
• An episode of Danny Phantom had the intelligent Jazz telling her fellow classmates that she was struggling on whether she wanted to go to Harvard, Yale, or Stanford. They all walk away with disinterest. It's arguably averted for most of the series since Jazz doesn't care how others perceive her.
  • Of course, bragging about all the prestigious universities you've gotten into to people who may not be as naturally gifted as you could also be seen as kind of a dick move
• Twilight Sparkle was initially like this at the start of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic in preferring her studies over anything else. Her mentor sets her straight by sending on a mission specifically to make friends, setting up the plot of the show. The rest of the series then goes on to avert it, Twilight becoming liked and respected because of, not despite her intelligence and magic skills though she does still remain somewhat socially awkard.
• Gates from Rollbots has no friends other than Aria. Justifiable, considering that he's not pleasant to be with.

Real Life

• High School issues and bullying aside, studies do show that people with significantly different IQ scores do have trouble relating. 15 IQ points difference is a small impediment but 30 IQ points typically makes it difficult (which is the minimum difference between someone perfectly average and someone classified gifted in the public school system.) Though of course, personality plays a major factor. Bookish and intelligent kids tend to be more reserved and quiet, while the average child is more outgoing, and thus becomes popular.
• Autistics (specifically HFAs and aspies) tend to pick up skills that interest them very quickly, with many of such skills being included as skills of an ideal student. This sort of brain design also leads to a lack of understanding and natural following of social rituals, such that autistics tend to have difficulty getting along with non-autistic individuals. As autism is rather rare (rarely is there even one in any given class), autistics are often isolated.
• The great mathematician Berhard Riemann was painfully shy, with few friends outside of his tightly knit family. This has given us the ironic situation that we know far less about the inner life of one of the greatest intuitive mathematicians of all time than about his contemporary the incredibly austere proto-formalist Weierstrass.