Intelligence Equals Isolation/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: The smartest kid in a class has few or no friends.

  • Straight: Jen is the smartest kid in her class, and doesn't have any friends.
  • Exaggerated: Jen is among the .00001% most intelligent people in the world, and no one wants to have anything to do with her.
  • Downplayed: Jen is among the smartest students in her class, and has a few friends.
  • Justified: Jen is an Insufferable Genius.
    • Alternatively: Jen is the smartest kid in the class, and also the quiet kid in the corner that's too shy to make friends. Most people assume she's too busy studying or that she thinks she's better than them, so they don't try to break the ice either.
  • Inverted: Jen is the dumbest and most popular kid in her class.
  • Subverted: Jen seems to be unpopular due to her intelligence, but proves to to be fairly popular.
  • Double Subverted: ...Except it was all an Imagine Spot.
  • Parodied: Jen is an average but popular student, the one time she gets an actually good grade in school everyone starts bullying her.
  • Deconstructed: The isolation that Jen's intelligence brings drives her to suicide.
    • Social behavior never evolved because of Natural bias against intelligent creatures
  • Reconstructed: The isolation that Jen's intelligence brings gets her into a depression. Soon after, she decides that she's better off in her own, becomes a hermit, and makes great discoveries in several scientific fields, all of which are understood a few decades after her passing, leading to new technologies.
  • Zig Zagged: Jen is the smartest kid in the classroom, and also the loneliest. The Hero befriends her and soon she becomes part of a Five-Man Band. After that, because everyone spend their time heroing or escaping from monsters, no one has their homework done, and she starts teaching everyone in the class how to study correctly. Jen becomes the most popular kid in school, and then summer vacation starts, and not a single of her classmates ever goes visit her, calls her, or even friends her on facebook.
  • Averted: Jen is neither intelligent nor socially isolated.
  • Enforced: "Jen can't look better than the hero! Let's make her friendless!"
  • Lampshaded: "Jen is obviously the smartest one in the class. How much you wanna bet she has no friends?"
  • Invoked: ???
  • Exploited: The Big Bad knows that Jen, who can easily outwit The Hero, wants friends, but is rejected by her classmates. The Big Bad uses Jen's loneliness as a way to get close to her, and, after gaining her trust, he somehow manipulates her into helping him.
  • Defied: Robin befriends Jen, knowing full well that she is the most intelligent person in the class, and thinking she could use a friend.
  • Discussed: "Why is it that the most intelligent people tend to be the ones people ignore or bully, anyway?"
  • Conversed: "Have you noticed that every time there's a smart kid in the classroom, they always end up alone in the back of the room?"

Maybe you'll find someone who will appreciate your intelligence back at Intelligence Equals Isolation.