The culture of shaming the intelligent has been prominently present throughout the United States both in reality and in entertainment and, although this proclivity for bullying the “academically serious” has declined in recent years, it is still highly eminent. In the passage from “America Needs Its Nerds,” Leonid Fridman challenges this culture by first, questioning the negative connotation associated with the words nerd and geek and second, embellishing on the fact that these negative connotations are detrimental to the success of the country. Fridman’s first topic of interest is the negative connotation that the words nerd and geek carry. He begins by defining geek as “a street performer who shocks the public by biting off heads of live