I went to one of those public high schools where the nerds were as vicious, if not more vicious, than the popular kids. They weren't throwing tampons or pouring pig blood on each other, but they were ferociously competing against each other to be the most highly-ranked students in the school. At a school with over 700 kids per grade, your GPA had to be at least 4.0 if you even wanted a shot at being in the top 5-7% of the class. I had a front-row seat to the competitive antics of these nerds as someone who was smart enough to be in their classes but not smart enough to even try to compete with them. Just talking to one of those kids filled me with stress and piqued my imagination as to how much pressure to succeed they had at home.
One of those nerds all grown up recently got in a squabble with her boyfriend (one of the popular kids at her high school) about whether she would've been thrilled to have dated a "popular guy" back when they were in high school together. Spoiler alert: she didn't even know who he was.