I tend to agree with the comments that this is probably way over-thinking the issue from a certain perspective, but the author makes a subtle point that I generally agree with. The general premise that bullies don't particularly single out geeks leads to some interesting implications that I think has not been commented upon very much. She acknowledges that:

> On the contrary, I think people get bullied for lots of reasons.

Which leads to the implication she touches upon near the end of the essay:

> ...violence is not special, but routine—and if you can't understand the violence directed against you, how can you stop it?

She's pointing out that geeks shouldn't necessarily think that they were bullied because they were smarter than the others, but because bullying is a common feature upon the dystopic educational landscape. And not recognizing this leads to a situation where bullying of victims who are not somehow especially outstanding in some way (smart being only one attribute of specialness), is not recognized as bullying. She cites that this sometimes emerges from previous victims of bullying themselves by mentioning how male geeks sometimes bully female geeks for not being "real geeks".

All this is well and good, but it unfortunately doesn't materially help the folks on the ground waking up today and dreading their daily bullying gauntlet. This perspective is where I think the article is possibly over-thinking the issue, by not providing actionable information. To be fair, I don't think that was her intent, but judging from the comments, there is a sub-group of people who seem to desire that kind of information with these articles that explore bullying.

At the risk of generalizing, and supplying actionable information that may be out of date, in my personal anecdotal experience bullies select victims that somehow respond in a manner that rewards the bullying. Thus the commonly-dispensed advice to "ignore them". But I think that advice often doesn't come with a helping of how to ignore them, and really should be dispensed as advice on using ignoring as a way to stand up for yourself. Ignoring taunts while showing on your face that the taunting shatters your confidence and self-worth tends to incite further bullying. Ignoring in a manner (which will not be easy to pull off) that fizzles out the "fun" of the bullying is a means of standing up for oneself. This may sometimes mean actually interacting with the bully, but not in a manner that they expect; the "ignoring" refers to ignoring the intended effect of the bullying, and figuring out what action takes the fun out of the bullying. I wish someone had told me this when I was first going through my daily gauntlet.

For males, and increasingly for females, physical bullying is sometimes the form. I was very fortunate that I grew up in a part of the world and time where just fighting back was sufficient to stop physical bullying. I got the snot beaten out of me sometimes, but the ringleaders I was up against uniformly did not like to get their hands dirty, so using the element of surprise to land in a hit that draws blood (visible bruising counts) helped me dissuade them from further bullying. These days, there are more nasty places where you can get murdered fighting back. Be safe, play it smart, and don't get yourself killed if you are stuck in that kind of situation; if you're in such a dangerous situation and the adults around you aren't helping, some anonymous forums can sometimes provide ideas from sympathetic adults who have been-there-done-that.

YMMV, and all that.