She Came from Greece, She Had a Thirst for Knowledge

Stella Tsantekidou begins her essay "I too am an unfuckable hate nerd" with the kind of inside-outside two-step that characterizes much of the writing on The Human Carbohydrate, her very compelling Substack newsletter. She's at a party in London talking to another writer. The topic is a recent piece they've both read on the phenomenon of the "unfuckable hate nerd," that very 21st century type who populates the nether regions of the internet, marinating in resentment and fury and impotence, taking out his unquenchable hate on the women of the world, particularly those with the gall to think they have opinions worth considering. Stella writes:My issue with that article is that it misses how many women feel like unfuckable hate nerds too. [The other writer] looked at me unconvinced, as people often do when I try to explain to them my affinity for incels and other basement dwelling online weirdos. Coming out of my mouth it sounds like I am fishing for compliments, trying to get my audience to state the obvious. How could I be an unfuckable hate nerd?Then the sexy hammer drops. A photo of Stella:She's hot, in other words. How could this very attractive, apparently well connected woman feel a connection to these terrible, and terribly unattractive, men? The answer, as in much of Stella's writing, is that she's been on both sides of the glass. Born and raised in a small city in Greece, in unremarkable middle class circumstances, she moved to London for college with no connections and no organic insight into the hierarchies and mores that structured British society. Now she's part of the elite political class in the UK, moving back and forth between jobs in government and the advocacy world, with a regular gig doing TV political commentary on the side.In 2024, she's quite good looking and socially successful. As a kid, though, she was a bona fide reject, greasy and awkward and the victim of rather relentless bullying by her classmates. And not weak-ass American-style bullying, but hardcore second world haven't gotten the memo that we don't do that kind of thing anymore bullying. "When I say I was bullied," she writes, "I mean that for six years, on a daily basis, I was reminded that if my peers could exterminate me like a cockroach cornered with an aerosol, they would. ... The boys would push me down the stairs, throw my rucksack out the window, spit on me, call me names no self-respecting heterosexual teenage girl could ever bear to hear directed at her from the lips of boys without contemplating suicide or at least complete voluntary social isolation. ... the only attention I was receiving from boys was to be reminded of how repulsive they all found me. They regularly wondered out loud why I didn’t kill myself."Stella knows what it's like, in other words, to stew with hate for both oneself and others, to wish the worst things in the world upon others who seem to have more fortune while also desperately seeking and wanting their approval and affection. She knows what it feels like to feel ugly and powerless. "In my heart," she writes, "there is always an unfuckable hate nerd. This is the part of me that takes intense, nostalgic pleasure every time I sense as much as an atom of bullying energy coming my way. It feeds my inner unfuckable hate nerd who is still struggling to accept her new position on the food chain."The final turn in her essay is back toward the fact of her current life in possession of young female attractiveness and what she can see, in no small part thank to the benefit of her early struggles, are its dangers and the relatively short half life of its power. Stells and I talk about these issues; the broad arc of her academic and professional journey from Greece to the U.K. to the U.S. (where she worked on the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign) and back to the U.K.; reactionary feminism; and the complex legacy of her parents, among many other things. It's a great conversation.Eminent Americans is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe