Much like a group of people watching a dancing monkey, while a firefighter saves some people on the other side of the street.

to look at it on a larger scale....

people listen to Lady Gaga's new video,and not caring that a hotspot fireteam defuses a nuke aimed at North America.

Some people can be that uncaring aout people saving their lives.

Because TV and media in general has generally become "disconnected" from people's lives. How many of you have seen someone save someone's life with your own eyes? Heck, how many of you have even seen a dead person? I'm pretty sure almost none of you have fully contemplated what it really means when someone dies, and thus it's impossible for you to think of how great such an act of saving a person from death is - sure your rational side might abstract such a situation - or you might hear it from other people, but until you experience it directly the words of "saving people" have little weight. Second hand experience, i.e. via other people, has almost no impact on people. Music and art in general, however, is completely a first hand experience, unless you sit through dull lessons on the theory of it. But that's a different story.

@ the question; I think it's unfair that you call geeks/nerds/dorks/whatever "intelligent". Sure some of them might be good at math or physics or whatever, but I find that nerds ,in their own way, are pretty dumb. This is coming from someone who declares himself a nerd, if that means anything.

Okay I'll stop nitpicking now - the whole question is a matter of simple psychology. Nerds are commonly weaker in a physical sense against most teenagers - excuse the cliche, there are exceptions - and thus commonly seen as an "easy target" for people looking to ridicule them. And teenagers commonly ridicule people because they're looking to assert their dominance and build up their self-confidence. In essence, by ridiculing other people teenagers can say that they're stronger than another person, and fulfill their psychological need for power.

Since teenagers commonly lack a high level of restraint they let their lust for power run almost unchecked - until the point that they would get in trouble - which basically means they'll look for every opportunity to "safely" say they're stronger. Nerds are targeted here because nerds often have little self confidence (shy), and that they threaten the bully's dominance in intellectual activities, so the bully will sometimes see the nerd, psychologically, as a threat. All of this build up and this results in ridicule for nerds. Of course most people grow out of this by developing higher levels of restraint - commonly called the superego - and thus becoming "adults".

@H4rl, being smart is not necessarily a good thing. The periods of the nihilist/emo are MUCH stronger when one is "smarter", aka, able to see things critically and have a "piercing eye", because they realize how little the person actually is worth.