Basic Trope: A nerd engages in bullying rather than being bullied.
- Straight: Bob is a bully in computer class who sends insulting messages to everyone, pulls horrible pranks via hacking, harasses others for being fans of a franchise he hates, and uses insults like "ignoramus" and "plebian".
- Exaggerated:
- A gang of nerdy bullies.
- Bob is a Mad Scientist in the making, who pushes all the other students and even the principal around.
- Evil Nerd
- Downplayed: Bob is an Insufferable Genius who lets everyone know how smarter he is than them and is a huge Jerkass, but he rarely if ever actively initiates bullying.
- Justified:
- One or both of Bob's parents are abusive, if not severe Education Parents.
- Bob would otherwise be a jock, but he's too full of himself to associate with who he sees as a bunch of idiot meatheads below him.
- Bob just happens to be both geeky and obnoxious.
- Bob was or still is being bullied and lashes out at others to feel better about himself.
- The school's anti-bullying efforts generally focus more on the physical kind done by Jerk Jocks and Barbaric Bullies, and is either unaware or turn a blind eye to the kind Bob does, so he takes advantage of such.
- Bob attends a gifted school where intelligence genuinely translates to social status, and the power goes to his head.
- Inverted:
- Bob is the biggest bully in the school, insulting people, stealing their lunch money, and shoving them into lockers, but his one weakness is that he's dumb as a stick.
- Bob is the dumbest boy in the school, but also the sweetest.
- Bob is a nerdy boy in computer class who is also very kind and helps the other students with their assignments.
- Bob is a star athlete and an all-loving hero.
- Subverted:
- Bob appears to be an intellectual, using big words in his insults and bragging about how smart he is, but he turns out to be a Know-Nothing Know-It-All.
- Bob is seen hacking into Alice's account and sending her insulting messages, giving the impression that he's a bully, but then it turns out that it's in retaliation for when she smashed his chemistry set.
- Double Subverted:
- ...Actually, he does have a fair amount of knowledge, he just forgot the name of the man who discovered penicillin.
- ...But she only smashed his chemistry set because he shoved her into a locker just because she didn't know a fact of biology.
- Parodied: Alice is so pathetic that the school nerds (who are also frequent bullying victims) join in her harassment.
- Zigzagged: Bob is seen hacking into Alice's account and insulting her... but that's because she smashed his chemistry set... but that was because he shoved her into a locker... but that was because she stole his calculator, etc.
- Averted:
- There are no nerds.
- There are no bullies.
- Bob is a nerd, but doesn't bully.
- Bob is just a bully, and while he's smart, he's not a total nerd.
- Enforced: "Having the nerd be the Bully Magnet is such a cliche, let's have him be the bully instead!"
- Lampshaded: "Gosh, Bob's so tech-savvy, but he's bad news! He's a devilled egghead!"
- Invoked: Tired of being bullied so much, Bob just snaps and becomes a bully himself.
- Exploited: Due to the fact that he's a nerd, many people who aren't easily offended by his insults typically just beat him down and put him through a Humiliation Conga. No questions asked.
- Defied:
- Bob decides not to bully anyone, since he feels antagonism is for ignoramuses.
- Some people stand up to Bob and absolutely go to town on him with humiliation, and once they're done with him, they leave him Stuffed into a Locker.
- The teachers of the shool clamp down on such behaviour in nerds.
- Discussed: "I used to be pushed around by this obnoxious boy from computer class. He'd hack into my account and change my bio to 'I'm a nincompoop.'"
- Conversed: "Why do fictional nerds always either be bullied or bully?"
- Implied:
- The students and the staff get uncomfortable and uneasy with Bob, but nobody knows why.
- When Alice is told there's no way a nerd could be a bully, she responds "Well they can."
- Deconstructed: There are a lot of people who Bob couldn't hurt with words, typically because they've been called worse than a name for the Roman Commoners, and eventually, Bob gets the second version of "Defied".
- Reconstructed: Bob does not have the muscles, but he has the brains: he destroys the lives of his enemies and those he hates in general through methods like programming puppet-bot accounts to flood their social media with an endless barrage of hostile messages, figuring out the location of their most beloved places via signal triangulation and doxxing their social media to do some Swatting and hacking their bank accounts to steal all of their money/the school database to remove all privileges like scholarships/the police database to have them arrested.
- Played for Laughs: A Running Gag is Bob insulting people in Latin and the other people not knowing what he means.
- Played for Drama: Bob's bullying is so severe it makes Alice fall into a depression.
- Played for Horror:
- Bob invents an Energy Weapon and uses it to attack the other students.
- Alice's life is utterly demolished by a case of identity theft so thorough she may as well no longer exist. Said identity theft was orchestrated by Bob, who is that nerd who got upset over Alice taking the last meatloaf in the opening credits.
Meet me at The Main Page at lunch time and give me all your money, you plebian!
