alt Hacker NewsNot only is this such a cringe term (we may describe poor aptitude in an area as an exception but exceptional?) it's also not accurate. If you want a milquetoast label call them "spikey" to denote the array of dimensions and the variance, or multimodal or similar.
I mean, I didn't invent the term--but the literal definition of "exceptional" doesn't necessarily mean that something is positive, only that it's outside the norm.