I’m baffled. People say that nerds have bad social skills, but nerds create nerd communities and don’t show any social ineptness.
You can participate in, or even help form, communities and still be socially inept. The stereotype should, of course, be taken with a grain of salt when it comes to individual cases, but it’s not pointing to an absolute lack of social interaction so much as a limited social range: your stereotypical nerd has hobbies and friends and can probably talk your ear off about them, but he’s lost when it comes to social tasks outside the narrow scope of his community.
Your example about flirting seems to be gesturing in this direction, but I think you’re assuming a tradeoff where none exists; socially adept people are just as good at shop or hobby talk as the average nerd, but they also have the skills necessary to bridge communication gaps when they don’t have a huge body of shared enthusiasm to fall back on.
You can participate in, or even help form, communities and still be socially inept. The stereotype should, of course, be taken with a grain of salt when it comes to individual cases, but it’s not pointing to an absolute lack of social interaction so much as a limited social range: your stereotypical nerd has hobbies and friends and can probably talk your ear off about them, but he’s lost when it comes to social tasks outside the narrow scope of his community.
Your example about flirting seems to be gesturing in this direction, but I think you’re assuming a tradeoff where none exists; socially adept people are just as good at shop or hobby talk as the average nerd, but they also have the skills necessary to bridge communication gaps when they don’t have a huge body of shared enthusiasm to fall back on.