HalfSigma likes to theorize about the principles which make certain activities nerdy or non-nerdy. Why is World of Warcraft so nerdy?

Perhaps Chess is perceived as an extreme mental challenge (although not necessarily as g-loaded as people think), while WoW is mostly perceived as vegetating in front of the computer monitor.

A list of other super-nerdy activities includes Star Trek, Dungeons and Dragons, and playing the game Magic: The Gathering.

Why is Magic the Gathering nerdier than Scrabble? I suppose because women play Scrabble.

Science fiction/fantasy involving spaceships or Hobbits is nerdy, but vampires are not nerdy because girls like Vampires. Nor is science fiction involving time travel.

In the comments to my last post about World of Warcraft (WoW) being nerdy, people have hypothesized that sports are manly and non-nerdy because they are proxies for physical combat.

But most video and computer games popular among nerds are also proxies for physical combat.

It occurred to me that painting isn’t considered a weird nerdy hobby like playing Dungeons and Dragons, or going to Star Trek conventions, or blogging about human biodiversity. Yes, painting, if somewhat introverted, is considered normal, and is not a big turnoff to women (and it’s women, not men, who get to determine what’s normal and what’s not).

And thus we discover the nerdiest activity of all: attempting to develop a unified theory of nerdiness.

You don't need a theory here. If you've got nerdy tendencies and (wisely) wish to destroy or at least conceal them, just avoid situations in which you have previously found yourself surrounded largely by nerds or can expect to be surrounded by nerds. Find somewhere else to be and something else to do. Head for a gym or a pub instead of an anime convention. If you're playing in five bands and need to quit one to free up some time, quit the one with the nerdiest fanbase. How hard can this be? Are some people so nerdy that they really do need a theory to guide them?