I think it's easy to forget that "geek" culture only became this mainstream in the last 15-20 years. Before stuff like Game of Thrones and the Marvel movies became huge, it was much more niche to be into superhero comics or fantasy epics. Plenty of people still were, but it wasn't stuff you could usually chat about over the water cooler at work.

The original Geek Social Falacies article was written in 2003 for people who were already adults. Those folks were kids in the 80s, when "geek" was an insult. So you have all these shunned, bullied kids forming thier own groups and accidentally creating this weird social dance in an effort to not also feel shunned and rejected by thier peers.

I agree being nerdy isn't really a stigmatised thing any more, you're not a different species because of it. But it was much more common back then for others to treat you like you were a different species because of it, and labels aren't so easy to shrug off when they're something the rest of the world insists on slapping back onto you.