Also, people who have sex with men have different preferences (gosh), so the smooth talker may get declined in favor of the astrophysicist. Both very competent, in different fields, but the astrophysicist dude may not think of himself as good at social stuff.

In fact, I wonder how many of the dudes who think of themselves as social losers have careers/fields of skill in areas that were denigrated by the influential people of their youth? Used to be that competence at computer stuff was devalued and "not manly"; I would guess a fair number of guys who grew up exposed to that culture internalized that, even as computer skills have come to command a decent amount of power.