I think personality quirks are fair game - if you can't interact with Normals the way they interact with each other, then almost by definition, you are abnormal.
The main social failure that I tend to notice in CS geeks (not all, but some) is complete indifference to other peoples mental states. They don't notice, or don't care, that their conversational partners are not interested in or knowledgeable about what they're saying, they don't seek out a common ground, and they write off any resulting awkwardness as a mere symptom of geek discrimination or (worse) take it as an indication of the stupidity of the other person.
I realize that sometimes this is actually a result of Asperger's, which for whatever reason seems more common in CS than any other field, so I'll always cut a lot of slack to those that have such a disorder. But I also think that a lot of kids that are mentally normal end up getting too deep into the dorking out that tends to happen around computers and lose all interest in social interaction, which is a shame, because it's really rather simple - I know people with Asperger's that have learned to "fake it" well enough to be enthusiastically welcomed in social settings, so people without it have little excuse.
Hobbies are a red herring - you can obsess over Doctor Who, World of Warcraft, or gruesome Internet porn all you want, the issue is whether you can read people well enough to stop talking about them and move on to something else when they are making the conversation less enjoyable for others. For better or worse, most geek hobbies are peculiar to geeks, so when you're around non-geeks, it's usually on you to leave your area of comfort in the name of finding good topics of discussion.
The main social failure that I tend to notice in CS geeks (not all, but some) is complete indifference to other peoples mental states. They don't notice, or don't care, that their conversational partners are not interested in or knowledgeable about what they're saying, they don't seek out a common ground, and they write off any resulting awkwardness as a mere symptom of geek discrimination or (worse) take it as an indication of the stupidity of the other person.
I realize that sometimes this is actually a result of Asperger's, which for whatever reason seems more common in CS than any other field, so I'll always cut a lot of slack to those that have such a disorder. But I also think that a lot of kids that are mentally normal end up getting too deep into the dorking out that tends to happen around computers and lose all interest in social interaction, which is a shame, because it's really rather simple - I know people with Asperger's that have learned to "fake it" well enough to be enthusiastically welcomed in social settings, so people without it have little excuse.
Hobbies are a red herring - you can obsess over Doctor Who, World of Warcraft, or gruesome Internet porn all you want, the issue is whether you can read people well enough to stop talking about them and move on to something else when they are making the conversation less enjoyable for others. For better or worse, most geek hobbies are peculiar to geeks, so when you're around non-geeks, it's usually on you to leave your area of comfort in the name of finding good topics of discussion.