You're definitely surrounded by nerds, just to use your words. I'm even in a PhD right now and most people just aren't in the hobby. It's something they did as a kid, ran out of interesting things, moved on to video games and either grew out of those or never looked back. Of the people that did, they started D&D campaigns and have little time for anything else. Boardgame culture is still very much niche, even among the broader nerdgeist

I love the word "nerdgeist!"

I'd accept the epithet of "nerd", and I've never played a board game (assuming Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't count). Especially among the more complex ones, I don't see why someone would rather run the rules manually instead of letting a computer take care of the bookkeeping and just play.