alt Hacker News> lack of social intelligence mixed with little self-confidence, both of which you can gain by being out-reaching and taking risks.
I live this. Even today, I have to make myself be social, I have to practice (my first job as a waiter was the best thing to happen to me).
The human engagement muscle atrophies when you indulge "introversion" (for all definitions and causes), and our age of infinite individual delights has tipped the tradeoff towards "alone and easy". I wish the sensitivity toward and acceptance of "neurodivergent" had more recognition that the way humans have been doing things for the last 15000 years might have had some value.
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We previously were more accepting, eg, if you read the accounts of various socialites trying to include shy, reclusive, or eccentric friends in high society, you see real effort and concern to include them despite the difference in behavior.
We dropped all that social connection/obligation and associated support it provided for various people when we stopped doing things that historic way.
Talking about a thing to virtue signal is not the same as doing a thing.
At least since the agricultural revolution (settling happened at various times depending on region, but we are talking thousands of years, up to 12k) up until a couple of hundred years ago most people lived in small communities of a few hundred people, where their great-great-grandparents also lived, huge extended family networks, regular festivities and behaviors tied to and strongly prescribed by farming work seasons and religious customs, semi-arranged marriages, job/land inherited from father to son.
There is nothing "natural" about living in some cramped city, meeting strangers all the time, trying to build connections and everybody leaving within 3-5 years to hundreds of miles away, navigating relationships online, working for big corporations with no stable coworkers, having to mingle with strangers all the time whose reputation, past etc you know nothing of etc.