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Notes -
I think it's the other way round. EA arose out of the "dating for nerds" culture, and that's the problem they've now run into. The cultural assumptions are still those of the nerd-dating scene, but the movement itself is now moving towards being a mainstream academic/philosophical/charitable foundation entity, and is adjusting to the cultural assumptions of those scenes. Hence the problems with "Oh hi, new member? Would you like to meet the rest of my polycule? We're open to taking on a new partner right now!" approach at conferences, which was perfectly fine when it was all the Bay Area kids (or people who moved to the Bay Area because they heard about the whole scene and wanted to be part of it, like the gays moving to San Francisco to be part of the scene there) but isn't workable in today's "I went to Oxford to do a degree in PPE and then upon graduation get a job in an NGO" environment, which is increasingly the one they're operating in.
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