Asklemmy

Millenial/GenZ borderline here. Perhaps not wise, but I have the modern dating experience and I can give advice about that.

Apps are completely useless. There are way too many guys and way too few girls who regularly use these apps, and that leads to awkward interpersonal dynamics, as though you're interviewing for a job. You should never feel like you're interviewing for a relationship. Even if you "pass," it's never a good sign that the start to a relationship is built upon checklists, transactions, and being the "best candidate." I honestly expect that this is where a lot of incels get their strange dating worldviews from.

The hard truth is that there is no easy answer. There's nothing you can do that will guarantee that you find someone nice. All I can say is that there are things you can do that will destroy your chances of finding someone. The best that you can do is to not do any of those things and hope for the best. Here's a couple tips that might be helpful:

• Don't spend your time online. As mentioned above, dating apps are worthless. Beyond that, though, it's pointless to find anyone when everyone is anonymous. It's ok to use the internet, but you also need to spend equal, if not more, time outside. Touching grass is a real, underrated advice. If you don't have a reason to be outside, find a reason. Whether it's a job, or a hobby, or a club, or some other commitment, you need to have a public presence. It was easier to be outside back when the internet wasn't a thing, now you have to be intentional about it.
• Find in-person communities to be a part of. Goes hand-in-hand with the tip above. You need a public presence. Have in-person friends that you see regularly, have people whom you know well enough that they recognize you and know who you are. I was part of a for-fun orchestra group, but you can also find gardening groups, or sewing groups, or any other number of formal or informal groups that might host regular in-person meetings
• Know your neighbors. Your neighborhood is a community that you're already a part of. It's quite easy and low commitment.
• Find new hobbies and expand your horizons. You should have a wealth of experiences, not just an autistic-level depth of a single experience. If someone asks you what you do for fun, you better not have only a single thing to say. Not only does this make you a more interesting person, it increases the chance that you'll encounter someone that you connect with. ie, you'll be part of more communities and therefore encounter more people, but also for any one person, there's a greater chance that you share at least one interest.
• Never stagnate. Builds off the previous tip. Always look for more things to do, more communities to join, more people to meet. There is too much to do in life for you to stagnate. Not only does this make you a more culturally rich person, it also gives you an excuse to be outside.
• Take some time to evaluate and reflect on what sorts of incel mindsets you have inadvertently adopted. A lot of internet and modern trends have fundamental roots in incel thought, and it's very easy to get subtly influenced by those ideas. Having any sort of incel ideology is a major red flag, so you'll need to self reflect on how you have been influenced by these ideas. Many people that I know who are single use incel or incel-like terminology or have expressed incel-like ideas. They're not bad people, and they're definitely not incels, but they have been subconsciously influenced by incel ideology from the internet. Meet enough of these people and you can start to see why it might be hard for certain people to find partners compared to others.
• Don't approach someone who doesn't actively indicate that they want to be approached. It's rude and possibly creepy to do so. It'll immediately destroy any chance of a connection with that person. It's a false stereotype that people in the past got relationships through cold-approaches. At any given point in time, very few people want to be approached. There are only 2 solutions to this. First, meet more people so that you run into more people who want to be approached. Second, be more targeted with where you spend your time. If you are at a community meeting, the people there are significantly more likely to want to be approached than people that you find randomly on the street. Even so, read the room and determine if they want to be approached or not.

You don't need to do all of these tips, but the more you do, the more appealing you become and the higher the chances are that you find someone. With a long enough time, you'll get lucky and find someone that you connect with. I won't lie, it's hard. In a sense, it's like losing weight or getting fit - you have to be intentional about doing things that you know are healthy. Except in this case, you're building social health, not physical health.