One of the reasons it is so hard is that right now is an extremely difficult time for people, so I think meeting people is even more difficult. If you are stressed out about making rent every month, guess what socialization and finding a partner becomes a distant priority vs just surviving.

I promise you though there are plenty of women out there who find social awkward people into niche hobbies sexy, especially if you are a genuinely nice person (which, beyond a superficial impression, is pretty much always the truly sexy thing about a person).

The problem is that those women are sitting at home exhausted and sad from modern life the same way you are, and it is hard to meet people outside the context of a bar.

If you are a nice person you are sexy and enough the way you are, what needs to change is the brutal grind of modern life, not you.

I mean just from a basic freetime calculation… women didn’t use to be able to work, which is fucked up, but it is also fucked up how much everybody's lives are swallowed up by work at least in the US, and if you compare the difficulty of finding a women to hit it off with vs when women weren’t working as much…. I mean you have to cut yourself slack. The women of your dreams probably isn’t at the bar or wherever public meeting space you are, or actively on the dating app because they are stressed out and working all the time just like you :(

Depends. Speaking from a lot of experience being a socially awkward guy, the following helps:

• Improving fitness and wearing clothes that show it, getting rid of any terrible haircuts.
• Having standards other than appearance and focusing on that from the start. This means rejecting attractive people who aren't a good personality/etc. fit. Why does this help? It leads to better conversations and less wasted time.
• Attitude of trying to laugh/have fun/be fun. She's not into FOSS and motorcylces? Ok, don't keep bringing it up then, instead talk about something you both like (and if you followed the above, there should be something).

Two fields famously filled with women: Linux and motorcycles lol