Dating in a social climate where it seems unacceptable to approach people you don’t know already.

I was hoping I could get some advice from the community. Long time lurker, first time poster

For context, I’m 22M. I’m graduated from college now for about a year, had my big boy adult job for about that long. As a result I’m financially independent, save for my roommate who is my best friend. I feel like I’m a decent conversationalist. I contribute, put in effort to actually learn about who I’m talking to, etc.

Maybe this is just something that I experience, or may be a result of my own approach to dating.

It seems like our current culture around approaching others is that people don’t want to be bothered in public by strangers you don’t know, especially out of fear of people being creepy. Totally fair. I don’t wanna be suddenly approached by people I don’t know asking me personal questions.

Although, that leaves kind of a catch 22. How do people meet new people if nobody wants to take the first step? From my perspective, at best I don’t want to bother somebody who doesn’t want to be bothered. At worst, I don’t want to come off as creepy, or make somebody’s day worse by approaching them in public.

It seems like the only places that are appropriate to go to meet people are places/events specifically for that purpose. That leaves OLD, which for most people gives wildly varied degrees of success, or bars/clubs. I like dancing, tbh I’m a fiend, but I don’t drink or do any drugs at all, so it feels weird to be surrounded by people under the influence while I’m not. I almost feel predatory in that situation and it makes me uncomfortable.

Pretty sure that other stuff like blind date events and things that you see in romcoms are either a thing of the past, or just a fictional trope. I don’t really know.

I’ve also been told the classic “it’ll happen when it happens.” thing. But I don’t think that’s necessarily true. There have to be opportunities for meeting people, and for the reasons I mentioned above, seem incredibly sparse.

I work, come home, do chores, go to the gym, play games, watch a show here or there, standard stuff everyone else does.

I haven’t dated in the adult world before. Had a couple from Tinder, but they were short, just a date or two. Nothing really wrong, just neither of us really click. Since I’ve deleted all of my OLD because it just doesn’t seem worth the effort, and it was affecting my mental health. I had a 3 year relationship with a girl I met in highschool that continued almost through my entire college time which ended about a year ago.

Sorry for the long post and what may be a lot of extraneous information… Thanks for any of your responses and taking time to read this whole thing. ❤️