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Bars aren't that much better, often lower quality women and more women than men. Starting a hobby to meet women is not efficient at all. Signing up for tennis/pottery or language classes just to meet women is a massive commitment of time to say high to maybe one or two single women in your age group.
Bars and clubs have kind of died as a place for 'average people to unwind', especially past University age. There's simply too much competition from other entertainment mediums, atleast in my experience. A certain subset of extroverted nightlife enjoyooors rotate around between eachother visibly, but as a subset of the population I believe it's smaller than it has been historically.
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That’s obviously not what people mean when they say meet people in real life. You’re right that most hobby groups are filled with retirees, because those are the people who have time to do those things.
You meet people in real life by making friends, getting invited to parties, meeting more people, getting invited to more parties (by which I include everything from barbecues to housewarmings to weddings to Halloween to NYE, whatever) until you have a relatively busy social schedule because one of your dozens of friends and acquaintances is probably hosting something this weekend and you’re invited.
100%. This very night, I caught up with my best friend and his rather inebriated girlfriend. A little bit into the conversation, she interrupted me and asked me if I was considering getting married, to which I reacted in the affirmative, albeit in a year or two. She immediately tried to set me up with her sister, and by set up, asked me if I wanted to marry her.
Having platonic female friends is life on easy mode, women love few things more than matchmaking. Prove that you're not a creep, and they'll send people your way.
I can remember several platonic female friends complain about women in their circles that no one was interested in, and then refuse to make introductions.
Were the guys that they refused to make introductions for lacking social proof? The guy they've never seen in a relationship before, even if a good guy in other aspects of his life is not a known good party for a relationship, he's an unknown, untested, possibly one that has some red flags that scare women away because increasingly as a man gets older from a woman's (mistaken) point of view it should have happened at organically if there was nothing "off" relationship wise with this guy.
Once a guy has just one relationship that wasn't completely disastrous done, only then have I seen women willing to endorse him.
It's the classic 'Your need several years experience to get an entry-level job' problem.
No wonder people compare dating nowadays to job-hunting.
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Not in my experience. I have had plenty of platonic female friends, but none of them ever tried to set me up with someone. Nor (as far as I'm aware) did they do so for any other dudes they were friends with. I can only speculate as to why, though (generational difference? nerdy women don't get into matchmaking the way normie women do? who knows).
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This is key and what a lot of dating discourse neglects. The problem is that many men who want a romantic partner often aren't particularly interested in making more platonic friends. Psychologically, it also feels a lot more indirect (compared to being told how to looksmax or how to cold approach), so can be difficult to generate enthusiasm for this approach.
I would also like to note that from the recent discourse about marriage in Mormons/religious groups, it was pointed out that the men are a lot more social and very regularly go to non-romantic social events where they get to know the women in their community (and the women get to know the men).
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You also don't need to start a new hobby to meet people. For hobbies with any women and even a modest number of young people taking any initiative, even the bare minimum, is often enough to make a big difference in your social life.
For example, my local hiking meetup was always desperate for hike organizers. What is involved with organizing a hike? Sending a single email to the list saying "Hey I'm going to X trail at Y time I expect it be Z difficultly. I can take 3 people from W parking lot, if you are arranging your own transport we leave promptly at Y from the trail head." By spending 30 seconds composing an email you get to:
You don't need to directly pull numbers at your hobby to have it expand your social circle.
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Do you have a manual on how to do this.
Arrange an event and invite the people you want to get to know better.
The main ingredients are an easily understood distracting activity or two that promotes interaction (cooking/eating, watching sport on a screen, simple table games, whatever suits you and your group), somewhere to rest and an informal atmosphere.
If you don't want to arrange something yourself look for similar low stakes events around your area and ask if they're thinking about going, then if they're open to the idea suggest meeting there.
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Set up a standing social event - church used to fill this role for many. You can still do that, but adding another regular event helps. It’s a low-effort way to invite people without the mental load of planning. For me, planning one-off events often fell through, so I stick to, “I’m at trivia at this spot every Thursday; first beer is on me.” People say young adults aren’t going out, but I see plenty of attractive mid-20-somethings at the trivia nights I hit up. Really want to amp it up, I have beautiful big dog (thanks to my wife) that is a magnet for women.
Get roommates and run the house so you can choose who lives with you. Bonus: you cover your rent. Double bonus if you can house-hack.
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Learn to cook and make cocktails. Create facebook events for house parties. Eventually someone will bring couple of girls they are hitting on. Befriend them. They have friends, they can invite other girls and they will vouch for you that you are cool guy and not a creep.
The average age of people on Facebook is like..55.
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Fuck.
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