That’s an effective summary of the situation. Society has effectively made it taboo to pursue dating/romance in just about any irl space where you might meet someone. Makes me wonder how much was social engineering on the part of dating apps (like Match group astroturfing on reddit/social media).
i tend to think it's a christian thing. "sexuality and lust are evil, you're not supposed to flirt" kinda thing.
As for your last paragraph, sorry to tell you this, but that won’t work either. People will start noticing and telling their friends about you, calling you names, saying you ask out literally every woman you meet, calling you fuckboy, creep, or whatever. It doesn’t matter how polite you are or how respectful. In fact if you bring attention to how polite and respectful you’re being, they’ll view that as even worse. Eventually someone will sneak a picture of you and it’ll make the rounds on social media. There are entire sites and apps dedicated to women gossiping about men. It doesn’t take much to kill your whole reputation. And women talk to each other about the men they see, so if you become known as “that guy,” then even if you meet a woman who hasn’t heard of you and things start going well, eventually one of her friends will tell her you’re a walking red flag and she’ll ghost you without an explanation.
and that is also spot-on. 100%