As a Gen Z man, that has explored every method available to date, I genuinely think that most men would have better chances online than offline at this point, especially if you want to meet Gen Z. Most people are giving advice that is extremely outdated for our generation. I can't stress enough how different the dating culture is for Millennials vs Gen Z. Millenials' advice to us is as outdated as Boomers' advice was to them.

So, to give some background, I've lived in 2 metropolitan cities (Boston and Phoenix). I'm pretty much your cliched Indian ambivert tech worker. I never had a single girlfriend during school and, while I did go on dates in college, it was never long-term. I only lost my virginity at senior year. I'm around a 6/10 in looks and charisma and I take part in a lot of social hobbies (running club, salsa, yoga, book club). I'm 25 and I'm open to dating anyone from 21-35 and have not had much success on the apps (I get around 3-4 matches a month). After reading some of the posts here and on other subreddits, I deleted all my apps and tried dating offline. However, I actually had a worse time dating in-person than on the apps, and most of my other Gen Z friends felt the same way.

Generally, I see four main suggestions for dating offline

  1. Hobbies/Meetups
  2. Speed Dating
  3. Cold approaches
  4. Work/Friends circle

I'm going to go over each point and explain why I feel apps are better.

Hobbies/Meetups

I'm gonna be brutally honest here, the vast majority meetups are complete sausage fests. Most single women prefer woman-only meetups (for good reason imo). So you're left with single men and couples in co-ed meetups. I think the best gender ratio I've seen in a meetup group between single men and women was 7:3, and that only happened once.

Hobbies are slightly better but not by much. From my experience, 80-90% of people in hobby groups are 35+. Most Gen Z people don't take part in any hobby groups from my experience. Among those that do take part, it's very, very rare to find single younger women who are actually interested in dating. To put it into perspective, the youngest single woman in any of my hobby groups is a 35 year old mother of two. Most single women do not want people hitting on them or asking them out in their hobby. This is especially true in female-dominated hobby groups like yoga classes and book clubs. Most women treat their hobby groups as a safe space from men, and are super wary of men that join until they verify that they are not there to hit on them. Using these groups as a method to date is super dangerous and can get you kicked out.

IMO hobby groups are a good place to socialize and improve your skills (although most groups are super flakey and it's hard to meet people outside of the hobby), but are terrible places to date. The gender ratio of young single women that are open to dating men is even worse than on the apps.

Speed dating

Don't believe the stuff women say about men not attending speed dating events. That's true only if you're older than 40. If you're under 40, any half-decent speed-dating service (for example Thursday Events) will try to sell an even amount of tickets for both genders. While this promising in theory, it doesn't really work in practice. While almost all men go alone, the majority of women go with their friends, many of whom are not single. So in practice the ratio of single men to single women ends up around 65:35. This has been my experience in over 10 dating events in 2 cities. Although in fairness, this is probably the best place to date if you're open to spending $50+ a night.

Cold approaches

I'm gonna make this quick. Most Gen Z women hate cold approaches unless the guy is atleast a 7/10 in looks and an 9/10 in charisma. If you're lower than this don't even bother trying. Gen Z women don't go to bars to meet strangers the way older generations did. They go with their friends to drink and have fun within their group. If you're an average guy, you'll honestly have more success on apps than in bars and clubs.

Work/mutual friends

Work could be a good place to date but it depends on the work environment. If you work in the service industry or a hospital, then it's probably the best place to date. If you work a corporate job, you usually won't have much success.

Now I've always found the advice of dating through mutual friends to be extremely overrated for guys for 3 main reasons.

  1. It's not very common among Gen Z. Apps have mostly taken the place as the intermediary.

  2. Straight men will almost never introduce you to their single female friends. Because of toxic masculinity, most men will feel possessive towards their single female friends and family, even if they don't have any romantic feelings towards them themselves.

  3. After college, developing friendships with women to the point that she feels safe to introduce you to her single friends can take a super long time (remember, if the relationship goes south, it could impact her friendship as well, so women are naturally pretty reluctant to play matchmaker unless they 100% trust you), and by that point you'd honestly have better chances with the apps.