It's often observed that there's a pipeline for a certain kind of lonely young man to find some right-wing personality who tells them that their lack of connection to other people and lack of romantic relationships isn't their fault -- it's the fault of e.g. feminism, liberalism, leftism, postmodern neomarxism, whatever series of words they want -- and then give them "pick up artist"-type advice on how to talk to women, usually in a very manipulative way that dehumanizes women.

I never participated in those communities because of the overt sexism, racism, homophobia, general right-wing beliefs, etc. But I do sometimes look at the people in those communities and think "There, but for the grace of god, go I." On paper, I have a lot in common with "incels", in that I'm 29 years old and have never had sex with another person, or been in a relationship, or even been on a capital-D Date.

(I'm going to be ranting a bit about myself here, and I realize that it's generally boring to read men complaining about how lonely they are. Leaving aside for the moment the question of why this is so common that it's become boring, I'll try to avoid being too self-pitying and stick to information and questions I think will be interesting or relatable to other people besides myself.)

I think a lot of people make all their dating mistakes in high school, so that by the time they're in their 20s, they've learned the basic dating scripts. I never learned that. I never even really got comfortable talking about sex and relationships -- my parents didn't talk to me about sex or dating, I never talked about it with my friends in high school, and I can't think of anyone in my life who I would be comfortable contacting to say "I have a crush on <person>, what should I do?" I don't have the vocabulary for it. I literally don't know what to do when I am attracted to someone. I know a bunch of things NOT to do -- e.g. obvious things like don't harass them, don't stalk them, don't abuse or manipulate them. In other words, don't be an asshole. Which is true enough as far as it goes, but those are just good rules on how I should treat EVERYONE, not specifically people I'm romantically interested in.

As far as positive actions I can take, the most I can figure is:

• Try to spend more time with that person, going on small outings at first (e.g. walks, coffee) to get to know them better.
• In general, take care of myself and my own life, on the reasoning that people are attracted to someone who has their life together. (Oh, and also because I'm a person who matters and my own health and happiness are important for their own sake, but whatever.)
• Put some more effort into my appearance -- improving my clothing style, having some kind of skin care routine, and maybe getting a better haircut seem like good low-hanging fruit.

Okay, but this is still just generally good life advice outside of dating. It still seems like there are a lot of steps between "take basic care of myself and spend time with other humans" and actually getting into a relationship with someone. I'm fortunate enough to know lots of happy couples, but it's like, I've never "watched" two people fall in love, you know? I have lots of models in my life of people who are good partners in an existing relationship, but that tells me nothing about the initial process of attracting someone. I don't know what the process is supposed to be like. And I don't want to rely too much on the fictional examples I've seen -- it's become a cliche to point out that movies and TV show very unrealistic depictions of how relationships develop. So that leaves me without any narratives to inform me. (Although, if anyone knows of any fictional examples of a developing relationship that they see as being healthy models, please let me know.)

I believe that my experiences are a bit unusual, but not that uncommon among men my age (and especially among men my age who use the internet a lot). It might be reasonable to ask why this is. And an online right-wing asshole would give an explanation that involves the top 10% of alpha males taking the top 50% of women for themselves, leaving omegas like me with nothing. Which is silly, but I wonder if this is one of the many cases where right-wingers have (a) correctly noticed that there is a problem that center-liberals have ignored, but (b) completely misdiagnosed it so they could put forward their own racist, sexist, just generally awful ideology.

So, with all that in mind, what I would really love to see is resources for dating advice that:

• Acknowledges that all people involved are humans deserving of respect. I really hate "seduction" advice, for any gender, that treats the person you're attracted to as a "mark" or a "victim" or someone you need to manipulate or deceive. If I thought that were a necessary part of starting a relationship, I'd rather die alone than deliberately abuse another person for my own gain. But -- as evidenced by the fact that I have friends who are in relationships and aren't assholes -- I don't think it should have to come to that.
• Acknowledges that dating and attraction are complicated, non-obvious things that warrant explicit explanations. It's a cliche that "Just be yourself" is bad advice, but alternatives like "Just spend time around other people and don't be an asshole and eventually someone will fuck you" aren't much better. I'm not sure if I would describe myself as autistic, but I have found that it is very helpful for me to have certain supposedly "common-sense" things about interacting with other people explicitly explained to me.
• Is specific to men, especially in a North American context. I'm sure there is some dating advice that applies to everyone, but the fact is, gender is (currently) something that has real effects on people's experiences, so it would surprise me if, for something as intrinsically gender-related as dating and attraction, there's not some good advice that's specific to men who are attracted to women.