>>17385320The way social media and dating apps work now has made "picking up" women a dead letter. Historically, socialising in general (not just dating) was easier, due to technological and transportation limitations.
As a general principle, the further back in time you go, the stronger social bonds were. The number of people you could meet or be in contact with at any time was drastically limited, so those people that were around you were a limited quantity and treated with more care and value.
In particular, before the invention of the railway, you would naturally get to know a great number of the people around you. You would need them, for news, for resources, to kill boredom, and yes, for sex and marriage.
You would have regular conversations with elderly people, the men of your quarter or village, and yes women too. While women were always at least somewhat picky, attention from men was a scarcer thing in a time when no women (except literal prostitutes) would have been parading themselves either literally or virtually before a mob of men. So even if you honestly had no chance, there was a much greater possibility of women responding politely and graciously to an equally polite and benign greeting, especially if you were known to be respectable.
The railway, followed by the steamship, the telephone, the television, and finally the Internet brought women into contact directly or indirectly with an infinitely greater number of men. No longer was attention from men something of much value at all, it was an ever-greater nuisance. We've reached perhaps the heights of this today, where almost all women are in a position to receive both polite and crude advances from an absurd number of women both in real life and online.
To try and distinguish yourself effectively from other men has gone from a challenge to almost an impossibility for the vast majority.
