Welcome back STC.
In the early 2000s, even if chicks didn’t find you attractive (looks wise), many were still open to being approached at bars and clubs. Without smartphones to distract them and kill time and online social media to pump up their egos, many women are the bars and clubs were genuinely bored (and somewhat more down to earth) and looking to socialize with men. Even if they thought your canned routines were silly, they were open for some conversation, laughs and silly bar games (known at the time as "game"). If you had the looks, you could hook up with these women. If you didn't, you at least had some social interaction, practice and a few laughs of your own.
But at the time, because of the above, it was tricky to separate "game" from looks. You got seemingly decent reactions from some women, and you got excellent reactions from others such as a solid number, makeout or full close. So it SEEMED like the game stuff worked and only required more practice and fine tuning. It wasn't necessarily obvious to guys (including myself at the time) that gaming a chick when you aren't her physical type was just free entertainment/dancing monkey stuff, and she was politely friendzoning you.
Then social media and online dating flooded women with attention, and they raised their standards on guys much like an employer who gets flooded with applicants for a job opening would do. Social media and online dating made chicks start to act and feel like celebrities. They lost their "down to earth-ness" and started to really put up a wall against any guy below (an increasingly high) looks threshold. It got to a point where the "dancing monkeys" and even just regular guys looking to chat were completely shut down. That's when guys started to question their "game gurus" who kept insisting that looks didn't matter.