I think a huge factor that a lot of people on here completely miss is simply accepting the reality of the dating market in our current time. I have a strong feeling a lot of the posters on here are much older, as in 40+ and well past this even, and do not understand the dynamics of the dating market today simply because they never went through it. Things like social media and dating apps did not exist 20 years ago. Sure, online dating sites existed, but wasn't how most couples met, in fact there was even a bit of a stigma associated with it.
IF a man was struggling in their time frame, the natural response is to assume there is something wrong with him. It's the same repetitive crap like work on your social skills, have better hygiene, dress better, become moderately fit, etc. This advice 20 years ago worked because the majority of guys were not struggling to get a date, so simply fixes like this would definitely help.
In contrast to this, you have large hordes of men that are otherwise decent/passable that are still struggling in today's dating market. Telling them the repetitive crap I mentioned above isn't even applicable.
Men are in the middle of the worst market for trying to find a partner, there is literally no debate on this. Your grandfather literally could just show up and he'd find a decent looking and decent quality woman to which he would marry, have multiple kids with, etc. Your grandfather didn't need to learn about "game" or spam approach women or make gym/fitness a part time job in order to land an average woman lol.
The advice should be to work incredibly hard on self improvement, because there are countless other guys out there doing better than you.
This analysis in all 3 of these quotes is all accurate. The dynamics of the sexual marketplace have changed from the sexual marketplace of the 1960s-1990s. Men who are Boomers and Gen X'ers who entered the market during this era would have a more difficult time comprehending what has changed in the sexual marketplace since circa the year 2000. Boomers and Gen X'ers entering the sexual marketplace in a more analog world had advantages that aren't applicable anymore.
Older Millennials (1981-1985 births) like myself were on the first wave of these changes. As someone who is in my early 40s right now and who entered the sexual marketplace as a lot of the current trends were emerging, I can relate to the changes that have happened.
I'll break a lot of this down point-by-point.
In the late 1990s/early 2000s, social media and dating websites were in their infancy. When I was in college (2001-2005), online dating websites still had a stigma. Match.com launched in 1995 and it languished for close to a decade until the stigma of online dating websites wore off. When I was in college, college students weren't using online dating. Online dating was only a thing (and something with somewhat of a stigma depending on the year) for people in the working world.
By the 2nd half of the 2000s decade, the online dating website stigma had eroded and Match, Okcupid, and Plenty of Fish got popular. In the 2005-2009 time period, women started to go onto websites and experience an abundance of penis like they had not seen before. Even nightlife venues (places that are often sausage fests) didn't offer them the type of penis abundance they were seeing on dating websites in this time. To women, being on a dating site in the 2nd half of the 2000s/early 2010s was like being in multiple nightlife venues at the same time and 24/7. It was incredible abundance for them. In this time, it was common for women to have something like 200-500 inbox messages. The only thing is that in this era, a smaller percentage of women were actually using dating websites.
Dating apps replaced dating websites in the 2010s and a larger percentage of women participated in the app environment as compared to the website environment. More women started experiencing the abundant feeling of being in multiple nightlife venues at the same time and 24/7. Apps changed the game because women didn't have to deal with the inbox volume of the dating website era. The volume of abundance came in the swipe queue and the swipe app inbox was only for specific men that were attractive that they right swiped. This was a major change for women as I am about to illustrate.
The abundance that has resulted in the change from a more analog way of first interacting to a more digital way of first interacting (website, apps, and social media) has raised women's standards and raised them to often delusional levels. While certain analog ways of starting interactions gave women a numerical advantage (bars/nightlife being the most common experience), nothing in the analog world could compete with the digital abundance.
Social media arrived in the mid-2000s with MySpace launching in 2004. Facebook also launched in 2004 but it was a college student only platform until late 2006 when it opened to the general public. Almost as soon as MySpace and Facebook started, there was DMing going on with guys looking for sex. This was happening in the 2nd half of the 2000s decade just as the stigma of dating websites had also eroded.
Around the same time, smartphones took off and changed communication patterns in the early stages of interactions as well. Apple's first iPhone was released in 2007 and made smartphones popular, even though some other smartphones had been released prior to the first iPhone. The iPhone/smartphone made text messaging the more common form of initial interaction, which changes how people communicate as compared to either landline telephone calls or pre-smartphone basic cell phones (think flip phones and candy bar type phones of most of the 2000s). Sending text messages on flip and candy bar phones was far more difficult and reserved more for situations where phone calls would be impossible (places like loud nightlife venues or stadiums). My last 2 years of high school and all 4 years of college (1999-2005) were done with phone calls being more popular than text messages. The smartphone has also helped women manage their abundance, shifting more of their communication to impersonal text messages rather than more personal and more attentive phone calls.
Prior to some point in the 2000s, the common diagnosis for struggling men would have been to fix various things that were wrong with themselves. In the 1960s-1990s sexual marketplace, that diagnosis was more accurate and then addressing personal shortfalls were likely to make a difference. Since the 2000s, that advice has not worked as well because of shifts in the marketplace. While some men need to have some level of self-improvement, self-improvement as a whole now has reached a point of diminishing returns. There are some men that would be good enough by the standards of the 1970s-1990s that simply can't compete in the 2000s-present market because of the shifts that have given women such immense abundance.
The prior paragraph is not meant to be dismissive of self-improvement. Improvements in social skills, fitness, apparel, accessories (Rolex, etc), automobile (higher end brand), avoidance of porn/masturbation, etc. might still have some impact in today's market. The point is that self-improvement can only go so far in a market that has shifted to the point where women's standards are so high that a large percentage of men are eliminated. Self improving from a 50th percentile man to a 70th percentile is good and will take a lot of effort. It might not result in that much of a change when women are looking to start interactions with strangers in the 85th-90th percentile +.
Plenty of Boomers and early Gen X men (birth years 1946-early 1970s) would have been incels or borderline incels had they been born as Millennials or early Gen Z'ers (early 1980s-early 2000s). The percentage of men who are incel or borderline incel has increased because women's standards have shifted so far and women are unwilling to settle for anything besides a top tier man because 60 years of feminism has told them to "Never Settle" and they have such abundance that the "Never Settle" mantra of feminism can be applied more easily than in the late 20th Century.