Daygame is tough. Recent technological advances haven't made daygame any easier.
Most men are invisible to most women. Unless a man is at least a 7.5-8, he's going to feel invisible a lot of the time. Heck, even some 7.5-8s might feel that too.
I'll take my experiences as a man with photo ratings around 6.5-7. Let's be conservative and say I've rated as a 6-7 on looks.
If I'm doing an approach session outdoors, this is what I notice. When I make eye contact with and smile at most women, the overwhelming majority of women do not even acknowledge my existence. There's zero positive body language. There's no indication that they want to be talked to. Some portion of those non-responsive women have boyfriends and are not looking for new penis. I'll never know that. However, there are some women that are actually available and open to new penis who might not be interested. I think it is better to do outdoor approaches when there's an IOI in place. If I have to do stops on women that give me no IOIs, the most common interaction is some interaction of 30-60 seconds or less that doesn't result in me asking them out on a date and/or collecting their phone number. It's a mostly meaningless interaction. While I am willing to approach a woman not wearing headphones/earbuds without IOIs, I won't approach a woman wearing headphones/earbuds without some IOIs. Most women, earbuds or no earbuds, are not acknowledging my existence. I only have a fighting chance with the women with no earbuds in. Those are a small part of the population now on outdoor walking paths. It's incredibly difficult to capture the attention of women wearing earbuds on a walking path, not to mention get a 5 minute conversation out of her that serves as the basis for asking her out on a date.
Fewer women wear earbuds in the indoor retail settings. The pandemic and indoor masking ruined indoor retail game for multiple years and we're just starting to see signs that women are willing to talk to strangers indoors again. Even still, most women do not consider talking to an unknown man in a mall store, mall corridor, grocery store, or book store to be a priority. Many of those women in the venues mentioned in the last sentence are not open to new penis, but it's difficult to know the boyfriend status of women in the grocery store who you open and the interaction ceases in 30 seconds.
The general gym floor has a massive earbud problem. Fitness classes (either at the gym or a separate studio type environment) are the earbud workaround. Fitness classes at gyms and class-based studios have better ratios but even pickup in those venues is a bit of a challenge. Getting dates from attending them isn't as easy as you might think. There are very narrow windows to approach. You have 5 mins before class and 5 mins after class. That's not much for quantity. Additionally, a lot of women are not very sociable before/after classes. That's true both for men and with other women in terms of female friendships. I have arranged dates at fitness classes but relative to the number of fitness classes that I attended over time, it was an inefficient time sink. The primary reason to go to fitness classes is if you enjoy the exercise style of the class. If you get any dates out of it, consider it a bonus. You can't build a pipeline around fitness classes. You'll likely have to supplement with other approaching venues.
