It's true in my personal experience, women throw themselves at you and you take the best options rather than actively pursuing what you really want (a 9+).
Let's take the example of a man who is an 8.5. A man is who an 8.5 will have women in the 5-6.5 range actively pursuing him. A man who is an 8.5 doesn't have to put in much effort to have sex with a 6. Plenty of men who are 8.5s are swiping on 6s on Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge. An 8.5 can have sex with a 6 on a first or second date from a swipe app. It's quite easy, and there's a near endless amount of 5s and 6s that can be smashed from the swipe apps with minimal effort.
If an 8.5 doesn't want to use swipe apps, he can pick up a 6 at a bar for a one night stand or short term casual sex arrangement nearly as easily. He won't have as much abundance from solely doing bar pickups as swipe apps, but he'll be able to do well enough on quantity.
It would take more effort for an 8.5 male to get an 8-9 woman even for one night, let alone some sort of extended relationship.
An 8.5 male is likely to be a guy who is 6'0"+ with a good physique. This is a guy who could do well meeting attractive women playing sand volleyball, either in random pickup games or in an organized co-ed league. For the 6'0"+ guy with a good physique, I don't think that sand volleyball is any more efficient than swipe apps or random approaching at bars. That type of guy is going to have success in all formats. It's a matter of how much screen time he wants to put in on his smartphone vs. how much real life approaching he wants to do and what his goals are. Doing something like trying to meet a top level volleyball playing woman (likely to be a 7.5+ in looks) will take more attraction-seduction effort.
I think it would be more fun for a 6'0"+ guy with sand volleyball skill to pick up women through volleyball than to sit on Tinder/Bumble/Hinge and swipe. It'd be a better use of time for that guy to play volleyball in terms of getting longer term relationships. That'd be the use case where I'd recommend volleyball over the swipe apps. It's a realistic scenario for a 6'2" guy to a get a 5'9"-6'0" volleyball playing girlfriend and that scenario has a better chance of lasting longer than flings with Tinderellas, most of whom are 5'6" and under.
I think what you mentioned here with the single woman wearing earbuds is a great example. Most men that will see such a woman will naturally take that as a sign of being a social interaction deterrent, so naturally they avoid her. Another really good example is women that are constantly glued to their cell phones, again this is just another deterrent because instead of looking around and making brief glances at individuals she has her eyes locked to a screen.
That one example of a woman in a higher end chain liquor store wearing earbuds while not having a ring on her finger is a great example. It's unknown whether or not she had a boyfriend. In addition, since about 2015-2017, I have also seen more women wearing earbuds while at grocery stores too. Wearing earbuds at grocery stores or higher end chain liquor stores prior to the mid-2010s was unheard of.
In a mid-size to bigger metro area (500,000+ in population), there is a case to be made that there are enough approach targets that it's not worth dealing with someone in an indoor retail setting wearing earbuds. The earbud wearing on the general gym floor or outdoor spaces is a bit different, and I'll get into that in a moment. The same also applies to women immersed in their smartphones. Wearing earbuds and being glued to a smartphone do signal a lack of interest in socializing with other humans. It will reduce a woman's in-person approaches.
I don't think women do this intentionally to ward off men and instead it's more a product of culture, this is something that younger millenials and gen zs have serious issues with.
Some women in relationships will wear earbuds in various settings to reduce approaches. There's no reason to wear earbuds in a liquor store or grocery store.
The culture around earbuds/headphones has changed over the years. When I was in college (2001-2005), it was the earlier days of the iPod and MP3 players. Even prior to the iPod and the MP3 player, there were Walkmans and Discmans. In the Walkman/Discman era of the 1980s-1990s, it was certainly possible to immerse yourself in a personal music device. In the USA, outside of the subways and the streets of New York City, it was uncommon for women to wear headphones then.
I remember being in my college's gym in 2003 and distinctly noticing how the majority of the most attractive co-eds at my university were wearing earbuds with their newer iPods and MP3 players. The lesser attractive women weren't wearing earbuds in the gym at that time. Fewer females were wearing earbuds walking between classes as compared to the proportion of women I see now wearing earbuds at parks or on walking paths. By the early 2010s, the earbud virus had spread to average and below average looking women at the gym while staying constant among the hotties. The growth in earbud wearing outdoors has been exponential. There has been a bit of the copycat effect among women with it. In 2023, we now have a history of ~20 years of women wearing earbuds/headphones at gyms. It's sort of been ingrained among women. Because this has been going on for so long, there are women doing it now who aren't even questioning it.
Outdoor approaching at parks, on walking/hiking paths, and likely on college campuses has been made far more difficult by the virus of earbud wearing.
At any gym, only a small percentage of men wearing headphones/earbuds on the general gym floor while nearly every woman does. I think a lot of this is related to in-person approaching and women being fearful of in-person approaching.
I'd say this age cohort has sub par social skills and often are not comfortable with interactions with those that are strangers.
This is true for both Millennials and Gen Zs. Realize that the oldest Millennials like myself are now old. The early part of the Millennial cohort is now starting to turn 40.
About 5-6 years ago, a good friend's wife claimed that she had never been approached at a grocery store. Considering that she was good looking in her 20s and was ~30 when she made that claim, it was a rather dubious claim when she made it. My friend and I both figured that she was so socially inept that she wouldn't even realize an approach if it had happened.
A number of wives in my local area social circle are at least moderately socially inept, and these are older Millennial women who are ~35 years old now. If these ~35 year old women are a bit socially stunted, imagine a 20-25 year old woman. A 35 year old woman today finished high school in the era before Instagram and smartphones, and when Facebook was only a college campus social network. They had AOL Instant Messenger as a precursor to smartphone
texting though and might have even done some texting on feature phones in the mid-2000s.
In the mid-2000s, the pre-smartphone feature phones were mainly used for making phone calls while away from home with some very light texting done in noisy environments like bars/nightclubs.
This ties in with the idea that men are far more likely to approach women that appear open to such an interaction. All of these behaviors like we are discussing here are the opposite of that and naturally approaches do not occur. It's also totally possible that some of these women are lonely or even open to meeting a man, they just aren't aware how their behavior is preventing this from even happening. In addition to this, I feel that the younger generation of women, those that grew up with social media, are not very good at displaying to men that they are actually interested. I believe a lot of this all ties in with just the current culture, social media, the internet, etc. but it was made worse during the pandemic.
At least 10-12 years ago, I had noticed that Millennial women were getting poorer at using body language to signal interest to men for approaches. I saw a difference in female behavior in 2011-2013 compared to 2003-2005. This trend has likely gotten worse in the last 10-12 years.
There could be some younger women immersed in smartphones or wearing earbuds who are single and lonely. In recent times, most women have enough abundance from either their social media DMs and swipe apps (if using) that they don't even need to field in-person approaches anymore. There are also some women not open to new penis due to a boyfriend relationship that is at least moderately satisfying for them. Most women 35 and under who are single and not wearing earbuds can get approached enough in real life within a few months to find a decent boyfriend if they leave their homes on a regular basis.
