Do normal people really act like this?

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Until about when were you in San Francisco? Because I think that things might have gotten worse since 2016 when I started attending meetups.

I have had some strange interactions where occasionally women who were in their 50s and 60s would ask me to dinner and stuff. And contrary to the rule about never asking women their age, I never asked them--however, they told me their age unsolicited. I always found that quite odd. There was one woman was in her 60s who asked me to dinner or to come see her in San José, but I declined because I just found the whole experience too weird for me.

There was a woman last year who told me that she had graduated from UC Berkeley...in 1973. I never asked anything about it, but she just told it without my asking. She told me how she had divorced her husband a few years ago and that she had children who were studying as postgraduate students. Then she asked if I wanted to hang out. I felt just kind of strange in that situation, but we never met up outside of the meetup. She still goes up to talk to me from time to time at meetups though.

Last September there was a woman who perhaps was in her late 40s or 50s, and talked with me. She told me how bad dating was here, and that the problem was that there were either 1) too many gay guys or 2) too many tech guys. Then she asked if I was single. Later she pointed to some women in their 20s and told me, "Look, she looks cute. Why do you not go and talk with them?" Obviously with my social anxiety that was not possible.

Two years ago a woman who was almost age 50 asked me to dinner, so I went. She told me that she had graduated university in 1990, i.e. when I was but one year old. Then she said, "People in this city just have no manners...they never grew up with manners like both of us in our generation had." She was a nice person, but I kept reflecting on that statement. Do I really look like a 50 year old? Did she think that I was around age 50 the whole time?

Both the men and women at meetups are indeed quite vicious if you are not a talkative neurotypical. I got asked to my face, "Why are you so weird?" because I was acting too shy. Sometimes at meetups you talk with someone and they start whispering to you, "Look at that guy, he looks so lonely. He is not talking to anyone. Must be a creep" or something similar. But I notice that some people who are by themselves are just too shy and introverted to walk up to a big group and introduce themselves.

The tech thing really ruined social interactions and all manners in the city though. At meetups every time is a circle-jerk of one-upping one another based on who has better coding skills. "Oh, I do coding at Stanford. You?"

I was there from 2014-2017. Lived in Martinez (much, much cheaper) and BARTed into SF for work and events. But I was also married then so I didn't experience the dating scene firsthand, though I heard plenty of complaints about it so I know you're not alone in your feelings about it.

I don't doubt that things have been getting worse. The whole area seemed to be collapsing under its own weight while I was there, both the social structure and the physical infrastructure. I did find a lot of good there too, though, that outweighed the bad, so I hope things still have a chance of turning around, but the bad often seemed pretty odd and disturbing and potentially dangerous so I wasn't optimistic enough to gamble on change. But I do still visit from time to time and have a lot of affection for the place.

As for the experiences with the older women you mentioned, it's actually pretty common for women over 40 (the group I now fall into) to want to disclose their age pretty quickly because we know a lot of men prefer younger regardless of how wonderful our personality might be, so it seems best to just get that hurdle out of the way early on.

If they're asking you out to dinner, that can be taken as a good sign. It usually means they're interested in trying to get to know you better through conversation (so long as they're not asking for something obviously shallow and obnoxious like insisting on going someplace really expensive and expecting you to pay for it). There is probably nothing suspect about a dinner invitation and I think you can safely err on the side of assuming it to be a compliment, although if it makes you uncomfortable or you don't find them attractive then it's perfectly reasonable to decline.

As for why that particular age group seems to be seeking you out, while every individual case has the potential to be different, there is a particular situation older, unmarried women are facing in the area in that if they've held the same house or rental for a very long time they might have capped property tax or rent benefits that will be very costly to lose if they move out, while at the same time losing ground against the rising cost of living if they stay. Many are in a position where they may want to be in a relationship again, but they also need a second income to be able to keep their home. So any healthy-looking man who seems more mature than average (because they're looking for someone they can trust with their lifetime home) might be considered an attractive prospect to pursue.

While there's only so much that can be deduced from afar, given the combination of what you're saying about how people your age or younger are vocally rejecting you while at the same time older women seem to be attracted instead of equally put off, I'll hazard a guess that what might really be going on is that the "weirdness" you're being labeled with is not weird as in psycho or deficient, but that you're coming across as unexpectedly mature, which is something immature people often have a hostile reaction against.

If that's the case, then the problem may not be as much with you yourself, but that you need to find other venues where people you are interested in will find that attractive instead of treating you negatively for it. You might try looking around in some of the other communities on the BART line as things seem to be more settled down the further you get out from SF proper. From what I saw, places like Walnut Creek, Concord, and Brentwood seemed to be a lot more normal.

Actually now that I'm thinking on it, I think if I were still in the area in my now-single state, what I would most likely do is take the Amtrak to Sacramento (there's a commuter route that's pretty cost-effective while also having some nice quality-of-life/productivity amenities so the travel isn't a pure time sink) and go spend time casually hanging out or working in Old Sacramento to get to know people there. There seems to be a lot of diverse but laid back personality types there if you look past the tourists, and there seems to be a lot of overlap between Sacramento and San Francisco social networks so making friends in one place can also lead to meeting more in the other.

On the surface it might seem like a busy, chaotic place to try and deal with, but there's lots of smaller places to duck into whenever you need more sheltering so you can take things at your own pace. If you've never been there and would like more specifics to determine if it would be feasible for you, feel free to PM. I lived there from 2004-2013 just a few blocks from the Capitol downtown which is right next to the Old Sac area, so I've spent a lot of time there as it's one of the more interesting places Sacramento has to offer.

Though I should probably also mention I'm self-employed and can work while I'm out, so maybe my modus operandi of just casually hanging out places wouldn't work so well if you have to sacrifice productivity or have more restrictive responsibilities that limit your free time for it.

It was not really a question of attraction or non-attraction, it was mostly the age difference that confused me a bit. Some of the women were older than my mother, and some even had children that were older than myself. So I was unsure about how meeting up with them one-on-one would be. I did find it curious though that extremely rarely did women my own age show any interest. The few women that have from meetups were almost exclusively over age 45.

But your explanation makes sense. In my own experience, just trying socialising at meetups, I notice that the men here are very immature even in their 40s and 50s. They think that they are still in a fraternity in university or something. Only in SF have I heard men in their 40s and 50s address me as "bro" and "dude". So, I can see why women would find them unappealing.

Rent was averaging $3000-$4000 for a small one-bedroom flat back in 2016, from what I heard at meetups. Now $4000-$7000 apparently is normal. And all those women whom I mentioned, they all left and no longer live here in SF due to rent problems. Many of my acquaintances left due to the cost of living. But the immaturity about money worship seems to permeate all ages of society. Just two weeks ago at a meetup some tech worker kept bragging about his $6000 flat and how it was easy for him to afford due to his working for a big tech company. I thought that talking about one's own salary as well as asking others how much they make per year was taboo. But I guess no longer (?).

Usually what happens though is that both men and women share their sexual/relationship histories with me when I never even asked them about it. Then after they go on and on about their own past, then they turn to me and ask me about my own history. My guess is that they are trying to compare me with them, and see if I am "normal" with many exes and sexual encounters like they are. Like two months ago when I ate dinner with a 30 year old woman she suddenly switched the conversation to talking about her experiences with birth control and condoms. I found this alarming because I did not expect such a change in topic. When she asked me about my history I told her that I had no relationship nor sexual history, then she found out that I was a virgin. She gave me this facial expression that reminded me of a teacher who is looking at a student because s/he had failed an exam or something. I feel that many people here of both genders just want to start talking about sex and see who has the best sexual prowess or something.

Not to mention the immaturity. She also talked later about how she likes partying and that a few days ago during a night out at a disco she had drank too many shots and vomited uncontrollably thereafter. In my mind, I thought, "Is not age 30 quite late to be binge-drinking to the point of becoming delirious as well as sick to one's stomach?". I mean of course I drink every time I go out to a bar or to a restaurant, but I definitely do not down shots of vodka over and over.

I am not sure if you have heard about this, but there is a lot of low-level, underlying animosity between males and females here. There is a new term called “49ers” which is derived from the name of San Francisco’s NFL team. Now “49ers” refers to a woman who is a 4 but thinks that she is a 9. The women have a proverb now, “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.” Meaning that since there is such a massive majority of males here, mathematically women have good chances to meet someone. But the “goods are odd” part means that the women think that the men are all weirdos. So it is this back-and-forth struggle where men and women try to blame the other for why the dating scene is so difficult here. Like I wrote in my other thread, San Francisco now have the lowest percentage of children born out of any American city, plus also the lowest percentage of children who live in the city.

I have problems connecting culturally with people who are in their 20s and 30s. The worst age group are probably ages 21-25. They act like they are 11 years old, and in addition to talking like children, they do stupid stuff like take someone’s nametag and paste it on some random stranger’s back for laughs. They usually are the ones who insult me the most. I get called “Grandpa” and “Scrooge” or whatever because I am very serious and I suppose, act like an old man. Last year during a meetup some idiots in their early 20s went up to me and started talking rubbish to me, then patting me on the back sarcastically and saying, “What, you cannot take a joke, Grandpa?”

My only acquaintance right now is a guy who is almost 50 and is originally from rural Minnesota. Lately I have not seen him at meetups. He had told me various times that he was getting sick of meeting people who would treat him like dirt, so maybe he just stopped going.

Like I said, over here I was surprised that people in their 40s would say things like “ew, virgin loser”. I would think that most people outgrew that when they were 14 or 15.

Perhaps another thing that people consider me weird for is because I am culturally not in tune with things these days. All of my cultural references are from the 1960s and 1970s, sometimes 1980s. I have more in common with people who are baby boomers (people born between 1946-1965) and from the Silent Generation (people born between 1928-1945) than I have with my own age group.

When I get asked about my music preferences for example, I say Beatles, Bread, The Carpenters, Wings, Simon and Garfunkel, Peter and Gordon, Chad and Jeremy, Bryan Adams. No one my age knows of these groups, except the Beatles since they are so famous. So, I get shunned for my tastes in music as well as other things.

Personally, my preference is towards older women. I think that I could get along with someone aged in her 30s and 40s better than someone who is in her 20s. I also am more of a serious person always thinking years ahead about what to do in the future rather than the present. But those past times where I was asked to dinner, I just felt a bit awkward about how it looks or seems, with my being 27 or 28 back then going to dinner with a woman who was around age 65. I mean it is possible, but at that age she could basically be like my mother’s older sister. But still, a guy in his 20s with a woman in her 60s would look very odd. Even if they were age 50 right now, a 30 year old man with a 50 year old woman would look a bit odd.

If people ask you such personal questions, you should tell them that it's none of their business. That's what I tell people when they ask me.

Now I do that. Usually something like, "None of your god-damn business".

My trust in people has plummeted to an all-time low, so I stopped answering most of people's questions during social interactions.

Not everyone's like that, keep looking!