The only way is to go out there and try. Make your mistakes and learn to socialize. The important thing is to get out and have hobbies outside your house so you can meet people with similar interests. Forget about dating sites or pickup locations, look around places you find interesting and enjoyable, and you'll at least have common ground with folks you meet.

I've tried to do just that in the past. Holding conversations with people, trying to find similar interests with people. Trying to attend conventions / meets / whatever-have-you in an attempt to.. really do much of anything social. I might be a bit goofy or silly on the RL side of things, but I wouldn't consider myself antisocial or even socially-awkward. Rather; the opposite.

But it doesn't help when you're more or less into something relatively niche and trying to find people in an otherwise.. 'normal' area (Living pretty much on the border of Kentucky and Indiana, two places where this sort of thing isn't really too welcome / commonplace).

I've always been "The weird guy", or the "guy with the creepy father" or something to that effect. It's frustrating.

I think I understand now. And I'm sorry man. It's gonna be difficult to find someone who shares the same niche interests as you. You'll have better luck if you just look for someone who wants you happy, even if they're not into the same stuff as you. A healthy couple doesn't have to share everything, and getting alone time to pursue individual interests isn't a bad thing either.

Take what I say with a grain of salt as I have a condition that makes it difficult for me to have much of a social life, but I think the most important thing is just being yourself, even if you need to keep some interests of your's on the down low it's always best if you just act like yourself. If someone likes you for the way you are things will fall into place, or at the very least you may make a good friend

Honestly you may find someone on FA DA etc you just gotta keep yourself open and make friends. and try to find people with some similar interests as you.

I mean you can try dating sites and there lots of them around i see ads of them all the time. but you can even try IRL it whatever you feel more happy with. the one of the pros of dating online is finding people it will have alot of interests as you do like whatever you may be interested in.

The girls will come if they know your single and looking. i be honest i had no idea you was not taken i always thinking you were. i mean im sure any girl would love to have you. your a great guy :3 if i know any singel ladys i will point them your way... tho i have mostly male friends.

Sadly I have no advice for you honestly. My dating... Hell my social life is basically non existent. But I do wish you good luck, the best advice I ever got was to just find a person who you can be best friends with, who you wanna fuck!

Pounced was alright, but didn't have enough users. And you're right, most other dating sites are bots/cash-grabs. There's a few legit users there that will either list their IM info or mention to ask for it, but they're also kind of a pain to navigate properly.

Have you heard of Ferzu? Works a little like Pounced in that it sorts by distance, but it's much more fleshed out and has far more users, and also has no ridiculous messaging limits like other dating sites, though I guess it's technically more of a social/dating hybrid site. Great place to find new friends to hang out with, that won't find enormous hungry dicks appalling, lol.

Dating shouldn't be the objective in itself.

What you need to do is to put yourself into a situation where you regularly get to socialize with people of the opposite gender. Join a hobby club or something else. Reading, knitting, LARPing, model airplanes, outdoors activities, some kind of sport, or just about anything!

Now, you need to get to know people. You might become infatuated with someone straight away, but try to wait a bit and get to know them personally. After about half a year, perhaps more depending on how you feel, you should know people well enough. If you're still romantically interested in anyone at this time, great! If not, you've hopefully made a bunch of friends, which also helps a lot. Just having interaction with those of the other gender, even if it's non-romantic, helps self confidence greatly. IF you do find someone who interests you, go ahead and confess your feelings to them. Don't go all out immediately, though. Say something along the lines of "I really like you, and I was wondering if you'd want to spend some more time together - just the two of us - to find out if we're for each other." Not that exactly, as it might be a bit too direct, but that's the general sentiment. You'll be spending time together, just hanging out, not necessarily going out to the movies/restaurants until later. Unless that's what feels most proper, of course, then go ahead to the real 'dates.'

This way, you actually know the person before you start dating, which means a lot, and will absolutely help your confidence, even if they end up declining.