I think the first thing to realise is most guys have self esteem issues and most are very insecure. It's not something that makes you inferior and actually having a bit of self awareness to go with it is quite healthy. Some guys seem to get lost in it and it ends up manifesting itself as abuse or Read more… driving an Audi.
You do need to force yourself to be brave and not be afraid to flirt/be a bit cheeky (without being disrespectful). It's like everything else in that it's a learning process. Learn to be comfortable with who you are and what you want and you'll find you start naturally finding yourself in the right situations. There'll always be rejections and people you don't click with but that happens to all of us. Just don't have a meltdown or be weird/stalky about it and it's fine.
Not sure that helps much but i feel like I've sort of been there in my 20s. Now generally fine apart from my short attention span and ability to be extremely irritating.

Genuinely thought they were light bulbs 🤦‍♂️

Yeh that's exactly it, but I think toxic masculinity, insecurity, peer pressure...they're all interconnected things. The masculinity feeds the insecurity and vice versa. The insecurity creates the peer pressure.
When you think about it, talking to other guys about how many women you sleep with or Read more… how often is pointless. No one knows if its true and its completely irrelevant information. Its simply a tool to try to exert some form of masculin dominance which again comes back to being based on insecurity.
I don't have sympathy with guys who can't deal with rejection because frankly, we all have to deal with rejection and just need to learn to get over it. When I first started using dating websites I would spend ages typing out a really thought out message and then if I didn't get a reply would be genuinely a bit knocked by it...so I learned fairly quickly to make the message more short and simple and just not think anything of it if there was no reply. I think to get to the stage where you are being abusive...never mind making a woman feel unsafe, doesn't happen without conciously knowing you are being an arse. I mean anyone can act like an arse on the odd occasion, but making a pattern of it just makes you one. Obviously some people are also actual psychopaths so simply don't care.
Your last paragraph I completely get. I tend to focus more on just being happy in my own skin and accepting that not everyone will like/fancy/love me or want to invest the time to find out if they do. Particularly as I often enjoy being an annoying git and also have ginger hair. Don't over analyse yourself as anyone who does like you isn't going to expect you to be perfect or necessarily see the things you see as faults, as faults. The only thing that matters is if there's a mutual connection in terms of something you both want from each other, and having fun finding out what that is....although this is me just trying to sound like I know what I'm on about, when in reality I rarely message anyone because I get distracted by absolutely everything.

Completely agree with the analogy except that I will never, ever just not fancy a pizza. I'm literally eating pizza as I type this.

My (possibly ill informed and inaccurate) take on this:
Some things about men
1) We're ridiculously insecure. Especially when it comes to people we are attracted to. Some men deal with this by trying to act nice, to the point it almost seems false, and then as soon as it doesn't get the desired Read more… reaction, becomes actually false, because the options are then to act even nicer (stalking) or to stop being nice and be abusive or rude instead. There is of course the third option of just accepting someone isn't interested, but some men can't accept this option (see point 2 below), especially if they are emotionally immature.
Other men deal with this insecurity by acting uber confident and spouting or demonstrating utter bollocks about every imaginable subject to prove how confident and not at all insecure they are. This extends to many forms of idiocy such as buying an expensive looking car and driving it like a twat and talking about cars a lot, or talking shite in work meetings despite actually having nothing of use to say. Basically 90% of the stupid shit men do that makes no sense, is down to this. It also extends to communication with women, and the amusing opening post in this thread about immediately explaining all the great kinky things they're going to do before they've even thought to attempt to talk to the receipient...because their insecurity wont allow them to engage in conversation until they feel like they've already won over the person they are talking to...in case they say something to feck it up. It makes no sense, and its dumb, but it is what happens.
2) As a result of the insecurity, we also have ridiculously fragile egos. It is difficult for a man to accept rejection, because the only way to stave off their insecurity is to believe, against all common sense, that all women must fancy them. To receive no response from a woman is not acceptable because there is no possible way to missinterpret this as her fancying them. To receive a clear response of rejection from a woman is not acceptable because there is no possible way to missinterpret this as her fancying them. It is received in much the same way a punch in the face would be...and so the response from the man is often to be abusive. To receive literally any other response from a woman is usually missinterpreted as her fancying them, as this then satisfies the ego, at least temporarily until their insecurity starts overthinking the response they received even more.
Obviously all men have this under control (or not) to varying degrees. Some have that part of their brain that kicks in and says "look you're being a fucking idiot" and some lucky few even have the part that kicks in sooner and says "look, don't do that, it's just going to lead to you being a fucking idiot"...some have neither of these brain features and are (I can only assume) particularly prone to inhabit dating websites.
From a brutally honest point of view. I can type all this because I can relate to it. I wouldn't do any of these things, but I probably have done, in the past, to some degree. We're brought up to believe we have to be strong and not display weakness and then we suddenly get to an age where we want to have sex with everything but all have to prove we're the alpha male and this all feeds into and creates the problem....and there is a growing up stage at this point that I think some just never get past.
This doesn't mean all men are terrible obviously, and I would guess even some who don't have this nonsense particuarly under control are genuinely nice guys once you can get past it...but from a woman's point of view, why should you need to tolerate or get past it? and how do you determine someone is nice when they are behaving like a derranged overbearing psychopath and there is alsways the chance that the reason they are behaving like this is because they are one?
I think this will only really change over time. Attitudes are quite different now which means as the next generation grow up there will be a little more understanding, and respect of how to approach talking to women, and a little less pressure to behave like a loon, but it is a process like everything else to do with ingrained attitudes and behaviours.
And I will stop talking rubbish now

I think "nice guys" and "bad boys" is over simplifying things though.
Everyone is different. A bad boy can be a nice guy who just doesn't want to let anyone in or is happy being independent and doesn't even realise they are hurting anyone (if they are). A nice guy can respect space and be polite, Read more… but then goes home and spends the next 12 hours stalking a girl's "last online" status on whatsapp and worrying about what other guy she might be fucking.
I don't ike categorising people as it leads to presumptions about how someone will behave, or why they behave a certain way, which more often than not are wrong.
Girls say they miss you for example. It could be because they do and are busy. They do but have a lot of people they miss and are content with it. They could be trying to be polite because they like you as a person or friend, or just because they are polite. It could be a form of involuntary manipulation. Most people don't even know why they say half of what they say themselves, so you're into muddy water trying to work it out on behalf of them.
All I know is when you box people into behavioural categories, as happens a lot with guys and girls, girls and guys...people always end up surprising you, because in reality they have a hundred different reasons why they might do or say something, and if they don't have a specific goal will often just pick one of those reasons at random or depending on whatever is on their mind at the time.
End of pointless gibberish post.