Read a tweet today about why Gen Z men are not "manning up" and cold approaching women. It's obviously the fear of getting your life ruined, not the fear of rejection.
This is established fact for virtually anyone who's ever thought about the subject (besides NPCs).
But my thought is even if you somehow took away the risk of ruining your life, there are a lot of problems with expecting men to find relationships by walking into the buzzsaw of cold approaches over and over. First of all, it kind of hurts to get turned down based on your physical appearance, and the appearance of 80% of men is inadequate on its own. You can make up for that with banter and flirting. But is it realistic to expect every man, or even most men, to develop the level of game needed to pick up girls off the street?
Second, most attractive women you see on the street already have a boyfriend. Not a meme boyfriend, an actual dude. Now it is true that if you're Timothee Chalamet you can probably turn half of those women into cheating hoes, but why would you want to given that you're going for a serious relationship? In the end it's just very awkward for both parties to go through the script again and again. "Sorry, I have a boyfriend." [forced smile] "Oh, my bad sorry"
In the past women were somewhat more likely to take cold approaches as a compliment. Disclaimer: somewhat more likely. Today the infinite choice of online dating has more than filled women's thirst to be admired, so getting approached in public mostly makes them annoyed for the same reason that most people prefer to be emailed rather than called.
There is a way for guys who aren't male models to be attractive to women: get to know them in a mutual community so their appreciation of your positive features overcomes the "ick" and "he's not a kpop boy band member" factors that they initially notice. People can also figure out who's in a relationship and who's looking without embarrassing themselves. This form of courtship, coincidentally, has been attacked by each successive sexual revolution.
I'm generalizing in several places, but I doubt that most relationships are going to happen through cold approach in a healthy society, whether that's in person or on a Jewish dating app.
One thing I've thought about a lot is that average men are much more aware of the treatment that top 10 percenters are getting from women than they were in previous generations. Men are pretty willing to jump through hoops and put up with the kind crap that average men have to in order to date if they simply see it as the price of admission. But if they see Mr. Hawt Guy walk in and have shit handed to him on a silver platter putting up with all that shit becomes a lot harder to justify. I know watching Chads get handed sex and dating just for existing killed any willingness I had to put effort into trying to date. You're just paying for sex at that point, and if you're gonna do that it's cheaper by the hour. There are obviously plenty of other reasons men are checking out and the OP describes one. But I really do think that widespread knowledge of AF/BB is playing a major role in killing men's interest in dating.
Is it a European-American thing? The top 10% best-looking guys aren't that great. With rare exceptions, they're not getting anything handed to them.
People don't understand statistics. 10% means that on average, of 10 guys, there is one 'Hawt Guy'. Yeah, no.
I was in the top 10% (older now), and while there have been ego-boosting moments there have also been many rejections. I've had more success than most men, but to imagine a world where I got even fewer spontaneous compliments, flirts, smiles, hard eye contact, opportunities etc. would honestly be soul-crushing.
Attractive men get a fraction of the attention that average women receive. Average men are essentially invisible.