It's a skill that can be learned.

Skill is certainly involved, as are sometimes crushing demographics. I grew up in churches that taught one to only date non-Catholic Christians. In the area those were rare, especially single ones my age. Then everyone has deal breakers further reducing the pool of possible candidates. I learned to be less picky but still had to travel about 50 miles away and only made 2 successful matches (i.e. second date) over 5y.

100%, I still remember all of my epic failures when I started learning it!

You are absolutely right but you will never be able to convince anyone here that this is true.

The odds of success are probably higher then using one of the now common dating apps.