Maybe one day I will travel, but I don't really have the resources yet
Yeah I feel like I'm invisible, big cities are especially bad because small talk is harder to initiate
It's about who you know. Naturally if you don't know anyone, you engage with more "obscure channels" (activist groups, bookclubs, all of which have their own "niches" which make things less competitive while still requiring you to alter your behaviour, spaces which consciously curb the "looks-driven" account of human nature because of shitlibs).
Reading some of your posts, I see that you're subject to a lot of "normie sadism", as the frogtwitter crowd would call it. I'm forty-seven now, so as a wizened "oldcel", the best bit of advice I can give is that it "isn't over" until you cross a certain threshold like I did in my early thirties. Of course, this isn't something you'd find on a "PSL forum."