no joke and I'm not trying to shift blame off myself - when I was a teenager, the prevailing narrative from girls was that cold approaching a girl was not appropriate and it made girls feel uncomfortable. obviously it wasn't like you would ruin your life if you did it, but I distinctly remember it being a commonly held view among girls that if you weren't sure you should cold approach a girl, then you definitely shouldn't do it. I (and I assume many other guys) took this to heart, and lived with the "I don't wanna be THAT guy" mindset, and the longer you go like that, the harder it becomes to cold approach.
Like I said, I'm not shifting the blame off myself, but it's the reason I turned out to be sort of "afraid of girls" in my young adulthood.

Me on the left centard on the right