Not too long ago, I realized I'm a walking red flag

Congratulations! Atleast you are trying to improve but make sure you don't get stuck in this negative view point, it will only undermine your self-confidence. You are not perfect, but nor is anyone else in the world. Everyone have their own weakness, each individual is trying to reach their highest possible self. You have no interest in politics or other stuff, maybe because those things have nothing to do with your goals OR maybe you don't have any powerful goal.

What you need is not women, but goal in life. An intense desire towards a goal that keeps you awake at night, appears in your dreams, and occupies your every waking moment. Focus on that goal, immerse yourself in it, let it consume your thoughts and dreams. Weather you achieve that goal or not is secondary, but it will fill you with confidence, your every thought and action will be purposeful, your mind won't be free to think about PMO.

Just look at your thoughts, they are nothing but past MEMORIES or IMAGINATION based on past memories. Mind is a focusing tool. If you do not give your mind with a goal to concentrate on, it will begin selecting items randomly from your memory. You may temporarily avoid negative thoughts, but as your mind exhausts other options and lacks a clear focus, it will finally move towards PMO. Therefore, it is important to have a goal in life, it's not only to achieve something, it's also to stop yourself from moving towards bad things. Just think where you would have been if you had dedicated one hour a day to on productive things, even if we ignore that in worst case atleast you won't fall towards darkside.

Believe it or not, no women will feel safe to stay with a guy who has no ambition in life. Consider yourself as a women, will you marry a person who is trying to achieve something big, who has some goal, OR a person who has completely given up on life, who just doesn't have any goal, remember you are not only entrusting your future on this man but also your child's future.

When you are working day and night for a goal, women will enter your life automatically. Its like when you run behind women, you won't get them but when you run behind your goals, they will automatically come to you. People can easily sense whether a person is ambitious or not. The way you talk, sit, walk, everything tells about how focused or goal oriented a person is. We are subconsciously more attracted to people who are ambitious and have goals in life.

I just said your mind does nothing but generates thoughts from your memory, with time as you work on your goal, your memories will be filled with content of your goals, this will decrease the chances you getting thoughts of PMO, then you will be able to focus more on your goals. With time this will further increase constructive and good things in memory, which will again reduce the PMO urges and the cycle goes on and on.

Let me tell you a story said by sadhguru -
There was a man in India, who wanted to get magical powers. He went to a sage for guidance, the sage gave him a mantra and asked him to chant it near river 3 times, with one condition that he shouldn't think about monkey during this process. The man went to the river, and started chanting, but then monkey thought came, he started again but monkeys came again. He thought - "don't think of monkey, Oh no this itself is a thought of monkey". He tried and tried entire day yet failed.

Mind is a focusing tool, it's like flashlight which is always turned on. You can only focus it towards something, you can't tell it to not focus on something, So don't try to avoid thoughts of PMO, but try to focus on a goal. Thoughts of PMO will go away on its own.

 

I have a hard time believing this

 

At first I thought they told it to you just to conceal the real reason why they're not interested but this seems they actually believe it. Strange. If you're politically engaged and your other half isn't, you avoid many confrontations.

 

Dating apps are not incentivized to match you with a good, long term mate. They are incentivized to keep you using the app, so you finding a fulfilling, long term relationship is the exact opposite of what they want. These things are either intentionally or unintentionally designed to keep you dissatisfied, otherwise they would cycle themselves out of existence. And it worked on you! 15 years of monetizing your loneliness, not a bad haul for the app.

Were I you, I’d be wide open to the idea that I needed improvement, but skeptical of culture’s demands. A while ago I heard some expert claim there’s two kinds of people on the dating market. There’s people looking for commitment, and people looking to cynically hook up, and it’s like these two groups don’t even inhabit the same space. They don’t meet. All the complaints about women who require you to be 6’4” and a six figure income by the age of 23 are about hookup women.

Regarding political activity, I don’t think it is what they think it is. I’m indulging in mating theory here so I could be way off, but the idea is that Women are looking for men who can provide and protect. Thing is, we’re actually very safe already, so we build artificial threats for ourselves in the form of political wars. The other political side is an active threat to their wellbeing, so they want to know a mate is going to do something about it. If you get off the app and talk to them in person, and in depth, I think most would be ok with you not being politically active if you made them feel genuinely, emotionally safe, instead of artificially safe through your self-avowed bonafides.

It’s all about marketing. Dating apps, in addition to keep us dissatisfied, are a way for us to shop for people. We browse the app for a date like we browse amazon.com for socks, and we advertise ourselves, but advertising can lie and it’s a cheap, easy way to sell a product, not deliver satisfaction to a customer.
You know all those flashy commercials for toys, like race tracks or action figures, on the cartoon channels. Those kids were having so much fun. but if you got one for Christmas, it was nothing but boxed sadness and disappointment. That’s advertising vs. reality on dating apps. The real fun was friends and some sticks.