Talking to random people about anything, and talking to girls, and talking to girls romantically are all separate skills from talking to someone about an interest. I am going to assume you're a smart, educated guy with niche interests. So even if someone comes up and talks about something you don't know much about, maybe Biology for example (no clue if this is true), you are probably able to fill in the blanks, find a common interest, connect it with something you've re ad before or whatever. The real difficulty is when you then are talking to people without technical interests or such, do you fake talking about sports? Or whatever.

With girls, be up front, direct, don't shy away. Honestly a lot of the old PUA strategies work really well if you look at it like a skill you're building.

haha I'm not into sports so I definitely don't fake that, just tell people, which is not great because if you look at a lot of online dating profiles a lot of women are into the local sports eg. Broncos or whatever. Same with religion but it's alright, the girl thing isn't a huge problem to me, it only hits me sometimes the FOMO when I'm in public settings. Used to club/bar hop a lot problem is I had a drinking problem (wouldn't stop) so yeah, would be that belligerent person not a great look. I quit drinking so now I rarely see women except at work, I do photography though so I do see some women at the park but that's one of those places not sure if you should engage or let them be like a gym, there to workout kind of thing. I have other problems to deal with though like getting out of being poor for personal peace of mind.