I’m talking about pretty “safe” settings, like:

• game night with mutual friends - your and their friends will help keep things on the level
• co-ed sports (again, with mutual friends)
• community events, such as at a local library or whatever
• meetups for interests - often hosted at some local business that does something related to the thing (I’m a dev, so I go to local Rust, Go, Python, and JS meetups on occasion)

In other words, places where people are “forced” to interact doing something that interests them, while around other people that could come to your aid if someone is being creepy. The goal shouldn’t be to find a SO (that attracts the wrong type), but to interact with people that share an interest. You should be looking to make friends, and if that blossoms into something more, I guess that’s cool too. Don’t go into it looking for an SO, go into it looking to engage about something you enjoy.