Encouragement? Getting disoriented with gay friends/culture after one too many drama/pot stirring sagas

Hey,New to this sub. I'm a gay white cis male. 24 years old. Grew up in a rural small town and now live in a bigger west coast city.Was raised Christian and had that whole childhood experience to navigate through. Won't go into details cause you can cut and paste the cliche experience and it applies to me. Good news is family all accepts me, supports full equality and don't go to that church anymore.Any how. When I moved to the city when I was 18 I was ready to finally meet gay people. I was excited not only for intimate situations but for friendships.Now, before comments suggest I perhaps added to drama I'll describe below I'll say now I did not. I critically examined things and knew I was just a bystander caught up in the vortex of the BS of this group I got myself caught in.It was classic situation with older guy sort of being the social coordinator who liked to have lots of younger gay guys around to hang out with.But fuck was he a pot stirrer. You'd trust your crush or feelings for someone to him and he'd find ways down the road to cause friction in the group and then miraculously make himself the innocent one through some BS narrative.It was about 6 months in this social sphere and I realized I had to remove these people from my life. They were toxic.I had a similar friendship situation at another point. It's made me be very careful about gay guy social groups that I consider entering in the future.Outside of that part of things I'm just so disoriented with our dating culture. Maybe it's my age. And I likely am older in my head then my age. I am not a prude but I'm traditional on the gay relationship spectrum that I:1) Avoid one night stands or hook ups. Find them cold and I don't like the transactional feeling the next morning. Exception is one night stand if it's a friend or somebody that tension has been building with. If I know them it's different and I may be likely to indulge.2) I want to date. Not this BS 'let's just keep things casual'. Like fuck. Dating doesn't mean your my boyfriend or anything's serious. To me, it's saying -- hey we've got mutual attraction so let's see where this goes and be open to a relationship down the road if things move that way.3) I'll hook up on a first date but not full on sex (top or bottoming). To me that means something and ideally I like to save that for a BF but I typically will cave on date 3 or 4.4) I want a boyfriend and not one who is going to suggest an open relationship or bring in a third. I'm a loyal monogamist. My attraction is linear. If a guy is in my radar my feelings are for him only. That said, when it ends I am move on pretty quick.I'm not anti-poly or open relationship. To each their own. But it's not for me. I can't handle that because I know I'd have jealousy issues.5) even at boyfriend stage all that means to me is a monogamous sexual and emotional connection. I don't want to rush into moving in or marriage with a guy for YEARS if I met someone who felt like the one.Anyhow, my 'traditional' approach is so difficult to find someone similar with the gay guys I've met.I get the psychology. Guys making up for lost time from repressing sexuality for many years. But there is just such a vast vapid and manipulative hook up culture that I can't handle being even around that scene.I've fallen off bandwagon after months of like no dates and will go on Tinder and it'll feel like a date, and the guy will say he likes me yada yada yada and says things that aren't quick fix terms.We hook up and then it's like slow excuses or they go radio silent. Nobody knows how to be upfront and honest these days. It's all slow drift on texts or they go cold. I used to the slow text drift off guy on the other side but when it happened to me a few times I realized even if it's seems harsh you're better person to just be upfront you're no longer into them.Meh. I'm not trying to be too bitter. I'm a pretty good looking guy and I can get the physical type I want. I just find a lot of those hot guys I am attracted to have the emotional IQs of 16 year olds.So like I'm just looking it orhers have had similar struggles after a period of time associating with certain gay social groups and the dating culture?