Meetup.com vs going to the pub – best way to make new friends?

23M in the UK. I’ve always been shy, i struggle with approaching people and starting conversation, but I’m pretty much fine when I’m the one who’s been spoken to. I’ve got a twin brother whos exactly the same as me and in the same social situation – we’ve only got 2 mates and we both work at a small businesses so neither of us really have any social opportunity. So we’re both happy but also shy and relatively lonely

Basically we’ve reached a point where we want to meet new people – originally we just joined Hinge, but the idea has evolved since and now we want to generally meet new people/make some new friends and hopefully become more social as a result

Afaic theres 2 ways for us to approach this – going down the local pub and trying our hand at approaching and chatting to people, or we could go on Meetup and try meet new people that way by attending events/meets

Just wondering what would be the best way to get out there and meet new people and make some friends. I’d like to think Meetup is a good option, simply cos my weakness is approaching and sparking convo, but I’m also open to trying to chat to people at the pub if i have to 😅 All help is appreciated, thanks in advance