Yeah, come to a meetup and have dinner with me.

You're right to be skeptical on the 'net. Nostr doesn't have any verification per se, most folks here are rather anti-KYC and privacy-centric. One thing nostr stives for is "web of trust" or WoT. There's no official definition of it, but basically it's people who have been around, interacted, maybe know others in real life, offer value, etc. There's no standard, but I like the coracle.social use of it. If you got to https://coracle.social and login, you see a circle by your name a hover over to see a WoT trust. I see you have a WoT of 1, which makes sense because you're new and that's fine. Stick around, interact, ask questions, etc, it'll rise. That score gives a simple, but imperfect, glance at a user. (Still doesn't tell you m/f though!)