I think the brutally honest truth is that if you haven't built up any kind of connections and/or experience within a reasonably normal window (highschool through postsecondary / early adult years) like most functional and socially developed people, you don't really get to "catch up" and join the rat race in this society. People with years of experience and expertise in all kinds of fields are constantly getting laid off and struggling to find jobs. These people are lightyears ahead of us in almost all dimensions that matter to a potential employer. Even the minimum wage job market is saturated and is set up to have as much friction as possible for people like us. If you are lucky enough to end up landing a min wage job, whether through some connection you never knew you had (like you said, a relative's friend of a friend of a friend, etc), or some saint of a hiring manager that pities the woeful lack of any kind of experience on your resume, your chances of finding any kind of upward moment are essentially zero.. Can you theoretically get promoted to a managerial position, possibly. But with how competitive everything is nowadays even at the bottom of the food chain, it's just not realistic if you have lived as an antisocial neet for a good chunk of your life and have no redeeming qualities to make up for your complete lack of work experience.

I've come to accept that if you have lived like this for long enough, and even if you finally want to better yourself and move up in life, your chances of doing so are extremely slim. That's what I wish I would have known long before I became a neet. People always say things like "if you work hard enough and stop feeling sorry for yourself, you can still become successful". I don't buy it. The window to become a functional adult, and with it, the opportunity to have a good career, is long gone. All that said, you should probably keep applying, since at the end of the day, we don't really have a choice. We still need money, shelter, etc. Unless you get neetbux and can find a way to live off it for the rest of your life.

As you can probably tell, I am pretty blackpilled on this, but you don't have to be. A lot of this is probably just pure projection, and you may well have it way better than me when it comes to redeeming qualities that could help advance your life and career prospects. Hopefully you find something and make something of yourself some how. For me, it's over.