I love that you all are giving me help but at the same time I’ve started hundreds if not thousands of seeds, always in paper towel just like this sometimes wetter sometimes dryer (Shrug)
Brother I am 41 and grew my first plant when I was 21, and even though I have learned a lot, and even was at a point I felt I couldn't learn much more, I quit growing for simply 3 years and now that I am trying again I am having similar struggles as you... I know it sounds repetitive and annoying because you feel like you know how to do it and everyone is repeating themselves, but it's the truth! If you hold anything that was meant to be alive and not meant to be under water, under water, it drowns. We all see the paper towel is too wet because the shiny glare, if it was wringed out, it would be matte in color. Not shiny! The thing is, you can only get away with the paper towel being that wet ONCE, at the very beginning, but it has to dry out pretty quickly from not having too much water. The problem is your paper towel is so wet when you close it, no oxygen or air can get in. You probably already know all of that and heard it a hundred times before. But the thing is time's change, and maybe the way your seeds need to be germinated needs to as well. Not trying to sound all weird, but nothing is normal these days. I keep doing the same thing... It's annoying and I feel like I know better, but I am running through 100+ seeds right now. So trust me, you would think I'd be a pro by now, even sprouting seeds in the past. But in the past 30 days I have gone through 150 solo cups, 3 rolls of paper towels, 100+ seeds, (my wife is annoyed lol) and I have only had 17 pop and start growing. And as my luck would have it, I woke up to my cat eating three of them!
Now I'm down to 14, need about 50, and have to start more. But the ones that do sprout are in a paper towel that almost feels dry to the point the seeds keep rolling away when I open it. You gotta make em search for water but have it there if that makes sense....