sim can't meet new people

Hello Simmers, I hope that I do this well. 

Just to preface, I have City, Cottage, Snowy Escape, Eco, University, Island Living, Get Famous, Get Together, Get to Work, Seasons, Cats and Dogs, Vampires, Realm of Magic, Tiny Living, and Jungle Adventure. I had a few mods installed (Basemental Drugs, , Woohoo Wellness) which I have since removed. I only list these because I'm not sure why this is happening and I don't know if this has been an issue with a certain pack. My sim is also a University Student if that helps. 

A week ago, after the new patch (I don't remember the name of the patch but this is May 13 2022 so it's whatever the last patch was) I opened the game and tried to talk to a new person (a stranger) and my sim can't greet them. At all. The only thing that came up was the celebrity options (hug fan, sign autograph, get a picture, etc). I thought it might be an issue caused by being a celebrity, so I cheated and brought the sim's celeb level to 0 again. This didn't help. I repaired the game, didn't help. Removed my mods, turned off mods, didn't help. Removed mods one at a time to see if it was one specific mod. No dice. I repaired the game again. Nothing.

I'm not sure what to do. The game is a little pointless if you can't meet new sims. I can talk to the old sims just fine, I just can't greet anyone. Has anyone had this problem before? I attached a pic of what came up when I tried to greet a stranger. This person was my dormmate, but it also happens with every stranger NPC in the game. It matters a lot on holidays where I need to talk to people (Like Winterfest) where my sim "fails" the holiday just because he can't greet Father Winter and it gives him this annoying sad buff. 

Anyway, this is super annoying and I'm not sure how to fix it. I've stripped all the mods and CC out of my game and it still doesn't work. Any suggestions you have I would love to hear.

Thank you