> This paradox/abundance of choice is artificial though. Dating apps could throw up a counter of the total number of people you will be permitted to interact with over a window of time, which creates scarcity that forces the user to increase their efforts accordingly.
The problem is that's not what causes the problem.
What happens is that different people are different levels of desirable and everyone messages the highly desirable ones first. Then those women ignore most of the flood of messages they got, even the ones from other highly desirable people, because they don't have time for so many messages.
So then all the senders, dejected, realize the majority of messages won't get a response and become less selective in who they send them to. So then the second most desirable set of partners get flooded with messages and it repeats on down the line.
Which creates the illusion of choice, because even if you're a "6" you'll get messages from many people, including an "8" or three, but you can't actually have them. They only messaged you because they messaged everybody. So then the 6 wastes their time responding to the 8 instead of the other 6s they actually had a chance with, who then get no responses from other 6s.
If you limited the number of messages then everyone would only message the most desirable partners. So the 10s would still be flooded and not respond and the 6s would go from having too many messages from unavailable senders to having zero messages from anyone.
Some sites do the "user's mailbox is full" thing to try to avoid this, but that doesn't really fix it either. It just accelerates the problem because then the most desirable partners all have full mailboxes, so the second most desirable partners get flooded with messages even sooner.
What you need is some way to match people with the people they actually have a chance with (and who actually have a chance with them). But that's easier said than done.