I believe the idea is to reduce to number of messages women receive from guys they have no interest in. This benefits guys as they are less likely to spend time composing a long message that is wasted. More generally, you want to encourage a dynamic where there is a progressive ladder of investment sizes by each party, so that no one makes a large unilateral investement.
Not saying that’s not worth the trafeoff though, I don’t have a better idea to fight spam.
It's clear that all messages need to be tailored to expect a reasonable reply rate; otherwise the woman has no way to tell you've put in any effort (so it might be copypasta spam). That doesn't mean that women are replying to unsolicited messages from men who they wouldn't even swipe right on.
> I'd say only around 50% of women look at my profile before replying.
How do you know? What app are you talking about? I estimate that >95% of women on mainstream apps look at a guy's profile before replying to a message.