Interesting you would say this. The other major paradigm to dating is, of course, arranged marriage. The main advantage that arranged marriage brings is that third parties are involved in price discovery, hence setting much more realistic expectations.

One of the most interesting things I found when discussing this topic with people of my parents and grandparents generation who dealt with this is that the first question for the parents or representatives of the female were always "How much money does he make?" and for the male were always "How pretty is she?". To this day, matchmaking services essentially ask the same questions.

Dating is supposed to be about everything else other than these two factors, but is it really?