Comment by lordnacho

Everyone is playing the secretary problem. If you're popular, you have to turn down a lot of candidates before you try to find one that's in whatever you measure to be in your league (better than all the ones you saw previously, but I wonder how many people are really going with that). If you're on an app, that's a lot of people.

At the same time, there's a bunch of people who aren't so popular who are now done checking a short queue of candidates, and willing to go with whoever shows up next above their bar.

But those people are still busy rejecting everyone in a seemingly infinite line of suitors. So we have a problem getting people to match.

Add to this that the sexes are not distributed the same way. There's a few ultra hot guys who will never not have a date, and there's a more even number of hot women who the less hot guys are waiting on.

If you're speed dating or doing any other real-world dating, your queues are a lot shorter. You will feel like your idea of the market is set much sooner, and you can start picking out a candidate.