It comes down to a classic problem: every guy is best off shooting off as many messages as they can, but doing so screws up the signal-to-noise ratio and causes everyone to do worse, in turn rewarding the spammers.
So, the women (naturally) fall back to a heuristic of "Well, does the profile pic at least look attractive?", in turn reinforcing the idea that they are shallow people only caring about looks at the end of the day (somewhat true given the context). It's just not good for anyone.
I'd thought about requiring a proof-of-work to enable sending of messages--failing that, maybe some kind of system whereby you get a token every time you message and get a message back which you can then use to send additional messages.
So, the women (naturally) fall back to a heuristic of "Well, does the profile pic at least look attractive?", in turn reinforcing the idea that they are shallow people only caring about looks at the end of the day (somewhat true given the context). It's just not good for anyone.
I'd thought about requiring a proof-of-work to enable sending of messages--failing that, maybe some kind of system whereby you get a token every time you message and get a message back which you can then use to send additional messages.
Think flow-control for dating sites.