yep. me too. i think it's a demographic thing, but i remember when i stopped taking it seriously is when i had the utmost success. i guess that's just the moral of living in general
Dating styles are very informed by upbringing and culture. For example with my German upbringing but living in the US I am very long term oriented and do not shy away from addressing serious topics early. While this is considered "very intense" in the US, it is very common in many other countries.
If your goal is dating to establish a healthy romantic relationship then number of matches isn't what you want to optimize:
Accept who you are, how you think and feel. No need to hide the real you. No need to please the masses. You can find people who will appreciate you the way you are. And I can't emphasize this enough: *Respect the other person* - everyone is equally looking for (and entitled to find) what is right for them.
With experience it gets easier to quickly identify people who think and feel like you, who share similar values and lifestyle.
Vastly more matches, but what was the quality of the matches? Dating is weird in that lots of matches is an anti-feature (at least for some users, I wouldn’t know, I’ve been married for a decade and never really online dated)—-one _good_ match is much more valuable than any arbitrary number of less good matches.