I'm not sure if this is an obvious debate, or I'm really missing something.

Assume a person's SMV follows a bell curve distribution, the most common distribution.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8c/Standard_deviation_diagram.svg/2000px-Standard_deviation_diagram.svg.png

68% of people are within 1 standard deviation of average. 95% of people are within 2 standard deviations. So only 2.5% (1 in 40) is 2 standard deviations above average or more. At 3 standard deviations, it is only 0.13%, about 1 in 769.

Online dating sites make men desperate, which causes men to lower their standards and hit on anything that walks. This causes women to become inundated and as a result to view men as a large homogeneous mass of unimpressive people. So to stand out from the masses, as a man, you have to be exceptional.

The problem is most men are not exceptional, neither are most women. So men lower their standards, and women become even more aloof and unimpressed.

The end result is that men end up writing women they'd never even notice (let alone talk to or hit on) in real life, and women end up holding out for men that either don't exist, or if they do exist are the most elite 1 in 100+ and who can do far better than the women holding out for them.

I know women have to deal with aggression, stalkers, sexually aggressive men, etc. As a man I had to deal with aggression too (got one poster banned for making physical threats, and got yelled at several times). So both genders have to deal with that but I'm sure it is worse for women.

Anyway, CMV. Dating sites make men desperate and they make women unrealistically demanding because they want a man that stands out from the crowd. This creates a downward spiral of desperate men creating demanding women creating desperate men creating demanding women. Both sides end up unhappy and empty handed because of it.