Most of the debates and discussions on this subreddit revolve around analysing dating like it’s a marketplace and making sense of the decisions people make and why they make them, but does a lot of it not boil down to personal preference and feelings?

Is dating really transactional enough to be considered a marketplace? I do agree that what is considered conventionally attractive is often socially and culturally informed and enforced, but are people really shallow enough to overlook how they feel about a person’s company to make decisions based on some arbitrary standards?