Is the whole screening test attractiveness?

I tried OKCupid a while ago, and came away with the impression that most people have their profile filled with political shibboleths. Maybe that's just because I live in a major coastal city, but...

Tinder for looks.

OKC for ideology.

POF if you like your partner skewed to the wrong aspect ratio.

I think it's all looks. Even OKC has changed their system recently to be more like Tinder. The first impression is never the profile, but the photo. Pretty much everything else is weighted against that in most peoples' minds (either consciously or unconsciously).

Yeah, but a well written profile and message can go a long way even if you look fairly average (for a man).

The messages and profiles most men do on these sites are awful. You don't have to work that hard to stand out from the crowd.

In fact my most recent OKC experience went like this - reviewed all the women in this city (it's not a large city and it's not in America so this is quite possible), picked the one I liked the most, messaged her. Got a reply the next day, first date a few days later.

That said, Tinder is pretty useless for men. But then you can't send high quality messages and the UX makes it annoying to view profiles, so what a big surprise. The number of women who post Tinder profiles saying they don't want hookups is ridiculous - the entire app is optimised for nothing but that. They should be on more traditional dating sites; I suspect they can't be bothered writing or reading profiles however.