Dates are easy to get, but explicitly looking for a long term thing puts off a lot of guys because it's just not the expectation. There is pressure to hold off on deep conversations or say you're just looking for fun when that really isn't the case.
'sometimes I just tell the guy on the first date that I'm looking for someone to settle down with. I've never gotten a second after that'
Getting ghosted by mr right for the twentieth time and wondering what is wrong with you seems as self esteem destroying as not being able to get a date at all.
I guess tinder just wrecked dating.
But it's true, most people really go to Tinder expecting only dating and one night stands.
However, when you're upfront and tell guys you want to settle down you're filtering them, so I guess it's working as intended?
Maybe putting that info in your profile would make it harder to get matches, but at least you'll won't have bad surprises.
EDIT: Another choice is to just keep quiet during dates and probe the guys subtly. Works for some people.
Also, I bet the West Slope of Colorado is different, dynamically, than NYC. I live in a town, not a metropolics, so that has to make a difference.
Tinder is a super lazy product, terrible even. I wouldn't be surprised if they're optimizing for a high number of matches and happy with that outcome.
I don’t think those guys are even close to the majority of straight male users, but since they always swipe right, you have a 100% chance of matching one of them if you swipe right too. So they pollute your match list disproportionately and end up making it worse for everyone. Pretty annoying.
I don't know where you live/what dating pool you have experience with, but here are some contrasting anecdotal observations from NYC:
1) Straight women I know here get way more swipes than straight guys, but lots of straight guys will swipe indiscriminately and immediately unmatch, or will send extremely lazy or off-putting, salacious messages a ton of the time. It's not everyone, but it's common enough to be extremely obnoxious and discourage straight women from swiping right on guys or messaging them. They get more swipes, but more of those are noise.
2) Straight guys will get way fewer matches, and straight women will tend not to message them first/respond very often. This encourages some guys to swipe indiscriminately (see above), though my straight guy friends who are more measured have far more success.
3) Attractive/hip people tend to date each other. The hot guys aren't out there dating less attractive women/taking them out of the dating pool for less conventionally-attractive guys.
4) I've seen awkward, conventionally unattractive straight guys get tons of dates online. It seems a bit harder than if they are conventionally attractive, but none of them seem to have any trouble finding dates.
5) Some of my friends have unrealistic standards for their partners, whom they expect to be more attractive, socially graceful, fashionable, intelligent, and/or wealthy than themselves. These friends either reject everyone they might have a chance with on dating sites or complain about their partners.
6) I've seen plenty of really hot women with homely men and vice versa in couples I know. I can't say I've noticed that women have an easier time than men "dating up" in terms of conventional attractiveness. It seems like conventional attractiveness is just a starting point, but good presentation, social graces, and wealth markers can push overall attractiveness arbitrarily far in either direction.
It probably varies a lot from place to place, but in my slice of NYC, it's not particularly dominated by conventional attractiveness, and overall outcomes seem similar across genders (despite the swiping behavior differences noted at first). Standards of conventional attractiveness also vary widely of course.