Consider the "social contract" of both situations.

With the bar situation you can literally leave immediately with no social expectation that you should have to interact with that person again.

With the "date" typically they're alone (i.e. she cannot bring friends, unlike a bar) and there's a social expectation to stay at least for whatever constitutes an entire date.

I think it is less irony and more that we have complex social expectations.

There are plenty of first date options that make this easy. I was fond of minigolf because it goes relatively quick and you can either opt to play more rounds or hit the eject button with a half decent excuse.

Meanwhile, a date you eject from still consumes most of your evening. ...And it's extremely uncomfortable and emotionally taxing to be in that position for both people.

That said, I think almost everyone would be better served if they shot out a "wanna grab drinks at X at 8:00?" much earlier into the conversation. The sort of "Tinder convo" I see on r/tinder is almost exclusively men sabotaging themselves instead of making a move.

I mean, once you've established you're not one of those "send pic of vagene sex sex sex pls" people, I'm not convinced there's all that much more rapport you can build over text.

Then again, I imagine men who are able to talk themselves into a hole over Tinder chat are sending useful signals to women.

Couple possibilities I can think of there. First and foremost, it could be that the people being described before the comma, and the people being described after the comma, are not the same population. There may be some overlap, but I can at least say that the friends I have who've used (non-Tinder) online dating services in any sort of serious way were also very much not the kind of people to go to bars to meet people.

Another is that talking to a stranger at a bar is most decidedly not a date. Evidence: Once upon a time, I did that fairly regularly, and my partner didn't mind at all. (I think that there was only ever one person who was obviously only interested in a hook-up, and, it being a bar, it was pretty easy to gracefully exit that conversation.) I think they would have felt very differently about me signing up for OkCupid.

But as soon as you walk into a bar, every woman in that place is taking in broad bandwidth data on you. Do your mannerisms look natural? Are you acting aggressive? Are you friendly? What are you wearing, and are your clothes clean? Do other women seem comfortable around you?

All of those assessments are based on very finely honed intuitions that they rely on every single day to stay safe.

You can easily do a social proof check on a stranger in a bar by checking out their friends. That’s why it’s such a successful strategy to go on the pull with a wingman/winggirl.