> Ironic that people don't want to meet someone off an app without "sniff test" conversation first, yet are happy to meet strangers at a bar with no prior knowledge of them whatsoever.

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.