As minority man of color my own experience as well as my friends experience are absolutely in line with what OP has stated. Although I am well-educated, successful and reasonably good-looking, I've a hard time dating. OTOH women of my ethnicity do pretty well in dating market. The only way to explain this phenomenon is hypergamy.

Everyone I know in real life (from different genders and ethnicities) acknowledges this. But for some reason these issues spark a fierce debate online. I am not sure what I am missing here.

> The only way to explain this phenomenon is hypergamy.

This statement just does not mesh with the study suggesting the proportion of people getting 0 sex has risen by about 5 percentage point (eyeballing the chart) from 2000 to 2018. Doing some bad-and-wrong-but-making-a-point statistics, if you're getting 0 sex in 2018, the majority of your likelihood of being there was already present in 2000. I'm sure it's harder being a man of color, but I'm also sure it was harder being a man of color in 2000 as well.

It's totally possible for dating markets to favor a few individuals and for that not to explain this trend. The reason it sparks debates online is because some individual recount their struggles getting dates as evidence for huge impacts on what dating is like for the majority of males. It doesn't resonate with those who have "normal" sex lives.

I don't really understand why it isn't consistent with the study. It's entirely possible that people spend a lot more not having sex and waiting for a better partner because these huge dating pools have such a high variance.

So people see that there are very favorable targets on the platform, and their perception is skewed, they start to reject the average matches, they want the best.

So less sex, more hoping for the best.

Am I missing something?

According to the study, it's, at most, 5 percentage points of the population over the last ~2 decades suffering from this. 5% is a lot of people, but it's hardly an overwhelming effect, is likely driven by other well studied factors like economic stress.

What minority category is this?

This is exactly what you would expect if the OP's hypothesis is correct. 3 partners really isn't that many. The study should have looked at something like 0, 1-5, 5-19, 20-99, 100+ or something like that. It is not capturing the top end at all.

This is only true if you believe the people who used to be getting 3+ are now getting 0. This is unlikely to be the case because we don't see the number of people with exactly 2 partners going down.

If some of the 3+ people move to 2 and some of the 2s move to 1s or 0s, then you would see the same exact thing.

The data in the study you linked to its entirely consistent with what the OP suggested. We need to know what is happening at the tails to determine whether what you're claiming or what the OP is claiming is true. However, OP has a lot of anecdotal evidence in their favor. The study only provides data for the left tail of the distribution, but we need to see the right tail to know the full story. You could be right, but the OP's hypothesis is also supported by the data.

No that's not a possible explanation. Look at the charts for women. 80% of women have just a single partner in a given year and 60% have regular sex every week. This hasn't changed over time. For a hidden exponential right tail to explain this, you would need to believe that women are overwhelmingly switching into weekly, committed relationships with a small number of men and no others. You would also need to believe that these alpha males are bedding all of those women weekly. That doesn't make logistical sense, and isn't the story people are trying to tell either (that a small number of men are doing a different woman every other day and keeping them satisfied and off the market).

These alpha male type men may exist, but they're a drop in the bucket compared to well documented factors like worsening economic conditions.