This is why you're so likely to see the least attractive and least socially skilled guys who are MOST likely to be involved in PUA. They are the largest demographic because they fail so often and have to take much longer to get any result of any kind.
This is why online dating is likely flooded with older women and less attractive women. They are the leftovers (for the most part). Just as in pua, for the most part, pua guys are the leftovers: guys who could not get attractive girls or even average looking girls to commit to them so they wind up back on the "marketplace" so to speak.
Dating is like any market: the hottest "properties" go first and for the highest price, and they usually don't show up again on the market in the short term.
The least attractive and least socially skilled guys are either PUA or MGTOW guys. However, because of the Pareto Principle and the surplus of younger single men relative to younger single women, lesser skilled men are wide audience. Lesser skilled men describes about 80% of men. When numbers get that large, not all men part of that 80% are socially inept. Due to male surpluses and technology giving women more options, the middle of the bell curve men are doing worse than 30 or 50 years ago. A generation or two ago, a 50th percentile man could get a stable long term girlfriend who was semi-sane and had a BMI in the normal weight ratio. There are plenty of unspectacular Boomer males out there who have been with the same woman for 40-45 years or are divorced guys on their 2nd wives who didn't have much trouble out there. Had these 1950s born Boomer males who came of age in the late 1960s/1970s been born in the 1980s (Millennials) and came of age around 2000 or after, they likely would have been working harder to get scraps of pusssy from overweight women, face long sexual droughts as betas, and simp for women on Instagram and OnlyFans.
I agree that dating is like any market. In commercial real estate, it is well known that the best properties never get listed on the big internet listing boards for commercial real estate. They get sold off market. If a property makes it to the big internet listing boards, it is a less desirable property. The equivalent of this in dating is that the best men and women meet each other in real life and never get "listed" on dating websites/swipe apps. Men and women only resort to tech assisted dating when all other methods fail. The better ways to market yourself are...
1. Through social circle
2. Through random interactions either at bars or non-bar venues
3. In the DMs on Instagram, YouTube, or Twitter. Facebook and LinkedIn DMing is complete shiit so don't do that.
Once you start to look on the swipe apps, you're looking at the women who couldn't solve their dating needs through in-person methods mainly or secondarily in their DMs. While you might see some physically attractive women on swipe apps, they often have some big personality flaw. There are too many flaws to list. The typical guy (who likely has a weak social circle) goes on a swipe app and sees more pretty women on a swipe app than he sees while going about his day to day life, so his mind tricks him into thinking that there are hotties on apps. Apps allow him to do the equivalent of being in multiple places in the real world at one time. Some men do approach sessions during the day in retail settings or outdoors and get scant attention, so they are tempted to do to the swipe app thing and they think they are accomplishing something, but usually aren't doing any better than lingering outdoors waiting to see a good approach scenario.
Let's not forget that romantic relationships are transient. So quality women will find themselves single at some point, even if they are off market due to an extended relationship for 3, 5, or 10 years at a time. If you want to get with these women, find them through some real world means. Approaching in the real world is a slog. Also, some people aren't capable of building a social circle that is effective in producing dates. There are a lot of variables that need to line up for a social circle to happen and some of them are out of the man's control.
There's merit to
@joesbigship's assertions.