Basically you start as a baseline or perhaps an average, and your own behavior influences who you get matched with.

So in dating apps, matching indiscriminately in frustration to getting few matches will ensure you get thrown into the less attractive bucket. As you match with mostly other people already in that bucket. You can delay or prevent this from happening by being more discerning, not dissimilar from trying to chat up everyone in a cried. But you can get the algorithm to only show you other people considered attractive by a large population.

Note: if your ranking is too low, people you see are not actually seeing you. So they aren’t really expressing an opinion on accepting or rejecting you. So keep it high. Apps are different and they update alot, but just assume this is happening behind the scenes.

The sad or sadder part of this is to not match with unattractive people. Keep them in pending forever even if you rarely get matches. The algorithm also has to learn to show you to people that are widely considered attractive. Takes 3-7 weeks and then its a gravy train (in the cities), or time to reevaluate other aspects of your profile.

Its not really that complicated, just counterintuitive.

Last thing I’ll add is that attractive people have the same anxieties or “awesome personalities” or other attributes as unattractive people. So you can prioritize your time accordingly.