Two Questions:
On one hand I have a knee-jerk reaction to paying extra money to message someone specific who may not message me back. Also, any person who has their inbox full has had a lot of attention and already hasn't found someone. There are easily a handful of explanations for why that may not have happened (guys message too often, she's very approachable, she had a long conversation with one or two people who didn't work out, she's very picky, she has had the profile a long time and left the site but doesn't update her relationship status on there, or some other option)
On the other hand, any person who has their inbox full is unlikely to be recieving a lot of messages in the recent past. That distinguishes the person who pays the extra $1 to message them since the person being messaged will be in a situation that resembles being in low demand (recieving messages rarely). This places you in a smaller pool of competition than normal.
I can see the draw of joining a dating service that requires you to pay for access to it since a paywall instantly filters for a lot of things (though OKCupid seems like it might be good enough for the task). However, I'm on the fence about the benefits of the A-List subscription service for OKCupid. Have you tried it out at all?
There's a lot of data and research on what makes people successful at online dating, but I don't know anyone who actually tried to wholeheartedly apply this to themselves. I decided to be that person: I implemented lessons from data, economics, game theory and of course rationality in my profile and strategy and OkCupid. Shockingly, it worked! I got a lot of great dates, learned a ton and found the love of my life. I didn't expect dating to be my "rationalist win", but it happened.
Here's the first part of the story, I hope you'll find some useful tips and maybe a dollop of inspiration among all the silly jokes.
P.S.
Does anyone know who curates the "Latest on rationality blogs" toolbar? What are the requirements to be included?