Swipe feeds and skewed attention

Large pools plus cheap actions produce winner-take-most dynamics: a small number of profiles capture outsized attention because they win early tie-breaks in split-second sorting. Everyone else competes for scraps of focus even when they might be a better match for someone who never scrolled far enough to notice.

Scarcity of sparks and small cohorts change the unit of competition: you are not optimizing against thousands of thumbnails - you are present in a finite room where mutual intent is easier to verify. That does not erase inequality, but it narrows the battlefield to something humans can actually reason about.