Yeah, because the whole point of the topic is that they are making an effort to talk to a girl by messaging her first; the idea is that women rarely initiate contact first, so why are they so picky when it comes to opening lines?

Regardless of the graph that you cited, the norm in our society is that men chase the women, which is what I would imagine most of these guys believe.

No where in your post did you mention girls being the first to initiate contact, you simply acknowledged what men already know, which is that women have a large selection of men (who span the entire spectrum of attractiveness) who use "low-effort" messages to initiate contact.

I didn't downvote you, but think about what you're saying in a thread where the basic premise is that there should be a "women first" style of dating app; where the co-founder of Tinder, who is a woman, is saying that women are too afraid to talk to men and that this notion of men initiating contact is dated and should be done away with.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised to get downvoted when you're telling men that they need to be more creative with their opening lines because the hot guys put in the same effort and you're going to pick the hot ones over the average looking ones.

You can't see that telling average-looking men that they need to put in extra effort because they aren't as attractive will get you downvoted?

From the OkCupid article you cited:

"...women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. Very harsh."

&

"Paradoxically, it seems it’s women, not men, who have unrealistic standards for the “average” member of the opposite sex."

Out of about ~700 matches on Tinder, I've had about fifteen girls message me first. It feels good when you get messaged first. Whereas many girls have received so many messages that it gets old, a lot of men don't ever receive that first message.