...have long been gone saying,"last seen over a month ago" which could mean several months to years... meaning your prospects of finding someone to be basically zero if not into the minus zero odds.

So, maybe for as much as this jaded creature is right, mebbe we should use the chat to petition the wanker running this site to remove those profiles not logging in after four months' absence, six months - whatever. Get rid of the dead wood we are forced to wade through to find the live people. A good coompromise would be a button which removed those who had not sent or responded in, say, two months from your searches.
I mean, consider that you are here, so the chances of finding a compatible person is a significant quotient. If the long gone are vanquished from search, then it does not take three weeks to go through, trying to get an answer.
Consider the old days. You went on a site, found a person to chat with, then spent the evening flirting and discovering a new friend. Worst case, that person was a troll. Here you are reduced to sending emails to a person who will never look at them. The site managers are the new trolls! They place non-responsive bait out there to show bloaded statistics to their advertisers and take satisfaction in the number of single people they can run around the bend. The site owners are the people who ten years ago could not get a date here!!!
Okay, so the site owners are complete jerks, but they are simply capitalists who don't give a hoot about you and me. They are in it for the money and will cheat and subvert a wonderful thing for money. Is this a new concept? Once more, you gotta man-up here and wade through the garbage to find the most important thing in the human existence - love & companionship. Our presence here is one of the most significant examples of being human there is in modern America - you all are being wonderful in spite of losers and trolls who run this madhouse, and the empty responses they nurture.

Good job!

Now, where's my troll club?