Hey, I read it all, I live in the Bay Area, so, to me people that don't identify with mainstream or accepted or labels of any kind are not the odd ones...no pun intended. No, it seems like its a lot more 'normal' for a lot of people to just sort of do their own thing, I knew someone like you who was looking at online dating for almost the same reasons, and she got really frustrated with it too.
Beleive me, my dear friend is fiery, brave, beautiful and a wild one, you can tell just by looking at her. But she had no luck with OLD because of the same kind of thing you mentioned, most people don't want to excersize their brain cells by having to look past the surface.
And her natural beauty isn't appreciated by the silly sites, do you know how many of those are hook-ups for paid for services? I was told by a guy that 90% of them are for 'mail-order' bride services, it was, he said, like they all used a profile with different pictures, and then switched it around. Not only was it hard to find a REAL woman on there, once you did you had to navigate around all the analytics of getting to know someone at all...
So looking at that evidence, it seems self-explanatory that an non stereotypical person, wwith above average intellegence, or education, would not fit into these types who KNOW that they are trolling for easy ego stroking by dancing some dance with a gorgeous mail order bride, who the picture may or may not be of...