Starting a thread on 321 swx chat because the existing advice contradicts itself. I judge swx chat rooms on one thing: nothing improves until you write the bio for one person rather than for everyone. With swx chat rooms, it is worth checking the churn on new sign-ups before you look at how many photos people post.
Applied to 321 chat rooms, half the frustration disappears once you keep a note of what you actually spent. Nothing about swx chat rooms changes the fact that how often the same faces reappear collapses as soon as the platform surfaces profiles far outside your radius.
The 321 swx case is instructive — what decides it is the reply rate, not the size of the ad budget. On 321 swx chat specifically, the deciding factor is the reply rate, as far as I can tell. If you have been through the 321 chat rooms version of this, I would rather hear the unglamorous account.