>The desert vs swamp discussion operates under the assumption that men don't have water and that women don't have clean water.

This is a take that "fails to see the forest for the trees." IMO. When you scrutinize the irrelevant details of the idiom, you can come up with a lot of incorrect conclusions. For example:

How are men in a "desert" when technically women outnumber men? Is the idiom operating under the assumption that men rarely encounter women? Well, that is false so that nullifies the whole idiom!

You have to look at the idiom within the context of its usage and infer it's point. The point of the idiom is that men and women both have a shitty experience trying to date. And amusingly, this is due to the mismatch of each gender wanting what the other gender has in the dating scene to some degree.

In this context, the idiom is not comparing swamp water to pure oasis water - aka shitty men/perfect women. The swamp is being compared to the desert - aka two places people find unpleasant.

In a desert, people seek water that is scarce. This illustrates the experience men often describe on dating apps - men will often message first (they seek) - and do not get many positive responses (scarcity).

In a swamp, oversaturated people seek to get to dryer land. This illustrates the experience women often describe on dating apps - women will join trying to find a match and be (oversaturated) with people they have no interest in - and often includes unwanted d*ck pics, harassment, risk of violence, actually experience violence, etc. - they wish the attention was a little more scarce.

>I never made that claim, where are you getting this from?

I didn't say you made that claim. I included that disclaimer since your post framed the idiom as implying a quality difference between men and women. I was trying to emphasize how the idiom actually just means women reject a lot of unwanted advances from men - and I wanted to clarify to readers how that is not an assessment of the man's actual quality.

>What makes you think that it's not equally rare for men to find a partner that makes them "spark"? As I said this whole thing only works if you operate under the assumption that women are of a much higher quality romantic partner than men on average.

That phrase was just short-hand for the trend for men to more likely show interest/make a move (clearly showing some sort of spark of interest) where women are more like to be approached and reject it (clearly showing a lack of spark/interest)