The Who's Hiring, I kind of have lukewarm feelings toward those outcomes, because assholes are everywhere - but I've had the same experience as you on https://www.workatastartup.com/ which is just what the actual fucking hell.

From reading the sibling comments, it seems that my problem is that I enjoy reading more than talking on the phone so I much prefer browsing through listings and being selective, but what apparently needs to happen is that I call previous recruiters and badger them about "got anything?" rather that believing anything written online is true

I am also US based applying to exclusively US-based jobs. I've had the most success with Who's Hiring over all of the other ways (cold applications, network referrals, headhunters and whatnot), success rate being way higher than the others: for just a handful of positions I've been interested in I've had three offers, two for FTEs and another for a contract. My skills and background have been pretty well-matched to postings, almost exactly what they were looking for, but extremely deep in specific (increasingly hard to hire-for) areas.

I'll admit I've been super lucky here. It's almost like a cheat code because you're almost always connected with the person(s) actually doing the hiring and with the power to make the decision so things move fast.

I had an interview last month from a post there. Dude sounded like he was half asleep and hated talking to me even from the very beginning. He carried it on for almost an hour for reasons I don't understand if he was so disinterested. No rejection email follow up, posted again in November. The rule just says "you have to respond" and he did by interviewing me, it doesn't explicitly say you have to provide direct yes or no answers to going forward.