Does pulling in a middle-class salary really hurt your chances that significantly if your professional life is still interesting?

For a bit of context, I (26M) have done some dating here and there but haven't really had the time yet to maximize more of an effort (I didn't start making any effort at all until I was 24). I'm an average looking guy, and despite how it's obvious that pulling in a higher salary increases your chances to some extent (even if it's for the wrong reasons), it seems like some people on Reddit will catastrophize that if you're average looking and not pulling in $80K or more, you may as well give up. They could say something like, "Women will act like it's not a big deal and they'll pretend to value someone's personality and other traits more importantly, but in reality, it's a dealbreaker as long as you're average."

Regardless of how I'm pulling in around $40K a year (which I know is technically lower middle-class, but it's fine for me since I'm fully independent with it despite how it's not amazing), at the risk of sounding high on my ego, I think the work I do is still pretty fascinating and could be more attractive to the right set of people. I work as a freelancer in the film industry (not to say that it's a rare job market, yet a lot of people I meet outside of the business find it more interesting than your average IT job), and I'm also a music video director who's trying to work their way into commercial representation one day.

With that in mind, do you think my ambition and unique work life can still compensate for it in terms of attraction? As long as I can support myself independently, personally I don't see why it would be such a big deal. Plus, I wouldn't want to anything to do with the type of people that set a higher income level as a benchmark.