This post will be picture heavy.  I’ve cropped faces and names where appropriate to protect the Fishermen of the Midwest.  

If you play the Tinder game regularly as a meditative “would I fuck or not,” or a confidence booster, or taking it seriously as a dating app (I’ve got several friends who’ve met their long-time partner on Tinder), you’ll start to notice trends.  Loads of people like the outdoors.  Loads of people have no bio, or only emojis as a bio.  Shirtless Bathroom selfies.  The trend I can’t wrap my head around is fishing photos.  I started posting examples on Facebook to show my friends who don’t Tinder, and most people were amused.  It was pointed out to me, though, that’s a little mean to be posting people’s semi-private dating profile with their name and face and then laughing at it.

So, here I am attempting to create more privacy for them while still exploring the trend and my complete lack of understanding while maintaining light humor.

Guys on Tinder be like:

Not an actual Tinder photo

It feels like about a full third of male profiles in the Midwest have a fishing photo (data not actually gathered scientifically).  Growing up in California, I’ve always thought it was CRAZY to ice fish, let alone go fishing in good weather on the regular.  Can’t you just go to a super market and then drink while grilling your fish?  So, fishing generally is weird to me.  Advertising your fish on a DATING site is just beyond bizarre.  Do these men think that their fish are attractive to the opposite sex, or are they not thinking past “hey I love this photo of myself!” And therefore they put their awesome photo on their profile, without comprehending that the photos on the profile should be geared to attract women.

At first, having a fish photo was an automatic “nope” from me because I was just too frustrated with seeing all the fucking fish.  Then I took the app less seriously and started pressing “like” on the profiles where there were fish with attractive men, or profiles that were all about fish.  I wanted to find someone who had a good sense of humor.  Apparently, fishing is serious business.

gobble

you ate the WHOLE THING?

whatever lol

If this guy would have had a sense of humor, I totally would have bought him a beer.

I’ve collected a lot of photos!  Most are normal, just some dude looking super proud of a fish, but some are pretty funny!  Let me show you some of my favorites!

Did he catch this with his bare hands?

A pretty fish! Would you date this fish?!

So proud of my fish!

different guy, same tiny fish!  This fish gets around!

This fish is illegal, right? I hope this guy got released!

Now you kiss him!

Now this guy knows how to have fun.

I matched with this last guy.  I call him my Fish Rocker and we’ve been having fun texting for the past few days.  He definitely has a sense of humor about his fish.  I’ll be buying him a beer if we ever meet (he lives in a different town).

So then this happened yesterday:

Who dat?

He’s verified, and I’m still unsure what that means.  I ran across one other person who was verified and their job said they were a programmer at Tinder.  I asked a friend who this was and she said Zac Efron.  Is he in Saved by the Bell?

WHAT!

Hello?

Later in the day:

stupid bots.

I’m not going to your damn movie.