We get it. You love fish. You love fish so much that you got up at the crack of dawn, put on some ill-fitting cargo shorts, and stepped onto a tiny-ass boat. You pulled out your extra-long fishy, fishing stick and caught that .5lb swimmer with fins. Then, you felt such pride at hooking this tasty treat pumped full of Lake Michigan pollution that you took a bomb-alicious pic. Where to share? On your Tinder profile, of course. Immediately. Surely all the dates are going to come flocking to your feet like seagulls at a lakefront fish fry.

I mean, who wouldn’t? A man holding a very dead, slimy thing is the perfect picture of a hot date. Who needs cologne when you’ve got an 86-ed catfish by your side? Men who hold dead fish are brave, proud, and bold. Tinder fish-men will put themselves out there in ways the “other guys” who post non-fish profile pics could never understand. 

What about the “dog guys”? No potential date wants a man with a dog. Unthinkable. Ridiculous. Why date a guy with a fluffy, apricot-colored, angel-baby mini-goldendoodle who licks your face and loves with his whole canine soul when you’ve got the option to go out with a man holding a catfish instead? (wiggly whiskers-intact, of course.)

Or what about the “cat guys”? Surely not. Hmm. Ok ok that’s one’s actually true. No jokes here. Cats vomit hairballs for your bare feet to find and also go to the bathroom in the house. This is the one animal sitch that is actually sub-par to a rancid rainbow trout.

Irregardless, why can’t you take a pic in front of a tropical multi-colored glitterfish named Ephemera swimming in its beautiful tank? Why does the salty swordfish have to be dead? Take a pic on your postage stamp-sized boat with the beautiful sunrise behind you, perhaps with your stained bucket hat tipped jauntily to the side. Sit up semi-straight, give us a toothy smile-do not pick up that dearly departed, septic pickerel. Leave it. In the barrel. Close the lid. Stop it. Tryna save you from yourself here.

Question: Is the dead fish some sort of emotional security blanket? Some sort of shield to keep you from sharing your feelings with your brand new date? Because you can come out of your shell! Come on out here with the rest of us. Like a crab venturing from his dark cave into the sunlight, feeling the warmth on his beady little eyes, you too can find a warm body (unlike the fish) on Tinder. Swipe right. Swipe right. Swipe right, right, right. One of these gals surely will want a great sports-dude like you.

You can show your date how to cast a line into the dark abyss, how to trawl for tonight’s dinner. Then you can take a picture together-with the fish carcass-like true lovers do.

Note from the editor (that’s me:) These are jokes. Please do not send me a box of dead fish; I’ll just send ‘em back-to you.