Dogfishing: The Next Big Ick We Didn’t Need In Our Lives

We all love a cute puppy picture, there’s no denying that. But is posing with your fluffy friend actually making you more attractive to potential soulmates? Recent discourse says no. In fact, your dating profile might be giving some people the ick, big time.

A new word has just dropped in the dating world, and of course, it’s only making everything a lot more complicated. “Dogfishing”: a term to describe the act of using photos of dogs on your dating app profiles to make yourself more attractive to other users.

Now, anyone with critical thinking skills will know that this has been going on since the beginning of time. Nobody can look away from a puppy pic, and in times gone by, many women would have seen the appeal of a dog-owning man. A family man, if you will. Someone who’s responsible enough to look after another little creature. Just imagine, you’re swiping away, losing all faith in the dating pool, when you stumble across a 6’4 Greek god playing tug-of-war with his golden retriever puppy. How could you say no?

@theogidney dw i split the bill #fyp #tinder #tinderdate #dog #datenight ♬ original sound – sped._.up.soundss

Well, if you were planning on using this foolproof tactic for your own profile, we have some bad news: gals just aren’t into it anymore. While it might have been appealing at some point, the man-with-dog pool is becoming really oversaturated, and the whole concept has been thrown into the ‘performative male’ bin. 

Any gender can be guilty of dogfishing, but it’s seeming like it’s more of a men’s sport. And, of course, everyone knows that there are many men out there who genuinely do love owning a dog, and have absolutely no weird intentions when they include a picture of said dog in their dating app profiles. But not all men.

It’s starting to become clear that a lot of the men who are parading their furry ‘best friends’ on Tinder or Hinge, are really just using the fact that they own a cute dog to make themselves more attractive to women, who, typically, might pay more attention to a cute animal when they see one.

In her weekly newsletter, Love, Willa, Cosmopolitan US editor Willa Bennett claimed that she had asked five different men if dogfishing was actually a thing, and all five of them confirmed it was. On top of that, each of them also told her that this tactic does work in getting more matches. There have even been instances of people using photos of themselves with someone else’s dog to make themselves look better. Now that’s just weird.

But if dogfishing has been happening for years, why are we only this hyperaware of it now? Where was all this discourse when you couldn’t scroll on Instagram for four seconds without having to see the words “doggo” or “pupper”? 

It could be because we’re now seeing dogfishing being applied to the dating scene, more specifically, dating apps. The rise of dating apps has undeniably made the modern dating scene a lot more superficial and performative. In defence of the dogfishers, doesn’t every photo we use on dating apps serve the purpose of making ourselves look better? It’s very hard to find real authenticity on dating apps because users are inevitably going to have to put on some kind of performance.

It’s different than in-person dates, where you have very little control of how your date perceives you before you meet, and once you’re there, your opinions and feelings towards each other are formed in the most natural way possible. On the apps, you already have preconceived notions about the person you match with, and it’s solely based on looks (let’s not pretend that we care more about the bios than the photos, okay – nobody’s that nice). These apps are inherently performative, it’s no wonder these performative behaviours are coming out of them.

Another reason the spotlight of shame has been cast on culprits of dogfishing is likely to do with the ‘performative male’ discourse that’s been trending on social media for months. This trend includes memes or rants that call out or mock men who feign interest in things that are centred more around women in order to make themselves more attractive. Think men drinking matcha, men reading feminist literature, owning a Labubu, listening to Clairo.

These are all traits that many women believe are just ploys that men use to get the attention of women, and to separate themselves from the ‘basic’ guys. It could very well be the case that dogfishing has been grouped in with this kind of behaviour, and that’s why it’s been getting so much heat recently.

There are definitely arguments to be made against the performative male trend, including the fact that mocking men for having the same interests as women just reinforces gender roles and stereotypes. At the same time, there most likely is some truth in the idea that a lot of men out there do create a superficial kind of persona to seem more attractive to women, and that this is unfair and makes dating even more complicated than it already is. Going into a relationship, everybody wants to know what their partner’s interests and hobbies are, and nobody likes being lied to. 

So what do you think? Is dogfishing just harmless behaviour that we’re all deeping way too hard? Should we let the puppy pics roll on? Or does it reflect a deeper issue in the modern dating scene, an inability to feel like we’re enough for someone without having to put on a misleading performance?