In July 2013, a blog called Dead Fish of Tinder limply wriggled into minor internet fame.
It did what it said on the (tuna) tin: posted examples of when men, for some unknown reason, had decided a picture of themselves with their hands covered in blood and fish guts was exactly how they should sell their best selves on a dating app.
Presumably, the point of the pictures is that their subjects have exhibited the strength and agility required to wrangle a deep sea beast from its underwater lair (and onto a hook with a bit of worm on it, dangled by a sunburnt man in cargo shorts, sitting in a dinghy).
However, a recent survey has revealed that there may be some method to the madness of men putting pictures of their recently harpooned game on Tinder.
According to a survey on heteronormative dating and fishing practices by international "fisher social network" Fishbrain (Like Facebook! But for fish! And brains!), the chicks love nothing more than swiping right on a bloodied halibut.
Of the 1000 women surveyed by Fishbrain (which, it cannot be stressed enough, is a social network for fishers) 46 per cent said they found men on Tinder more attractive when holding dead fish in their photos.
(To clarify, these are almost certainly pictures of men who have just made hook-to-scale contact, and not pictures of men holding cans of sardines, although the survey's methodology does remain unclear.)
The survey found dead fish in Tinder pictures to be most common in the state of Florida, where 22 per cent of men surveyed had included pictures of dead fish in their Tinder profile, which seems comparable to the rate at which Australian 23-year-old male Tinder users share pictures of themselves posing next to sedated tigers in Thailand.
Men were much less likely to use a fish pic to reel in the swipes in New York, where they were only employed by five per cent of those surveyed.
Not content with just compiling this data, the survey went on to ask women which fish they were most likely to swipe right on, and the answer was the great northern tilefish, which is native to the US East Coast. (Men of New York, put away your artsy coffee shop shots and start adding a few more tilefish to your Tinder profile; they're so well located.)
Unfortunately for Australian fishers, the least attractive fish to put on your Tinder profile is the juvenile common carp, which you will find wrecking the submergent vegetation in the Murray-Darling river system, as well as in other freshwater rivers and lakes.
So, while you can feel good about fishing those introduced carp right out of Australia's waterways, they probably won't earn you a right swipe.
