Alright humans, we need to have a talk.

Have you heard of Yik Yak? Maybe it’s a very well-known app, and i’m just behind the times as per usual, but it has been installed on my SmartPhone as of recently. I love it. It’s like, you can post anything you freaking want to, and every Yik Yaker in your area can see it without having a clue as to who the author is.

This app can be used for good, or it can be used for evil. For the most part, the newsfeed consists of humorous, slightly embarrassing entries. But, as with most things, there’s gotta be a couple of assholes who ruin it for everyone.

I’ve noticed a lot of posts on the Yak from young men (assumption) complaining about girls catfishing them on online dating sites, i.e. Tinder. One of the posts was complaining about girls that look “thick” or whatever terminology the kids are using these days, but in real life they’re just fat. I dunno, a lot of really fat-shaming comments were made in response, which was completely problematic on its own, but it got me thinking about this whole catfishing and online dating business.

So, we have social networking platforms that enable us to share everything from photos of our food to photos of ours and others’ faces with our dear friends, enemies, and strangers from Ethiopia of whom we’ve never met before, but accepted their friend requests anyway to be polite. (Guilty as charged.)

It’s no secret that basically anything posted on the World Wide Web can be viewed by anyone with access to it. Because of this, we tend to shed ourselves in the best light possible, because let’s face it, at one point or another, someone is going to see something we’ve posted on our personal pages, and it will change their opinions of us forever.

This applies especially to dating or “hook-up” apps such as Tinder. The intended use of these apps is to find an attractive being to date or make out with or whatever activities you guys do when you meet up with a Match from Tinder. I don’t wanna know.

With the objective of making oneself attractive to others, it would only make sense that we post only the best photos of ourselves, complete with the best filters that Instagram has to offer. That’s not just us ladies, I know dudes be using that Sepia as well. And yes, editing photos enables us to present ourselves in completely unrealistic ways.

Back to the catfishing, I don’t think that enhancing one’s profile photos is considered catfishing. People on dating websites should be going into these accounts with the knowledge that the information presented on anyone’s profile is a reflection of them on their very best days, plus or minus a filter.

So stop getting upset when the individual you are meeting up with from these sites doesn’t look quite like his/her photos. That would be an unrealistic expectation.

Actually, y’know what, scratch everything I just said. My real advice to you would be to get yourself off the computer and go meet some people face-to-face so that you can avoid the whole catfishing problem all together.

Swipe right!

M.