If You’re Sexting With A New Person, Watch Out For This

If you’ve recently started flirting with someone new, you might decide to exchange sexy photos. But if you haven’t seen your match’s goods in person yet, look out: they might be cockfishing.

"Cockfishing" doesn't have anything to do with fish. The word is a combination of “catfishing” and, well, “cock,” and it’s also sometimes called “catcocking.” The term means that someone is tampering with their dick pics to give a false impression. This might mean sending photos of someone else’s penis, editing their own photos, or even taking photos at deceptive angles.

The word “cockfished” first appeared on Urban Dictionary in 2017 with the definition: “When a guy talks about how big his cock is and sends dick pics at a clever angle, making his penis look larger than it is.” Know Your Meme, however, dates the first use of the word back to 2013, shortly after the movie Catfish premiered. And in 2014, the first cockfishing meme appeared, captioned, “That moment when the dick don't match the dick pics…Cockfished.” 

But while “cockfishing” might have been around a while, the term saw a spike in interest this September, thanks to the new iPhone 11 Pro. Twitter user @writhewell tweeted a photo of a close-up of a banana taken with the new phone camera, captioned, "iphone 11 pro….boys, we got em.” People made plenty of “cockfishing” jokes in response.

For an extreme example of why cockfishing is a bad idea, consider this: according to the Daily Mail, one man decided to trade dick pics with a Grindr match and got sent an old photo of his own penis in return. Remember, honesty is the best policy — including when it comes to sexting.