Word of the week: "curtfishing"
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From Astral Codex Ten:
Something is off about this Bay Area House Party. There are . . . women.
“I’ve never seen a gender balance like this in the Bay Area,” you tell your host Chris. “Is this one of those fabled ratio parties?”
“No – have you heard of curtfishing? It’s the new male dating trend. You say in your Bumble profile that you’re a member of the Dissident Right who often attends parties with Curtis Yarvin. Then female journos ask you out in the hopes that you’ll bring them along and they can turn it into an article.”
“What happens when they realize Curtis Yarvin isn’t at the party?”
“Oh, everyone pools their money and hires someone to pretend to be Curtis. You can just do things. Today it’s Ramchandra.”
Curtfishing obviously plays off of catfishing, which Wikipedia tells us
refers to the creation of a fictitious online persona, or fake identity (typically on social networking platforms), with the intent of deception, usually to mislead a victim into an online romantic relationship or to commit financial fraud
There's more fun stuff in the "Bay Area House Party" article, so by all means read the whole thing, despite its length. And then there's
[previously in series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
Update — The origin of the term "catfishing", discussed in 2013 by Ben Zimmer and Aisha Harris, is not obvious. At least, my guess would have been wrong. They refer to a 1913 work that starts this way:
Before the hustling days of ice and of "cutters" rushing to and fro between Billingsgate and our fleets of steam-trawlers on the Dogger Bank, most sailing trawlers and long-line fishing-boats were built with a large tank in their holds, through which the sea flowed freely. Dutch eel-boats are built so still, and along the quays of Amsterdam and Copenhagen you may see such tanks in fishing-boats of almost every kind. Our East Coast fishermen kept them chiefly for cod. They hoped thus to bring the fish fresh and good to market, for, unless they were overcrowded, the cod lived quite as contentedly in the tanks as in the open sea. But in one respect the fishermen were disappointed. They found that the fish arrived slack, flabby, and limp, though well fed and in apparent health.
Perplexity reigned (for the value of the catch was much diminished) until some fisherman of genius conjectured that the cod lived only too contentedly in those tanks, and suffered from the atrophy of calm. The cod is by nature a lethargic, torpid, and plethoric creature, prone to inactivity, content to lie in comfort, swallowing all that comes, with cavernous mouth wide open, big enough to gulp its own body down if that could be. In the tanks the cod rotted at ease, rapidly deteriorating in their flesh. So, as a stimulating corrective, that genius among fishermen inserted one catfish into each of his tanks, and found that his cod came to market firm, brisk, and wholesome. Which result remained a mystery until his death, when the secret was published and a strange demand for catfish arose. For the catfish is the demon of the deep, and keeps things lively.
Update #2 — The OED is not convinced. Its "additional sense" for catfish (added 2023):
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
September 25, 2025 @ 7:17 am
The Wikipedia definition reminds me of a great Latin (through Greek) word I read the other day — "planus" — (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Dplanus2) used in St. Augustine's Confessions, (according to my dictionary) to mean "one who makes a living through deceit or imposture".
Dwight Williams said,
September 25, 2025 @ 8:10 am
Okay, this "curtfishing" is just creepy as Hell.
JimG said,
September 25, 2025 @ 8:15 am
You'll get many more ghits by changing one letter. The word is NOT "cuRtfishing."
Mark Liberman said,
September 25, 2025 @ 8:32 am
@Dwight Williams: "Okay, this "curtfishing" is just creepy as Hell."
FWIW, I'm pretty sure that the concept is a joke, though it plays on some arguably semi-creepy trends.
Jerry Packard said,
September 25, 2025 @ 8:58 am
I’ve always understood catfishing as deriving from the catfish being a bottom-feeder, and if that is so then curtfishing involves reanalysis of catfish [N N] as catfish [N V] (object-verb), with ‘fishing for cats’ > ‘fishing for Curts’.
Mark Liberman said,
September 25, 2025 @ 9:12 am
@Jerry Packard: "I’ve always understood catfishing as deriving from the catfish being a bottom-feeder"
That makes sense, but apparently it's something very different…
J.W. Brewer said,
September 25, 2025 @ 9:57 am
That etymology of the relevant modern sense of catfishing is bizarre not simply because the alleged practice sounds offbeat (because what do I know about the practices of early 20th-century fishmongers?) but because the analogy or metaphor is not obvious even given that explanation. The catfish mixed in with the cod is not fraudulently pretending to be anything other than what it actually is, and it would seem that the supposed benefit to the cod (or rather to the ultimate purchaser of the cod …) derives from the fact that the catfish can be expected to behave in an authentic and honest way.
That said, maybe there's a broader phenomenon where snowclones may not make compositional sense on a freestanding basis, because the new morpheme swapped in is not playing the same semantic role w/r/t the meaning of the whole as the morpheme for which it's swapped did?
ajay said,
September 25, 2025 @ 10:04 am
The origin of "catfishing" seems very implausible – I'd always assumed it was related to "trolling" or "baiting", the idea that you're putting something attractive but fake out there to attract attention. Clearly I was wrong!
But the origin story itself seems a little implausible. Codfish are oceanic fish. Catfish are, as far as I know, fresh-water fish. Nor are they native to Britain – the only ones in British waters are introduced Wels catfish, which are definitely fresh-water.
And this:
"most sailing trawlers and long-line fishing-boats were built with a large tank in their holds, through which the sea flowed freely"
is exaggeration. Before readily available ice, most cod fishermen gutted and salted their catch while at sea, or would bring it ashore (for example on the shores of Cape Cod) to dry it for ease of transport. "Well boats" with a well communicating with the sea were not unknown in Britain and the US, but they were never widespread.
Since the essay is Christian apologetics, it's very possible that the story is completely invented.
cameron said,
September 25, 2025 @ 10:13 am
I agree with ajay and J.W. Brewer, above. not only does the codfish and catfish story fail to explain the metaphor, but it's completely unbelievable on the face of it
ajay said,
September 25, 2025 @ 10:20 am
I mean, we can't really dispute the origin of the word, because that story is where the title of the documentary came from, according to the person who made the documentary. But the story about using catfish to keep cod fresh is nonsense.
J.W. Brewer said,
September 25, 2025 @ 10:20 am
Separately, note the use of the phrase "You can just do things," which is said to be of Silicon-Valley techbro origin and seems (although recency illusion) to have become ubiquitous in the last year or so. (Here's some evidence it had made it as far east as Cambridge, Mass.: https://www.harbus.org/post/you-can-just-do-things I haven't seen a good piece of linguistics fieldwork tracking it to its origin, which doesn't mean there might not be one out there.
I assume that's in the text precisely because it's the sort of vogue jargon that the characters in the fictional situation would stereotypically use, although I guess it's also possible that the author is so immersed in that milieu that he doesn't think of it as marked.
ajay said,
September 25, 2025 @ 10:22 am
The essay itself seems to be part of the widespread "You know what would be brilliant to have right now? A war!" trend in early 20th century British and European literature which, for some reason, lasted only until 1914.
J.W. Brewer said,
September 25, 2025 @ 10:31 am
However ichthyologically implausible,* I'm not sure why ajay is describing the account as "Christian apologetics" – I see no obvious textual evidence of that and the wikibio of the author doesn't make it sound like that's a genre in which he specialized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Nevinson.
*FWIW one authoritative-looking online source says the Wels catfish, while predominantly a freshwater creature, nonetheless "enters brackish water in the Baltic and Black Seas and spawns in the salt water of the Aral Sea," although that may not be enough to rescue the story. Unless some other species was in former centuries imprecisely called a catfish by some before better taxonomic principles dominated the lexicon?
Jerry Packard said,
September 25, 2025 @ 10:48 am
Well, regardless of the origin of the [N N] catfish, the reanalysis of catfish [N N] as catfish [N V] (object-verb), with ‘fishing for cats’ > ‘fishing for Curts’ still holds.
J.W. Brewer said,
September 25, 2025 @ 11:01 am
@Jerry Packard: But it sounds here in the fictional-trend context that Curtfishing is not fishing for Curts but fishing with Curts – with an illusory promise of going to a Curt-attended party being the bait.
ajay said,
September 25, 2025 @ 11:17 am
JW Brewer: phrases like this from the essay:
" A society needs to have a ferment in it—a leaven, a catfish, a Mephisto, the queer, unpleasant, disturbing touch of the kingdom of heaven. Take any period of calm and rest in the life of the world or the history of the arts. Take that period which great historians have agreed to praise as the happiest of human ages—the age of the Antonines. How benign and unruffled it was! What bland and leisurely culture could be enjoyed in exquisite villas beside the Mediterranean, or in flourishing municipalities along the Rhone! Many a cultivated and comfortable man must have wished that reasonable peace to last for ever. The civilised world was bathed in the element of calm, the element of gentle acquiescence. All looked so quiet, so imperturbable; and yet all the time the little catfish of Christianity (or the little leaven, if you will) was at its work, irritating, disturbing, stimulating with salutary energy to upheaval, to rebellion, to the soul's activity that saves from bland and reasonable despair…At present in this country, for instance, and, indeed, in the whole world, there seem to be more catfish than cod, and the resulting liveliness is perhaps a little excessive, a little "jumpy." But in the midst of all the violence, turmoil, and upheaval, it is hopeful to remember that of the deepest and most salutary change which Europe has known it was divinely foretold that it would bring not peace but a sword."
"Unless some other species was in former centuries imprecisely called a catfish by some before better taxonomic principles dominated the lexicon?"
I did wonder about that – was there some European fish, a rather larger and more nimble predator, which used to chase cod around the North Sea, which used to be called a catfish? But I wasn't able to find anything. I think the whole thing is made up.
ajay said,
September 25, 2025 @ 11:25 am
Apart from anything else I don't think it's true that demersal fish, if not constantly chased around the tank, get "weak and flabby" in a matter of days.
Seonachan said,
September 25, 2025 @ 11:51 am
I had always associated the term with the personification of the catfish as a sexually promiscuous character in songs like Muddy Waters' "Catfish Blues" and Danny O'Keefe's "Catfish". I assumed it was a common metaphor, perhaps related to some actual characteristic of the fish, but now I have no idea if such an association even extends beyond those two songs.
Jonathan Smith said,
September 25, 2025 @ 12:00 pm
FWIW Harris's slate article begins with the origin of catfish in the newer sense ("[documentary filmmaker] Schulman finally meets the woman [and] discovers [she is] not young and single [… at which point her] husband, Vince Pierce, recounts the […] story which inspired the name of the film [about the nibbling Christian cod keeping us all 'on our toes']") and ends with a debunking of the catfish-cod stuff by consultation with people who would know ("'a piranha or a shark' would be a more logical choice.")
I note a catfish/troll parallel — internet creatures exploiting the veil of anonymity to incite and provoke, each in their own way.
Jerry Packard said,
September 26, 2025 @ 5:33 am
@J.W. Brewer
You may be right. In either case (with, for) the grammatical case on the [N V] noun would probably be dative.
Peter Taylor said,
September 26, 2025 @ 7:15 am
The same story about fisherman using a predatory fish to keep live catch in good condition is told in a Japanese setting with a small shark instead of a catfish. At least one management consultant has turned that version of the urban myth into a book.
ajay said,
September 26, 2025 @ 10:13 am
I had always associated the term with the personification of the catfish as a sexually promiscuous character in songs like Muddy Waters' "Catfish Blues" and Danny O'Keefe's "Catfish". I assumed it was a common metaphor, perhaps related to some actual characteristic of the fish
At this point, I regret, we reach the limits of my knowledge about the catfish.
Cats are generally used as examples of immorality – alley cats in particular. I have no idea whether this extends to catfish. Or, if it did, how Muddy Waters would have been able to know.
Mark Liberman said,
September 26, 2025 @ 12:17 pm
The original (1941) recording of "Catfish Blues", by Robert Petway, puts the singer in the catfish role:
What if I were a catfish, mama?
I said, swimmin' deep down in deep blue sea
Have these gals now, sweet mama, settin' out
Settin' out hooks for, for me, settin' out hook for, for me
Settin' out hook for, for me, settin' out hook for me
Settin' out hook for me, settin' out hook for me
Sean said,
September 27, 2025 @ 8:45 pm
I am more fascinated by the sociology. Bloomberg, Time, and a splinter movement say that your subculture is full of powerful men who see women in the movement as potential conquests (that last post about the boss who dated three employees is trying to make the boss look good!) And rather than trying to show you have learned better, in the year of Nyarlathotep 2025 you make a joke about how maybe you should lure women to community events by lying to them?
The author of that blog is married to a woman! Imagine how clueless the average 20 year old man in that space must be.
Michael Watts said,
September 27, 2025 @ 9:34 pm
Why is the OED etymology considered to disagree with Aisha Harris? She says exactly the same thing that the OED says: the term derives from the title of a documentary, which drew its title from the metaphor of the catfish in an essay by Henry Nevinson.
The analogy between the catfish in the essay and the woman in the documentary is provided, explicitly, by the woman's husband:
The analogy is that if you want to survive meeting a catfish (literally or metaphorically), you have to stay nimble.
Nancy Friedman said,
October 13, 2025 @ 10:56 pm
@J.W. Brewer on the spread of "You can just do things": The phrase was popularized, if not originated, by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a December 21, 2024, tweet: https://x.com/sama/status/1870527558783218106?lang=en
It has been appropriated by Jay Yang as the title of his book, published April 2025:
https://www.youcanjustdothingsbook.com/
Vercel, a Bay Area AI company, is using "You Can Just Ship Things" in its outdoor advertising. See this LinkedIn post by Vercel's CTO: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/malteubl_you-can-just-ship-things-activity-7264463600574971904-82Jb/
Sorry to be so late to this conversation! I'm researching the -fishing libfix and landed here (because curtfishing).