Ironic Fishing Memes / Bass Pro Shops

About

Ironic Fishing Memes refer to memes parodying recreational fishing culture and ironic reposts of the memes associated with it. The trend gained significant traction on Instagram in early March 2019, also spreading to ironic Reddit communities such as /r/okbuddyretard and /r/comedyheaven.

Origin

The exact origin of the ironic fishing memes is unknown, but is presumed to be iFunny. On August 20th, 2018, Reddit user g_woofduff_11 made the first known ironic repost of a fishing meme (shown below).^[1] The post gained over 220 upvotes in six months.

This and multiple other ironic fishing memes which were posted afterwards had previously been featured unironically in various fishing forums and communities, such as Bass Resource forum and South Texas Fishing Association fishing community on Facebook.^[2][3]

Spread

On February 17, 2019, Redditor Kevin1216_ submitted a post of unknown origin called "this" to /r/bruhmoment subreddit,^[12] gaining over 340 upvotes in three months.

On March 7th, Instagram account i_have_no_memes96_v2 made an ironic shitpost of a fishing meme (shown below).^[11] The post gained over 43,500 likes in one month.

In the following weeks, multiple ironic fishing memes were posted on Instagram shitposting accounts.^[9][10] For example, on March 9th and March 13th, 2019, Instagram user mememonk_ made two ironic shitposts of fishing memes.^[4][5] The posts gained over 12,000 likes and 13,100 likes respectively in one month. In the comment section, multiple users highlighted the influx of ironic fishing memes on the platform.

Starting on March 17th, 2019, a number of fishing memes were reposted by ironic meme communities on Reddit, with examples appearing in /r/comedyheaven and /r/okbuddyretard. For example, on March 17th, Redditor tiltpolice made a post which gained over 1,200 upvotes in three weeks.^[6] Another post, made on March 22nd, gained over 9,500 upvotes in three weeks.^[7]

On April 7th, 2019, Redditor TheRealLTGaming made an ironic repost of a meme mentioning Bass Pro Shops fishing store.^[8] The post gained over 8,200 upvotes in four days, prompting an influx of related memes on the platform.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References