Wave Goodbye to the Factory of "Content"

October 2025

It took an embarrassingly long time for me to deeply accept that fly fishing social media isn't reality. I was naively convinced that there were just way more 25+" wild trout regularly getting fooled by everyone but me. Fortunately, the illusion has since broken, but it kicked off an internal battle with the delete button.

But beyond simply lurking on Instagram, I'd been wrestling against the prevailing “creator” approach to perpetually amass more and more "content". Personalities, brands, each wants to get the attention they think they deserve. Substance be damned. More, more, more; or you'll be forgotten. Repeated forever... the whole concept is frankly ridiculous.

"Content" is an ugly word, a perverted way of describing our approach here: researching, testing, fishing, sweating, and simmering on ideas until they're ready to be explored in longform. "Content" is what tech wants from "creators": a constant bombardment of low-effort reactionary click-bait. That's just not our style. To that end, it's finally time to give up our feudal attempts to maintain pace in the rat race: including our social media presence.

Don't get me wrong, social media has its advantages, internet sleuthing has helped me in my angling. Picking up a sneaky spots in Reddit comments, finding new flies on Instagram. New ideas for articles, I've even won a few minor giveaways! Sometimes it simply energized me to get off my ass.

For every yin, an equal yang; and the dark side of fishing social media is sleazy. Snaggers, hotspotting, questionable ethics. The calculus shifted and now, the negatives outweigh the positives. Not to mention, large tech companies are feeding their AI language models with everything publicly shared on their platforms.

Would fly fishing be better off without social media, and the social media personas that represent fly fishing? I’ve recently seen internet famous anglers hawking cars, corporate ads poorly disguised in Instagram posts. That one was a shock to the system. Doubling down, social media isn’t designed for light use. Tech spends mega money to find ways suck us back in. It definitely works on me. I can’t seem to reliably drink from that firehouse without eventually getting wet. So the time has come.

As far as DWA, a lack of any social media presence will likely cost us exposure. But any effort to push out more stuff just to stay in front of people’s eyeballs is disingenuous. That goes for articles too. We’ll be here, you know where to find us. If there's nothing new on the site, it just means the cookies are still in the oven.

There's a growing force opposing the mass production mentality common from social media giants: A hunter friend recently exposed me to the Hunt Quietly ethos: rejecting a hyper-commercialized pay-to-play model of outdoor recreation, promoting a personal experience. They take a bold stance: reject social media, reject recruitment of newcomers.

My fishy vision of this approach would favor a return to sharing information in old school settings, swapping photos and stories only amongst friends, or on river banks, fly shops, bars, etc. Plus places like our site, free from tech over-reach. Hunting Quietly rejects self-aggrandizing broadcasts across the impersonal, illusionary internet just to get exposure. That resonates. Though Hunting Quietly makes a compelling case against newcomers, I can't say I'm fully convinced with the rejection of newcomers - fly fishing is a different beast.

Ultimately, I keep coming back to the Lefty Kreh quote: “There are only two types of people in fly fishing: those who show their knowledge, and those who share it. Stick close to the latter and avoid the former like the plague.”