Will AI Kill Fly Fishing Too?
The Digital Sons of the Father Internet are Born PART 2
NOTE: I heard a great quote last night. It went something like this: “A writer is a beggar who shows another beggar where to find a piece of bread.*” That’s me in a nutshell. All along, I have had to BEG for my fly fishing bread. Anywhere else? information, it appears to me from this side of the fence, flows much more freely. But never so in fly fishing. And I will stake twenty-years of writing for magazines, and periodicals and of course this website – on that statement. Writing fly fishing is a beggar’s banquet.
Miss Part ONE? Read Part ONE in the SERIES – Will AI Kill Fly Fishing Too? PART ONE
As the aughts hit the tens, the allure of discussion boards began to wane – the popularity curve was pointed down, off a cliff. Facebook was scratching at that door, and making progress … finally. Trolls had taken their pound of flesh, and websites like the Texas Fly Fishing Forum and others, well, they began to fold their tents. It was too much work for no income, and the hackers were finding easy access to those early versions of discussion boards, which they still attack to this day. Hackers and scammers helped many in the fly fishing world beat a full retreat from the open internet, into what they thought was safe, but actually into the hands of the Devil itself – Facebook.
It is with that in mind, that way way back, just about when the century hit the teens that I would contact fly fishers with greater, much greater, personalities than mine, people like Alvin Dedeaux, and encourage him to join in the next digital era of fly fishing – SOCIAL MEDIA. (HONESTLY – I liked having the early lead in Social Media!) I was encouraging him to embrace Instagram (before Facebook bought it), and Twitter as tools to expand the sport and help him self-promote. It took a good number of years for Alvin to see the light, but due to his geography, and genuinely lovely attitude, you can see, not only did he see the light, lightning struck him in a big way … and he’s still got the juice to this very day. One of the first, if not the first promotion of Alvin Dedeaux, I was a part of – Kayak Fishing Journal “The Guadalupe River” – is still online, and a glimpse
into the distant future. This video was way ahead of the digital fly fishing curve. Working directly with Alvin Dedeaux in those earliest days was unforgettable – in a lot of ways. Being as objective as possible, I think his time in a band made his persona a natural for the big times to come – for him. He was ready for his closeup.
The Sons of the Father fly fishing internet? SOCIAL MEDIA. They came along just as a whisper. Instagram and Twitter were there for the using, free and new. The fly fishers who embraced these began to get a bit of a kickstart to what they were doing, showing, telling and talking about. I was one of those guys. It interchanged with the Texas Fly Caster website well, and the little engine that could -YouTube – was starting to show signs of life too. The “Sub-for-Sub” era was gone, and the speed and quality of online videos was picking up rapidly.
With SOCIAL MEDIA came huge constant complaints from the Growlers. Now posters were not just talking about their holy “fly fishing spots,” they were actually showing photographs of them! Blasphemy! Secrets are meant to be kept, mine-mine-all-mine. As a compromise, I am sure you remember the blurred out backgrounds that paid tribute to their own selfishness? And my fly fishing trail through the SOCIAL MEDIA era hit a few road blocks as well. Suddenly, a bright line was drawn, and it came at a time when I was writing and photographing (some) for National magazines, like Drake. Common asks were, “Just don’t show …” and for the more savvy fly fishers, “… just remove the metadata from the image.” I honored those lines because I knew they were drawn in sand, and would not be asked of me – in a short time.
The Yin-Yang of social media lasted longer than anyone expected. Facebook, had proven to be a force for true evil – in the USA – in the time between 2014 and 2020. By way of the algorithm, Facebook sewed the seeds of political discontent in the USA, and gave rise to anti-environmental minority, called MAGA. MAGA and Trumpers were and still are antithetical to fly fishing. Through huge political gains of this group, we today face losses of wilderness, Texas environmental chaos and setbacks yet to be calculated. The Facebook algorithm loved it. It kept MORE eyes on the platform longer than ever before, and profits grew. Facebook bought Instagram, and tracing the outlines began for the handwriting on the wall.
However, another son also rises, and that son is YouTube. Bigger than Facebook could swallow, and just small enough for Google to eat, the YouTube era found its voice, its platform, its bandwidth. I became much more interested from a creative standpoint, but didn’t really have an early grasp on just what I could do on the YouTube platform. I meandered along until 2015 going into 2016, and then came my own personal reset – cancer – that left me at 135-pounds (at 5’11”). So about the time I should have been hitting YouTube hard? I was down for the count.
COVID comes along and the world faced its first reset of the Century (1.2-million dead in the USA as of this writing). Fly fishing, the internet and social media reset as well. Fly fishing discussion boards? Ancient history, on the trash heap of trolls. All I still use boards for is sharing information that doesn’t belong on this website, or needs a more focused audience than this site hits.
During COVID the fly fishing “good times” did roll. Social media hit soaring heights because a large number of 20-25-year-olds suddenly found themselves out of school, flush with money and not having to pay back student loans. Me, if it were me? I probably would have done the same thing! Find a niche, like fly fishing, add a pretty face, boobs, flat-brimmed hat, beard, a buff six-pack … or a real six-pack and your formula is set – YOU BLOW UP.
You blow up fly fishing, and the Growlers? They were silent, and knew when it’s time to end an era of caring about what the kids are doing. It is what it is. The fly fishing industry? What a bunch of morons. They bought into the COVID BLOW UP just like the kids. It will last forever, and fly fishing is baptized and reborn! Changes in leadership, changes in the economy and upheaval in the USA mark the first half of the 2020’s. Action and reaction, while the environment and fly fishing excess burns away, an out of control forest fire.
The COVID fly fishing bubble bursts, and nothing in social media, Facebook, YouTube or the internet can save it. Fly fishing, and all its accompanying hoopla dies, and we’re back down to the new normal which is essentially the old normal. Abandoned fly fishing influencer Instagram accounts, abandoned fly fishing YouTube influencer Channels … all a digital wasteland left behind for others to clean up and recover from … and some of the genuine fly fishers have never recovered.
IN PART THREE – The Evil Empire Artificial Intelligence is in Fly Fishing Now
END NOTES
NOTE: What you are going to find with me is; I am a bleeding edge guy, and I try new techniques and technologies as soon as they make sense to expanding the world of fly fishing to a bigger audience. (IF the effort pays for itself along the way/ so much the better. I have yet to see that event horizon.) If I can’t fly fishers to cooperate, I CAN GET technology to get along with my efforts to find a piece of bread – to share with you.
*The Original Quote: D.T. Niles wrote this definition in his 1951 book That They May Have Life to describe Christian evangelism.
