wokefish

wokefish noun: someone who pretends to be woke and in favour of progressive political ideologies on a social media or dating platform.

Noun

wokefish (plural wokefish or wokefishes)

(Internet) Someone who pretends to be woke and in favour of progressive political ideologies on a social media or dating platform.
- Couple this with the apparent nationwide divide over issues ranging from George Floyd’s death to wearing coronavirus masks, and you’ve got the ideal environment for the wokefish to thrive.2020 July 30, Ben Cost, “Wokefish’ dating trend: Shady men are pretending to be progressive on apps”, in New York Post, archived from the original on 06 Oct 2020
- “A wokefish may at first present themselves as a protest-attending, sex-positive, anti-racist, intersectional feminist who drinks ethically sourced oat milk and has read the back catalogue of Audre Lorde, twice.” However, in actuality, these practitioners of false identity politics couldn’t care...2020 August 1, “'Wokefish' dating trend sees people pretending to be progressive on apps”, in Fox News, archived from the original on 24 Mar 2021

wokefish (third-person singular simple present wokefishes, present participle wokefishing, simple past and past participle wokefished)

(Internet, ambitransitive) To pretend to be woke on an online platform to deceive (someone).
- Wokefishing notwithstanding, Layla told Vice she isn’t optimistic about the prospects of dating outside of political bubbles.2020 July 30, Ben Cost, “‘Wokefish’ dating trend: Shady men are pretending to be progressive on apps”, in New York Post, archived from the original on 06 Oct 2020
- Smith, from Leeds, claims she herself was a victim of wokefishing, as her former partner had lured her in believing the pair had similar beliefs, but revealed his true self when she decided to become vegan, sending her patronising texts with derogatory language.2020 August 6, Bridie Pearson-Jones, “Have YOU been wokefished? New dating trend sees singles pretending to be more progressive than they are to attract sexual partners including a neo-Nazi who...

If you find yourself dating a “wokefish,” it can be a lot trickier to identify than your garden variety catfish.[2021 August 4, Molly Longman, “‘Wokefishing’ Is A Uniquely 2021, Uniquely Terrible Dating Trend”, in Refinery29, Vice media group...
If someone says that they’re vegan but you find out that they occasionally eat a box of fried chicken when they’re very drunk or very sad, they’re not necessarily wokefishing you - they’re just human.2021 January 8, Marianne Eloise, “A guide to spotting and avoiding 'wokefishing' in dating”, in Cosmopolitan, archived from the original on...
Like catfishing – where someone pretends to be another person in order to attract more attention on dating apps – wokefishing is a similar kind of deception.2021 April 4, Natalie Morris, “Black Lives Matter hashtags are making dating apps even more complicated”, in Metro, archived from the...
People have even been known to “wokefish”: to pretend they're progressive in order to get a date.2021, F.H. Buckley, Curiosity: And Its Twelve Rules for Life:

Noun
plural	wokefish
plural	wokefishes
Verb
third-person singular present	wokefishes
present participle	wokefishing
past participle	wokefished
past	wokefished

Blend of woke + catfish, equivalent to woke + -fish.

What does wokefish mean?: Wokefish means someone who pretends to be woke and in favour of progressive political ideologies on a social media or dating platform.
How do you use wokefish in a sentence?: If you find yourself dating a “wokefish,” it can be a lot trickier to identify than your garden variety catfish.
What part of speech is wokefish?: Wokefish can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of wokefish?: The plural of wokefish is wokefish.

Adapted from Wiktionary: wokefish (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “wokefish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wokefish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.