The badge means swipe left
An interview with the person behind @TinderPigs, an IG dedicated to documenting cop dating profiles
Hi all! With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, love and romance are certainly in the air… even for our boys in blue.
See, it turns out, when they’re not carrying the fate of the universe on their shoulders, cops are a lot like us. They’re people behind the badge, with wants, and needs, and the corniest fucking dating app profiles on the planet.
But don’t just take my word for it—see for yourself on @TinderPigs (h/t friend of the newsletter and true Post Enthusiast Peter Hess!), an Instagram account dedicated entirely to collecting the dating app profiles of police officers. Handcuff jokes, smoldering uniform selfies, and ugly tattoos only a badge bunny could love abound. You’ll have to click through to Instagram for the full effect, but a quick hate-scroll is worth it—trust me.
Gagging yet? We’re just getting started. I talked to the anarchist running @TinderPigs an a side project about swiping for cops and definitely not fucking the police.
Could you tell me a little about yourself and where you got the idea to collect all of these cop dating profiles onto one Instagram page? I know the account is pretty anonymous, but whatever you're comfortable sharing would be awesome.
I'm punk and an anarchist and an artist. Just your run-of-the-mill antifa supersoldier or whatever. There were so many cop profiles popping up on my Tinder that I was screencapping to share with friends that I devoted a folder on my phone to them. There are all those "Shitty Dudes of Tinder" Instagram accounts, and I couldn't find a single one that specialized in police, so I started Tinder Pigs as a way to open up more space in my phone, and to share the gross and funny profiles with a handful of friends.
I'm pretty terrible about updating the account, and checking DMs, but I try to stay reasonably on top of it. But it's still just like a funny project I do on top of everything else, so it's never really a huge priority. Plus, dating sites are fucking depressing and I have to tap out for a few months once in awhile to give my brain a break. So please, submit photos!
What have you learned from looking at all of these cop profiles?
Hmmmm... There are not a lot of female cops on dating sites, from what I've seen/what's been submitted to me. I think, demographically, single pigs are sort of all over the place, but filtering for ages 27-45 is usually where they show up. That's a pretty wide age range, but I usually will pick a span of 5 years (ages 30-35) to swipe through one week and then a different range the next. Bumble still allows filtering by political affiliation, and throwing the “conservatives only” switch brings up sooo many police profiles. I'm sure there are some who ID as liberals, but I really cannot bring myself to slog through that sea of single tech bros on top of everything else.
How do you feel about cops in general?
Police are a boil on the face of society. They are a drain on the economy and exist only to uphold white supremacy. The world would be a better place if they had to get real jobs like the rest of us. To quote AK-47: The badge means they suck.
Why do you think cops love highlighting the fact that they are cops on their dating app profiles?
It's a power thing. It's like how all the military dudes have photos of themselves holding guns. I saw this one guy's profile where he had a photo from Afghanistan where he was POINTING A GUN AT A CHILD. So, I don't think it's limited to police only. Badges, fish, guns, motorcycles. I'm sure a number of sociology theses have been written about online dating and dick metaphors as profile props.
What's an unexpected by sure sign that a Tinder/Bumble/Hinge profile belongs to a cop (besides the obvious: pictures in uniform, blue and black hearts/badge number in the bio, etc)?
Having been to a lot of protests in my life, I keep in mind the hallmarks of a plainclothes police officer: cargo shorts, dumb novelty t-shirt, cop shaped body (rectangular), some white sneakers. These are the things that make me pause on a profile to actually read their bio, even if there isn't a photo in uniform up. My friend summed it up as, "Cops dress like my homophobic cousins," which I think is about right. Except for Hipster Cop from Occupy. He was able to be plainclothes for so long because he was a skinny little asshole who wore cardigans and glasses and threw everybody's copdar off. [Editor’s note: Didn’t know about this guy or the media buzz around him, and after a little research, I gotta say—ew, everyone!]
What's a cop's favorite dating app?
It's hard to say, but I think Bumble has been very generous with cop profiles lately. You can't really compare though, because Tinder has a distance limit and I'm not about to pay to swipe nationally. And OkCupid got rid of “search by interest” a thousand years ago so that's pretty useless imho. There's a dating site called like... BadgeDate or something that is specifically for first responders and their fans, but I feel like that's cheating.
Do you think these profiles... work?
I sincerely cannot imagine who would be interested in any of these dorks.
What has the reaction been to your page? Do you get hate mail from cops pissed you're making fun of them? Fan mail from people who've dated cops before?
Mostly positive, I think? I haven't gotten hate mail from anybody yet! And I'm pleasantly surprised by number of followers the account. But I have had a couple of my dating profiles get banned because I linked to Tinder Pigs or had "just here to screencap cops" as my bio and a cop reported me.
Anything else we should know that I haven't covered above?
Fuck the police and fuck ICE. But not literally, please. :)
Blocked and Reported
Here’s the latest round of fallen heroes, struck down by their own posts.
On January 22, Augusta, Maine Capitol Police Chief Russell Gauvin was placed on administrative leave after someone leaked his Facebook posts saying you-know-what about the 2020 presidential election. Now, Maine’s state legislature is attempting to assume jurisdiction over its Capitol PD in Gauvin’s seemingly permanent absence.
On January 22, Andrew Johnson of Kissimmee, Florida was fired from the Kissimmee Police Department after a concerned citizen sent in a complaint about Johnson’s pro-Capitol riot, anti-BLM social media presence.
On January 23, officers Thomas Robertson and Jacob Fracker of Rocky Mount, Virginia were suspended without pay for breaking into the Capitol on January 6… and Facebook messaging a shitload of evidence to friends and family, including a selfie from inside the Capitol. Anything for clout ;-)
On January 25, the Orange County, Florida sheriff’s office launched an investigation into deputy Shelby Abramson’s TikTok account, supposedly because she has clearly been filming this shit on the clock. Has the war on Cop TikTok begun in earnest?
On January 28, Stinnett, Texas police chief Jason Collier was arrested after some messy, messy Facebook drama revealed he (“allegedly”) falsified annulment documents for one of his 5-plus mistresses.
Also January 28, an NYPD officer Carmine Simpson was charged with soliciting nude pictures from “four dozen preteens and teenagers” who he originally connected with on Twitter. Did the NYPD fire him? Nope—he’s suspended without pay, per a department spokesperson.
On January 29, an unnamed cop in Pleasanton, California was placed on leave after the department was alerted to some pro-Capitol riot posts on social media.
On February 1, the Knoxville Police Department released the results of an “investigation” into a photo of two cops with someone (maybe a… child) in blackface—Todd McFaun has been “reprimanded” and Leah Miller resigned in December, before the internal investigation closed. “Though their actions were done only in the spirit of Halloween, those actions were hurtful and insensitive,” a release from the department apparently reads. ONLY IN THE SPIRIT OF HALLOWEEN?
Also on February 1, an unnamed officer with the Fort Worth Police Department was placed on restricted duty after another cop found their “racially insensitive” social media posts and turned them in.
Questions, comments, corrections? (“You don’t know what it’s like to be a police officer” is not a correction.) Shoot me an email at k80way@protonmail.com, send “business” “inquiries” to way.kta@gmail.com, or DM me on Twitter.