I’m not sure if Steve Jobs is resting in heaven or hell, although I suspect in his case he’s stuck in a special form of purgatory where he bounces between the two as iPhone users take selfies with a panel of renown photographer angels rating each with a thumbs up or a thumbs down and Steve following that trajectory. If so, Job’s loyalty card for hell is surely racking up the greater number of points. You can’t go anywhere these days – including the supermarket – without seeing some fool standing with arm outstretched smiling at his or her cellphone. And while there is no need for every second of every person’s life to be digitally recorded for posterity, that still wouldn’t be a problem if people realized that selfies are still a form of photography and should still adhere to a few of the more basic rules of that art form. Instead, the results often make you wish that cell phone cameras too had a lens cap for the masses to forget to remove before snapping that shot.

Not that Jobs is to blame for digital photography. That honor goes to Steven Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak, who invented and built the first digital camera. Which, considering the current plight of Kodak – the company that at one time ruled the world of photography – shows you just how evil digital photography is. When your young turns on you and devours your profits, it’s never a good thing. But Jobs gets the blame for bringing digital photography to the masses, when said masses should have been left to using a 110 instamatic camera. At least back when it was film instead of pixels, repeat offenders had to shell out cold hard cash for every bad photo they took.

I’m not sure why Sasson invented digital photography back in 1975, because it was another 15 years before the World Wide Web existed. But he should have heeded that age-old adage ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; give a man a cell phone camera and he’ll spend a lifetime taking snapshots of his penis.’ Which should be a good thing. But unfortunately most men think as highly of their photographic skills as they do of their dick when in truth both are often sorely lacking. Another applicable age-old adage is ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’. And of the thousand words I can come up with for many selfie dick pix I’ve seen, none are complimentary.

Part of the problem is there are a lot of ugly dicks out there. But men who suffer from ugly dick syndrome seldom realize it. They may think another inch or two would be good, but over-all they’d rate their dick a 10. Even though if that magic genie did grant them another few inches in length, all they’d end up with would be a larger ugly dick. But even then, you can work with what you were not blessed with. Don’t forget Nancy Reagan was once a movie star too. And even if your dick’s best side is neither, with proper lighting, a well-thought out perspective, and the judicious application of your favorite Instagram filter, your ugly penis too could end up looking like something Ronald Reagan would’ve loved.

The larger problem is that when guys see penis – even their own, and even if they are straight – all their blood goes rushing from their head to where it’ll be more useful. And then with selfies, minor photographic considerations like composition and focus fall by the wayside when penis is all they can see. And then even a good penis can look bad. Worse is when surrounding details upstage that penis. In most cases, masturbation would be the better way to go, but the fact is you can not score with on-line or digital dating these days without having a dick pic, and while guys often post facial shots of someone else when it comes to their penis it’s always their very own no matter how ugly it is or how poorly they photographed it. With that in mind, I thought I’d post a series of how-not-to articles that highlight the more common epic fails in the world of dick pix. ‘Cuz your sex life depends on it.

There are some universal self-inflicted errors that account for the majority of dick pic fails, but I didn’t want to start with the easy ones. Besides, you’re probably guilty of taking a few of those yourself and there’s no good reason for me to start off by offending you when there will be ample time for me to do that in future posts. And while you are probably thinking the important thing about a selfie dick pic is your dick, this is a good time to stress that while size always matters, details do too. And here’s why: The guy you want to hook up with so badly that you are willing to send him photos of your penis will spend a quick moment or two looking at the one of your face, and then a good hour pouring over every pixel of the one of your dick. And no man’s dick was created to stand up to that kind of scrutiny. But he was probably attracted enough to you in the first place to take time out of his busy schedule to look at your dick. And he wants to like your dick. ‘Cuz that means he’ll get some dick. So don’t be throwing him off the scent with some unintended no-no just ‘cuz you were too lazy to pay attention to the details.

So what’s wrong with the above dick pic? Yes, shutting that closet door first would have been a nice idea (and it’s a good thing Joan Crawford is dead), and no, you damn size queen, it is not too small. What this guy (whom I’m sure went on to bust a nut) did get right was including his hand in the shot. It’s always nice to provide some perspective. Even if you are not well hung, showing that your hand fits around your penis without covering it’s entire length is a good thing. (If you are not so blessed, do not include your hand in your dick pic, but do include some other perspective revealing detail. Like a background of Godzilla destroying Tokyo.)

Okay, so by now you’ve probably made a mental note that just in case those off-white sheets were supposed to be white, you don’t want to be hooking up with him at his place, But the real sin in this shot is the two weeks worth of dirt under those fingernails. He looks to be cut, so at least you won’t have to be concerned with what little colony of creepy crawlies he’s been growing under his foreskin, but still, cleanliness is next to godliness and if you are gonna have a holy experience with some stranger . . .

They say a man’s eyes are the window to his soul. Just as true is that the condition of his nail hygiene is the key to his overall cleanliness. And if he can’t be bothered to keep clean what he can see, you don’t want to know how bad things are where he can’t. Unless you’re into that kinda thing. Granted, this guy’s to-do list for the day may have been wash hands, trim finger nails, take a dick pic and he just started with the chore that sounded more enjoyable. But unless that camera pans out and it turns out this dick pic belongs to Zac Efron, there are a lot of guys he may have otherwise laid who will move onto the next dick pic that got sent to their cell phone instead.

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