The closest I came to seeing another man’s dick was in the summer of 2012.
It was somewhere around eight in the morning, I’d just rolled out of bed in nothing but my jocks, and I groggily answered a Skype call I shouldn’t have. What ‘happylarry969’ would’ve seen was a shirtless young man squinting confusedly into the camera; what I saw resembled a pale bloated chimp that had just discovered the joys of sexual self-stimulation.
This wasn’t the first trouser snake to ever rear its ugly head on my computer screen, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Existing in the age of the Internet is like living in a share-house with a bunch of sex pests: open the wrong door and you’re going to catch a fella having a bat. The difference, though, is that there’s never any shame or apology involved online—no “get the fuck out!” or “don’t you know how to knock?” as they try desperately to get the laptop screen down, the pants up and the choker chain off. Wankers of the world-wide-web want you to see them. But why?
What is the point of the dick pic?
AESTHETICS?
The simplest answer, of course, is that the humble ‘dickie’ serves the same function as any other nude selfie: namely, as a kind of cyber foreplay aimed at seducing the recipient. It’s a tale as old as the camera phone itself: Jill gets a JPEG of Jack’s johnson, her panties promptly drop, sexual intercourse inevitably ensues.
But does anybody actually get off over the image of a phallus?
When it comes to the DO’s and DON’T’s of male courtship, gramming a snapshot of your unbattered sav has got to fall into the latter. Type ‘penis’ into Google images and you’ll be proverbially turkey-slapped by a hundred million reasons why. Stiffies aren’t sexy—the image of a solitary stiffy, without any context beyond the hairy upper thighs in the corner of the frame or the white socked feet in the background, approaches abomination.
Is there a ‘right’ way to take a dickie? I don’t know. Is flash or natural lighting more flattering? What’s the ideal angle: a bird’s eye view of the worm, or from below with the coin purse in the foreground? Is it ever a good idea to include your face in the picture, and if so, how?
These are all questions that, for the sake of women worldwide, deserve answers. But until someone shows me a good-looking dick pic, I’m happy to draw a veiny red line through the ‘aesthetic’ argument.
ADVERTISING?
The second most obvious reason—and, I think, the most common—is that dickies are used as kind of self-promotional advertisements. If a picture says a thousand words, then a picture of your pocket rocket might say something like: “Look: I have a penis. This is its size, colour and physical condition. Please note the lack of infections and lesions. This could be yours.”
Think of it as a provocative form of flexing, like a peacock flaring its plumage or a lad taking a photo of himself at the gym: a dickie is basically the modern man’s way of exhibiting himself to a potential sexual mate. Dickies and gym selfies are similar in several ways, for that matter—not least of all the fact they’re usually taken by vainglorious wankers and shown to people that could not give less of a shit.
ATTENTION?
Then again, I might be looking at this from the wrong side of the lens: maybe the dick pic isn’t for the sake of the recipient at all. When happylarry969 offered me an unsolicited view of his Bavarian beefstick, whether or not I’d reciprocate might have never crossed his mind. Like many public masturbators of his ilk, he probably just wanted to be seen.
And seen he was. The lighting was dim, the resolution blurry, and he’d apparently made no effort to aestheticize or advertise. But despite my extreme lack of sexual arousal, this stranger from the other side of the world had, without consent, thrust himself into my cerebral cortex and forced me to take notice.
That was three years ago. He could be dead now, for all I know—but his tiny little dick is immortalised in the annals of my memory. And in a world where dicks are a dime a dozen, maybe the most a sexual exhibitionist can hope for is to be remembered.
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Words by Gavin Butler.
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