The art of the dick pic: lessons from a CEO's social media mishap

The tale of a former PWC boss, a suspected hack, and a really, really bad nude

So a couple of weeks ago, a very unfortunate thing happened to the President of the Carlton Football club, a bloke called Luke Sayers.

Even if you’re not a sports fan, you might recognise that name. Sayers also used to be the Australian CEO of the enormous consulting company PWC.

Yes, that’s not in and of itself particularly interesting, except for the fact that when Sayers was in charge, PWC was very naughtily sharing confidential information about upcoming tax changes with their clients.

Anyway, Sayers was on holidays with his wife and kids, when something very odd happened to his Twitter. While Sayers was presumably making a cup of tea or reading the Bible, some nefarious person got access to his account.

This tasteless fiend then publicly tweeted out a dick pic. There was no note or explanation. Just a picture of a dick, tagged with the account of a woman Sayers is acquainted with.

Now, you might be thinking that this sounds a lot like a man, who tried to send a private message to a person he was seeing on the sly, forgot how direct messages work, and accidentally broadcast his uninspiring knob to the entire world.

But of course this isn’t actually the case. Sayers was hacked! Maliciously hacked!

Thank God this villain didn’t change any passwords or restrict access to the account, so Sayers was able to very quickly delete the picture. But sadly, the damage was already done. Various news organisations picked up the story and ran with it.

“This is outrageous – I’m investigating and will leave no stone unturned finding out who did this to me and my family,” Sayers said in a statement.

Sayers hasn’t confirmed whether this photos was indeed of his penis, or whether it was a random and maliciously-attributed penis.

We’re unlikely to find out. According to recent reports, Sayers has gone to ground in Italy and is not returning calls. Fair enough. In his situation, I would put myself in a big circus-style cannon and ask to be shot into the general direction of the moon.

But personally, I’m less interested in the mystery of whose penis this is, who uploaded a picture of it onto the internet, or what their motivations were. What matters to me is the fact that this photo was taken at all because, frankly, it is terrible. Just terrible. I’ve been unlucky enough to see a less-redacted version – suffice to say the censorship does us all a favour.

I would love to know who liked this tweet.

Yes, I’ve seen medical textbooks that are sexier than this photo.

But we can learn something from this terrible, sordid affair. No, this isn’t a cautionary tale about cyber security or using two-factor authentication. This is about good taste.

Men, you need to work on your dick pics.

You see, when women send racy photos, they’re mostly artful affairs. With little more than a forward facing camera and some tasteful posing, women will transform themselves into the subject of a Baroque-era painting.

When women take nudes.

But if we took nudes like men, you’d all be getting close-up photos of bum holes, snapped in the reflection of a dirty mirror.

So gentlemen, you need to lift your game. If you’re lucky enough to find someone who wants to see a photo of your hog, you owe it to them (and yourself) to take a nice, flattering picture.

Really it’s not that difficult. In fact, I could fix 99% of dick picks with one little alteration: improve the lighting.

Allow me to elaborate: when you go for a romantic dinner, does the restaurant have the soft glow of candles on the table? Or does it have brutally strong fluorescent floodlights in the ceiling?

It has the candlelight, doesn’t it?

You see, few things are improved by harsh, overhead lighting. The penis, I’m sorry to say, is not one of them.

So get off the bed, waddle over to the switch, turn off the overhead light and use a lamp instead. But just don’t point the bulb directly at your junk. A spotlight will make it look like your penis is doing a tight five set in a basement comedy club. Instead, bounce the light off the wall for a gentle, diffused effect.

Here’s a good rule of thumb: if the picture you’re planning on sending is so clear and crisp a doctor could use it to form a clinical opinion, you probably need to soften things up a bit. The lighting, that is.

If you get the lighting right, most of the work is done. But there’s still the matter of framing to consider. The photo tweeted out by Sayers is a marvelous example of what not to do. Truly, I could not imagine a less flattering angle than this.

Ballsack-up really was quite the creative choice.

No matter how lovely your boner is, it will be improved with a bit of tasteful context and perhaps some posing. Try a few takes and see what works for you. The first shot, snapped while flopped spread-eagled in bed, pallid stomach in frame, is probably not the best option.

The fun, I think we can all agree, is in the experimenting.

So go forth and take pictures of your penis with wild abandon. Just make sure that you’re sending them to your intended and consenting target and not, say, your entire professional and social network on a large media platform.

Because that would be very embarrassing indeed.