An insightful look at all the poses men do in club photos

Did your mother never tell you it was rude to point?


Boys will be boys, whatever that means. Apparently at a club this involves pulling some horrific poses for photos – why else would it be the defining phenomenon of the modern male? Just like Pavlov’s dogs, we’ve become conditioned to trotting out the same appalling poses whenever a club photographer appears in our peripheral vision. We run over to him, beckoning him to capture the same moment to go in the weekly panini sticker album of tragicness on Facebook, week after week.

You’re sure to recognise a few – and like a freshly-squashed critter on the side of an A-road, you won’t be able to look away, no matter how upset it makes you.

The ‘Point’

We’ll start with a classic. Everyone has pulled this pose on a night out and lived to regret it.

Most often utilised by people who don’t quite understand how photos work, they feel the need to signpost that it’s not just them in the photo, but this guy too!

The ‘Usain Bolt’

“Richard, you’re slow as shit, why are you pulling the Usain Bolt pose?” “Maaate, I can chop 17 pints quicker than he can run the 100m!” Wahey, wahey, etc. etc.

The ‘Cheers’

I go out. I drink. I pose for photos of me doing both of these things just in case anyone doesn’t believe me and I can show them convincing photographic evidence backing me up.

The ‘Feeling the Beat’

You dirty little beat fiend. You go clubbing because of the bangers the DJ spins. You fist bump along to every song, the beat pulsating through your body. It controls you. Oooh yeahhh that’s the spot.

Every waking hour you hunt the beat. Even your clueless mates who go clubbing just to fill the void in their empty, beat-less existence can’t distract you from your bass-y, drum-y mistress.

The ‘Your Country Needs You’

Can you feel it? You’re the chosen one. Through the intense eye contact, the outstretched finger and the magic of photography, you now know what it feels like to go to a club with our plucky hero here.

“You could have been here having just as much fun as me.” Next time you won’t make the same mistake. You’ll dance, you’ll drink, you’ll make merriment, and when you spot the club photographer out of the corner of your eye you’ll track him down and get him to take your picture.

Like the long line of those who have come before you, you will slowly extend your arm out. Your fingers will unfurl. The empty glass will drop to the floor. Your forefinger straightens. Snap.

The moment is captured and thus you have spawned countless others to go out and spread the good word.

The ‘Look Sick Feel Sick’

Others refuse to stand alongside you, looking like a mug while you glow with something that is not quite of this world.  You have your own signature pose that you’ve practiced in the mirror for countless hours.

If you look like you could slide into an anime series you’ve done your job. In this case, our hero is rocking the Ash Ketchum, if he had a subscription to Kerrang magazine.

The ‘Sweary One’

You are one edgy S.O.B. You don’t play by the rules, you don’t answer to anyone.

That is, until your mum calls you up telling you to take the picture down after your auntie saw the pictures of you with your middle finger hoisted up in rebellion and was deeply distressed by the whole thing.

The ‘Overly Affectionate’

The lads who will rip the shit out of each other all day because they all possess “phenomenally good chat”, but as soon as they get to the club and have a couple of vodka mixers they get all soppy.

The hardened banter exterior is peeled away to reveal a soft gooey interior of excessive manscaping and liking girl’s profile pictures at 4am in the morning.

The ‘Why So Serious?’

“Alright boys, remember, no-one smile.” Spoken seconds before the shutter goes, ensuring that how hard you and your boys are is captured forever for all to see.

Boys posing like this are also likely to have Twitter accounts which act as their diary, where they subliminally vent about all the girls who won’t reply to their texts.

The ‘Double-Parked VK Monster’

This, sadly, will be the enduring image that will be studied by future historians when they try to pinpoint the exact moment that our society passed the point of no return.

You go out and you metaphorically “tear shit up”, but you do this by drinking copious amounts of sugar and very little alcohol, and then vomiting it all up when you get home.

A morning-after curry for breakfast followed by a cry wank will sort you out just in time for you to do it all over again.