There’s a certain art form to selfie-taking. You have to get that camera at just the right angle — so you don’t capture any unflattering chins! — while also getting your smile just right. Then, while trying to actually snap the photo, you have to maintain a steady hand!
Not everyone has the same level of talent when it comes to snapping solo. Here are hilarious pictures of people who should have hired a photographer instead of attempting a selfie under the given circumstances…
1. How do you think her friends will react when they find out that she doesn’t actually have a boyfriend to stop from taking a photo of her in this bathroom… with a mirror? She wasn’t thinking far enough ahead on this one.
2. Their dog’s butt in the background of this selfie probably was not part of the look that these two young women were hoping for. Think about that poor dog, though. He looks a little bit sad that his friends are leaving him out!
cdurant / Reddit
3. Why take a selfie all by yourself when you can just strike a pose with your pet pooch? This young woman certainly seems to know what she’s doing, but her friend could really take up a career in modeling!
4. Wild animal + selfie = certain failure. Seriously, folks, animals don’t care one little bit about making you look cute for your Instagram followers. If they don’t like how close you’re getting to them, they’re going to react!
5. Take a seat and snap a picture! As if mirror selfies weren’t bad enough on their own, it’s almost a universally terrible idea to take a picture of yourself (or anyone else, for that matter) while on the toilet.
6. “The camera isn’t interested in you, bro.” You know, one of the most important elements of photography that gets lost on a lot of people, whether they’re taking selfies or not, is the issue of keeping things in proper focus!
Yung_hitta / Reddit
7. Leave it up to Dad to ruin everything! From the looks of it, he couldn’t resist giving his daughter a dose of humility and so he had to drop into her selfie session to make an appearance. When she figures out what’s happening behind her, she’ll probably delete this one.
trevortf / Reddit
8. This guy definitely needs a lesson in perspective… unless, of course, he’s already a photography master and just thought it would be funny to manipulate the angle to make it look like the dog is pooping on the baby’s head?
vinnyty / Reddit
9. This is really what true friends are for! After all, how can you ever know if you’re truly close to somebody in your life if they’ve never ruined one of their selfies by appearing in the background in their underwear?
10. “Ridge-cut potato chips all over my face and body: Check. Vaguely sleepy face: Check. Boyfriend who found me and thought it would be cute and funny to take a picture of me in this ’embarrassing’ state: Umm…”
11. Again with the phony picture-snapping partners? If you’re going to take a questionable selfie like this one, the least that you can do is be aware of the mirrors around you that might give away your photography secrets.
12. Please selfie responsibly. While this man’s photo may not have anything strange or embarrassing in the background, what’s in the foreground is just… bad. Come on, dude, nobody wants to see that!
Sudz705 / Reddit
13. “Did I just travel back from the future to meet myself?” Seriously, it looks like that man in the yellow shirt by the left of the background could be an older doppelganger of the man in the similar yellow shirt taking a selfie!
NaptownFellow / Reddit
14. Glasses Store Employee Handbook Rule 101: Don’t be a creep. When you’re standing behind a woman as she’s getting her photo taken, and you’re also staring at her butt, people are definitely going to take notice.
Found_my_username / Reddit
15. “Excuse me ladies, but I believe one of you might be stepping on a child. I realize that you all think that you’re looking spectacular right now, but can you please try not to kill that poor kid while you’re at it?”
16. Jeez… somebody please just lock this guy up and throw away the key. He doesn’t even look like he’s being subtle about taking a picture up that woman’s dress… look at how weirdly he’s positioned his own body!
drev / Reddit
17. This is why selfies and nude beaches are a dangerous combination. Actually, it’s not entirely clear whether or not this young woman is actually at a nude beach, but that guy behind her certainly seems to think he is!
kelsobucket / Reddit
18. When you’re trying to take a good photograph for Instagram, Facebook, or the like, it’s always important to be aware of your surroundings, especially if it involves a cannon. It’s not clear what’s happening here, but it doesn’t look good.
99-LS1-SS / Reddit
19. That’s a very bold statement to make to the world near the top right of this image. Look, not everybody’s saying that it’s something you necessarily need to be ashamed of, but, you know, it’s not the kind of thing that’s socially acceptable to go around advertising, either!
Ima_Grab_Yo_Snatch / Reddit
20. “You just couldn’t hold it for one more minute, could you?” There are a lot of things wrong with this photo, but the worst unquestionably has to be that creepy half-smile on this guy’s face. What are you smirking about, buddy?
iamhusband / Reddit
21. One man left his dog alone for a minute while he gathered lacrosse balls in the yard, and when he returned, he learned you can teach an old dog new tricks — selfie-taking. Others, too, have wound up with memorable photos after leaving their phones unattended…
22. A man found a fellow university student passed out in the library, and when he started taking pictures, the sleeping man caught him red-handed! We can only hope this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
23. A grandmother and an aunt found an unattended smartphone (does this sound like the set-up to a bad joke?) and after finding out how (sort of) to work the camera, they left this ghostly photo behind for the phone owner.
24. Before getting his finger partially amputated, he had to hand his cellphone over to this surgeon, who — we hope — used said digit’s fingerprint to unlock the phone and take a selfie.
HankDroppenduece / reddit
25. Music festivals get a little crazy, and if you lose your phone at one, chances are, you’re never seeing it again. That’s why every festival should offer Robs and Alexs to find lost phones, take selfies, and return them to the lost and found.
26. After a night in Las Vegas, a tourist woke up to find this photo on his phone. Vegas may be called the city of sin, but this mysterious photo proves it should be called the city of best buds — it can bring together sworn enemies!
27. He went out of town with his friends, only to find his girlfriend did a little tinkering with his phone lock screen and background. She was watching him closely, at least metaphorically.
28. Behaving like a classic anarchist cat, she made long-distance calls to China, sent six texts to all the phone owner’s ex-boyfriends, and then replaced every app with reminders to buy more cat food after the camera captured her pretty mug.
Thrusthamster2 / reddit
29. See if you can follow along: after a night of drinking, a man found a picture on his phone of a picture of a woman on a phone (phone-ception?). It also looked like the woman was trying to take a sip of his drink.
30. Sure, the oral surgeon was only giving his patient a photo to remember him by when he grabbed his pliers and went bug-eyed for the camera. But you have to wonder why exactly those pliers were in the office in the first place…
Snow_Commander / reddit
31. New rule: if someone passes out, you must use their phone to take a close up picture of your face — preferably with cut-up sweatpants as a mask or a birthday hat bra — and then return the phone. Especially if you don’t know the phone owner.
32. The guy in bed? Yeah, he was pants-on-the-ground drunk when these police officers nabbed him off the streets. But instead of throwing him in the slammer, they tucked him in and took some group pics on his phone.
33. He lost his phone in the coop for a few minutes, and when he picked it up later, he learned that chicken beaks are conductive and can operate capacitance-based touchscreens…and they take pretty threatening selfies.
mrnanovideos / reddit
34. Hockey games bring out the inner animal in all of us, but this drunk hockey fan found his inner beauty post game and tinkled “New York, New York,” on the ivories. He woke up the next morning with this picture on his phone and no memory of how poorly he played the classic.
35. If you thought parasailing would get your heart rate up, imagine returning to the boat, checking your phone, and realizing your friends had the power to make your day very, very bad.
Liz Harrison / Twitter
36. Her phone was stolen in the Copenhagen airport, and the thieves used it to document their own vacation…and take a photo that vaguely resembled a boy band’s promotional poster. They didn’t know it ended up on the original phone owner’s iCloud.
37. A wife received a text from her husband. She was excited — after all, he’d been traveling and away from home. But the text was just this photo, and her husband was the sleeping man. So who was this other guy?
Mrs Rosey Crotch / reddit
38. The precedent was set: when you find a lost phone in a Walmart, you have to take a family photo where your youngest son looks like he’s still trying to process a ghost he spotted six weeks earlier.
bmbleb / reddit
39. You leave a bar at 4 a.m. You’ve had a few drinks, but enough to keep your senses about you. Outside, you see a man who has clearly had way too many drinks. What do you do? Handstands, right? Yeah, handstands.
Southern Jeb / reddit
40. When she lost her phone in the park, these selfies taken by a woman down-on-her-luck turned up in her iCloud. But hey, taking pictures with a stranger’s phone must’ve been the most fun she’d had in a while! Or maybe it was chewing on that chunk of butter.
