What does your poster choice say about you?

Graphic by Jaime Mere

A lot of effort goes into decorating your room. For some people, it is the only place they have to call their own hundreds of miles from home.

It’s important to surround yourself with whatever makes you most comfortable, even if what makes you comfortable is a poster of Detective Pikachu or an image of a rainbow-hued moose fiddling with drug paraphernalia.

That’s where Laurier’s poster sale comes in handy, the best place to buy a needless portrait of Post Malone’s oily hair. Who wouldn’t want to scramble through a rickety maze of obsolete television shows and obscure political figures juxtaposed against landscapes of rolling hills and snapshots of malnourished koalas?

Your backpack becomes a weapon, disarming fellow shoppers through the towering walls of Kanye West and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The importance of “textbooks” quickly disappears when the sudden possibility of hanging Macaulay Culkin’s mugshot over your toilet becomes a reality.

You can tell a lot about a person by the posters on their walls. In fact, it’s a great way of forming a rational first impression, an internal way of deciding whether or not you intend on taking your pants off in front of this person.

Rooms filled with Minions decals and posters of Adam Sandler are likely to scare away even the most liberal of companions. 

There are definitely posters to avoid — generalized tropes and stereotypes to divert associating with. It’s very easy to come off as a complete psychopath simply based on the photos on your wall. It doesn’t take much to fall right into the categorization of “frat douche”; a couple pictures of Kurt Cobain and some unidentifiable cleavage is really all it takes.

That being said, what do these choices say about you? How telling are these choices about your personality and lifestyle? Here are just a few of my guesses:

You’re academically motivated.

Maybe your biggest passion is academia. You’re in love with your program and never want to forget it. Film majors hanging posters of Wes Anderson movies and screenshots from Reservoir Dogs. Business students displaying photos of DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort while Kinesiology students show off their knowledge of anatomy on their disturbingly accurate poster of the human body. Those with more obscure majors are forced to get a little creative; a Communications major hanging a poster of Alexander Graham Bell, although fitting, comes off as a slight overkill.

You’re kooky.

It’s surprisingly easy to give off the crazy vibe. The best way of doing so is simply by hanging nothing. There’s nothing more terrifying than walking into a blank-walled sex cave smelling of Little Caesars and fresh caulking.An old roommate of mine hung his only poster, left by the old tenants, by hammering it into the wall with fencing nails, not only reassuring my hunch that he strangled people in their sleep but also creating a physical, eye-level hazard.

To avoid making your room looking like a carnival, posters of Austin Powers, Gene Simons and or anything by Stanley Kubrick shouldn’t even be considered without a straightjacket.

You’re a frat boy.

Do you sip light beers and pretend to smoke cigarettes? Do you hang out on your front lawn and hide your Juul from your parents? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these, I bet you also have a poster of Ricky Bobby or McLovin’ hanging somewhere in your disgusting trap house. Be careful not to be mistaken as such: hanging posters of The Big Lebowski, Animal House or anything out of the Playboy mansion is an immediate exile from any respectable social circle organization.If these posters only hung to blanket rage-provoked holes in the walls, does their content really matter? Who better to cover absinthe-induced damage around the house than John Belushi anyways?

You’re allergic to the sun.

Do you sit staring at your laptop until your eyes feel as if you bathe in chlorine water? Have your curtains remained drawn for months while you vegetate in bed waiting for another video game that won’t help you lose your virginity? Then there’s a good chance your walls are littered with 8-bit mushrooms and unsettlingly sexualized military personnel. Those who hang posters of pixelated breasts or cross eyed dragons most likely own a loofah and tend to watch the Superbowl for the previously unreleased Marvel trailers.

These are just a few broad generalizations. At the end of the day, I don’t know who the hell you are. If you’re into Glee or the Phoenix Coyotes and want the world to know, by all means plaque-mount a picture of Jane Lynch. Staple a Snickers wrapper to your wall for all I care.

My self-image is just as fake and constructed as anyone’s. I recently purchased a poster of Frida Kahlo having not the slightest clue who she was. Scrolling through her Wikipedia biography in the checkout line, I acknowledged to myself I was only buying this to raise my intellectual hierarchy, hoping my friends would be just as oblivious as I was.

Whether you’re hanging posters of recent Oscar favourites or you’re a pervert with a blacklight, do what makes you comfortable. Who cares if your roommate doesn’t like horses? Litter your room with equestrian merchandise if that’s what makes you feel at home.

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