Snapchat Is The Enemy

If you still don’t know what Snapchat is by now, there is probably no hope for you.

Snapchat is an app available on phones and tablets (Android and iOS) that allows you to send pictures and short videos that will ‘self-destruct’ after a set number of seconds. In addition, you can also add captions and draw on the snap you have taken, meaning you can get as creative as you want with it. Unsurprisingly, Snapchat’s key demographic is young people, or ‘youths’ as I like to call them (I’m actually about 80 years old) and if you show me someone between the age of 14 and 24 who doesn’t have it, I will be genuinely surprised. Then I’ll call them lame because Snapchat is fucking awesome. Misleading title, eh?

The prevailing reason for why I am such a Snapchat lover is pretty simple; I just really enjoy making weird faces. If there’s anything you’ll come away with from spending a few hours with me, it’s these two little things: I make a lot of faces and I make a lot of noises. As they are generally weird and unattractive, I’d rather not have concrete evidence of them in the forms of pictures and voice notes for people to mock me with – I have already provided them with an abundance of ammunition. So, enter Snapchat – the perfect medium to allow me to express myself whenever and where ever I want. Just last night I sent out a little video of me singing the Oreo chant from Wreck-It Ralph, because, why not? I won’t lie, it wasn’t well received, but, whatever, my friends are lame.

Of course, you always run the risk of someone taking a screenshot of whatever you have sent them, but, as you can see, I tend to keep it pretty PG so have nothing to worry about. Snapchat, or ‘Snatchchat’ as the cool kids call it, quickly took off as the ‘safe’ way to send dirty pictures. But, as we all know, due to that pesky screenshot function, there’s a solid chance your half naked selfie will end up on a poorly named Facebook page. Being the respectable and graceful young woman that I am, I don’t send dirty Snapchats. Whether this is because my mama taught me better than that, or because I’d rather not scare boys away with my abundance of jiggle straight off the bat, we’ll never know. If it’s something you’re into, though, good for you. Just don’t send me a picture of your dick. I don’t want that.

So, obvious screenshot issues aside, why is Snapchat your enemy? Why would I even suggest such a notion when I’m clearly all over it like Pooh Bear on a jar of honey? Could I have used a more innocent simile? Do you believe that I just Googled simile to make sure I had the right word? So. Many. Questions.

#1  Snapchat makes you forget that there are boundaries you shouldn’t cross. It makes you feel like you’re Bradley Cooper in that movie where he keeps popping pills. It makes you feel like the answer to everything is the same as the answer to the last question in the Mathlete competition in Mean Girls. But I have news for you; you are not limitless. The limit does exist. Just because you sent a picture of your balls for two seconds and then it disappeared, it doesn’t make it okay. Just because you sent a picture of you in your bra to a boy you know has a girlfriend, but then it disappeared, it doesn’t mean you’re not a homewrecker.

#2  You can’t see what you’ve sent once you’ve sent it. For the casual alcoholics amongst us, this is a real issue. I can’t tell you how many Snapchats I’ve drunkenly sent, which means I can’t tell you what they’re of or what they say. It’s entirely likely I have sent a couple of dirty ones, because, let’s be honest, I’m neither respectable nor graceful, but I genuinely have no idea whether I have or not. It’s pretty clear what the problem with this is; just because you were drunk and woke up having forgotten that you sent anything inappropriate, it’s more than likely that the recipient of said Snapchat wasn’t and didn’t. Subsequently, this can go one of two ways; it’ll have either piqued their interest and you may get laid out of it, or they’ll feel embarrassed for you and your relationship will never be the same again. But you were drunk, right? So it didn’t count? And it disappeared? So it’s like it never happened? NO. You dumb slut.

#3  Snapchat is not a loophole. Again, no more of this ‘it disappeared so it doesn’t count‘ malarkey. I won’t lie, I’m more guilty than Oscar Pistorious when it comes to this. I know it’s easy to think that a Snapchat conversation is harmless and you’re not actually engaging with someone you shouldn’t be, but you’re wrong. It 100% counts and you 100% won’t feel good about it. Cutting a person out of your life means cutting them off on Snapchat, too. Dramatic, but true.

#4  Snapchat Bestfriends. One of Snapchat’s fun little features is that it shows who your three ‘best friends’ are, ie, the three people you Snapchat the most. As my real life best friend found out recently, people (especially girls) actually look at who these best friends are. The girl that he is currently seeing looked at his Snapchat best friends, saw that she was one of them, and asked who the other two girls were. One is a girl he slept with whilst seeing her, and the other is his ex-girlfriend of a bajillion years that he never stops talking about and is still in love with. Awkward. Although I don’t have a problem with this feature, I don’t at all understand it. Whatsapp doesn’t inform all your contacts who you talk to the most, why does Snapchat? Bizarre.

Are you a Snapchat lover or hater? Have you had any mishaps with the app?