Everyone and their mom has Snapchat nowadays, hell my mom has Snapchat. I’ll be damned if she knows how to use it, but she has it. I have a love-hate relationship with the app, and here’s why. Let’s start with the love. I can creep on virtually all of my friends, people I may sort of super dislike but still want to know about their lives, and celebrities (I use this in terms of people I look up to, now a fucking Kardashian). It’s quite fun to watch quick snipits of people’s vacations, weddings, concerts, nights out and things like that. As someone who really doesn’t have much energy to go out, it’s encouraging to see other people living their lives to the fullest. It gives me the optimism to think that yes, one day I will join them and live my dreams, won’t be today, or tomorrow, but eventually.
I like Snapchat better than Facebook because it has an expiration date. If I miss your Snapchat Story, I’LL NEVER KNOW WHAT IT WAS. It’s bloody fantastic. Unlike Facebook where I get stuck in a web of endless scrolling through baby pictures, engagements, and memes, now there is either a list of a ton of stories to watch, or nothing at all. It’s wonderful because I can choose when I even want to bother watching them. For someone with a short attention span, and minimal desire to be involved in other people’s lives, this serves as a buffer because I can watch and don’t have to “like” or “react” to anything. The only person who knows I was annoyed by you 85 shitty concert snaps is myself and my mother who was sitting next to me as I tried to desperately tap through them.
So we have the good, now we have to acknowledge the bad. I know it’s called Snapchat, but that’s because you are supposed to chat using snapshots. When they added the chat function it fucked me over. If you don’t know me very well, my friends refer to me as a goldfish for my short term memory loss. You could tell me something and I will legitimately have no idea what we were talking about a few moments later.
You may now be asking yourself, well you drew me in with this misleading title, you have not mentioned why you feel old! But alas, here it comes, the big reveal. I’m literally so forgetful that the chat function disappears and I can’t fucking remember what the other person sent me only seconds prior. What even is the goddamn point! If you want to have a serious conversation send me a text message, or call me on the phone. Don’t send me a message that will disappear before I can respond and then be salty with me because I didn’t know what you said. Is this what Alzheimer’s feels like? I feel like I’m losing my mind because sometimes I’ll ask them to repeat what they said and it’s something completely different.
What is the moral of this story? If you’re having a serious conversation with Saba, please send a message that will remain for longer than the 10 second window provided by Snapchat.