Oh, Snapchat. It’s so much more than a social media app—it’s a constant war.
It’s always fun to send silly pictures and videos to friends, until you realize that the power of a screenshot impacts you forever.
I remember sending a rather inappropriate picture of myself to a friend in the ninth grade. Now, before you go and assume things, it was not a nude, but I don’t want to explain any further for the sake of my sanity. I sacrificed five seconds of dignity for a joke that I now realize was purely idiotic. She screenshotted it. I am now a senior, and that picture is still in her camera roll. Over the span of three years, she has posted it several times—making me feel angry and mortified each time.
I finally convinced her to never share that photo again by screenshotting an equally embarrassing picture of her. It’s so ugly that it could give me nightmares.
If you open my camera roll, you’ll see countless screenshots of my friends saying crude and offensive things or just looking absolutely hideous. I have a whole collage of racist-captioned pictures in case one friend decides to whip out some of the terrible screenshots of me.
How can I win? It’s a constant battle of saving, blackmailing, kneeling for mercy and threatening with the almighty picture. I can’t send a gross picture again, or I’ll have to live with the anxiety of a friend posting it again. Is the only option to look good and innocent in every single picture? Perhaps.
But it’s exhausting. Always looking good or being innocent defeats the whole purpose of the app for me. Your friends will have a huge collection of your ugly pictures, but so will you. Where’s the fun if all your photos of friends are nice? No ugly photo spams for their birthdays. No hilarious reaction photos in your group chat.
I won’t send indecent photos anymore, but I’m glad I look like an oafish swine in 90% of my snaps. Send that stupid picture, and don’t look back. Embrace your ugliness, love the embarrassment and conquer the Snapchat war. In the end, all that matters is that your friends laughed. You won.
Okay, but don’t send nudes. Those spread like wildfire.