I remember the times when my life had no purpose. Spending long periods of my time alone in my room listening to “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley on continuous loop while drinking gallons of strawberry milk and looking at the latest “bon appetit” memes, I thought I’d continue to be a sad waste of space for the rest of time. Then, I stumbled upon an app that changed everything. Snapchat.
With Snapchat in my life, I now have the purpose for living that I’d been looking (not very actively) for all along. It’s clear to me now that the reason I was put on this earth is to broadcast every single action I perform to anyone willing to watch. When I say every action, I mean it.
Whether it be in the form of a short video or a picture of my face with a caption expressing my deepest emotions, nothing goes without being documented. Not enough milk for my Cocoa Pebbles? Anything less than a picture of me with the empty milk carton and the saddest possible look on my face is a disappointment. If I’m sitting in physics, I’m sure to take videos of me writing down the answers to the hardest questions of the assignment (after looking up said answers off-camera on yahoo answers beforehand, of course) to make myself look like a bad boy in the world of math and science. What if I’m sleeping? I have my phone set to take a picture of me every minute with the caption “I’m sleep cuh” so that my Snapchat followers have something to see at all times. The 24-hour Snapchat grind is a real thing, and I’m living proof.
Over time, I’ve gained quite a following doing what I do. People that follow my Snapchat are basically living my life right alongside me, so a lot of the time people like to message me with life advice. I’ve gotten things like in-depth recipe ideas if I’ve posted something about not knowing what to eat and various Netflix suggestions if I post something asking for good show or movie ideas. This isn’t to say that this advice is always the greatest (I’m looking at you, person who suggested that I use Mountain Dew in replacement of milk for cereal and other person who suggested that I watch the documentary “why Obama is actually a reptile 100% proof,”) but it’s quite humbling, really.
This Snapchat fame hasn’t come without its hardships. Any time I decide to go out for a night on the town, a mob of my followers always shadow me with hopes that they’ll make it into one of my snaps. This makes doing things like trying to go on my usual weekend trips to Chuck-E-Cheese alone difficult. When I can’t go to Chuck-E-Cheese over the weekend alone, I get sad. When I get sad, I post at least 10 different pictures of my depressed face to my Snapchat story with various depressing captions to accompany them. It’s a vicious cycle, really.
The issue of Snapchat streak management is also a big pain, and it’s one that keeps me up at night. If my streak with you doesn’t hit the thousands, then I have to reconsider being your friend. There’s no other way around it.
Regardless of me not being able to dive into the ball pit and stuff my face with cardboard-tasting pizza on my own anymore and having multiple panic attacks as a result of broken streaks, documenting my entire life on Snapchat has been nothing but a positive experience. The people that no longer associate with me as a result of this new hobby (some of which are family members) clearly just aren’t worthy of my company if they aren’t willing to have videos and photos taken of them every minute. I’m glad that Snapchat has been able to filter those people out of my life.