Aw Snap

Snapchat is just ‘Snap’ now

Spectacles, on the other hand, will allow wearers to record without holding anything, so they can really show off that brunch or keg stand.

…the app has recently exploded in popularity across age groups, and it’s become known as the place where people share “intimate” or personal content.

It is probably bad that my first thought was “Snap(chat) must have hired a really self-important branding person” and I imagined the satirical movie adaptation of the meetings that led to the rebrand…but that is not what this post is about.

This post is about the subtext in the quotes above–the italics in the first and the scare quotes in the second. It is clear the author does not consider Snapchat to be a legitimate context for meaningful social engagement. We cannot tell from the article if these are only complaints about the vapidity of the medium or a deeper understanding of the social mechanisms at work. Certainly, he has no freedom at Mashable to lean into the latter. This is my blog, however, so I am going there.

There is an important distinction in the effort to construct a meaningful life between the experiences of that life having inherent meaning, or those experiences only having meaning when reflected back through the gaze of another. There is probably already some well-known philosophical theory that I could attempt to apply, but this is just my hot take.

Learning to focus on the former is something I’ve only recently started to do. I remember when I first started blogging, I would process the events of my life by thinking about how I was going to blog about them. Later, Twitter and Facebook brought this kind of not-quite-DSM-worthy psychopathy to the masses. (Those who treat social media as the world’s customer service line are another matter altogether.)

We’re in a world where, instead of getting 15 minutes of fame in a lifetime, we’re afforded 15 seconds of fame every day.

The problem is you can share your actually meaningful experiences on social media with admirable intent. You’d just be in the minority. As such, you’re throwing your proverbial pearls to the swine. If I felt like I was in that camp on any particular platform, I would ask myself why that medium is important and if those reasons were worth the cost.

Previous: The Best Judge of Your Ideas Is Not Your Boss
Next: 6 Years

Archives | RSS