Taking peek-a-boo to a whole new level

image: clearminds.wordpress.com

Article: Paige Kreutzwieser – Staff Writer

If you are concerned about the eternal existence of your uploaded all-inclusive (i.e. drunk) vacation photos, or those “Throwback Thursdays” lingering around the interweb for your future children to
find, fear no more.

One of the world’s cutest ghosts is here to help you display your pictures without too much threat of permanent history.

Snapchat, a smartphone app created by Stanford University students, dawns the adorable mascot and since its inception in 2011, Ghostface Chillah has become a recognizable icon for many smartphone users.

This is because Snapchat is dedicated to ephemeral photo sharing between users and in a technologically advanced world. This wasrevolutionary. Permanent Facebook edited photos had met their match; transitory uglyselfies weighed in, and they looked to be tough competitors.

With 350 million photos being shared daily, Snapchat’s network activity has easily surpassed the beloved app of narcissists around the world, Instagram. With the initial mainstream understanding that Snapchat was for teenage boys hoping for ten seconds of pure pubescent bliss with their teenybopper female counterparts, it is hard to think 350 million pictures are being delivered just for this reason.

But the winds changed.

Now triple-chinned-duck-lipped-selfies (that tend to resemble a person in immense constipation) have become the trend. Add in amateur Van Goghs and Picassos, superhero enthusiasts, and revealing defecating images – yes you read that right — and you have this strange, yet perfect, combination for a multi-million dollar valued company.

For an app that launched less than a year ago on the Android operating system, its rapid popularity is astonishing.

It’s fame could be drawn from the impatient attitude of our Western society, along with the conventional demand for authenticity, and how Snapchat serves this through its “au natural” low quality photos being short-lived for the viewer before it is has completely vanished into some sort of abyss, never again to be reviewed.

Or it could just be because everyone has it, so everyone wants it.

Its prevalence in the global app community could be exposing something about the way our communication needs are changing. Instant messaging is a thing of the past; instant snaps get more of the ‘picture’ across in less or no words at all.

This demand for up-to-the-minute responses with a limited character cap transcends through the Twitterverse as well. Whether it is a good or bad thing for how human interaction occurs in the 21st century, I don’t know.

All I know is we have come to the point in life where every hall I walk down, every store I’m shopping in, and every public bathroom I enter I will be vulnerable to witnessing selfies in action. This, to me, is distressing.

I do, however, want to live in a world where Saturday morning hangovers are captured, where colourfully drawn Santas, Minions, Borats, and Ronald McDonalds can be found anywhere, and where unknowing victims have giant neon green penises sketched into their hands.

I hope the future of Snapchat continues on with this artistic outbreak it is having, because the only thing worse than realizing your naked snap went to your entire contact list is finding out someone took a screenshot of it. And no one needs that.