We’ve all done it. We’ve all been doing it since cell phones first got cameras (Who remembers when they didn’t have cameras?!). At first we were trying to be cute, but then as the years passed, and we all realized it really wasn’t that cute, we did it to be funny. Group messages are filled with them. You drunkenly send them to your mom at 2:48 a.m. to let her know you made it back from the bar (I’m not alone on this, right?).
Of what wonderful creation am I referring to? Self-pics, otherwise known as “selfies.”
When Apple introduced the front-facing camera on the iPhone 4, it ushered in a new generation of self-pic capabilities. Out were the awkward pictures that resulted from not knowing where the camera button was, and in came the perfectly poised shots of people doing whatever they deemed selfie-worthy.
And when two guys at Stanford created the app “Snapchat,” another landmark in self-pic history occurred. Snapchat is an application that allows iPhone and Android users to send pictures to their Snapchat friends for an allotted period of one to 10 seconds. So whether you want to send your BFFs a picture of you and your seven chins or your BF a picture of you sans a shirt, the picture will disappear after a maximum of 10 seconds. Rarely do users have fast enough fingers to get screenshots, but even if you do, it notifies the sender, which can be incredibly awkward.
If sending pictures wasn’t enough, Snapchat also allows you to add short captions right onto the picture, either to explain the photo or simply to add some humor. You can also draw on the photos, which, when utilized properly, can be especially hilarious.
While Snapchat is mostly used to send disgusting pictures for a short time to your closest friends, a.k.a. the people who will still want to hang out with you even after seeing these pics, there is another market that Snapchat is tapping into, whether it meant to or not.
Snapchat answers every sexter’s prayers for a way to send a picture to his or her significant other without the possibility of the photo going viral. Even Cosmopolitan calls Snapchat “a safer way to sext.” With Snapchat, there is only a slim chance that the photo will be captured, and even if someone attempts to take a screenshot, Snapchat sends you a notification. Imagine how much easier former U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner’s life could have been if he had simply used Snapchat instead of Twitter as the medium of his electronic relationship.
But whether you’re sexting or snapping sneaky shots of yourself in math class, be careful whom you send the photos to. All it takes to send photos to a “friend” is finding their username and hitting send, but sometimes, people are not who you think they are (dun dun DUN)…
“One time, I was Snapchatting who I thought was my boyfriend, but when I asked him why he wasn’t responding, he told me he hadn’t gotten any pictures,” Taylor Henning, a junior at UNC, says. “Then I realized his username wasn’t the one I was sending all the pictures to. Luckily, they were just me making funny faces, but that could have been really bad.”
Ultimately, Snapchat is the perfect app for all those people who are past their time of taking serious “selfies.” It seems to be sweeping UNC’s campus, so don’t be surprised if on your walk to class you start to see more and more people with their heads down, phones up and tongues out. No, they don’t have something wrong with them, they’re just Snapchatting.