An obituary for the old Snapchat
Beloved smartphone application Snapchat passed away suddenly in the phones of all its users last week. After seven years of faithful service, Snapchat developers abruptly laid our dearest social media app to rest with an update completely ruining the beautiful app that changed all our lives.
When Snapchat was born in 2011, it quickly gained popularity. Many were intrigued by the app’s potential for unique communication, and the gimmick of the Snap soon became a phenomenon unparalleled by any other form of social media.
See something cool you want to show a friend? Send a snap. Want to play a fun game? Take a picture and give a friend 10 seconds of photo to locate you. Interested in a potential significant other? A five-second offer of Netflix and chill is a low investment way to check.
For many, this was a fun, new app that provided an innovative way to stay in touch. But many, myself included, thought that we would soon move on from this app. We thought it would be just another fad.
But alas, Snapchat did not fade so quickly. Our cherished Snap grew and grew. Soon, in 2013, it was updated to include Snap Stories. We could share our pictures and videos with all our friends at once, not just a select few. And thus, Snapchat became a full-fledged social media app, competing with Facebook and Twitter. Some boldly proclaimed that Snapchat was the finest form of social media, seamlessly blending private communication and open sharing with all of one’s followers.
And then in 2015, another update brought us the Discover page, where we could follow all the finest news outlets, from Cosmo to the Daily Mail. Now we could stay connected with each other and the world around us easily. The world was made new. No app could stand up to the Snap.
In the three years since, improvements have continued steadily. Longer captions, longer strings of videos, minor updates and additional filters were made. Custom Snap Stories allowed groups to collectively make their own stories. Snap Maps were made—okay, that part was kinda weird but let’s just roll with it. Take my point here;this app was at its peak, and then it all came crashing down.
Just two weeks ago, our beloved app was stolen from us. In the wee hours of the morning, I awoke and opened my phone to discover that I had been betrayed by my auto-updates setting.
Snapchat, the app I had loved so dearly, was gone. In its place was a only a shell of what the app used to be. Nothing made sense anymore.
Menus were devastated, Snap Stories forever changed, and all conceivable logic that my Snapchat used to have in such abundance was gone. Perhaps this obituary is preemptive, as some may still hold out hope, but I can’t help but feel that this is the end. Goodbye, my dearest Snapchat.
Anyway, if anyone needs to contact me, I guess email is all that is left now.
