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Comment by overcast | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why use cases 1 and 2 wouldn't just send a text message picture. Why would you bother with a 3rd party app that erases them?

With that said, that is probably the least percentage reason as to why people use it. The greatest being for sending half naked photos to strangers.

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> I don't understand why use cases 1 and 2 wouldn't just send a text message picture. Why would you bother with a 3rd party app that erases them?

Snapchat has more features than sending a simple text. I still use text message pictures when I just want to send a picture. Snapchat lets you caption and draw on photos, which is a big draw. The erasing part of it is a feature too, and not just for nude pics. For example, sometimes I send off color humor to my friends and knowing that the joke's going to go away in 5 seconds makes me less hesitant to send. I don't think my friends themselves are going to screenshot the pics and try to disparage me, but I would feel uncomfortable if I were to email something to them that may accidentally be seen by an SO or parent.

If you're that concerned/uncomfortable about what you're sending then don't send it in the first place. Once it's on the internet, it's there forever. Does Snapchat not have the feature now to save incoming messages for a price?

I'll grant you the feature of drawing on pictures though.

Here's a question. Why do we need to record everything we do digitally? It's not like we record our conversations when people hang out in person.

I'd argue it's stupid that we archive and collect every meaningless conversation we have.

Well, if I take the example from above regarding two people in a relationship. It IS nice, in my experience, to have a running dialogue with pictures available from our relationship. There are plenty of great moments I've received that I would prefer not to just disappear.

> There are plenty of great moments I've received that I would prefer not to just disappear.

Between my SO and I, for stuff that's more memorable and may want to be saved, we'll use email, but for stuff like "look at this weird sign I saw downtown", we'll use Snapchat. An app is all about its use cases.

That's fair, we just use text message, and keep it in one place. Bouncing between different apps for essentially the same thing isn't something I feel like spending time doing.

I also agree with the sibling post on this one, but another line of reasoning is that when texting pictures or other forms of sending, the default option is that the photo is saved. When using snapchat it's the opposite. Screenshotting allows you to keep it if you want, you can replay it if you missed it, but if it's not anything exceedingly special or worth keeping, it is discarded. In todays world I find myself with far more data that I can keep organized, and a lot of it is not of any particular value.

Another way of phrasing that argument is that if you look through my snapchat screenshot folder vs the received images from my SO, the snapchat screenshot has a higher density of content worth keeping.

I guess I just hold photos I want to keep at a higher value than a screenshot of an already poorly compressed / altered photo. Whatever works for you!

> If you're that concerned/uncomfortable about what you're sending then don't send it in the first place

I'm not concerned or uncomfortable with the message itself; my concern is that the message goes exclusively to its intended audience. An email or text message can sit around and eventually be viewed on accident or by someone nosy. At least with Snapchat, I have a level of assurance that this possibility is minimized.

That's an unnecessarily black and white perspective. In reality it's "once it's on the internet, it's possibly there forever" and snapchat is a step in the "it wont be" direction. It's entirely possible for someone to be willing to to take that risk.

Hell, most of us do it in real life. I say plenty of things I wouldn't necessarily want provided to my mother or employer, and small audio recording devices are cheap. I trust my friends and partners to not save and share unflattering snaps the exact same way I trust them to not record our real life conversations.

If you're planning to run for President some time in the future, maybe it's worth it to always act as if the public is watching. I think the rest of us are fine.

Snapchat removes the hesitation about what you are sending. People don't worry about picture quality, etc. It's a temporary message. It really is about the content.

Or lack thereof.

Yes. By definition most people's day to day lives are average and not particularly special.

I find conversations on snapchat annoy me in the same way as conversations with a needy attention seeking girlfriend.

All the person wants is confirmation of existence, and most of the time they are not actually interested in a real conversation.

One wonders why you're even bothering to complain. You realize that fashion, entertainment, movies, video gaming, female modeling, male modeling, and so on probably collectively make up more than $1 trillion of the world economy?

I think on the contrary, it is a more honest conversation. Because it is temporary, people share what is currently happening in their life. It may be boring or of little importance, but they share anyway. Sometimes it is because they want attention, but for others they are just staying connected. I would bet that most of them consume other peoples' content just as much as creating content themselves.

This is a refrain on Hacker News since I started coming here for insights since 2008.

That because you, personally, don't understand why you would do such a thing therefore said thing is invalidated.

It's lazy.

Additionally taking that point of view outs you.

Much like how when I was 16-23 and creating things on the internet when there was only 100MM users and people were wondering why anyone would want to spend all that time on the computer.

Or ever make a webpage.

Or put their information online.

Or meet people you've only emailed.

Or use a credit card to buy things.

All in all, the answer is always: there are 7 billion of us out here, the world doesn't revolve around you, grow up.

It's clear from your comment history that you're very confrontational, and cocksure. So I'll keep this brief, and end it here. This is a discussion, and questions were asked. Take your own "advice".

Questions were not asked. Glenn Beck style "condemning statement that happens to have a ? at the end of it" were made.

Text message pictures are IME incredibly unreliable and you may be charged for them. And god help you if you accidentally send one internationally; who knows what it might cost?

So like international data costs over Snapchat?

What? I mean, if YOU are overseas and send a Snapchat, sure. But it's no different from any other data. Sending a MMS picture or video to someone else who is overseas, could be expensive. Snapchat won't incur any fees that all other data wouldn't, such as uploading the picture to Facebook.

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