Snapchat Is for Flirting | Hacker News Reader

Snapchat Is for Flirting

nymag.com

83 pointstomokasa47 comments

For the longest time, I found Snapchat to be the silliest thing ever. I didn't understand how Evan could have possibly turned down Facebook's $3B…

But then, I started _really_ using it, and something clicked. Snapchat enables serendipity in the digital world. Unlike traditional social networks, where people curate their image, limit the amount they post, and where a smart feed decides what you see, on Snapchat people post unfiltered real-time snapshots of their lives, and when you go through the story feed, you see everyone's content. Snapchat makes it dead easy to reply to stories by just swiping, and unlike a public comment on other networks, it goes straight into their chat inbox. That makes it really easy to start conversations about things actually going on in people's lives. It's the ultimate ice-breaker.

Thanks to that ability to super easily and non-awkwardly talk to people, I've become friends with people who would otherwise be strangers or merely acquaintances. I've had relationships and flings with girls that I only talked to because it was easy on Snapchat. (No sexting involved.) That effect is what makes Snapchat truly special and different than other networks.

That and Snapchat is just _fun_, in a way that Facebook with its serious Pharmaceutical blue logo isn't, despite Facebook's sleekness and clean UI. Everything from the filters, to the little badges you get for streaks and best friends, to the moving selfie picture in the little ghost, adds to the effect.

Maybe Snap will stick around and maybe it won't but I've already found myself reaching for snap to send an image of a restaurant instead of typing it, or sending a reaction selfie instead of an emoji because its so much easier than typing.

Is this _emphasis_ a meme I'm not aware of, or are you just copying the parent's particular usage?

It's common convention that's a couple decades old at this point, also included in markdown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown#Example

RFC 7, from May 1969, used it: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7.txt

Correction on that RFC: The 1969 version was handwritten, and likely did not use underscores for emphasis (who does that in handwriting?). It was typed up electronically in what looks to be 2002, and plenty of examples of the underscore notation exist prior to then.

Not in handwriting but on typewriters, which didn't have italics. Underlining text was used for emphasis on typewritten documents. Which is probably the origin of this convention. You can't underline in plain ASCII either, so people started putting underline characters _around_ words instead.

It's old emphasis from at least the IRC heyday era (where I picked it up), likley earlier as some of the sibling comments allude to. Interesting, HN takes asterisk characters around text and parses it to italics like this, but I tended to know that as meaning bold font emphasis, with /this/ as italics.

Regardless, it's certainly an old habit

It’s a computer-era simulation of the 100 (?) year-old convention of using underline to represent emphasis in typewritten documents.

Or maybe the same convention might have even been used before typewriters, to mark up manuscripts? (A manuscript needs clear instructions to the typesetter, because someone’s handwriting might not make the distinction between Roman and Italic scripts immediately obvious.)

Well great, I feel super old now.

I do this sometimes. It's like a form of underlining when underlining isn't supported. Also, I think people get the habit from using Markdown, which uses _this_ for emphasis.

People use it all the time on IRC.

Oops, I've been writing too much Markdown!

Someone I know quit FB at the age of 22, when his grandma tagged a girl that he liked and commented "you'd make such a great couple" or some such. Age separation is a big deal.

Oh yeah. With your grandparents, mom, friends, etc. watching. You barely post anything.

I think the biggest place where facebook fails, is making it easier to segment people and create groups.

Where you can easily setup a group, of say friends, and you can more openly post. Without telling grandma about how you dropped LCD at the concert two days ago and had a wild time.

You _can_ do this now, but it's clunky and painful.

One thing I liked about my 5 minutes on google plus was how easy it was to filter groups out of my post. Yea FB has filters now, but I think google did it better.

Probably close to 80% of my Facebook activities these days take place in group messages for exactly this reason. It's easy to add and remove people to/from a group message while still retaining context, so it works well for planning ad-hoc outings where the group of people involved is quite fluid in its membership.

Oh no, was your phone okay?

^badjoke

Holy cringe... this is exactly the reason I tend to avoid Facebook in favor of the Instagram and such.

I think if Instagram Stories really does prove to be the death knell of Snapchat, it won't be because of Snapchat being inherently flawed, but because of the fickle tastes of the public swinging the pendulum of spontaneity vs. curation back towards the latter part of the spectrum.

I don't think that's to do with taste. More convenience. People already have large followings on Instagram and discovery is much easier. You're already posting there and now you can do stories without having to go to another app and build another following.

Sure, but that convenience still depends on what they want. Something they can share and then throw away within 24 hours, or something that they want to keep so that future followers can look at.

I'd still have to sign up for a Facebook-controlled service. Pass.

It might slow migration from Instagram to Snapchat, though.

They've added it to WhatsApp as well. Which has like 1 billion users around the world. Also now facebook controlled.

It doesn't bother you to have the perception of privacy without actual privacy? Like being alone, except for the hidden cameras.

Local Man Discovers Hindsight Bias, Shocked By Accuracy

... but can it make money? (pointing at twitter)

Some people are posting these very in-depth essays about Snapchats success, as if there was some deeper meaning to a picture that doesn't reappear.

To be perfectly frank as a young adult, Snapchat was great for flirting. As more friends joined, I also found it to be a fun way to talk to friends. There is nothing more to it than that.

Came for the sex, stayed for the filters.

I'm still having trouble processing the idea that a person could have used Snapchat as a young adult to flirt and is now not a young adult. Then again I still think of Twitter as being new and not really having a place.

There is something novel about a transient social network that only really exists when you're actively using it. People's behavior changes when what you say and post doesn't follow you forever, when you are rewarded for interaction rather than agreement. It's made people more genuine, they're less guarded, there's less virtue signaling, there's almost no political drama, and it's more personal.

I was in a long-distance relationship last summer, and Snapchat definitely helped us. Not even from the sexting angle of it-- Just seeing someone's face, or seeing what someone else is seeing, makes you feel far more connected than plain text messages.

It's a shill account posting ad-news. Please exercise skepticism.

Account created 1 day ago, this is their only post. Checks out.

Not just for flirting either.

My old standard rubric for workplace culture was adoption of slack - if you hadn't opted for it over synchronous communications or lesser asynchronous tools, you were backwards.

Now I look to snapchat. We have a group at my current company (8 people) and it's a well of humanity in what otherwise might be a stodgy professional environment.

> “If I have a guy’s number from Tinder, sometimes I’ll prematurely save it on my phone so it comes up in Snapchat if he uses it. I probably won’t add him immediately, but I’ll try and deduce his Instagram or other handles from his Snapchat one.”

As an aside, it might be a good idea to check privacy settings for Snapchat (I know, I know.. if you're already using it, you're blown) unless you want to be humblebragging.

Last year, I noticed women I had gone on dates with were coming up as suggested people to follow on Instagram. IG claimed it was because of photos I liked, but I knew that wasn't the case and assumed it connected us through our numbers and the other women did not turn off their discoverability (I had turned off mine). Call me old fashioned, but Instagrams and Tweeters are things I don't share until the 3 or 4th date.

I was hooked to Snapchat when I saw the live story of hikers from mountain Everest, it was incredible following their journey. It was live, it was intimate and it was from their point of view, I loved every moment of that story. Now I follow my friends' s stories, send each other silly messages and so on.

Snapchat is all about being yourself, and not having to worry about it. Creating such an experience naturally biases the app toward privacy and intimacy, but I wouldn't say the app is for flirting. It just happens to also cater well to those wanting to flirt.

It clicked with me when I watched a video by the CEO [0] where he contrasts the spontaneous, ephemeral expression of identity in Snapchat with the long-lived, accumulated identity in other platforms such as Facebook. Without having to worry about this entire paper trail of your past self, Snapchat sheds a lot of the anxieties that would otherwise inhibit expression.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykGXIQAHLnA

This is actually the first explanation of snapchat's appeal that makes sense to me. I guess my friend group doesn't really use it though, there's not much use for it unless you have an existing social group to interact with?

I'm noticing a lot of very positive stories bout Snapchat (WIRED --- Snap’s IPO Made Its Employees Millionaires—Why Not DJ Khaled?, CNBNC --- Here are all the ways Facebook has copied Snapchat). What's going on here? Is Snapchat using PR firms to prop up the stock after the analysts downgraded the stock earlier this week?

It might be a submarine or PR firm action, but it might also simply be that they're a billion dollar company that just had an IPO, so articles about them are simply timely.

I don't really put much merit into journalists saying something is good or bad. shrug

A zero history account thought it was really important this wound up on hn. It's almost certainly paid-for content.

Yeah, I flagged the story because of this. Let the mods decide what to do.

I think that's silly of you to do. The article has a legitimate point, especially since so many people misunderstand why Snapchat is used.

pg's explanation: http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Snap needs to push the stock and hence the media blitz.

That's nice and all, but are they going to make money, with Instagram breathing down their neck?

Oh, I thought people didn't really send direct Snapchats much anymore. But still, I could see using the app for this purpose. But I think over time, people will mostly just move over to Instagram.

snapchat DMs are used by young people; think AIM. snapchat stories is an old-people product. It fits into their existing frameworks of social networks: public broadcasts.

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