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I thought I agreed with you about 'cheaping of human communication' until a couple of years ago. I believed that Snapchat was the worst thing to happen to human

I thought I agreed with you about 'cheaping of human communication' until a couple of years ago. I believed that Snapchat was the worst thing to happen to human communication, and somehow that human interactions had been fundamentally changed for the worse. Then last year, I went on a 2-month long backpacking trip. I don't have facebook et al. and blogs are too tiring, so I decided to get snapchat just for the trip. A year later, I've gotten ~20 people to join snapchat, just to keep in touch with me. : ) For me, it's the model of human communication that matters: I don't necessarily want you to remember exactly what I said to you 12.27465 years ago. I know most of the HN and Reddit crowd aspire for the perfect object Vulcan mind, with perfect recollection either, but for me, the value of interpersonal communication lies in the fact that it's REALLY fallible. Not only do we NOT remember things as they are, even if we do remember something right, the act of remembering it messes up the actual memory. For me, that's essential. Our social interactions haven't evolved to reflect a perfect recollection but to accommodate our limitations. We are imperfect, and I like my mode of communication to reflect that.

sebkomianos 11y ago
Can you ellaborate on what, in specific, made you change your mind about snapchat and the rest of that kind of communication?
- benten10 11y ago
  I left facebook because it was too tiring. I HAD to have SOME way of connecting with friends. The part I like about snapchat the most is that there's no history -- you send an image, and it's gone, so there's no particular 'baggage' associated with it: no long thread of comments, no 'history' to look at, no tedious 'you didn't like my comment/omg i got 300 likes'. For me, snapchat is somewhere between real-life interaction and texting: as ephemeral as real life 'talk' and long-distance as well... a text message. On other media, stupid things people (or you) say tend to stay around forever, in snapchat, your mistakes last as long as the snaps do. A bad pun, or a mistimed joke, for example... they don't hurt you like they do in other media. This may sound like exaggeration, but snapchat could be the social network for adults in the longer term [not the 'look at my kid' kind, but 'we're having fun, but don't want it too seem like we're bragging' kind.

sebkomianos 11y ago

Can you ellaborate on what, in specific, made you change your mind about snapchat and the rest of that kind of communication?

benten10 11y ago
I left facebook because it was too tiring. I HAD to have SOME way of connecting with friends. The part I like about snapchat the most is that there's no history -- you send an image, and it's gone, so there's no particular 'baggage' associated with it: no long thread of comments, no 'history' to look at, no tedious 'you didn't like my comment/omg i got 300 likes'. For me, snapchat is somewhere between real-life interaction and texting: as ephemeral as real life 'talk' and long-distance as well... a text message. On other media, stupid things people (or you) say tend to stay around forever, in snapchat, your mistakes last as long as the snaps do. A bad pun, or a mistimed joke, for example... they don't hurt you like they do in other media. This may sound like exaggeration, but snapchat could be the social network for adults in the longer term [not the 'look at my kid' kind, but 'we're having fun, but don't want it too seem like we're bragging' kind.