Veritable Tantrum

Neil deGrasse Tyson once tweeted, “#WhenIWasYourAge Photographs were records of your life experience, and not the life experience itself.”

The cerebral sex pest and serial interrupter had to be thinking of Snapchat when he disseminated this parcel of wisdom.

And for good reason, too. Because there’s nothing in this world more unnecessary, more futile, and more pathetically insignificant than your standard Snap.

Snapchat is a portent of how millenials are ruining the most meaningful aspects of the human experience.  Now, when we see something KEWL, our innate response is to take a vanishing picture of it. Pictures vanish now, allowing us to piss memories down the drain into an endless nothing.

They’ve become something you need to see NOW instead of something worth keeping for a later moment in time. It’s inconceivably stupid, and I will rue the day I see my future child — a hopefully-not-redheaded stripling named Titus — using Snapchat while 45-year-old fratstar Evan Spiegel bonito fishes with roe caviar off his yacht in the Norwegian Sea.

But none of that is to say I don’t like Snapchat.

I love Snapchat. I find it wildly more entertaining than the Book and the Gram, and I say that wholly understanding I am a willing participant in the boundless eradication of traditional values. I’m perfectly fine with that if it means I can watch ayy.lmao Snap stories for the rest of my mundane existence.

Speaking of which, Snap stories, for the most part, are the fucking worst.

I’m NOT talking about face swaps. Face swaps are terrifying and hilarious. In some rotten alternate universe, where Zombie Bin Laden won the War on Terror, and fart-injected lumps of raw salmon win Republican nominations, our face swaps are probably just our real faces.

What I’m saying is that the general concept of Snap stories is inherently horrible.

They’re horrible because they drain the living shit out of your battery compared to a single Snap.

They’re horrible because they’re ALWAYS videos that can’t be enjoyed without blasting cacophonous noise and pissing off everyone around you.

And they’re horrible because the few Snap stories that aren’t videos are horizontal pictures taken by an ingratiating fuck who’s got the AUDACITY to make you turn your phone sideways.

This is not 2007, and these are not LG Voyagers. We shouldn’t have to turn our iPhones on their axis to enjoy them, and if your portrait orientation isn’t locked at all times, you’re a sociopath who was never breastfed as an infant.

But what are the absolute worst kinds, you ask? Let me count them for you…

Look At All This Food I’m Eating.

Standard Duration: 10 – 30 seconds*

You know what? It’s Friday night, the weather’s really crappy, and all I want to do is marathon an overrated true-crime docudrama about a blonde bushy-bearded murderer/Slipknot bassist. And the best way to complement staring at a screen until my vision fails is to PTFO (Pig the Fuck Out).

Let’s hit the pantry. Stuff your hands, pockets, and armpit crevices with every assortment of bagged junk you see. We got crispy Lay’s, barbecue Pringles, and Ruffles original ridged. The Lay’s taste like greasy air and there are only four Pringles left at the bottom of the can. I’m not getting my fist stuck in the bottom of that thing and calling the fire department just to make a baller duck beak that breaks in two seconds.

Okay, spread it out on the table and Snap a pic of it.

GET THE LEFTOVER CRUDITÉ IN THERE YOU FUCKTOILET. They need to see how healthy we are.

Now pass me the fontina bacon pizzettes.

*Brunch: 10 – 70 seconds

I’m Out, Drinking, At A Bar. Let Me Impede My Fun By Showing You I’m Having Fun.

Standard Duration: 30 – 180 seconds

It’s Saturday now, so I definitely owe it to myself to go punish RBVs until I’m hooched up beyond belief.

Seriously, I’m indulging in a veritable feast of awful muscular coordination, and it’s on everybody else to get the hell out of my way. I’ll feel like 10 gallons of dumpster water in the morning, but that’s not a concern right now.

I’ve drank so much Red Bull by now that I can read your fucking mind (you’re thinking of an opening line for Wendy Tittybutter over there, and the best you’ve got so far is “if you were yogurt, would you be fruit at the bottom, or stirred?”).

But HOLD ON. I just came to the terrifying realization that not everyone knows about this. Not everyone knows I’m getting drunk at…..

Shit. What bar is this? Find out the name and let me know ASAMFP. Then, let me Snap you chugging this Irish Trash Can.

Wait, you’re saying these are RBVs but with other shit in them, too? Let me get one, too, and I’ll video Snap myself drinking MINE.

Here, hold my phone while my heart explodes.

I’m At A Concert. Here, Have the Whole Set List.

Standard Duration: 60 – 310 seconds*

You’re at a concert? A live one? C’mon, man, no way it’s a live one. No, wait, IT IS a live one! Suck me sideways.

Evelyn and Tammy storied the same songs, at the SAME time. They’re right on top of each other in the Stories timeline. How gauche.

Oh Jesus, not another OAR concert. These things sucks. The whole crowd just puts their thumbs up their butts the entire time until they play Crazy Game of Poker at the VERY end. I’m surprised they let that saxophone player who looks like the Situation’s inbred cousin on stage with them. It’s the same damn set list every summer.

Except Jason’s Snap story was hilarious.

Did you see it? You haven’t added him yet? Dude, Jason videoed Lisa Twinkletits and Jeremy Snizzlefart HOOKING UP during the middle of the “Fool in the Rain” cover.

It was so rad. She shoved her fingers in his ears and spit on his forehead and everything. RIGHT THERE in the crowd!

*EDM concert: ∞