The Snapchats

Yesterday:

Woman on the News: Up next, we're going to talk about text bombing and how it might be hurting your child.

Eli: What on Earth is "text bombing?"

Kurt: I don't know. A thing the kids are doing.

Eli: The kids are doing a lot of things lately.

Kurt: You need to research this.

Eli: Why me?

Kurt: Because, that's your thing. You research the things the kids are doing.


And you know what, he's right. That is my thing. I have taken upon myself the sacred obligation of finding out what the kids are doing so that I can explain it to all of you. It's not an obligation I take lightly. I'm sure a lot of you at home have been wondering about recent trends like "texting" and listening to "discmans" and your first thought was, "I'm going to go to Stranger and find out what that is. And to see how good Eli's hair is looking today!"

For the last year I have not done a great job keeping you informed on what the kids are doing. This is because the only kids I had social interaction with in Palau were getting into machete fights at school and having crushes on their first cousins. And while interesting, I don't think that information was keeping you very abreast of popular juvenile trends.

When I got back from Palau a few months ago, I felt like I had a lot of catching up to do. And I immediately heard about a dozen different things that the kids started doing while I was gone. This included what the kids are calling "the Snapchats."

For those who don't know, Snapchat is basically a mechanism on your phone that allows for no-consequence sexting. Not that I know what that is, Cathie.

Actually, I'm a 29 year old man now who has given her exactly zero grand-babies. At this point Cathie probably wishes I did know what sexting was.

But to say that it's "no-consequence sexting" is actually not totally accurate. I'll explain.

Snapchat is this thing that allows you take a picture, usually selfies, and send it to a friend who can view that picture for a previously-designated amount of seconds, sometimes as short as one second. Once the time expires, the picture can never be accessed again.

But wait. There's a catch. There's a thing called "the screen-shot" that someone can do when the picture is on their screen and this allows them to save the picture for time and all eternity. Basically, then, Snapchat just amounts to picture texting with an automatic-delete schedule that one can override with minimal effort.

Snapchat is the most absurd thing that has ever hit the phone. So naturally, when I got back to The United States of God Bless America, I started Snapchatting selfies to my friends 70 or 80 times a day.

Which brings me to the point.

My Favorite Snapchats From Jolyn Metro

And, finally, this one was sent to me the other day after I told Jolyn that I was really tired and asked her whether she had any meth to give me.

~It Just Gets Stranger