As part of the rewire experiment I decided to change the way I text. Usually I use whatsapp, FB and Instagram messenger, as well as e-mail when communication is more formal. I do not like texting, because what I usually observe is that the process tires me a lot, both physically and mentally. Besides, I feel like sending an informal text in one of the regular messengers takes too much time of my life – just like reading a message does, especially if a conversation goes on for a while (usually I never initiate such conversations, only support them out of politeness).
Also, I often feel like I cannot interpret the mood of the sender or emotion behind the message, which often leads me to a lot of contemplation on what the sender actually meant, what he/she felt while sending it, etc. Emojis are a bit helpful in interpreting emotions but might also be confusing due to their universality (in fact, in some cases certain emojis (or their absence!) led me to anxiety).
So what I decided to do is to communicate only with instant and self-deleting photos and short video-messages on Snapchat. That of course limited the range of people I could talk to, as not everyone uses Snapchat, and in some cases it’s not appropriate to communicate in such manner (I can’t really send a snap to my professor). So, I decided to communicate with friends that have Snapchat but with whom I usually communicate through other platforms.
Firstly, I sent a snap of the nicely decorated common area in my apartment with a text “Come check out our new apartment decorations!” to a few of my friends outside NYU. My intension was to invite them over. A couple of them replied saying something like “nice!”, and the rest just opened it and did not send a response. So, perhaps the message in a form of a snap lacks seriousness and directness, which makes the receiver perceive it as something that was sent without a serious intention, and thus does not require a response. In fact, when I started thinking about my own reaction to snaps – quite often I leave them without a response, as many of them just show what one is doing at a particular moment, what coffee the person is drinking, or just a stupid filtered face.
Anyways, later during the day I went out with my friend to the city. I sent a snap video with us playing music in the car, with a text “you didn’t come, so we went out ourselves”. One of the receivers replied with a text: “where are you guys?”, another sent a funny face of himself using a filter, and another one sent a video from a family event. Two more opened the snap without replying. I sent a few other snaps of us walking around in the city without any text, and got only one emoji-response back.
So, having tried using Snapchat photos and videos for communication I realized that it cannot be formal, and that it is quite ineffective if you want to use this communication to arrange something in real life. In any case, having identified that, I also noticed that snaps make me feel like the ongoing communication is more real, in comparison with the dull text. Snapchat, unlike FB and whatsapp, gives an opportunity to experiment with humor and emotions, which makes it possible to express yourself better. Not worrying about the message being saved in the system, you can show yourself and your emotions the way they are at this very moment. Also, what I liked about sending the snaps of myself and receiving snaps back – is that there is no need to guess what the emotional response is. You can see it, laugh at it, and then quickly forget it.
If we consider that the ultimate goal of digital communication is to imitate real-life communication as accurately as possible, then probably Snapchat is closer to that than whatsapp and the messenger. However, it is also quite ineffective, which is why I would place it into the category of “entertainment” only – and would not want to waste my precious time on it.