My goodness the world is very different as I approach this ‘major’ birthday compared to the last one 10 years ago.
I’m half way through listening to a podcast (that in itself is entirely different) called Sweet Bobby. HT to Tom Reason for pointing me in the direction of that as he always manages to point me in the direction of really good podcasts.
Sweet Bobby is about catfishing which 10 years ago was a term that only really covered catfishing but now has an entirely different meaning.
It’s an extraordinary tale only made possible by the extraordinary advances of technology.
I was chatting to Callum about it yesterday just a few days after my kids thought it would be fun to make me a Snapchat account over Christmas.
Snapchat would be a great medium to assist with your new catfishing project (if you had one).
We set up the Snapchat account and my bitmoji (new terminology all the time for me) and then had a brief tutorial into how to use it, how to create snaps, how to reply, how to post things onto my story and then a long chat about snapchat etiquette.
How terrible it is to leave a snap unopened but even worse, opened and un-replied and how it was essential to have the notifications for snapchat on your phone so you didn’t miss anything.
To someone like me, snapchat is like a mental health illness.
It pings and pings and distracts and interrupts and causes anxiety and pleasure and fear and reassurance all at the same time.
It moves faster than building on Fortnite and you have to be at it all the time.
It provokes 250 pickups per day from your mobile phone and removes any possible ability to concentrate on something for an extended period of time.
Just because you adapt to using Snapchat doesn’t mean it’s good for you.
If you had snapchat and insta and you were still in a world where you needed to use email and your friends had you in WhatsApp groups, how would you ever, ever do anything else.
It’s like having a spade that constantly shouts at you to pick it up and dig a hole when what you’re trying to do is plant seeds.
Imagine trying to plant seeds when every 15 or 20 seconds you tried to dig a hole.
Social media platforms are tools that are supposed to work for you.
All too often it seems like the other way round.
Much to my kids disgust my experiments on snapchat are probably over (funniest thing was though that soon after setting up the account, one of Callum’s best friends requested to add me as a friend - he was utterly horrified) (I didn’t).
Blog Post Number - 2963
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