This Is Snapchat After 30

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Being a modern American man allegedly still in his prime, I like to keep up with the times in this high tech world. Not only does it keep me feeling relevant, but it makes working in an office with a disgusting amount of mid-twenties Millennials who think they can still drink 5 nights a week a little less awkward. I was in on Facebook when you needed a .edu to play ball, and I was firing off tweets that nobody read early in the game. Not much has changed, but now, my go-to source for killing a few minutes and living vicariously through others is Snapchat.

Pics and videos of my buddies getting completely tanked at a golf tournament while I get caught up on emails? Oh, yeah. I’m in. But unlike the other time-kills I mentioned, I was definitely late to the game with Snap. Not only was I late, but I was just awful at it. So awful, in fact, that I was viciously ridiculed by friends for the amateur move of leaving my Snap timer on for only 3 seconds, thus rendering all my snaps with witty captions completely indecipherable. I’ll never live that down.

But I’m here now, 31 years old but feeling 29, and we’ve all traded in our edge for a little stability. This is great long-term, but in the meantime, we’re forced to sacrifice disappearing pics from wild nights for 5 seconds of us sitting at a desk with a raccoon face. This is Snapchat after 30.

Face Swaps

Let’s just get this out of the way- Y’all need to stop face swapping. I think that one in five of the snaps I receive are face swaps, and guess what? They all look the exact same. I know it was completely wild and crazy for you and your husband to swap faces the first dozen or so times, but there’s got to be something else you can do. I can only think to myself, “Hey! Those aren’t your faces!” so many times before I stop looking at your story altogether. There’s no way I’m alone on this.

I get on Snap to swap lives for 8 seconds, not faces. SMH.

Babies

I’m not here to opine on the fact that all my rowdy friends have settled down, but it is very sobering when the guy that used to acquire and share nudes by the dozen a few years back is now just snapping pics of his kid pushing the bubble lawnmower across his living room floor. That’s sweet and all, but we know you had a kid. We were at her first birthday party, sipping craft brews like sophisticated humans, while making awkward conversing with your distant family members who we’ll never see again.

Poop

Like clockwork. Every morning between 8 and 9:30 a.m., I will receive at least one shockingly grotesque dump snap. The worst part is, I know that it’s going to be poo, yet I still open it anyway. Hell, sometimes there’s even art drawn on it because at some point in my life I befriended scum bags. The best part of waking up isn’t Folgers in your cup, it’s your buddy Stu sending you a record-setting turd that looks like a rugby ball with the caption “I think my insides are dying.” Thanks, Stu.

Funny Head Thing

Funny head thing has had quite the run lately. I mean, how could it not?

Whoa, hold up- were you severely disfigured in an accident? Did you run your mouth at the wrong Vegas casino and end up with your head in an industrial vice? Ohhhh, I see. You’re using the funny head filter thing again.

Damn, you scared me for a second. Not really. While I still chuckle at these because anything that takes my mind off of the strategy outline I’m editing is pretty much a win these days, I can’t help but lament the fact that this is where we’re at now- sending pics of heads, in all their deformed glory, to each other. Yes, we can!

Dog Face

So much dog face these days. I guess the first few times I saw it I thought, “Hang on a sec…you’re human, but you look like a dog? That’s wild.” Now I just click out of the snap. If your go-to filter in any situation is dog face, then you’re either boring as hell or an aspiring Instagram model fishing for compliments.

“Babe, you look sooo cute as a puppy, Babe!”

What’s the thought process here? “Hey, I know I’m just sitting here eating chips and salsa and drinking cold ones on a Thursday night, but people will probably give a damn if I sip this Tecate as a puppy. People will think, ‘Hey, puppies don’t eat Tex-Mex!'” And for the record, you don’t need to stick your actual human tongue out to make the puppy tongue happen. Just open your mouth, ding-a-ling. I love dogs, so please don’t ruin them for me.

Concerts

Every Sunday morning, I wake up to no less than 4 concert snaps. They sound like shit, and they’re grainy as hell, but, at least we know you were there now. Oh, shit! You were at an Old 97’s show last night? Did you enjoy it, or was it just okay because you had a cell phone in front of your face the entire time?

I was guilty of this recently, and I hated myself for it (it was Ashanti, though, and she’s basically a unicorn). As a general rule, you get one snap of the artist, unless they bring out a special guest, in which case you can arguably snap that too.

Makeup Thing

Following up on the scumbag friends thing from earlier, makeup/drag queen filter has really taken off in my inner-circle. Now every day, I’ll open up a snap only to see a guy I’ve known for 20 years with dark lipstick on swaying side to side a la Buffalo Bill. Oh, I even got one with “Goodbye Horses” recently, which was nice. No mangina yet, but it’s only a matter of time, especially since I’m basically asking for all of these to be sent my way by writing a column about it. Whatever, it’s 2016. #LoveWins.

Follow me on snap at “dcarterruff” if you like good clean fun and inside jokes.

Image via Shutterstock

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Dave

Lawyer. Writer. Dude doing business. I'm the meatloaf guy from tv.

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