WHY of Snapchat Streak
It is December 2017 and I got my father’s smartphone. Before that, I used to have a phone with low specifications and they were not functional enough to handle the app 'Snapchat’. But father’s smartphone can handle the functioning of application and so now begins my experience with Snapchat.
I didn’t know at that time, how to use Snapchat, I was only aware that people use it to click pictures with that 'dog' filter or with many other filters and I assumed that it was a messaging app, which turned out that it is.
The moment I installed Snapchat on my phone, there were two people just two people who made me very confused. They added me as a friend within a day and started me sending me ‘SNAPS’. I didn’t even know what the term 'SNAP' mean, I came to know about the term SNAP from friend’s chat screen, when a person sends a snap, it shows ‘NEW SNAP’ on its chat. And then I discovered other features of Snapchat like it doesn’t save chats unless you tap on it, they will just disappear and it’s way of showing Bitmoji (Your own personal emoji) instead of your actual picture. I asked my friend to make a Bitmoji for me because I was not satisfied with my creation of Bitmoji, So, Thanks to her.
Now everything is settled, I made my account and starting adding friends, but still why these two friends are irritating me with Snaps, day and night. Why on Earth are they doing this? But I made no research and I started sending Snaps to one of them after a week, whenever he sent me a snap I replied him back with a SNAP because I thought it’s not good to not reply. What he’ll do is, he’ll send a snap of letter 'S' which I didn’t know that it stands for STREAK and I again didn’t even know what ‘Snapchat Streak’ is. And what I thought that the guy is having alphabetical series with me through the Snap, if he sends me an 'S’, I would send him 'T’. And I ignored the other friend.
After 3 days of me and my friend sending snaps to each other, A number 3 appeared on my friend’s chat and a ‘fire icon’ with it. I mean WEW (WOW), What does that mean? Oh, I don’t know.
Here I again ignore this new ‘Streak’ thing. And now another friend of mine started sending me Snaps. And now being so confused, I asked him why would he keep sending me Snaps and he said ‘We get SCORE, BRO, SCORE’. Okay, but what will you do of the Score? Are there any rewards for it? You know like after hitting 10,000 you will get a gift voucher? He had no answer. He will send Good Morning and Night Snaps, I mean why? I don’t even wish Good Morning and Night to my family here. I ignored his Snaps too for some days.
The friend I ignored from the two in the first place, used to send me daily snaps of the word ‘STREAK’, I researched about this term on google and now my half of the confusion is solved, and what I found is whenever this ‘fire icon’ and a number appears on a friend’s chat, you’re on Snapchat Streak — meaning you and your friend have Snapped each other (not chatted) within 24 hours for more than three consecutive days. Now I know WHAT is Snapchat Streak and HOW you do Snapchat Streak by sending snaps every day, but I still don’t know WHY. I searched for the WHY of Snapchat Streak but all I found is WHATS, I even asked from some of my friends, they all knew the WHATS and HOWS again. What I did that is I didn’t stop that Streak and I kept doing it and started with other friends too eventually, but I do need to know WHY.
The WHY of the Snapchat streak came to me in the last month of May, I observed one thing, a pattern every day and that is I am connecting with my friends everyday and this is the WHY of Snapchat Streak and that is to ‘Connect with people (friends, family, colleagues etc.) EVERY DAY’, Okay, maybe just for a second, by opening your friend’s SNAP and closing it, but you did. That’s the unique feature of this Snapchat, which helps you to connect everyday and keep reminding you of your friends or peoples who are on streak with you, Every day. It’s not the Snaps you send to each other, it’s the notification you receive and send to each other by sending Snap. No other social media apps allow you to connect every day, you only connect when you want to, but Snapchat Streak gives you the incentive of getting connected and that is the numbers, you always want them to increase and have the highest number of streaks among your community of friends and all. This is the reason I now care for my Snapchat streaks, last month my phone was broken but I did maintained the streaks, somehow from my father’s, brother’s, mother’s or asked my friend to maintain.
Now, it doesn’t mean I’m obsessed or attached with this Snapchat streak, I send one snap daily which only takes less than 10 seconds to connect with more than 10 people every day. And then I close the app simply, and maybe later I will send the snaps, only if I want to, because Snapchat Streak only takes 1 Snap every day in the account to maintain itself, it doesn’t matter if you send any number of snaps after that, it will not increase the streak number, but it will increase your Snapchat Score. Snapchat says your score is the combined number of Snaps you’ve sent and received. So, if you want to increase your score, you should send the number of snaps to your friends. It’s just that I don’t care for my Snapchat Score because there is no use of it and that’s why I don’t send snaps very often except one for Streak. I only care about Streak. People keep sending me snaps, and sometimes what happens is you get irritated with the sender and question arises is “Why is this person keep sending me snaps in the whole day, doesn’t he/she have any more work to do?” And that’s what I don’t want to make my Snapchat friends feel this way because I felt this.
Sometimes a Streak with your friend or many friends may get broken because of being busy, and you may or may not get sad about it, losing that number, ugh, Right?. I have lost some Streaks, which did make me sad, but I just moved on and started again. But let me tell you here that there is no need of getting sad about numbers, it’s just the numbers, what matters here is that you did connect with that friend for ’n’ number of days and if you somehow lost it, all you need to do is take the permission from that friend and start the Streak again or Start by don’t taking permission. What you find here is that you only lost the number not the connection, you didn’t lose connection for the number of days you did the Streak, you only lost connection for 1, 2 or number of days until you start the Streak again. Try to turn down the emotions here and start again.
THIS IS WHY I DO SNAPCHAT STREAK, NOW
