real life

A messaging app investing in writing is a little baffling and weird, isn’t it? Today Snapchat launches online magazine Real Life, in which a staff of five writers publish long-form essays and narratives about life with technology. It’s headed by social scientist and researcher Nathan Jurgenson, who says Real Life “won’t be a news site with gadget reviews or industry gossip. It will be about how we live today and how our lives are mediated by devices.” A messaging app investing in writing is a little baffling, isn’t it? So why is an instant messaging app dominated by impermanent selfies and video suddenly investing in writing? When 100 million daily active users can turn images of themselves into a taco or a pooch or a baby, isn’t the very idea of reading kind of… well, basic, as my teens say? Said another way: in a disappearing-photo, 10-second-video Snapchat world… isn’t writing […]