Sorry But Famous People Suck at Snapchat
I think it sunk in for me when I was watching Snaps from family and friends float by and Kim Kardashian’s feet popped up, standing on a scale that read 124 with cheerful emojis reading “GAME ON” and “Eat Me”: celebrities suck at Snapchat.
Now, this particular Snap may have only pushed me over the edge because I’m not a foot person. I am a Kim person, though, and a diet person. So you’d think I’d be stoked for any extra glimpse I can get into Kim’s rarefied world of personal trainers and scale selfies.
But no. Celebrities on Snapchat are just too much. They overshare, they’re vain, and their absolute worst offense of all is that they’re boring.
Yes, boring. Chelsea Handler and Whitney Cummings are two of the funniest and most entertaining people alive — their IMDB credits alone show that they dominate TV both in front of and behind the camera. But their Snapchats give me more secondhand embarrassment than a dad in Tevas trying to dance. Chelsea Handler uses her Snapchat to rap in a high-pitched annoying voice all day long. I’m not lying, follow her and you’ll see. And Whitney Cummings — I don’t even know what she does, because I had to stop watching her story about two days after following her.
Even DJ Khaled’s Snapchat is boring at this point. His account jumped the shark right after he got lost on a jet ski in the middle of the night and snapped the whole thing. That was entertaining and hilarious — and sadly none of his other snaps have lived up to it since, no matter how many catch phrases he coins and emojis he adopts.
There are a few celebrities who are good at Snapchat. As much as Kim’s vex me sometimes, I do love when North West makes a cameo, especially when she’s chilling in the garage waiting for Kim to finish working out.
Kylie Jenner’s snaps are also weirdly mesmerizing, and I think it’s because she actually pays attention to the lighting, the scenery — the mise-en-scêne, if you will. Like, look at this gorgeously shot snap:
With that attention to detail and ability to build suspense, she’s basically the next Hitchcock of iPhone movies. In fact, she once made a short film on Snapchat.
But the point here is not to show how tolerable Kylie’s snaps are, it’s to talk about how I constantly find myself skipping past every single celeb snap on my feed. And the reason, I think, is that Snapchat’s quality is normally so low that in order to care about the content, you really need to be invested in the person creating it. So when my best friends put up dark, loud, shitty-quality snaps of their night out, I eat it up. I want to see what they’re doing (and maybe why I wasn’t invited…).
But when someone I don’t know posts a tedious, shaky, low-quality and worst of all self-serving snap, I don’t care. In fact, I can’t swipe it away fast enough. And when it’s a celebrity, who I’m accustomed to seeing only in the highest of high quality situations, it’s even worse.
I want to watch celebs doing whatever their talent is — comedy, music, even reality TV. I want to see them edited to look like the best version of themselves. I want to see Reese Witherspoon acting like Elle Woods or June Carter Cash, not trying to be relatable on Snapchat.
What’s the point of celebrities joining Snapchat, even? To appear more relatable? Hasn’t the backlash against Jennifer Lawrence proven that we don’t want to relate to our celebrities?
If celebrities only used Snapchat to promote their stuff — the way low key Snapchat swami Arnold Schwarzenegger does — I’d respect it more and even appreciate it. But when they use Snapchat to get me to pay even more attention to them, to really drive the point home that, yes, they are hot, they are rich, but they’re also just like you and me, it gets tiring.
Celebrities on Twitter can be fun, especially when they beef. Celebrities on Instagram are also great — they look incredible and aspirational, like their feed is their own personal Vogue editorial.
But on Snapchat, celebrities just need to stop. Either that, or take a clue from Kylie and treat their snaps like the main production instead of an afterthought. My ability to give a shit about them depends on it.
