Snapchat streaks are one of the most stressful things to come from the social media app. I've had Snapchat for the let three years and maybe 13% of my time has been dedicated to maintaining streaks. You may be wondering why I'm so stressed out to send a picture to one of my friends. It seems like something very common with the app. Take it from someone who doesn't really snap people often. Scratch that people just don't snap me a lot of the time. Not until recently the only Snapchat messages I would receive on average was from my mom or aunt. Nowadays my friends have started messaging me more and more on Snap. And while I enjoy getting a different notification to pop up on my home screen, they are a caveat, "Streaks."

My experience with streaks early on is a tainted one. Prior to college I never really sent a streak to people. My mentality at the time on the concept was that it was a stupid thing to do. What are you supposed to send? How often do you send it? Is it at the same time every day or is there a grace window? And the rules explained on Snapchat did not help and still kind of don't to this day. So I never bothered with sending them. One of my work coworkers last year wanted me to start one with her before I went off to college. I managed to set up a system where I send a streak to her first thing I wake up in the morning. A very simple system that has been working to even the day I write this article. But my coworker wasn't the only streak I had at the time, there was someone else and this person kind of tainted my whole snapping experience for awhile.

Without going into too much detail, there was this friend at the beginning of college who we had a streak going and I was very happy to have a streak with her because it was the first one to ever have that "best friend" symbol next to it. To be honest, I don't understand those symbols to this day. I tried changing the emojis in Snapchat but I still get confused. Anyway, getting back on track; so I had this streak going on with this girl but I soon started to realize something--especially when she unfriended me on Snapchat--that these streaks were causing too much stress for me. I didn't know when it was the appropriate time to open the snap. Right away? After five minutes? Wait a few hours? I always have my phone on me so when a notification pop up I feel inclined to open and not wait. Every time I saw this person's name pop up I felt inclined to snap her. And maybe I snapped her too much. It wouldn't be double snaps, but it would be like a conversation. I snap her, she snaps me, repeat. Anyway, we stopped being friends and as a result, I pretty much denounced streaks.

I felt like I didn't deserve sending snaps to people. The way that friendship ended really affected me at college and effects me to this day. Whenever my mod mates would want to start a streak with me I would use the stock answer of: "I don't do streaks." Some attempted but others just took it as it was. One less person to snap. And it left less stress on me because like I mentioned earlier I still do not understand how these snap streaks work. Plus, I have to make sure every snap I send is presentable. I am a weird person when it comes to sending snaps. I need a good selfie in the background or have a scenic background featured before I write my caption. Combine this with the fact people expect these streaks to come as soon as you open them, it is really stressful needing to send something right away.

So streaks would remain a foreign concept to me until this summer. While bonding with some of my co-workers who I've known since last year, I mentioned how we never really hang out. They retorted saying how we never started a snap streak in a joking way. I felt like an old man as they explained the etiquettes of sending streaks. And after a few snaps lessons, I finally started to understand these snap streaks.

Nowadays as the summer continues, I am inclined to send some streaks throughout the day to my friends. I feel it is a sense of bonding. At least I hope. Not everyone is going to be like that my ex-friend who gets weirded out by Snapchat streaks. There's more to that situation obviously that I can't share but I feel like I am at a much better mental state right now than before. Maybe it'll last, maybe it won't. But one thing is for sure, I gotta keep up with these streaks.