No one tells you that one of the most complicated social decisions of your youth years will be deciding who gets to see your Snapchat private story.
It sounds ridiculous. And it is ridiculous. And yet, somehow, being added to someone’s private story can feel like being handed a VIP pass. You’ve made it; you’ve been chosen; you are officially trusted with the unfiltered version of their life.
…Or at least the version they want you to see.
Welcome To The List
Private stories have rules. Rules nobody has written down, but somehow everyone understands.
First, there’s The List. Who gets added?
Your best friends, obviously. Maybe your cousins. That one person you recently became friends with. Someone you’ve been talking to for three weeks but aren’t quite ready to admit you actually like.
Then comes the difficult part: who doesn’t get added? Because private stories are basically social circles with a password.
Being left off someone’s private story can make you wonder if you’ve done something wrong. Did I say something? Are they annoyed at me? Did everyone else get added?
Before you know it, you’re conducting a full investigation into something that probably took the other person twelve seconds to set up.
The VIP Pass
The funny thing is that being added can feel just as significant.
Someone you barely speak to in real life adds you, and suddenly you’re thinking, “Wait… are we friends?” Maybe you’ve had three conversations in school, but apparently that qualifies you for access to their private story.
Congratulations. You have entered their inner circle.
Of course, private stories aren’t actually friendship contracts. Being added doesn’t mean you’re suddenly best friends, and not being added doesn’t automatically mean someone dislikes you.
But when you’re young, social media can make things feel much bigger than they actually are.
Which Version Of You Are We Being Served?
Then there’s the most important question of all: what version of yourself are you posting?
Because your private story is probably not exactly the same as your normal story. Your normal story might be a nice sunset, a birthday post, or a photo where everyone looks suspiciously good.
Your private story? Basically the content that would get you removed from society if it reached the wrong audience.
And that’s what makes private stories so funny. They allow us to have different versions of ourselves for different groups of people.
There’s the school version of you, the family version, the best friend version. And then there;s the private story version, where apparently all dignity has been abandoned.
You Don’t Have To Perform
Here’s the part I wish someone had told me: you don’t have to perform for your private story.
You don’t need to post just because everyone else is posting, you don’t need to make every update funny or perfectly curated. And you definitely don’t need to feel like you have to prove you are having a good time.
Sometimes you can just not post… it’s easy to forget that social media is still social media, even when the audience is smaller.
At the end of the day, your private story is not a ranking of your friendships, or proof of who likes you most, and it definitely isn’t a measure of how popular you are. It’s just a collection of people you’ve chosen to share a slightly more chaotic version of your life with.
So choose them wisely, post what actually makes you laugh, and try not to overthink who is or isn’t on The List.
Because, honestly, if you spend twenty minutes deciding whether someone is Private Story Worthy, you may have already taken the private story more seriously than the app intended.