There's a collection of photos I've gathered throughout the years that sit put in the camera roll of my Snapchat "memories" portfolio. Not for followers to browse through or for social media friends to comment on — but to bring me back to a time and place even on that exact date, years prior.
But when I swipe right rather than left from there, I'm met with a smorgasbord of unconventional beauty hacks, makeup and skin-care ASMR, and other beauty videos ranging from fun to weird to a little bit disgusting. Welcome to Snapchat's Discover page. One can subscribe to countless channels filled with short clips that can be sent, saved, and even shared with others outside of the app.
It's been one whole week since I joined the channel Beauty ASMR, for one — along with its 4.3 million other subscribers. Ranging from the sound of satisfying makeup product un-boxings, foot facials, and pore extractions, the creative videos this channel serves might make you cringe in the most I-cant-keep-my-eyes-off way (even more so than TikTok, an impressive feat).
There, I'm constantly discovering products I otherwise never would have known existed — for example, a gel facial peel that squirts out from the yolk of an egg-shaped tube. But that's for another conversation on another day because right now, I can't help but focus on a video shared by the 5-Minute Crafts channel – a clip that features an edible lipstick, the use of an eyelash curler to achieve perfectly lined lips, and instant faux freckles from a single spray of root touchup. Hard to grasp, I know.
Snapchat, which was created as and remains a social photo messaging tool, is less focused on following the lives of others through grids of photos and videos and instead allows people to capture short-lived moments that can be shared through one-on-one interactions — but now I can confidently say that it's also a prime source of creative beauty storytelling through its quirky yet informational Discover content.
If you haven't done so already, swipe right, slide down, and scroll through the Snapchat Discover page, host to highly satisfying beauty, skin-care, and makeup content that, if anything, will never leave you bored.
More on digital beauty filters:
- Can TikTok Filters Help You Do Makeup?
- Newly Remote Workers Want Zoom to Create Makeup Filters for Video Meetings
- How to Unlock the Most Stylish Beauty Filters on Instagram Stories
Now, see Meredith Duxbury's 10-minute makeup routine:
