As collegiettes in the 21st century, we’re presented with so many ways to flirt with guys without actually having to flirt with them in person. Technology makes it easy: “like” a guy’s Instagram photo, Facebook chat with him and he could be yours! But technology can complicate things, too. With apps like Tinder and Snapchat, it’s easy to accidentally cross the line from casual flirtations to cringe-worthy interactions. So how do you know where the line is when it comes to Snapchat? We asked college guys like Penn State junior Jake Adams, University of Richmond senior Andrew Valenski and recent Temple grad Nate Bronson to offer some insight on what they and their male friends are into (and not-so-into) when it comes to getting Snapchats from collegiettes: the annoying, the weird and the scandalous.
1. The Never-Ending Snapchat Series
Maybe you think that the guy you’re talking to wants to know what you’re doing all day at work. Or maybe you just happen to look really good and want him to see your good hair day as much as possible. Either way, Andrew says that you shouldn’t send too many Snapchats to a guy if you don’t want to annoy him.
“It’s not like sending one every once in a while is bad,” says Andrew. “But when you start getting more than three from the same person in a day it’s like, ‘alright, you’ve gotta calm down, girl.’”
Nate agrees: “I hate when a girl sends me a picture of every task she does all day long. I don’t need to see every thing you check off your to-do list from breakfast to bedtime.”
Andrew says that if a guy wants to get more Snapchats from you, he’ll send you some that require a response. “If a guy sends you one with a question or one that elicits an easy response, then he wants you to send one back to him. If you see he opened it and he didn’t respond, it’s probably better to wait until he sends one to you to send another his way.”
2. The Trying-too-Hard Snapchat
You know how on Instagram girls will hashtag things like “#Nomakeup” and “#Nofilter” when they’re clearly wearing makeup and using Valencia? Super annoying, right? Well, Andrew says the same principle can apply to Snapchats.
“If you get a Snapchat from a girl whose makeup is perfect and who clearly just did her hair and has crazy cleavage going on, you know that she tried hard to look good in that Snapchat,” Andrew says. “So to make a moderately gross face, like sticking your tongue out, then caption it ‘gross!’ when you’ve obviously worked hard to look cute… It just kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth, like this girl’s trying too hard.”
Andrew emphasizes that he doesn’t care whether a girl’s wearing makeup or not. “Look like whatever you want, just don’t act like you look terrible when you put forth effort to look good,” he says. “Either own it or just don’t acknowledge it.”
Jake says he doesn’t mind if a girl looks pretty, but that a thousand Snapchats of her with the exact same facial expression get annoying. “I get it, she looks good with her head tilted to the right and a close-mouthed smile. But I don’t need to see it 10 times a day.”
Nate just has one rule when it comes to a girl’s appearance in a Snapchat: “No duck faces.”
3. The Bodily Functions Snapchat
This one seems pretty obvious, right? Maybe if you’re bros with a guy you can do this with him, but if you’re pursuing a relationship with him, you should probably avoid sending him a 10-second video of you belching the ABC’s.
“I think some girls think guys will respect them more if they own this gross stuff or something, and I mean, I know girls poop… I just don’t want to get a Snapchat of them on the toilet doing so,” Andrew says.
Just in case you were thinking of making a Snapchat version of that “Sittin On Tha Toilet” video… don’t.
4. The Sing-Along Snapchat
One of the best parts of Snapchat is that you get to show somebody else a 10-second snippet of how much fun your life is. Which is why it’s so tempting to send out mass Snapchats of you and your friends singing in the car with the windows down and the radio blasting—how fun is that?! But Andrew says getting videos of you and your friends, or even just you, singing along to some song in the car is a weird experience.
“It’s one thing if it’s a song that means something to me, like if we danced to it once or have an inside joke about it,” Andrew says. “But I feel weird watching you and your friend sing along to ‘We Can’t Stop’ or listening to you belt out ‘Treasure.’ I think it’s a cuter idea in your head than it is in real life.”
Nate says sometimes he likes the singing videos. “If your friend is hilariously off-pitch, I’ll probably laugh a little,” he says. “Or if you’re at a really cool concert, I wouldn’t mind that. But don’t send more than one of the concert.”
5. The Guy Friend Snapchat
While you may not even give it a second thought when you send out a picture of you and your best guy friend being goofballs to everyone on your contact list, Andrew says this is something that could bother the guy you’re romantically interested in.
“If you’re aiming for a relationship with the guy you’re sending this picture to, then there should maybe not be another guy in the picture,” Andrew says. “It could make him jealous or insecure about what you’ve got going on. Or it could make him think you’re hanging out with guys other than him, which could make him think it’s okay to hang out with girls other than you. So be careful with that one.”
Jake says this actually happened to him. “This girl and I were ‘talking,’ and it was pretty clear we were headed toward a relationship. Then she sent me this Snapchat of another guy kissing her on the cheek and it just kinda rubbed me the wrong way,” he says. “I couldn’t tell if she was trying to tell me she wasn’t into a relationship or if she was trying to make me jealous or something, but whatever it was, I wasn’t a fan of it.”
If you’re hoping to make a guy jealous with this move, proceed with caution—you don’t want to turn him off!
6. The Nude-Too-Soon Snapchat
Obviously, you don’t want to send a guy a nude shot the night that you meet him at a frat party. But how do you know when you’re jumping the gun and when it’s the right time to send a dirty picture his way?
“The most important thing is that you’re comfortable,” Andrew says. “Make sure you 100 percent trust him, because even though Snapchats are supposed to be un-screenshot-able, they aren’t. You don’t want to send this hot naked picture to some asshole and have him send it all around campus.”
It’s really important to remember that people definitely can (and do!) take screenshots of Snapchats, even though they aren’t supposed to be able to. There’s even a new app called Snap Save that has been created to save every Snapchat a user ever gets! So if you’re going to send a sexy pic, you need to make sure you trust him not to screenshot it or save it, unless you want his friends to see it, too!
“I’ve gotten some really bangin’ pictures of girls that I’ve been so tempted to save for, uh, rainy days,” Nate says. “But I know that’s a d*ck move, so I just try to burn the image into my brain before the Snapchat disappears. That said, I do have a ton of friends who have screenshotted pictures of girls and kept them on their phones. They’d never send them around, but they show them to their friends from their own phone, which is why you really should be careful who you’re sending these things to.”
A parting word of advice? “If you’re second guessing whether or not you should send it, then you probably shouldn’t send it,” Andrew says. Snap carefully, collegiettes!