Forget Facebook. The New New Thing: Snapchat sweeps campus.

The future of photography is impermanent, report the students of Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut. Last May, they started using Snapchat, a wickedly simple new app for the iPhone that allows the user to take a photo, scribble or type on it, and then send it to a friend. According to the New York Magazine report the app caught on with bubonic speed owing to one ingenious feature: After a few seconds, the message vanishes, like a communiqué in Mission: Impossible........ When people, especially parents, first hear about this disappearing-ink trick, they assume it has only one purpose: sexting. But the students who use it know that its true purpose lies in a different clunky neologism: taking self-portraits, called selfies. More specifically, really ugly selfies....... The photos these students send—up to 35 a day, according to one—are almost always of faces, and almost always comically unflattering……….............................................................................................................. More? Read all about it at http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/snapchat-2012-10/