snapchat really quick hey before I get
started with my talk I simply want to
mention how blessed I feel not only to
be able to be surrounded by so many
brilliant individuals not only with the
speakers that are presented with but
also the people backstage they’re doing
a tremendous job you don’t get to see
the amount of love and sharing
I’m curious how many people here use
snapchat raise your hand I’m so lucky
how many people here before today knew
about the article or knew about me
ouch so my name is Joel I write I am the
founder and creator of the article the
article is basically the social media
not only page for community 1 million
strong on Facebook a moment that has
become this place where people get to
share the most vulnerable parts of
themselves through art I mean the art
load is really a connection between the
word antidote and art arty dope thank
you thank you it was nicely so the earth
ode is a project that I started in early
2014 and it was started very simple and
very weird I simply started posting
messages on Facebook and these messages
would usually be accompanied with an
image and a quote this would be a
classic example of an art it out post
right you would have either a painting
either a photograph or a sculpture and
then I would fuse it together with a
quote made by of course two separate
authors right and the fusion of these
two ways of storytelling visual and
textual made you feel something opened
up a space for you to feel something
that normally you wouldn’t feel on a
day-to-day basis and what I mean by that
is that the conversations that I was
most interested in having were not the
usual conversations that you would have
on first encounter with an individual
basically avoiding all of the small talk
right I I hate small talk and and I
wanted to also hijack the social media
landscape which I don’t know if you
remember but in early 2014
social media consisted of news fake news
apparently cat videos food porn
graduation pics vacation pics basically
all of these congratulate
taury moments that people wanted to
obviously share with their friends but
it was really lacking the other side of
life which is the dark side which is the
heavy side which is the painful side
there was no space for those type of
communications I mean let alone those
spaces in the physical world are very
limited and so online it they’re very
few so I began by trying to hack these
feeds on social media with these posts I
mean these posts used to talk about
things that are very vulnerable and very
honest and this is what they look like
and I thought that I was just simply
doing this creative exercise right being
an artist myself I wanted to just fuse
two artworks call it collage post it on
Facebook and let it go viral
this one is one my favorites thank God
that I don’t look like what I’ve been
through and they are like a little wonky
imagine looking like the way that you’ve
been through or what you’ve been through
Jesus but what I did not expect was the
community that would form underneath
these posts and what I mean by
underneath is the comments right I’m
very proud to say that the article is
possibly one of the few places on the
entire Internet where you tend not to
want to avoid the comment section right
where usually you would find like
success remarks homophobic remarks yeah
this is not it and this is possibly what
not only makes the article unique but
it’s the thing that makes me the most
proud of but to show you guys what I
mean by having this community online
because sometimes it’s very difficult to
explain what an online community really
is let me show you guys what has been
happening specifically on the snapchat
channel of the our code now last August
not even a year ago I simply asked my
audience my community online through
I need some slides so the question was
on snapchat what time is it there and
what are you thinking about that was a
very simple question and I would never
have expected that the answers would
pretty much become the backbone of the
snapchat channel and what I mean by that
is that the thoughts that started to
coming in we’re thoughts that were
usually predicated around two very
important values others that are
actually the backbone of my talk today
and that was empathy and self-awareness
it sounds confusing but what I mean by
that is let me show you let me show you
three examples of the thoughts that are
started to come in now example number
one is quite simple right it’s 6:18 p.m.
I’m chilling on the bed with my dogs and
I’m thinking about ice cream haha
because why not right who doesn’t like
ice cream the other type of posts were a
little bit more personal and it went a
little bit deeper thinking about how
happy I feel when I listen to my heart I
think that we can all connect with at
least that feeling of self-awareness
when you follow your your heart what
your heart says but the third type of
messages that I began to receive and
this is the thing that switched
thinking about the baby I lost four
months ago
so quite specifically it was this
message that created a vision for myself
about what this snapchat channel was
going to become and that vision was that
I was in front of the possibility of
creating a global support group because
let me explain so the reason why I enjoy
snapchat so much as a platform for
storytelling has to do with this in
particular with the possibility of
sharing not only a picture of your
surroundings of your perspective but
also putting text on top so you have the
possibility of seeing not only the
perspective of an individual quite
literal and figuratively and also with
their thoughts and sometimes it’s a
lonely room sometimes it’s a landscape
and other times it’s people confronting
themselves so this is where the empathy
happens right because you’re not only
being asked to be self aware and to
express your own thoughts but you’re
also exposed to the thoughts of others
and you’re feeling together with people
right now I wasn’t expecting to receive
a message like this one this happened
two weeks after I asked that question I
started taking my meds so that I could
stock up and overdose
tomorrow is the day Cochabamba Bolivia
327 a.m. what what do you do when you
get a message like that an immediate red
flag I thought that the most that I
could do was to at least screenshot this
story and share it with my community to
at least let this person know that she
wasn’t alone and that we were listening
right and I did not anticipate what
would happen afterwards because instead
of sending in their thoughts their own
thoughts people began to send in the
thoughts about this girl this stranger
on the other side of the world that was
going through a really rough time and
these messages were messages of support
messages of love messages that were
trying to get her to at least expand her
awareness and to make her aware that she
did not need to make a permanent
decision on a temporary problem and so
somehow I lost track of the username of
this girl in Bolivia and I couldn’t
connect with her directly so what I did
was I sent a message a personal direct
message into the feed asking her not
only had if she’d seen the messages of
support that she was getting but also
asking her if she was still there right
and I waited for a response
I waited some more and then finally her
response came in within 24 hours
actually I ended up getting drunk and a
friend took me to her place so I
wouldn’t be able to go with to go
through with it
overwhelmed thank you was her message so
at first I thought that this was a fluke
at first I thought that in no way was
this snapchat community responsible for
pretty much saving the life of someone
that was a complete stranger to
everybody in the community but then four
months later
this happened well I’m going to go back
to that slide but I want to talk about
the story that came in four months later
and it was a girl from Delhi and the
snap thought reads I’m only 20 and the
boy who knocked me up isn’t even my
boyfriend I’m so scared I think I’ll go
tea tonight so I don’t bring shame to my
family Delhi India 11:41 a.m. so in
order to understand this snap I think
that we have to be aware of the social
and cultural reality of India right
we’re bringing shame to your family is
pretty much the worst thing that you can
do I mean in India family honour is
everything and to bring shame to it
would either mean they can disown you or
they can you be strange from your family
and so this was a very tough situation
to be in for a 20 year old woman who
simply got engaged in casual sexual
experience and all of a sudden when the
condom broke which I later found out
that this was the case she got pregnant
a complete accident a very tough
situation to be in
now having learned from the past
experience with a girl from Cochabamba I
now did not wait now I messaged this
girl right away and I asked her one
simple thing I asked her to simply
breathe right which is sometimes the
most courageous thing that you can
actually do and I asked her to breathe
to give herself 24 hours and I told her
that I would be sharing her story with
the community and I just told her to
wait whadya I did not tell her was that
I had no idea what to do I felt helpless
I did not know if there was going to be
actually a way out I did not see a way
out for her I did not see myself helping
her in any way I was simply hoping that
somebody had been in that similar
situation from India and consent in a
snap of support and to my surprise and
to everybody else a surprise the
snapchat community came through because
everybody started sending in messages of
support once again the same story and
especially messages of people that have
been in that situation in the past or
people that not only empathize but
people that offered
possibilities and other types of support
and later talking with the girl from
Delhi she told me that there was one
particular snap that changed her entire
choice pattern right and that snap was
this somebody in Karachi Pakistan was
praying at midnight for the girl in
Delhi asking her to simply wait and to
be strong enough that there would be
other tons of options that she could do
but this did not need to be the end and
the girl from Delhi told me that this
was actually the thing that made her
change her mind
so the unexpected happened we got an
update from the girl from Delhi who told
us that she received enough support from
the community enough support to pierce
through the fear and confront her mother
about the situation and try to talk it
out and at least to hope for the best
and I couldn’t believe it I couldn’t
believe that were actually changing
somebody’s patterns of behavior right
and then this update came in two days
later and this was once again that were
from Delhi saying my mom took me to the
gynecologist today we’re starting the
procedure soon thank you for giving me
strength and saving me love the pregnant
girl from Delhi so I couldn’t believe it
back then and I don’t think I still
fully believe that now I still don’t
believe that social media could actually
help save a life right I couldn’t
believe it if it wasn’t for the power of
empathy and self-awareness but I
definitely do not want to stand here
today in front of all of you and say
something but that sounds like snapchat
is helping people is saving lives right
because there’s a there’s a
of everything elephant in this room yeah
we need to talk about and that is mental
health I have to acknowledge that I also
received suicidal thoughts sometimes not
databases and I have to notice the fact
that this specific conversation is much
as part of a larger conversation which
is mental illness in the age of social
media but I will also be the first one
to acknowledge that snapchat stories are
not going to cure a mental illness and
the only reason why these people feel
that there is a connection that they
could make through snapchat is because
talking to them I realize that they’ve
exhausted all of their possibilities
around them meaning that their friends
or family members either don’t know what
to do with people that are suffering
through a mental illness people that are
suffering maybe from this depression
anxiety bipolar disorder and they’ve
been greeted often with either judgment
or dismissal with either phrases for
example like get over it or this is just
a phase it will pass from people that
actually don’t understand how serious
mental illnesses are pretty much as
serious as cancer if not treated in time
they could kill you and I just wish that
mental health was taken as seriously as
physical health but until then we need
to create this spaces where these
conversations these honest and
vulnerable conversations happen so what
does this does this all mean and why am
I here today I think that the whole
point of what I’m doing with snap
thoughts and with snapchat is something
that I actually did not reveal to my
community until last month and that is
the fact that this snap thought project
is really a collective cathartic
exercise in meditation and let me
explain when I ask people what they’re
doing when they’re doing it and the
location that they’re doing it in or
what they’re thinking in that particular
moment I’m asking for three things I’m
asking for not only their thoughts which
generates this level of self-awareness
where you begin to think that you’re
actually a being who thinks and that
those thoughts have a great impact on
the
that you leave lead your life but I’m
also asking for a location which is
making people self aware of the social
cultural context right in which they
live and those context have tremendous
impact as well in our thoughts and the
way we lead our lives and third of all
I’m asking people to be aware of the
time of the current present moment of
the now which accounts for all of the
lived experience up until this point so
then now also reminds ourselves that
this is the only time that we ever have
and our stories are the only things that
we could ever truly share truly own and
the only things that will ever leave
behind so what this means to me what
this whole snap-snap thoughts project
means and what the arted ODE means to me
is it’s a very simple reminder and
that’s the reminder that for millennia
we’ve been doing the same thing we’ve
been bonding over stories our stories
are very important I mean back then we
were surrounded by cave walls now we’re
here surrounded by Facebook walls
snapchat walls but we’re still sharing
our stories and we’re empathizing with
each other through our stories we’re
creating bonds and we’re healing through
the power of our own stories now I think
that more important than anything though
is another another reminder and that’s
the reminder that here today everybody
even though we’re mostly strangers to
each other that we’re at least in we’re
all in this together thank
you [Music]