Snapchat Launches 'Real Life'

Snapchat continues to roll out projects focused on original content: first the company relaunched and revamped its oft-neglected Discover page so that users would interact with content from major media publishers; now, the Silicon Valley powerhouse is dipping its own toe in the editorial pool with the release of Real Life, an online magazine that focuses on how we interact with technology.

Snapchat employee, sociologist and social media critic Nathan Jurgenson will serve as the publication’s editor-in-chief alongside New Inquiry alum Rob Horning, Adult Magazine founding editor Sarah Nicole Prickett, Hazlitt founder and Hairpin editor Alexandra Molotkow and former Guardian production intern Soraya King. The publication will release a new essay on “identity, power, privacy, surveillance, relationships, and beauty” every week-day, though Jurgenson has left the window open for other forms and mediums to come into play.

Jurgenson also promises that the publication will retain editorial independence from Snapchat; you won’t find gadget gossip and rumor-mill fuel, but rather prose that “aims to address the political uses of technology, including some of the worst practices both inside and outside the tech industry itself.”

Real Life launches on Snapchat June 27. Until then, you can follow the nascent publication on Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook, naturally. If you live in New York City, the publication will be hosting a screening and discussion of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, a seminal work on the terrors of consuming entertainment, on launch day.