Snapchat 👻, in its endeavor to be a complete media experience, combines its original image-based social networking with a news/entertainment section called “Discover” with a simple swipe to the right. Snapchat’s Discover tab is meant to help users “keep up-to-date on breaking news 📰 the big game 🏈 or [their] favorite celebs 👩‍🎤.” Discover holds made-for-mobile vertical video sequences from Publishers like Vice, CNN, and Mashable; Shows; and ‘Our Stories’ which are Snapchat filtered sequences drawn from user content with the same theme or location. Unless you want to count IGN, Mashable is Discover’s only tech-focused Story. In my venture to become more up to date ☎️ on tech news, Mashable was an obvious choice as I use the Snapchat app everyday. Snapchat Discover Stories are updated every 24 hours and the previous stories disappear, but Mashable keeps the content from their stories on their website in the form of ‘Reels’ which are linked to below, though, they are optimized for viewing on mobile devices. 📲

The story talks a lot about introverts’ vs extroverts’ color choices, even stating “Introverts will not hold anything that is neon orange” showing a picture of a neon orange phone case (*that slide was shown in the mobile version, it is not in the website version). I personally find these statements problematic, because as a very introverted person, I still enjoy bright colors, especially in my work as a designer, and I think to say that no introvert would ever hold an orange phone case is simply wrong.

The story continuously says our color preferences are determined (not may be determined) from our biology  (and introversion vs. extraversion, which it does not state are products of both nature and nurture). The use of this ‘is’ rather than ‘may’ takes the article’s claims to a level above what it deserves in terms of scientific merits. Had it used ‘may’ once and then explored its content from the perspective of a fun happy-go-lucky article, I think it would have come out better. (/5 stars.)

4 Ways to Hack Your Life With LEGO

This story was at that level of cheerful 😄 and easygoing nature that the last one should have been. It simply gives building instructions for four different desk items made out of Legos. The animation is playfully choppy, reminiscent of the Lego movies, and the music is a nice touch: some kind of techno. I think it’s generally cute, though only one of the Lego items is tech-related. My 8 year old brother 👦 is super into Legos (and thus I am also into Legos), so I really dug the premise, and the instructions are easy enough to follow 👀 and the items are simple enough that anyone could make them. 🚧 I’ve actually made the Lego fidget spinner (after weeks of begging from the little brother), and I thought Mashable’s instructions made more sense than the ones I used a few months ago. Overall (⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars)