Screenshots Are the Gremlins of the Internet

In early 2017, a terrifying rumor began to drift around the internet. An iPhone software update was coming, and the anarchists at Apple had decided to add a new feature: Starting soon, your device would register every screenshot that you grabbed of a text conversation, and notify the other participants. Apple users imagined total mayhem, or the necessity of owning two phones—one for daily use, and one for photographing the other phone. Others dug in their heels and promised never to stop screenshotting their texts: “iOS 11 is gonna have screenshot alerts so if you get a notification from me you can pull up honestly I could care less,” one man wrote on Twitter. The feature never materialized, which we can be sure of because we still live in a society.

But screenshots themselves are very real, and sometimes equally terrifying. The idea that anything and everything you do online could be—and let’s face it, probably —captured by someone, somewhere, and then stored for future use, has imbued our lives online with a latent sense of paranoia. It’s a fact we all live with but force ourselves to forget,