By now, you’re probably familiar with Snapchat’s new maps feature. In short, it’s an in-app version of Google Maps, except instead of showing you how to find the annoyingly-out-of-the-way pub your mate has for some reason decided to host their birthday in, it shows you where all your friends are, in the form of their Bitmoji characters. It’s a little creepy, but quite a lot of fun.
Snapchat has always been the snooping partner’s friend – the ‘best friends’ feature was already pretty damn good at grassing up people who were being a little too friendly with people they weren’t supposed to – but this map takes it to a whole other level. No one will ever be able to cheat again, which is good, to be fair. Maybe Snapchat’s true aim is to make more honest men and women out of all of us?
Today’s story is nothing to do with cheating, though. This man has been caught – literally trapped – in a far more sticky situation, and his Snapchat map did… not exactly help.
The man in question, who wants to remain anonymous because, well, you just would in this situation, is a keen amateur photographer, and had gone out with a mate in Liverpool to take some pictures of ferries in the dock.
He laid down in the mud to try and get a better angle, but he ended up getting stuck, the poor bastard. Look, here he is, lying alone like a small, humanoid beached whale stuck helpless on the beach. I feel sorry for the bloke, but also, it’s quite funny, isn’t it.
The man’s mate, then, while waiting for help to arrive, thought it would be funny to check his Snapchat map, and he was right, it was. Because there was his friend’s Bitmoji, standing in the sea, thumbs up, with a big fat grin on his face.
"While I was waiting for help, I checked Snapchat and seen the emoji standing there thumbs up and smiling," Stuck Man’s friend told BuzzFeed.
The mate sent it round to some other friends, obviously, because it’s hilarious and is exactly what any mate would do in that situation, and a mutual decided to whack the screenshots up on Twitter, where people are loving it.
It’s been retweeted more than 88,000 times, and liked more than 125,000. It’s almost like there’s something inherently funny about terrible things happening to other people. Almost.
You don’t need to worry about Stuck Man, by the way. He was trapped there in the mud for about 45 minutes – which is a long time to be trapped in the mud, isn’t it – but he’s not injured at all. Just very embarrassed (Dave is a pseudonym, not the man’s real name).
If you weren’t sold on the whole idea of Snapchat maps before, then you kind of have to be now. Sorry Dave, have a good weekend.
