I am an accidental member of a Snapchat group and I feel like a creep.

I didn’t realise Snapchat groups were a thing, but apparently they are. It’s kind of like your standard group chat except with less memes and a slightly more narcissistic feel. It’s like adding things to your story that you only want a few people to see, so it would be perfect for virtual orgies. It’s actually not a bad idea. Snapchat groups, that is, not virtual orgies. Virtual orgies sound like a very sad way waste all your good olive oil.

I was added to one snap group, I’m quite sure, by mistake, and I don’t know how to opt out of it.

Yet I keep opening the snaps.

I can’t not. Partly because of my burning curiosity; partly because I can’t stand to have the unread notification on my Snapchat. I see the coloured box and it turns me into in irrational monster. There is some kind of primal urge inside me to uncheck the box, like there are tribal drums beating in the background of my own mind egging me on to do it (think of those scenes in the mysterious shop in The Hot Chick). I cannot rest until it has been unchecked; I cannot even breathe. My mind is in agony like it is being fried in a pot of oil; like someone is making crumbed brains out of the goo inside my head (which, with just the right amount of garlic, wouldn’t be too bad).

I know this is stupid. I know that the box being unchecked or not won’t change the course of my life. It will not strike me down with illness, nor bring me luck. It is inconsequential and pointless, yet I let it posses me.

It’s the proverbial chicken pock I just can’t ignore. It must be scratched. At all costs. Even if it means being a total creep and essentially cyber spying on people.

That notification will be my downfall.

It’s weird, because I’m totally fine with double-figure notifications on my emails, but my Snapchat is different. It’s kind of like how I was cruelly informed of the truth about Santa in Year 1 (I clock this up as one of the reasons I’ve become so cynical and sullen in my later years. This is somewhat true, but also because I needed something to blame my horrendous personality on and my childhood wasn’t traumatic enough to give me any interesting quirks. Like, have you ever considered the youths on Skins? Their lives were horrific, and they all turned out edgy and interesting). Even though I knew that Santa was just a lie parents fed their children (I blame capitalism for that one) I still believed in the Easter Bunny. Maybe I actually knew the truth but wanted to delude myself into having a normal childhood experience in a bid to turn out less like a real-life Daria. This is a possibility because I don’t remember a moment when I was informed the real truth about the Easter Bunny (or that rabbits were straight-up destroying our country and deserved a bullet between the eyes simply for having the audacity to exist). Another possibility was that I was profoundly stupid.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I can’t not open the snaps because it grinds away at my very soul if I leave them unopened. And this feels a little wrong.

Not that there’s anything juicy on there. Just a bunch of jealous much? travel shots, girls drinking wine and a few bunny face filters.

I mean, I do hope that I will be on the receiving end of a scandalous few seconds of footage that will set off a chain of Gone Girl-esque events. However, it’s generally quite mundane, and always tame. Never incriminating, never something you wouldn’t expect to see on Instagram.

But still, these people don’t know me and I don’t know them.

And my social media following isn’t big enough for anyone to bother trying to impress me. My approval means nothing. Maybe if I posted a lot of tit shots or shitloads of clean eating photos, I would be worth impressing. I mean I have breasts and I did just make a batch of sweet potato brownies (using maple syrup as a sugar substitute, no less) but that’s not really my jam in the ‘gram. Instead I prefer to post photos of emotional, attention seeking microwaves and toe rings made out of hair. This is why my approval is worthless.

This makes it feel even more unethical for me to open these snaps. But I have one, sitting there in my list unopened, like a bulging white-headed pimple waiting to be popped all over the bathroom mirror. I know I should have the self control to leave it, but I must have missed the course on will power at uni – it was probably in a 7am slot on a Monday morning.

Even now, having dedicated a good 20 minutes to writing about how irrational my need to un-purple that purple box is, I still cannot ignore it. My attempt to reason with myself via blogpost to leave the damn thing alone has failed.

The drums are sounding.

I am envisioning my blood boiling and bubbling.

The ticker in my chest is pounding.

There are wooden battleships hurtling through my bloodstream, led by dragons and an entitled blonde.

Someone has a flamethrower.

Shit is getting out of hand.

I am not strong enough to resist.

Aaaand I’ve cracked.

It was an underwhelming shot of people on the beach. I need to figure out how to get out of this group. It’s destroying my damn life and the payoff isn’t even worth it.