Snapchat has always found creative ways to let users express their friendships, and with Snapchat Plus they’ve taken that a step further with something called the Friend Solar System. If you’ve seen little planets on someone’s profile and wondered what do the planets mean you’re not alone.
Here’s the breakdown in the simplest terms possible.
|So What Are These Planets?
The planets are part of a Snapchat Plus feature that shows your closest friends as planets orbiting around you. You’re the Sun in the center and up to eight of your best friends are represented by different planets in order of how much you interact with them.
Snapchat uses your messaging and snapping frequency to determine the order. The friend you interact with the most becomes Mercury the closest planet to the Sun the second closest friend becomes Venus and so on until Neptune which represents your eighth closest friend.
Here’s the ranking order:
- Mercury is your number one closest friend
- Venus is number two
- Earth is number three
- Mars is number four
- Jupiter is number five
- Saturn is number six
- Uranus is number seven
- Neptune is number eight
Each planet also shows some unique visuals but the main takeaway is that the closer the planet the stronger your Snapchat interaction with that person.
|How Do You See the Planets?
To use this feature you’ll need a Snapchat Plus subscription. Once subscribed you’ll have to turn on the Friend Solar System feature from your settings manually because it’s not enabled by default anymore.
After that’s done you can tap on a friend’s Best Friends or Friends badge on their profile and if you’re one of their top eight you’ll see which planet you are in their system.
Worth noting this works both ways. You can see where your friends rank in your own solar system too.
|Why Are People Talking About It?
As cool as the feature sounds it hasn’t come without drama. There have been a lot of stories online especially among younger users about people feeling hurt or left out when they realize they aren’t someone’s top friend anymore.
Some users have even reported arguments or misunderstandings because of where someone landed in their planetary lineup. It became such a thing that Snapchat made the feature optional to avoid hurting people’s feelings.
So now when you subscribe to Snapchat Plus the planets won’t show up unless you choose to activate the feature.
|Are These Rankings Really That Deep?
Honestly not really. Snapchat bases these rankings on how often you interact with someone in the app so if you haven’t messaged someone for a while or you’ve been snapping someone else more frequently the system adjusts. It doesn’t mean your real life friendships are weaker.
It’s more of a fun visualization than anything serious but it’s understandable how it could cause friction if people take it too literally.
Snapchat’s planets are just another way to gamify friendship on the platform. It’s fun to see yourself as Mercury in someone’s orbit but it’s also good to remember that app interactions don’t define real life connections.
If you like seeing where your friends rank and it doesn’t stress you out give it a try. If it gets in your head too much it’s easy to turn off. Either way it’s a small feature that adds a new layer to how we connect online and like most things in social media it’s what you make of it.
