What The Heck Are Snapchat Trophies?

During your perusal of the new Snapchat update this week, did you happen to notice the itty-bitty trophy icon at the top of your profile screen? Tiny, innocuous, and still a freakin' mystery. Ninety percent of my Facebook news feed today was devoted to people wondering the same thing: What are Snapchat trophies? If you have no idea what the heck I'm talking about, don't worry — neither does anybody else.

In fact, it took some serious sleuthing (i.e., lots of playing around on Snapchat) for me to begin to unravel the feature. My long-suffering sister received the brunt of my rainbow puke selfies in the process, and then some more, just because I felt like it. But after much research and at least a dozen videos in which I pretended to be Iron Man's robot assassin nemesis / love interest Ruby Rogue, I finally have some answers.

The trophy case could be part of Snapchat's attempts to "gamify" the app, which began earlier this year with the addition of user scores and emoji based on your ranking among your friends. And according to Business Insider, some users might even already be familiar with Snapchat trophies ... kind of. Back in August, Snapchat's update allowed some users to see their trophy cases, although the feature wasn't fully functional yet. With the current update, however, everyone can now access their trophy case. Hooray! Now let's get to the important stuff.

What the Heck Are Snapchat Trophies?

According to the International Business Times and a little of my own research, Snapchat trophies are little emoji rewards that you can unlock by completing various activities. Easy-peasy.

How Do I Get Them?

Unfortunately, we really don't know yet, because Snapchat hasn't released any official statements regarding the trophy case. Luckily, that's where my addiction to social media comes in! As you can see above, I have two trophies already — a fact that I am not proud of, by the way. If you press and hold the icons, a message pops up describing how you got that particular trophy. My two trophies are for sending a video Snap and reaching a score of 10,000.

How Do I See My Trophy Case?

To get to your trophy case, just pull up your profile screen, which you can access by clicking on the ghost in the top center of your screen when you first open the app. It should pull up a screen like the picture above. After that, just click on the trophy icon in the top middle, and voila! You're at your trophy case. But first, a word of warning: You may or may not like how many trophies you've already accumulated. My trophy case is probably indicative that I need to get outside more.

... Or I could just send more Ruby Rogue selfies. You know, like an adult.

Images: Claire Warner/Bustle (3)