<p>Snapchat. Poke. And now Wickr. Self-destructing messages are here to stay. The thing is, they've been around forever. Why has this kind of communication captured our smartphones?</p><p>You'd have to have been living under a rock for the last few months to know nothing about the recent surge in ephemeral messaging that seems to have taken hold. Whatever you might say about the likes of Snapchat or even what has already been said about Facebook's Poke there is no denying that apps that stress impermanent communication among its users have captured something at the moment. Now that Wickr, a new, security-focused messaging app, has come into the fray, it's even more clear that something new is going on here.</p><p>What's remarkable about this trend is that we've had this particular notion of self-destructing communication for some time, both in media and in real life. Only you had to be super spy to make use of it.</p><p>But most of us can't claim to be secret agents. So why has this not-exactly-futuristic mode of technology caught on so fiercely? What do we suddenly have to hide?Frictionless intimacy</p><p><a href="http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/this-message-will-self-destruct-why-were-obsessed-with-ephemeral-messaging/">Keep reading...</a></p>