“One could argue that Instagram has already beat BeReal at its own game,” writes R.E. What’s most interesting to me about BeReal is how it’s timed both perfectly, and a little too late. There’s no direct messaging, so it can’t even moonlight as a dating app. (There’s a lost opportunity here to call them “MeMojis,” TBH.) And that’s about it. You can comment or react with “RealMojis,” which are basically selfie emojis. Right now, I have about 10 friends on the app, and there’s not a lot to do on it. But the long and short of it is that our brains are so attuned to the specifics of our online brands, that it is nearly impossible to have a social media experience that is in any way “authentic.” The closest I’ve ever come is having an Instagram account that is only for myself, and even this, I filter through the thought exercise: “But what if I ever wanted to make this public and my crush saw it?”īeReal’s greatest strength and weakness is that it’s boring. You could fill a New York Times bestselling book of essays on what it means to “be real,” online.
The idea is a spirited effort to create an anti-Instagram, filter-free space, where a curated life is impossible where instead of high-angle snapshots of your happy hour oysters, you post a photo of your filthy laptop keyboard. (A fact I only learned, unfortunately, weeks after downloading the app.) You can’t view anyone else’s post until you post yours, and after 24 hours, everything disappears, though you can access your own old posts. You can retake the photo, but users can see the number of times you do. “Don’t take it too seriously,” the app urges. You then have two minutes to take a photo (both front-facing and not) of what you’re doing in that moment. “It’s time to Be Real,” the app commands. After all, authenticity is in the embarrassingly sincere title: an app where the goal is to “be real.”Īt a different time each day, BeReal sends a notification urging you to post. Nevertheless, for BeReal, a French social media app that launched in December 2019 and has recently been gaining popularity, authenticity is its valiant goal - or at least, its selling point to investors. By this point, we know to be suspicious of an “authentic social media app,” which is, in fact, an oxymoron.
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