BeReal has gained astounding popularity in 2022. A French social media app released in 2020, developed by Alexis Barreyat and Kevin Perreau claims to prompt its 21 million users to showcase their unfiltered, mundane, and real lives. I think it does just that.
The app pushes a notification at a random time during the day and users have a two-minute window to post a picture from their front and back camera, capturing their current activity. You can only view the BeReal's of your friends if you post one and if you are late, your BeReal is branded with how late you are, mildly shaming you. Everything resets when the next notification is pushed. Only you are privy to your past BeReal's.
I will admit, the most attractive aspect of "yet another social media" was its novelty. But I have grown fond of it for multiple reasons. I believe it stands diametrically opposite to our current perception of social media. Spontaneously prompting a user to post strips away any forethought and calculation that existing platforms encourage under the pretense of engagement. Sub-par camera quality, the absence of filters, and the ephemerality of the posts add to its charm. All this while allowing avid users to stay updated, daily, on the mundanity their peers are enduring. How wonderfully bizarre!
We all persevere to let variation into our fundamentally prosaic lives. Dutiful living compounds its difficulty. By disallowing you to time your post, the app is forcing your hand, albeit gently, to showcase this reality. Today is Sunday, a day you have put aside for chores. You put on some soft rock, vacuum your room, light a scented candle, restock your refrigerator, take the trash out, and change the linen. Honorably completing these small acts of self-service, nothing extraordinary. However, your BeReal of the day, potentially showcasing this, is a badge you can brandish proudly. BeReal is undoubtedly normalizing pedestrian living, if not celebrating it.
With a plethora of social media platforms, all vying for your attention, BeReal sits quietly in the corner of your app drawer. Since all the people's mundanity you have subscribed to post at the same time, you can retire the app after spending a mere few minutes on it. Moreover, assume a friend posted the same image consecutively on an alternative platform; you would mute them in a heartbeat. However, on BeReal, this is precisely what you want to see! Perfection eludes even the most sincere but more importantly, novel ideas must continually evolve if they are to be diffused to the masses. A stronger indicator for late BeReal's would lend additional utility in discouraging this behavior. A variation of Apple's live photos for the posts would turn the experience more immersive. If users could cause an additional notification to their friends who haven't yet posted, it may further encourage posting.
The format of current social media platforms has forced content creators to become content generators as they are constantly battling "the algorithm." In the name of engagement, we are subjected to a barrage of content. Ironically, this not only further divides our attention but also pushes us further away from the actual creators. Whilst BeReal in its current avatar may not be the panacea, I believe it is an amelioration of the current condition. Strip the shame and BeReal.