What is BeReal, the social that asks us to be ourselves
What is BeReal
Imagine receiving a notification on your phone and from that moment having two minutes to take and share a photo of yourself and one of where you are, whatever you are doing and without any filters. It is not a weird challenge of TikTok, but "just" the basic functioning of BeReal, a new social network that wants us to show ourselves as we really are.BeReal, according to its website, is "a new and unique way to find out who your friends really are in their daily life ”. The goal is to share real life, while it is happening, with friends. To some it may seem useless or pretentious, but BeReal seems to like more than some. Launched in 2020 by the French Alexis Barreyat and Kévin Perreauda, it has only gained great popularity in the last few months, especially within American university campuses.
Since December 2021 it has only grown: between January and February it was downloaded four million times and according to Apptopia, active users have grown 315% since the beginning of the year. By data.ai BeReal ranked fourth for downloads in the US, UK and its home country France in the first quarter of this year, following Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest. A total of 6.8 million people have used BeReal in the last two years, according to data from the intelligence firm of the mobile market Sensor Tower.
For the American news site Axios, BeReal is “the new favorite app of Gen Z "and it has already been defined as the anti-Instagram of social media for the fact that it prefers a few photos, but authentic ones, to series of images modified with all sorts of filters. “BeReal is life, real life, and real life has no filters”, it is no coincidence that the social media slogan reads.
So every day at a different time all users receive a push notification from the app, at which point they have to take a picture and post it. BeReal activates both the front and rear cameras of a user's phone and the two photos taken are uploaded at the same time. Unlike Instagram BeReal, as mentioned, does not offer the possibility of retouching photos: you must always be real. However, you can take a photo again before sharing it with friends or with all users. However, the app communicates to others how many times the photo has been repeated.
On BeReal, unlike all other social networks, you cannot hide and just observe others, but you must actively participate. You can't see friends' photos until you publish your own. People who want to take their photos of the day at a different time can do so, but the app also reports very clearly who posted the photos outside the two-minute time limit. Another novelty is the RealMoji function which forces users to react to a post by taking an expressive selfie, instead of touching the heart icon, the thumbs up or the laughing face.
Se BeReal is here to stay it is perhaps early to say, but as the Wall Street Journal notes, the limited and "true" approach of social media is an original alternative to apps like TikTok and Instagram, which instead invest to keep users as long as possible on the platform. BeReal “has a different tone: publish quickly, scroll and live your life. For some Gen Z users, this is a magnetic idea. ”
I tried BeReal, the Instagram alternative, and I don’t see the hype
Is this new app going to transform the way we use social media? (Picture: Getty/AFP/Metro.co.uk)BeReal is the new social media app that’s taken the the world by storm, currently occupying the number one spot on Apple’s ‘Top Free Apps’ in the UK.
The app even made an appearance on Elon Musk’s tweet complaining that Donald Trump’s Truth Social was overtaking Twitter and TikTok on the App Store.
The app claims to be ‘Not another social network’ by discouraging filters and capturing life as it is.
Everyday at a different time, BeReal simultaneously notifies its users to capture and share a photo — the catch is you only get two minutes to do it. So, obviously there’s no time to find the best angles, lighting or filter.
I decided to give the supposedly anti-Instagram app a go to see what the fuss was about.
As a self-confessed Insta addict, who spends three hours a day on average on the photo sharing app, I was open to checking out an app that promised no filters or curation.
My first disappointment was that nobody I knew was on it. So if you’re over 25 you might be hard pressed to find these ‘friends’ the app wants you to share your true self with.
BeReal’s simultaneous front and back camera feature would make sure you captured yourself in the moment (Picture: Anugraha Sundaravelu)‘2 min left to capture a BeReal and see what your friends are upto!’ prompted a notification on my home screen.
It was 10.23 am on a Thursday so I can safely assume most of my friends are at work, either from their homes or offices. What else would any twenty-something be doing on a weekday morning?
Nevertheless, I complied and uploaded a picture of my face and whatever was in front of me, which more often than not was, my laptop.
BeReal’s simultaneous front and back camera feature would make sure you captured yourself your immediate surroundings so people could see your authentic self.
If I learnt anything from spending two weeks on BeReal, it’s that I’m never away from my phone. Whenever the notification popped up, at whatever time of the day, I would faithfully answer the call as my phone was never out of my reach.
This did make me think about how much I depended on this device but did BeReal truly capture who who I was? I don’t think so.
When I looked through the ‘Memories’ section of the app, similar to Instagram’s story archive, what I saw was in contrast to the image of myself that I had in my head.
Looking through my Instagram and Snapchat stories over the same two weeks gave me a completely different version of my life (Picture: Anugraha Sundaravelu)While I saw myself as someone who loved her job, hit the gym often enough and had a happening-enough social life, BeReal told me I was a lonely workaholic with an unhealthy relationship with my laptop.
Most of the times I got the notification, I was at work; typing away on my laptop, on my bed, on the couch, at the office.
Save for the two days I went on holiday over Easter break, BeReal really pointed out the mundaneness of everyday life.
This is its biggest flaw in the concept of capturing your true self. When you don’t time it right, capturing random moments of your life can be just that — unremarkable.
I use my Instagram as a photo album of sorts, going back and looking at happy memories, surrounded by friends, by myself, on a beach, back home with my family.
Save for the two days I went on holiday over Easter break, BeReal really pointed out the mundaneness of everyday life (Picture: Anugraha Sundaravelu)Looking through my BeReal memories did not give me that joy. Just the feeling of an app that’s trying really hard to make a point. Yes, this was a notification to capture my life as it was but did I really want that?
I want to be able to revel in the good times and look back at my story archive with things that made me laugh and moments I wish I could relive.
Looking through my Instagram and Snapchat stories over the same two weeks gave me a completely different version of my life.
Unlike my BeReal memories with the gremlin version of myself hunched over a laptop, I saw proof of blurry nights out, aesthetic meals, beautiful sunsets, dogs I saw on the tube and even some vain but post-worthy selfies.
Unless they’re making a living from social media, people more or less do end up showcasing their life as it is on the existing apps, at least on their stories.
BeReal told me I was a lonely workaholic with an unhealthy relationship with my laptop (Picture: BeReal/Anugraha Sundaravelu)BeReal also has the option to share your unfiltered moment on other social media apps like Snapchat, Instagram or Twitter so the idea does not seem to be to switch off from those other words but add to it.
However, its best feature is the Discovery section where you can peek into people’s lives as they go about their day.
A surprising number of them are people like me with their laptops and messy rooms but there’s also people mid-haircut at the salon, in the middle of class and out with their friends.
There’s no aesthetics here, just a collection of badly-timed selfies and terrible angles. Still, BeReal might be on to something, especially with the Gen Z crowd.
But for people who grew up at the peak of social photo-sharing, this is likely something they can do without. Then again, maybe I don’t want to be rushed into taking a picture of myself in just two minutes.
Also, BeReal’s UI is still a bit wonky and doesn’t have the same ease of use that other social media apps do. Its unique features like reacting to a photo with a ‘Realmoji’ don’t feel as organic as just double-clicking to ‘like’.
In a post-Instagram world, this could be a star social media app but it remains to be seen if it can keep its growing user base and get them interested enough to stick around.
There’s a reason we like to curate our lives for friends and family to see on Instagram. We know when we’re in the middle of a good memory and try to capture it. For more spontaneous photo sharing, Snapchat is a close second option.
BeReal is less appealing to me because it doesn’t give me that dopamine rush that all the apps making money from my attention probably do. Maybe I’m just a well-trained monkey for that instant gratification loop that Big Tech has trained me for.
But I’ve taken a break from Instagram more than once and it’s something I know I can choose to do. It’s also nice to have the option to share what I want to and when.
At the end of the day it’s that choice that makes living our online lives an enjoyable experience.
Have you tried BeReal? Let us know what your experiences have been like in the comments below.
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