If you ask anyone on Kenyon College’s campus about the social media app BeReal, they will absolutely know what you are talking about, and will likely have the app themselves. And if that wasn’t true earlier in this semester, it certainly is now that one of our campus’s fraternities, Delta Tau Delta, has hosted a party sponsored by BeReal.
For some background, BeReal is a relatively new social media platform that challenges the artificiality of social media culture. Each day, every BeReal user is sent a notification at the same time. This time varies from day to day and is meant to surprise users. The user, upon receiving the notification, has two minutes to open the app and snap two photos of whatever they’re doing at that time: one through their cell phone’s front camera, and one through its back camera. The photos are then posted. If this notification is missed, the BeReal can be posted late but will be marked as not posted on time. The idea is to “be real” with candid pictures. With the app’s unpredictable notification time every day, you can never plan to be doing something exciting. I, like many other students on Kenyon’s campus, downloaded the app with my friends back in February, and have had so much fun posting on it every day and looking at everyone else’s posts. I also love to use it as a sort of archive of my life; every now and then I’ll go back and look at my older posts and revisit happy memories.
My friends and I walked into our campus’s dining hall one day for lunch to be greeted by a table, on top of which laid a BeReal-branded tablecloth, an open laptop, and BeReal-branded phone grippers and rubber bracelets. Behind the table were brothers of Delta Tau Delta, or, as they’re known on our campus, “Delts.” They were promoting their all-campus party sponsored by the app. Being users of BeReal ourselves, my friends and I were stunned to see this display in the atrium of our dining hall. Why was BeReal sponsoring a party at our tiny school in the middle of nowhere? Soon, the Delts’ BeReal party was all anyone was talking about on campus.
Saturday, October 1 finally rolled around and our campus was abuzz with anticipation for the party. Delta Tau Delta had been tabling in Peirce Dining Hall all week, collecting students’ BeReal usernames to send to the company in exchange for funds to purchase supplies for the event. My friends and I dressed in black and white, perfectly on the party’s color-coded theme (to match the colors of the app, of course). We made the trek to the Delts’ “lodge,” a large building with a basement and an upstairs portion. Upstairs held the bar with BeReal-supplied beer, and downstairs was the DJ, flashing colored lights, and, unfortunately, some pretty nasty ceiling leaks. So many sweaty people were crammed in there that it quickly became difficult to move. It was seemingly a million degrees in this party, and my carefully blow-dried hair quickly became flat and drenched in sweat. Classy! Although I had a good time dancing with my friends when we had the room to do so, it definitely wasn’t my favorite all-campus party I’ve been to here at Kenyon. It was, however, the “realest” party I’ve been to, and my perception of the beloved app is forever marked by this event.