BeReal: it’s not me, it’s you. You were my favorite social media app… until you weren’t. It’s been real, but I need to stop faking it and say goodbye.
Let me explain. If you’ve never stopped talking in the middle of a sentence or interrupted a meal to take a front-and-back-camera picture, here’s your meet cute with BeReal:
BeReal presents itself as the antithesis to perfectly-polished, phony social media platforms: according to its website, BeReal seeks to showcase meaningful connections, spontaneous moments, and authentic real life. At a random time each day, BeReal sends out a notification to users and instructs them to take a photo with their front and back cameras. This way, users can catch candid moments in real-time from their friends and family members.
In a world of fake social media apps, BeReal seemed to be a catch. It checked off all of my boxes: sweet, silly, and simple. I was deep in the throes of my BeReal honeymoon phase. Each day, I awaited the moment it was “time to BeReal.”
And for a full year, BeReal was there for me, for better or for worse. As far as I was concerned, it was til death do us part for BeReal and me. Until I began feeling a pang of dread each time my phone buzzed.
“Ugh, I’m not doing anything interesting right now,” I remember constantly thinking. “I’m seeing friends later, I’ll do it then.”
Even though I knew it was going against the entire point of the app, I would ignore my BeReal notification and wait hours until I felt I was doing something worth posting. I finally realized how ridiculous the whole thing was during finals season last quarter; I spent a good 2 minutes rearranging my tabs and angling my iced coffee to take the “effortless” study sesh BeReal. It was all suuuuper real, obviously.
I only got more icked out with the addition of a celebrity-centered feed called RealPeople. While the concept of spotlighting candid moments from influencers and other public figures is intriguing, it contradicts everything that had attracted me towards BeReal in the first place. BeReal was supposed to be an online escape to bond with a smaller circle of friends. Now, I have just another place to watch celebrities try to be relatable (and don’t even get me started on the irony of most of the above celeb BeReals being late).
BeReal had pulled off the ultimate catfish: I had been male-manipulated by a mobile app. I found myself feeling just as pressured to control my online persona, even if it was within a space supposedly dedicated to being 100% yourself. In short, I had fallen out of love with BeReal.
That’s not to say that I’m against BeReal as a whole. On the contrary, I think some people find genuine joy in taking on-time BeReals each day. I still love looking back at my BeReals and being able to identify what I was doing on random days throughout the year.
But if you’re like me and are getting time stamps of “7 hours late” on your BeReals, it could be time to reconsider how you’re using BeReal. Is BeReal actually bringing a sense of authenticity to your social media use? Or is it weighing you down? Do you like posting late to capture the highlights of each day? Or are you just trying to impress someone else?
Whatever your answer is, I hope you’ve had a moment to actually be real with yourself (no pun intended). As for me, I feel so much lighter since dumping BeReal in January of this year (cue “Feather” by Sabrina Carpenter). But I will still happily freeze-frame as you retake yours for the third time.