Cher Horowitz says that trying to find authenticity on a social network app is similar to trying to find meaning and purpose in a Pauly shore film. Yet that hasn’t stopped Silicon Valley from trying. Apps like VSCO, Cluster, We Heart It, and Dispo all aim to take the pressure off curating one’s flawlessly Valencia-hued Instagram grid in favor of a grittier and more real social media experience, as if there were such a thing.
Social media can be a very inauthentic experience. It relies on presenting a variety of expertly curated personalities to a small audience. Whether you’re posting latte art from your NOLA vacation or trying to craft the perfect Jordan Peterson quote tweet dunk for clout, there is a tacit understanding that you’re not behaving anything like your real self, because that version of you is far more boring than the one you put out online.
One app, however, is willing to bet that your real, authentic self — zits, raccoon eyes, flyaways and all — is a lot more interesting than you think. BeReal is a French photo-sharing platform that has a staggering valuation of $600,000,000. It combines Snapchat and Instagram stories, but with Snapchat’s ephemerality (you can only post once per day, which disappears after 24hrs) and the routineness of Snapchat. Because the app sends you notifications reminding you to post every day — and because you can’t see your friends’ posts without posting yourself — you’re basically required to post what you’re doing, regardless of whether it’s interesting or not, which means your feed tends to be full of a lot of poorly composed photos of laptop screens and swivel desks. The app requires you to post a selfie along with every photo. There are no editing tools or filters that can be used to improve that tired, staring TweetDeck face. The app’s rather ominous mission? To assist you “discover who your friends really are in their daily life,”According to its website. (BeReal declined to interview me, and instead directed me to a press pack, which I assume is their right for $600million.
BeReal could be seen as a major failure, like Yo or Cuddlr or Whisper or Lulu. It has survived despite being surrounded by zillowians who are tired of the Instagram-centric, hyper-FaceTuned aesthetics. “There’s a spontaneity about it which takes the edge off,”Joey Gingold (28), is a product manager for a parametric insurer firm. His first photo wasn’t particularly exciting — it was of a sidewalk he happened to be walking down when he received a notification reminding him to post — but then again, that’s kind of the point: As he puts it, BeReal provides a glimpse into the actual realities of its users, however mundane they may be, serving as a reminder to stop and appreciate the little things. “I have always thought that taking pictures is kind of a [reminder] to be ‘in the moment,’ even if it’s silly,”He said. “The notification BeReal sends is kind of a trigger to drop what you are doing and recognize the moment in a way.”
When I reached out to the company, they provided me with the following fact sheet: “Warning! Be-Real will challenge your creativity. BeReal is life, real life, and this life is without filters.”
I haven’t experienced similar moments of Zen clarity since I downloaded the app a few months ago. Mostly, the app has served to remind me how boring my everyday life is. Most of my photos show me in various positions, with my chin in the selfie shot in unflattering angles. What it did do, however, was serve as a reminder to me that other people’s lives are just as dull and non-photogenic as my own.
Because I am somewhat outside what I assume is BeReal’s target demo of terminally jaded, wide-leg-pants-wearing zoomers, I only have about six or seven friends on the app, but all of them were posting pretty much the same type of content I was: goofy, unposed midwork selfies; day trips to museum exhibits; and the occasional road-trip vista shot or two. It turned out to be a starker departure from my friends’ typical, hypercurated Instagram Stories than I had expected: a true authentic moment in time, however fleeting it may be, no snarky caption or sleek filter required. And it did feel voyeuristic in a way to peek into the lives of people I don’t even know particularly well: Even if they weren’t showing me anything they thought was interesting, I certainly thought otherwise.