BeReal

On July 4th, 2022, I made my first post to BeReal, a fledgling social media app with a delightfully refreshing premise: each day at a random time you–along with all your friends–get a notification telling you that you have 2 minutes to post a picture–from both your front and back cameras–of whatever it is you’re doing at that moment. Once you post, you can scroll through a feed of what your friends posted that day and optionally react to posts with a reaction selfie. That was the whole app–at the time at least. You couldn’t post again, you couldn’t scroll through previous days’ posts, and you couldn’t get sucked into an endless stream of content from strangers and bots.

In the months following its launch, BeReal rode the hype train pretty hard, even making an appearance in an SNL sketch. I think at its peak, roughly half of the 40 or so friends I had on there would post each day.

Although the premise sounded simple—and perhaps even a bit boring—it started to resonate with me more and more with each “⚠️ It’s time to BeReal!” notification. In contrast with all the ways that traditional social media was hijacking my focus and filling my consciousness with the happenings of hundreds of people I hadn’t talked to in years, BeReal seemed to strike an infinitely better balance.

Realness. The need (or at least encouragement) to post right away at a random time disincentivizes (or makes impossible) excessive curation, editing, or filters. I’ve seen BeReals of friends doing everything from making food to brushing their teeth to sitting on the toilet. It’s very raw, a little silly, and incredibly humanizing. The flip side of this is that you probably don’t want to see content that real from all the people you have on the friends list on other apps like Instagram. In my view that’s the point though (which, sadly, I think a lot of people missed–or at least didn’t appreciate as much). The app’s core premise reminds you that you’re a human with limited social capacity.

Doubles as a photo journal. Another popular app category has been “one photo a day” journaling apps, e.g. 1SE. I love the concept and have tried them, but I always fell off because it lacked the social motivation and excitement. Although it felt like it paid off when I got to make monthly recaps, the time in between started to feel like work. With BeReal’s “Memories” feature that shows you all your past BeReals in a scrollable calendar, you mostly get that for free. In fact, scrolling through my “Memories” tab is exactly how I convinced Mat to get back on BeReal after being off it for so long (unfortunately, it didn’t last… Mat sadly doesn’t share my love for BeReal, at least at the same level).

Stay connected, but not too connected. I’m sure almost everyone in my generation (and even plus or minus a few generations) has gone through the experience of enjoying Instagram, getting a little hooked for their own good, deleting it for a while, then repeating. Given that apps like Instagram are designed to sap every last ounce of our attention so it can be converted to ad revenue, this isn’t surprising. BeReal somehow managed to escape that problem. Using it, I felt more connected to my close friends than ever (at least until people started falling off) without ever feeling hooked.

For the longest time, it didn’t even have ads. I still don’t really understand how they’ve managed to not go under, especially considering how expensive it must be to host so many images and serve such spiky traffic daily.

BeReal has evolved a lot of its original constraints over the years. For example, you can now post up to five times a day if you post on time and, alas, there is now a stream of content from strangers (although I find it not as addictively designed as Instagram). Despite that, I think the original spirit of the platform persists. To me, BeReal still represents a unique vision of social media that provides meaningful connection while respecting our natural social and psychological limits as humans. In a landscape of apps that are designed like slot machines and users that are used to playing them, it faces an uphill battle for survival. Perhaps as AI takes over the internet as we know it, we’ll see a resurgence of this kind of social media platform centered around human limitations—as well as entirely new ones like these.

If it wasn’t already clear, the fact that BeReal has fallen so far from its glory days makes me a bit sad. I don’t wish all 400 or so of my Instagram followers were on there, but I do miss seeing the raw, everyday snapshots of my closest friends’ lives. These days, I only see five or so others in my BeReal feed, though I’ve managed to convince a few folks to come back recently. Maybe this blog post will convince a few more. Either way, I’ll be there, posting daily, even if just for my own “Memories” log.

I give BeReal a 5/5.