Keeping it BeReal

April 12, 2022 9:04 AM

You can't lurk, you can't choose when to post, there are no filters. And it is Gen Z's new favourite social media app. Is BeReal the future of social media, or just this year's Clubhouse?

Axios seems to think it is a thing. Vice is not exactly raving about it. And of course, when and how is Meta going to copy it.

posted by Megami (41 comments total)

I'll give them this much, it's much more popular than Truth Social.
posted by box at 9:09 AM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

So... pictures of the inside of my pockets and/or the ceiling of my bedroom (where my phone charges), I guess? Or, if it's late at night, me in my CPAP staring at Marvel Puzzle Quest while I try to fall asleep.

BeReal seems to be assuming my life is a lot more interesting than it is.
posted by Scattercat at 9:12 AM on April 12, 2022 [9 favorites]

I don't even know you and I am assured that your life is more interesting than anyone can conceive of

you are a composite of so many atoms, converging and diverging constantly

you are a marvel
posted by elkevelvet at 9:15 AM on April 12, 2022 [39 favorites]

Marvel Puzzle Quest, yes.
posted by Scattercat at 9:16 AM on April 12, 2022 [35 favorites]

Can't wait for the follow up article:

When keeping it BeReal goes wrong...
posted by Sphinx at 9:20 AM on April 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

this is turbofucked
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:32 AM on April 12, 2022 [13 favorites]

If you want pictures of the future, imagine your phone snapping a human face— forever.
posted by chavenet at 9:35 AM on April 12, 2022 [12 favorites]

Interesting idea. As a conceptual art project, I love it. As a thing that I'd actually want to use more than once, I'll pass. This is something that would be a great one-off experiment launched at a late-night museum party.
posted by eotvos at 9:37 AM on April 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

What was the elevator pitch for automating social spot checks? 'Uber, but for bullying and grooming?'
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:37 AM on April 12, 2022 [8 favorites]

I like the idea that you only interact with it once a day, like Wordle (as mentioned in the Axios article) That part at least feels healthier.
posted by gwint at 9:38 AM on April 12, 2022 [6 favorites]

Anyone actually using the app want to comment? Judging from the comments above, you're not allowed on the lawn, but maybe you could just shout your answers from the sidewalk.
posted by gwint at 9:39 AM on April 12, 2022 [15 favorites]

SIDEWALK?!? OVER MY DEAD FIREWALL
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:43 AM on April 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

Our memories emphasize the unusual, the interesting, the emotionally intense, much more than all the routine stuff in between. And for the most part, that's what we want to take photos of, and share.

This seems to work the opposite way: take random photographs of when you're bored and killing time on your phone, and then keep those for posterity and show them to everyone.
posted by Foosnark at 9:43 AM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I used it for a little while last year. It was kinda interesting, mainly because most BeReal users at the time were European and so I got a window (albeit a small one) into ordinary life in Europe. But I got bored with it and ended up uninstalling it. Maybe if there were people I knew on the app? But then why would I bother with scrambling to take a selfie at a certain time every day, as opposed to a group chat?
posted by Cash4Lead at 9:46 AM on April 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

The buzzy app creates a new type of social media dystopia where it looks like no one ever does anything interesting.


LOL at Vice assuming that most people are actually doing interesting things all the time

Methinks someone's been believing the sosh meeds hype for a bit too long.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:48 AM on April 12, 2022 [7 favorites]

Ok, but how soon before they leverage their supposed authenticity and begin offering influencers double-secret paid subscriptions which give them more control of when pictures get taken? Those subscriptions wouldn't even have to be so secret or limited to influencers assuming they followed the loot box / pay-to-play model. Want to guarantee that you get buzzed to take a photo when you're parasailing? $5 Paypal.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:56 AM on April 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

sosh meeds

I cannot wait to use that phrase and annoy the absolute hell out of some youngster!
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:58 AM on April 12, 2022 [18 favorites]

There’s creativity under constraint, and then there’s constraint.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:00 AM on April 12, 2022 [11 favorites]

I would like to buy two very basic smart phones and install this on both. Then set them up on tripods, facing each other, about two feet apart, with a mirror behind each, just big enough to fill the screen shots.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 10:07 AM on April 12, 2022 [15 favorites]

Oh cool it’s like a parole officer randomly checking in. That’s the life I crave.
posted by rodlymight at 10:09 AM on April 12, 2022 [52 favorites]

It's a really interesting idea & I'd be game to try it. My family skews older & never adapted to the thing where the phone is on your person at all times and everyone puts what they're thinking about into the group chat (unlike me, who completely learned social communication from sitting around in msn messenger & aim all day with my internet friends). They were never that great at figuring out how to talk to each other remotely, even on zoom and even on the phone. I would try anything I thought might work to connect with them.
posted by bleep at 10:10 AM on April 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

So now wannabe influencers will sit around being perfectly made up and within easy reach of excellent lighting at all hours of the day. Boy, that sounds like an improvement.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:14 AM on April 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

Is BeReal the future of social media, or just this year's Clubhouse?

I like how this question has been constructed to get around Betteridge's law of headlines' obvious and correct answer of "no".
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:17 AM on April 12, 2022 [13 favorites]

I'm joining, mainly to fuck up their demos with an Xer.

linky
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 10:20 AM on April 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

Seems to be converging to just filming yourself, but so far at a very low frame rate.
posted by ctmf at 11:17 AM on April 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

Is BeReal the future of social media, or just this year's Clubhouse?

Which reminds me - I downloaded Clubhouse to see what the ruckus was about, and never actually got around to using it at all.

I'll skip the install step this time and save me some time.
posted by DreamerFi at 11:21 AM on April 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

BeBest
posted by kirkaracha at 11:23 AM on April 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

Bebo
posted by box at 12:08 PM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

It’s the Yo for the twenties!
posted by migurski at 12:15 PM on April 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

This is what happens when we cut down on Magazine subscriptions for kids, resulting in McKenna no longer getting her 15 minutes of fame for sending in that picture and/or letter for Teen! magazine?
posted by Nanukthedog at 12:33 PM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Downloaded, posted, accepted a few friend requests & scrolled through others' posts. Tentatively, although there are a few issues that give me pause, I think it's great.

The "anti-Instagram" appellation seems appropriate, and if I end up staying on it, this will likely be why. There's something comforting about seeing photo after photo of people going about their lives, without feeling the need (or having the opportunity) to edit the shit out of themselves, either in terms of content or presentation. Most people pose a little, but many people don't. The result reminds me of how candid self-portrait photos used to look before we developed the art of the selfie (which I don't consider to be an inherently negative thing, just different, but also extremely pervasive.) More like the kind of pics people take with a cheap disposable camera. There are no tags and no way that I can see to promote individual posts. Discovery is a bit awkward if you don't already know someone, but I don't hate it. The Vice article's claim that you get "shamed" for not posting right away seems overstated; the app just notes at the top corner of the photo how many minutes late you've posted and that's it. I'm not sure if there is a limit to how late you can post, so theoretically you could go get into full makeup and wardrobe and location and lighting, but... it doesn't look like people do that, currently. I hope they continue not to. It might be nice if users could select, say, a two hour window during which they get their notification to post, so that they could time it for an outing or event. But the spontaneity is part of what I like of what I've seen so far, so I'm not too eager for that to change. I can definitely see value in its use as a lower-stakes way of checking in with friends and family as bleep mentions.

On the downside... it's 2022 and no app, but especially not one that's being adopted by vast droves of teenagers, should assume you want to share location data by default or nudge you to allow it to search your contacts. The privacy controls feel irresponsibly minimal: you can turn off location, keep posts friends-only, report inappropriate content (no idea how/when this is reviewed and whether you get an update), and block individual accounts. The location radius needs to be about 20 times larger-- posts from users in my city, visible to anyone scrolling through the Discovery feed, appeared to have about a 1-2 mile radius. I flagged two sexualized photos for review and am wondering how prepared the team really is for the massive amount of moderation their app will need as it grows more popular here in the US.

In short, plenty of potential for small moments of connection and particular appeal for those who find beauty in the mundane.
posted by notquitemaryann at 1:59 PM on April 12, 2022 [7 favorites]

It’s the Yo for the twenties!

BeRealTaxi is going to be a very bizarre combination.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:38 PM on April 12, 2022

Many of my friends communicate throughout the day by snapchatting casual, unedited pics of their chin or knee or the floor or whatever with text overlaid, so this seems like a pretty natural extension to me. The “once a day” thing is cool, too.

But I totally agree about the moderation/privacy worries. :(

It’s the Yo for the twenties!

lmao I reinstalled Yo a couple years ago just for the memes and like... I don’t hate it? Some part of me feels like it could be a way to remind your friends that you’re thinking of them occasionally without Having a Conversation. A friendlier version of the fb poke (which always felt annoying to me).
posted by chaiyai at 4:00 PM on April 12, 2022

I kinda like this. I think it encourages you to go out and do things so you'll have something interesting to share, but not in the obsessive way where you can't enjoy the what you're doing bc you're too worried about how to capture it for social media. Either the notice comes while you're out or it doesn't. I do think if this catches on, it'll favor people without jobs who can just bum around beautiful scenery all day, but instagram does that now anyway.

Anything is great when it's new and only the cool people are there, notquitemaryann is right that the downside comes when more people come in and those people are lame, scammers, girfters, etc.

But also, I can't use it because I work a job where I can't randomly stop what I'm doing to take a picture (high school teacher). If you could set a window of time, like for instance only in the evenings after work, when you're available for this thing it would be much better. I also wouldn't use this because I already don't care about the mundane things post about they day on twitter or facebook LOL, like I come on the internet to talk about books and such. It doesn't seem like a bad thing for people who just talk about nothing online all day already though.
posted by subdee at 5:33 PM on April 12, 2022

This app sounds like a slight variation on those pandemic-era apps that countries required people who were quarantined to use.
posted by meowzilla at 6:35 PM on April 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

Someone in the discord server is suggesting a version where you must share whatever browser tag you currently have open... That version I could get behind.
posted by subdee at 7:08 PM on April 12, 2022

Anything is great when it's new and only the cool people are there

I would posit that no one's actually cool. Coolness is a quality that only exists because social media allows people to present a highly curated version of themselves to the world. This has been the case with Instagram accounts, Facebook profiles, Twitter feeds, blogs, personal websites...heck, even .plan files!

The only way to be cool online is to act cool, and that leads to the social media death spiral of everyone presenting increasingly artificial representations of themselves so that they can compare favorably with everyone else's increasingly artificial representations of themselves. BeReal might have found some mechanical constraint which has turned back the clock for now, but it won't be long before people figure out how to game it. Nature will find a way.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:45 AM on April 13, 2022

Coolness is a quality that only exists because social media allows people to present a highly curated version of themselves to the world.

I hate to break this to you but coolness predates social media by quite a bit.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 6:26 AM on April 13, 2022 [8 favorites]

They should have combined the idea with Yo, allowing the users to vlog one 1-second clip a day of themselves only saying “Yo!” at a random time when prompted to by the app, for extra pointlessness.

As Ned Smanks said, “stupid people think it's cool, smart people think it's funny, also cool”.
posted by acb at 8:07 AM on April 13, 2022

Nature will find a way.

or with more verisimilitude
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:46 AM on April 13, 2022

I liked this idea so I signed up, but my pictures were the front-facing camera + whatever the selfie/back-facing camera captured, as an inset. Which kind of spoils the whole thing for me - I want to either take a selfie, or take a picture of a thing, not both at once.
posted by joannemerriam at 7:18 AM on April 14, 2022