Can BeReal Deliver On Its Promise?

We’re seeing the rise of more authentic social media—apps that focus more on the present, and less on curating a flawless online persona for future benefit. I first wrote about BeReal on June 2, 2021 after my Paris-based internet friend Marie Dolle sent me a Twitter DM about how BeReal was spreading like wildfire across Paris. Twelve months later, ... See more

Instagram disruptors like BeReal, Poparazzi, Dispo, and Locket have promised a more authentic, less curated reality. But even authenticity, over time, becomes performative; “photo dumps” become carefully-crafted compilations of artsy images that show us in a good light (“Look how this blurry photo implies I’m too busy having fun to take non-blurry ... See more

In the end, to move through the world is to experience encounters that constantly pass us by, and to brush up against moments that we are not able to save other than as an unreliable memory. The increasing popularity of apps like BeReal that capture those moments—rather than try to contain and display them—seems to reflect an embrace of life’s flee... See more

“We specifically designed the experience to move against hierarchy in many different ways. There are no likes, no followers. It isn’t an infinite scroll. There are no profiles, so there’s no way to see those types of statistics,” says head of design Annika Hansteen-Izora. “What does it look like if you have a social media app that isn’t working wit... See more

Twitter let us tweet about the show before anyone else. Instagram lets us post a photo from the undiscovered holiday spot. But these techniques had two issues. First, they required a certain degree of obnoxious spamminess. For someone to notice your coolness, you had to broadcast it to everybody, and, well, that’s not that cool. Second, for the mos... See more