Me, apparently not being real.
As a social media-using 20-something year old living in this century—but not as part of the Gen Z generation—I too, would roll my eyes at the increasingly aging millennials who pride themselves on not using social media and engaging in the natural wonders of “going outside”. Yes, of course, we all acknowledge that in an ideal world, none of us would be addicted to our phones—instead, spending our weekends drinking vegetable smoothies, going on hikes, and interacting with our loved ones in person. But this is not the world we live in. We live in 2022’s real world, in which completely abstaining from an online presence is socially equivalent to being an alienated recluse. So yes, in large part, I understand that those ‘holier than thou’ mental health professionals telling us to decrease screen time and up our physical activity can sound like annoying grandmothers.
We all have an innate human need to be understood, to be seen, to connect. A couple of decades ago, a majority of Americans sought comfort for this need in their spouses and close-knit friend circles. As time has gone on, and society has shifted away from the sole idea of a nuclear family, people’s desire to connect has also expanded beyond just the closest people in our lives to colleagues, the people living near us, friends of friends and acquaintances we may have just met in passing. Putting our life on display not only projects a certain persona that we want to convince others we authentically are — in 2022, it now largely informs who we are to even ourselves, based on what we choose to share, who we choose to follow, and how much (or little) we choose to say.
Even not saying something is saying something. You decided not to post for a couple of months — because you genuinely forgot or did not care enough — and you’re labeled mysterious and elusive. You decided not to share an infographic about the latest socio-political issue that everyone is talking about? You must not care about those innocent people, you heartless monster. It seems that the only way to have complete control over our online presence is by abstaining from social media entirely, or being consistently on top of it, every single day.
But it’s exhausting. Spending 20 minutes angling our french toast plate next to the silverware at brunch in order to get the perfect picture starts to take its toll the hundredth time. Editing the perfect picture of you and your hubby smiling on vacation when in reality, you’re in separate rooms fuming over a recent argument, starts to feel pointless when we’re all consciously participating in the “who can fake it best” game. People are starting to get tired of keeping up the facade. They’re beginning to poke fun at it, pulling back the curtain just enough to show a peak at their authenticity, without actually deleting social media altogether.
Bella Hadid is now posting cute-ugly photos of herself crying, selfies in which her normally-perfect cheekbones are flushed and puffy, her eyes red, and her face dripping with tears — in a less-than-subtle attempt to show us that she, too, has bad days. Kendall Jenner is now creating sound baths accompanied by neat captions about overcoming anxiety in most videos on her feed. It turns out even models are capable of thought and emotion. Wow. Thanks for clearing that up, Insta.
We like the picture of our friend posting the latest Bell Hooks book even though we know they’ve probably never gotten past the first chapter; the picture was taken, and the paperback was back to collecting dust on the shelf. Healthy Harriet posts delicious looking salads to her dedicated “clean eating” influencer page, but what we’re not seeing posted are the weekly McDonalds burgers that are Ubered to her home on her cheat day.
I, personally, don’t mind the fakeness. Real life can be depressing enough. I want to go onto Instagram to see beautiful beaches, carefully curated cooking videos, and cute cats for a boost of serotonin. I understand the sentiment, but I do not need to see a 10-image gallery of you bursting into tears with your cheeks flushed. I’ll be doing that silently in my bedroom at exactly 10:57 p.m. tonight, and do not need an early reminder, thank you very much.
Posting ugly and less-than-flattering pictures is now part of the charm. People are including relatable memes in their 10-picture Instagram gallery posts, instead of half a dozen posed and edited photos. It’s nice, in a way, that we’ve all breathed a collective sigh of relief and agreed to be just a bit more of our actual selves on the Gram. Or maybe, I’m just getting older? Only time will tell.
But, as our silly little 21st-century minds do, once we get a little taste of authenticity, we want more. It’s not enough to just post one crying selfie a week. We want realness, right now, all the time. How do we achieve that? Perhaps by putting ourselves out there more? Having more discussions, with the people we love, in the real world, interacting with nature? Is that the way?
No. No, the people said. We want to be authentic, but we also don’t want to spend any less time on our phones. We’d like to switch to a different app.
Enter BeReal.
Every day at a different time, everyone is notified simultaneously to capture and share a photo in two minutes. 120 seconds; an “authenticity countdown”, if you will. However, if you don’t happen to see the notification within the two minutes — say, if you were showering, cooking, driving, exercising, working out, or any other part of a human being’s day to day — your BeReal is labelled late. So, if you don’t post the photo within that time frame, your BeReal post will have a "late" timestamp on it and your friends will get notified that you just posted late. Excuse me? This doesn’t feel like a place fostering people to be their most authentic selves. It feels more like the girl who gossiped about me in high school is now keeping public tabs on me, and if I don’t comply; immediate humiliation.
Maybe I sound like someone old and out of touch, but I definitely can’t be the only person who feels this way. I have my reasons for not wanting to download BeReal (Or for the matter, any other app. Instagram is my only form of social media, unless being an active Yelper counts. Yes, I’m an ex-Yelp review writer. Go ahead, judge me. )
The irony of an app being named “BeReal”, when using it requires you to spend more time on your phone—the opposite of engaging with the real world—might be lost on a generation that sees no escape from an endless cycle of content duplicated on TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
For the record, for the BeReal activists who hail the app for breaking down the barriers of “fakeness” present on Instagram — I’m confused. Are people actually going on Instagram looking for authenticity? I thought we were all subconsciously subscribing to the same idea that these profiles were glorified, shiny versions of people in our life.
I don’t think everyone should delete BeReal. If it’s giving you something you crave, keep it. But, I do hope users can see past the ridiculously phony marketing. Your friends for real. The app states authoritatively in its description. Really? Not another social network. Now, that’s just false. A social network is defined as a dedicated website or other application which enables users to communicate with each other by posting information, comments, messages, images. BeReal is an app where you share a photo a day of your life to your selected friends. I’ll just leave that there. You do the math. Also, who’s writing BeReal’s descriptions on the AppStore?
I’m no evangelist that is trying to save the world from the “horrors” of social media. Nor am I smarter or know more than anyone who might be reading this article. I, too, often post too much of my life on Instagram or spend 20 minutes writing a caption or crafting a post. But when I open Instagram, I know exactly what I’m signing up for. There’s no hiding it’s addictive nature—I mean, there was the most popular Netflix documentary, The Social Network, viewed by over 100 million people, that proved, without a doubt, that “our brains are being manipulated and even rewired by algorithms that are designed to get our attention and make us buy things, including buying into distorted ideas about the world, ourselves, and each other,” as Nell Minnow writes. I know all of this and continue to use Instagram, but with serious restrictions on when I use it, what I post, who I follow, what I look at, and most importantly, what I don’t post.
Overall, I’m not saying I’m sick of social media. What I am sick of, is greedy, technical business people looking to profit off of one of the few things remaining in society that isn’t yet commodified — our innate, human need to connect; to have a rich inner circle of friends who knows the softest, most vulnerable sides of ourselves that we hide from the outer world. I don’t want to connect with my old college friend on BeReal so that we can “be more connected”. I’d rather commit to sending each other a voice message once a week telling each other about the best and worst parts of our week. Or something we saw that made us laugh or smile. That point of connection is much more meaningful to me than a picture of you in bed with Cheez-Its. I personally believe that the only person that should see me snacking on chips in bed is my mom and my boyfriend. Hey, call me old fashioned.
It could be true that people are keeping up with their friends equally well through meaningful discussions and interactions on social media. But oftentimes, I find that it’s either one or the other. We missed our FaceTime call last week? It’s cool, I still feel like we’re connected because you replied to my Instagram story the other day. One is slowly starting to take the place of the other. If we only have time to do one, I’d take the phone calls, voice messages—even just texts—over a BeReal any day.
If you’re wondering what your friends are doing on a Tuesday at 2 p.m. —without the “show” that’s put out on Instagram—just make plans to meet up with them for lunch. If that’s not something you would do, then perhaps reconsider why they’re deemed your “close” friend anyway. Isn’t that the point of the app? In reality, when you’re being the most real, there’s probably no traces of it existing anywhere on the Internet. You want to be real? Just go outside.
And yes, I’m fully aware that makes me sound like your grandmother.
Me, being real?