BeReal, a French app by Alexis Barreyat, is a unique app that blew up relatively quickly two years after its initial release.
Once a day, at a random time, everybody who has the app on their phone will receive a notification saying, “two min to capture a BeReal and see what your friends are up to!” On the app, you take a picture from both your front and back cameras. If you do not do it in time, it will be considered “late” and everyone who is friends with you is notified about it.
So what made such an interesting idea blow up so quickly? It is the fact that it is so original. When you first download the app and make an account, you will get the option to add your friends off of your contacts, mutual friends or people who are local to you. This makes it pretty difficult to have a “popular” post.
The process of people posting at random times of the day gives people the opportunity to show the real environment they are surrounded by every day. Also, not being able to use filters in the app gets rid of the false influencer life that has populated the media as well as getting rid of any judgment. If someone decides to not post that day, they do not get to see anyone else's BeReal from that day which means they miss out on the lives of their friends.
Despite it coming out back in 2020, it did not get popular until this year. It began in France, where some college students liked the idea. They spread it to their friends and eventually this led to it growing in popularity around the world, being one of the biggest social media apps to be downloaded in 2022. That includes MJHS. Before this, everyone else was busy on Instagram and Tiktok, which meant BeReal did not have much room for the spotlight. Now, it is still popular throughout the school and the globe.
BeReal is a place where people can take pictures at random points throughout the day. Image by Canva.
When a few MJHS students who use the app were interviewed about why they liked BeReal, there were many different reasons why they liked it.
Senior stated, “I like BeReal because of the social aspect and the amount of pure interactions.”
“I like it because I can see what all of my friends are up to,” Talyna Zibuda ('24) commented, “and the concept of how it takes a picture of the front and back camera which is cool.”
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