A group of friends and I are sitting at brunch when one of them exclaims, “Oh, it’s BeReal time!” I watch, perplexed, as people crowd around him to be in a selfie. Confusingly, some people pose in front of him, too. “Wait, can we retake it?” says one friend after seeing the picture. A couple retakes later, the picture is uploaded on an app called BeReal. I ask my friend what that is. “So basically everyone gets a notification at a random time of the day and you have to take and post a picture of yourself within two minutes. And like you can’t fake it because it tells people how many times you retook the picture and stuff. It’s really fun.”
Fun is exactly how I would describe it as well. Upon first hearing the description, I was sold by the idea of a low-stakes, “authentic” social media app. The app takes a picture with the front and the back camera. You can only see your friend’s posts if you post on time. And you also get an archive of all your BeReal posts so that you have a random memory from each day. It is somewhere at the intersection of Snapchat and Instagram but also novel and distinctive in its own way. Something fresh, finally! And then I took a second to think critically.
My generation contains the first “digital natives,” meaning people who basically grew up with digital technology and the Internet. We tend not to question the tools we grew up with. After all, our predecessors didn’t squint their eyes at the first automobiles and think, “Wait, what will happen to the air quality?” It seems that “Gen-Z” is generally aware of the typical criticisms of our digital tools: lack of data privacy, declining mental health, decreased attention spans, information overload, etc. But what are we to DO about that? We’re in way too deep to boycott our smartphones. And, to be frank, we’re tired… and addicted. The conveniences outweigh the seemingly abstract downsides. Interestingly, most of the people in my circle tend to not care about privacy—not because it’s an invalid concern but because “eh, they have our data anyway.” This hopeless attitude is one I held as well. Until I realized that the Internet is barely 30 years old and there is so much potential to change it for the better. This change starts with some criticism.
Even as I write this piece, I am tempted to download BeReal to stay connected with friends and have an archive of pictures of every. single. day. When you feel this rush of excitement with technology, you must question it. And you’ll realize that the way they’re getting you is kind of fucked up. I have three main contentions about BeReal. First, it is not actually more “real” and there is no authentic social media. Second, it primes us for mass behavior control (I know it sounds crazy dystopian but stay with me). And third, it promotes memory hoarding.
What’s this Authenticity thing?
BeReal has a 4.8 star rating on the App Store and most of the positive reviews have to do with how the app is authentic and great for a close circle of friends. Very finsta-esque. One review reads: “This app is great because it rebels against this guise of perfect lifestyles and aesthetics. You get a notification at any random point during the day and you’re encouraged to post within two minutes of receiving the notification. It gives a more realistic perspective of what your friends and acquaintances are actually doing on a daily basis and it feels so much more real.” The key thing to notice is that many of these reviews say “more real,” thereby placing realness on a relative scale. If we are to examine this scale of authenticity, we may place Instagram on the “faker” end, but how far is BeReal from it really? I always tell my friends that BeReal isn’t real; it just puts more constraints on how fake you can be. The app’s description reads: “BeReal is life, Real life, and this life is without filters.” Being “fake” isn’t just about filters. Angles, lighting, background—those are all things you can control with just a camera. I’ve observed friends use this app. In a group setting, everyone will pose for the picture. When alone, one may walk into a more pleasant setting to take the picture. My point is that manipulation is still happening, it’s just harder to do.
But let’s dig deeper into “authenticity.” We’re entering an age of meta-authenticity where everyone is curating themselves to be so effortlessly real that it is fake. And now, people are self-aware of this fakeness and referring to the awareness of that fake authenticity somehow distances you from the fakeness? (Ex. captioning my Instagram photo dump: “Is this casually aesthetic enough?”) We all know the typical “social media is fake" narrative. Yes, we grew up being able to manipulate our image and share the flashiest moments of our life, and now we are all trying to reach an unattainable standard of ourselves that only exists in pixels. Naturally, this causes a desire to turn around and be authentic, to have a niche, a personality. That desire for realness has morphed into self-commodification and curation. I remember in high school, I thought, everyone is trying so hard to be “different” that they all end up being the same. There’s this “zone of quirkiness” where you’re special and edgy enough but still palatable to the mainstream, and that’s what “authentic” has become. This combined with the hyper-labeling fueled by trend culture has led to an era where you cannot just be “a person with X, Y, Z interests” but rather must be “‘that girl’ who drinks matcha lattes and does yoga” or “an indie kid who wears baggy pants and probably skates” or “the cool, zen person who’s spiritual and has an astrology degree.” We are all a brand. Whether we like it or not, we are categorized and labeled.
The multidimensionality of humans is what makes us so unique as a species. Not to sound all John Green but there are infinities and nuances within us and these are dynamic. It’s sad that this essence is reduced to aesthetics and phases and trends. We are so busy chasing this thing called authenticity that might not even exist. The chase itself becomes inauthentic. And we are running on a hamster wheel trapped in a cycle of curation and rebranding. I’d like to add that humans can still be and still are nuanced and unique, and phases are totally normal to go through. But surveillance capitalism and social media has rewired us to act like products.
Mass Behavior Control AHHHH
This brings me to my second point: we are not consumers; we are products. Tech companies don’t make money off of how many skirts Shein sells. They make money off of how many people they can get to click on Shein ads. They make money off of you and your decisions. Now you may ask, “Well, who cares if my phone can predict what I want to buy? If anything, that’s more convenient!” That’s true. Getting targeted ads is meant to make your life more convenient. In fact, all sorts of technology is framed as a way to make your life more convenient. But there’s always a catch.
There’s something called the behavioral futures market, which Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff defines as “business customers with a commercial interest in knowing what we will do now, soon, and later.” This market is integral to a system called surveillance capitalism, “the unilateral claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data” (source). There is no longer a private human experience because everything you do will be recorded, tracked, categorized, and regurgitated into a trend or an ad or YouTube recommendation. So what does this have to do with behavior control?
What’s more powerful than predicting behavior is guiding it. Manipulating it. And that’s what advanced algorithms and technologies are beginning to do. It’s no longer about whether you will like a certain ad. The business paying for your data wants to guarantee that you will buy the product in that ad. Tons of little psychological nudges and design features can be implemented to make you do that. Regardless of whether you believe in free will or fate, I don’t think you imagined a line of computer code making your decisions for you.
Let’s tie this back to BeReal. Though it is not suggesting ads or doing anything menacing, it is getting thousands of people to pick up their phone, take a picture, and post it at any time the app decides. Think about that. I could have framed it as if I were writing a dystopian novel.
“The people of Sector Real value authenticity. Their gadgets request to surveil their presence and position at any time and then share that data with the rest of the Sector to ensure each citizen feels equal.” (Camera pans to an overhead view of hundreds of people stopping and taking a selfie at the same time.)
My point is, as long as a technology is framed as “fun” and “convenient,” most people will disregard the implications it entails. BeReal is essentially priming us for mass behavioral control. It’s letting companies know that if you market a tool in a way that’s palatable to humans, especially younger generations, you can mask many of the behind-the-scenes intentions of that technology. Right now, these tools may seem abstract or unthreatening, but they’re already more powerful than you think and they will only get stronger. This is why I urge people to become aware of how much of them is influenced by an algorithm. Sci-fi movies always showed cyborgs as physically half-human and half-robot. I’d argue that some people are cyborgs today with how much their mental system is wired into these algorithms and apps and biotracking gadgets.
Memory Hoarding
I don’t use Snapchat anymore, but I still cannot delete the app because it holds so many memories. It gives me an update of what I was doing one, two, three… five years ago on this exact day! A huge part of life is reminiscing and reflecting. During my most depressed times, it feels like I live life and then just forget it. Each day passes by and fades away, gone from memory. Looking back at old pictures makes me incredibly emotional, whether that emotion is joy or sadness or nostalgia. It’s hard to enjoy the happiness of the present, but it’s easy to recall the happiness of the past.
But never in human history have people been able to take as many pictures as they do now. And I often ask myself if it’s even natural to capture and remember this much. Before smartphones, most people just remembered the special moments in their lives—weddings, graduations, family outings. The rest of their time was just spent living in the present. This is why I have such a complex relationship with taking pictures. On one hand, they bring me so much relief and security that I have a past that I can recall and relive. On the other hand, I surrender my pictures to digital devices that exist separately from my brain, thereby diminishing my cognitive memory function and essentially letting those memories live outside of me. There’s something off about it, and I can’t exactly put my finger on what that is.
All this being said, I still take many pictures. In fact, I probably take more pictures and videos than anyone in my friend group. I don’t post them all, but I have an archive. I had this problem with journaling as well. I was an avid journaler for years, writing down my thoughts and feelings and recollections every single day. I imagined being 80 years old and having a bookshelf packed with journals of my life, with words describing every little detail that couldn’t be captured in just photos. But my relationship with journaling became toxic because if I missed a day of writing, I would be hit with bouts of guilt and fear. “I’ve just let a day, a week, a month of my life go! What was the point of it all if I won’t be able to remember?!”
When I travel with my family, I notice that my parents are more interested in taking a billion pictures in front of a monument instead of the actual monument itself. I’m afraid that this habit of capturing and archiving has the potential to take over our lives so much so that we are only thinking of the future photos possible and the past photos taken. It diminishes the value of everything that exists here and now. I also fear that the ability to store our memories elsewhere is decreasing our brain’s capacity to remember. I personally have to look through old photos to remember what I did a week or a month ago. And even when I do remember, the quality of my memories has decreased. A good, vivid memory entails more senses—sight, sound, touch, etc. Many of my own memories are just visual flashes.
I’m not saying that I’ve solved this problem or that I even know what the “problem” is. We live in the middle of this storm of innovation and we can’t really examine how it’s affecting us until we temporally distance ourselves from it. This is not some “I am holier than thou because I don’t use technology” piece. I use a lot of technology. Social media is a big part of my life. I am Gen Z and I’m not going to deny that. There are many times where I’ve thought the solution is to delete everything and “detox.” But I always come back. And that’s not my fault. The current day and age makes it impossible to live without these tools, and they’re not all bad! I am letting myself use technology and the Internet however I want, but doing it with awareness. It’s sort of like “intuitive eating,” where you eat anything you want but are mindful of how your body feels and reacts. You don’t have to be a social media addict and you don’t have to be off the grid. I encourage my generation to simply be critical and take back some control over their human experience. So this is not a call to delete BeReal. It’s a cool app, just not for the reasons they tell you it is.
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