Always-on authenticity: Challenging the BeReal ideal of “being real”

It’s time to be real

Summer 2022, the social media platform, BeReal, went viral claiming to be the first and only platform where users could truly express themselves (Rosenberg, 2022).

Unlike its competitors that rely on constant notifications, BeReal sends a single daily notification to users’ phones, alerting them that it’s “TIME TO BEREAL!” Each post consists of two simultaneous photographs: one capturing the user’s face (front-facing), and the other showcasing their surroundings (landscape). “Realers” have 2 minutes to capture a satisfying pose and an appealing backdrop, and the app offers no filters or editing tools for refinement. By minimizing user control over posts, BeReal aims to be a space where social media users can finally be “real.” But as I demonstrate, BeReal fails to live up to its claims, instead selling a certain brand of authenticity: the ideal of the interestingly on-time. According to the app’s design and the content it promotes, the authentic BeRealer is not only one who complies with BeReal’s rules, who is able to respond to the call to be real as soon as they are told, but is also infinitely interesting – ready to create exciting content at a moment’s notice.

In this paper, I investigate the rhetoric of BeReal’s call to “be real.” What does being real entail and how can users achieve it? I use the walkthrough method developed by Light et al. (2016), which involves investigating an app’s promotional materials and design to build an analysis grounded in science and technology and cultural studies perspectives. This approach thus allows for an understanding of BeReal’s definition of the real and authentic through the vision of its designers and its technological affordances. Alongside this analysis, I provide a close reading of a conversation on r/BeReal that reflects BeReal users’ reactions and feelings toward the app’s definition of authenticity. Through these coinciding analyzes, I tease out the ideal of the interestingly on-time that BeReal promotes and probe the feasibility of the BeReal brand.

The paper is structured as follows: I discuss scholarship on the nascent study of the social media platform, BeReal, and authenticity online to situate my analysis not only in the budding scholarly conversation about BeReal, but in broader discourse on authenticity. After briefly describing my methodology, I then deploy these methods, first with the walkthrough method to understand the app’s intended use, and second, I provide a close reading of a public conversation about BeReal to show how this intended use is received by users. I argue that both represent the ideal BeRealer, that is, the authentic, as interestingly on-time. I then conclude with an analysis on the consequences of this ideal for platform’s users.

Literature review

Communication studies scholars have long been interested in questions of authenticity as it often provides a window into understanding how people communicate and behave. Banet-Weiser’s (2012) work has largely focused on the commodification of “authenticity” and how successful brands sell consumers a space that feels “safe, secure, relevant, and authentic.” Recently, Banet-Weiser (2021) has turned her eye to how social media platforms sell their own brands of authenticity that users can access through their technological affordances. This understanding of branded authenticity unique to each social media is a key framework I use for understanding how BeReal conceptualizes what it means to “be real.” Scholars have shown how this brand is sold to users through the help of influencers, acting as “ideological intermediaries” that promote the ideals of the platform (Arnesson, 2022). Others have focused on social media platform’s technological affordances that communicate brand ideals. Manzerolle and Daubs’s (2021) article about “friction-free authenticity” examines the environments platforms provide that facilitate performance of authenticity, whether it be through formal transaction or the unpaid labor of user-generated content within the limits of their platform’s design. Here is where I intervene, probing BeReal’s technological affordances that communicate their brand of authenticity.

As BeReal is relatively new, released in 2020 and only just rising to fame summer 2022, little scholarship has been published about the platform. Due to the platform’s popularity, unique functionality, and provocative branding that positions BeReal as the only social media app that allows social media users a glimpse of “reality,” critical scholarship on the platform is essential to understand its success and potential implications for individuals and society. A few scholars have begun this work. Media and communication scholars, Duffy and Gerrard (2022), explore the way performativity-shaming is built into the app in how it notifies users’ friends if they post late or have multiple retakes, thus revealing user attempts to curate their posts. They draw on their past research on social media to show their ambivalence toward BeReal’s ability to allow for authentic representations of the self. Instead, they argue, it represents “the latest iteration in the cycle of social media sites” that offer up another brand for users to equate with authenticity (Duffy and Gerrard, 2022). BeReal’s brand, to Duffy and Gerrard (2022), is defined purely by its reactivity – the platform’s self-positioning as something completely different from its “inauthentic” predecessors. I aim to expand this work by critically analyzing the app’s design and features to understand more capaciously what the BeReal brand of authenticity is. Like Duffy and Gerrard (2022), I argue that post timing is a defining characteristic of BeReal’s conception of realness, but also add to this an analysis of how the “memorability” of content is also important to the platform’s construct of the authentic.

Trevor Boffone (2022), an educator famous for his use of TikTok in his classroom, argues that BeReal does promote authenticity in comparison to its competitors. Boffone (2022) understands BeReal’s temporal disruption of typical social media rituals through its restrictions on posting as creative and conducive to authenticity, rather than curatorial of a certain branded aesthetic. While on Instagram users can post whenever and whatever they like, BeReal dictates when users should post. To Boffone, this forces users to get creative with the posts that they take, and he regards the app as a positive disruption in his students’ days. Through my selected Reddit conversation about lateposting on BeReal, I plan on probing the ways in which users negotiate BeReal’s temporal restrictions and debate whether they are restrictive or conducive to authentic performance.

Banks et al. (2023) look at how randomized posting on BeReal can be restraining, but their focus is less on analyzing the platform’s success in curating authenticity and more concerned with the app’s voyeurism and its privacy implications. They argue that BeReal’s control over when users post forces users to surveil themselves and others. Likewise, they express concern over the platform’s exposure of “the private, the intimate, and the mundane” (Banks et al., 2023). I further these authors’ analysis through my close reading of a public conversation about BeReal, challenging the assumption that BeReal exposes the intimate and mundane. Instead, I show through my analysis that BeReal is not always successful at forcing users to be authentic through exposing the private and mundane aspects of their lives as users admit to purposefully posting their BeReals late to portray themselves as interesting. Providing this close reading responds to Maddox (2023)’s analysis of BeReal using Light et al.’s (2016) walkthrough method and her call for further research around BeReal utilizing social science research methods. Maddox (2023) concurs with the platform, finding that BeReal’ does reduce user’s ability to perform. However, with my additional close reading of a conversation by BeReal users on Reddit, I aim to understand how “realness” is percieved by users and with this understanding I argue that the percieved need for identity performance is instead accelerated by BeReal, not diminished.

Methodology

I conducted qualitative research on BeReal using Light et al.’s (2016) “walkthrough method” and a close reading of a conversation by BeReal users about its late posting feature in the r/BeReal Reddit thread. First, I used the walkthrough method to analyze BeReal’s intended use and user base to understand its definition of the authentic, or the “real.” The walkthrough method involved examining the app from its “environment of expected use,” which combines a cultural studies approach of critical discourse analysis with a formal STS approach of engaging with a technology’s design, to discuss the socioeconomic and cultural principles embedded in BeReal by its designers (Light et al., 2016: 889). This process started by gathering the app’s vision through its promotional materials; specifically, I analyzed BeReal’s Apple app store page (BeReal, 2020). While this method typically foregrounds explorations with an app’s business model and governance of user activity, for a paper centered on BeReal’s definition of authenticity, I leave out this political economic dimension of this analysis to explore in future research. After investigating BeReal’s page on the app store, I performed the walkthrough method’s next step, a technical walkthrough of the app, which involved engaging with the platform’s interface. In this part of the analysis, I explored the app’s functions, features, and textual content, interpreting its surrounding discourse.

In the second part of the analysis, I conducted a close reading of public conversations about the BeReal late posting feature to reflect BeReal users’ understandings of what it means to be authentic on BeReal. This part of the research was inspired by Tania Bucher’s (2016) article exploring user perceptions and feelings about the Facebook algorithm through interviews and Tweets. Bucher’s (2016) piece argues that “examining how algorithms make people feel [is] crucial if we want to understand their social power” (p. 30). Similarly, I interpreted posts from a Reddit conversation by BeReal users, where they discussed how they felt about the platform’s features and whether it is able to create an authentic space, to understand the implications of the platform’s design on users. During this process, I asked, how do users understand BeReal’s call to be real? Do users feel that the platform allows them to be their authentic selves? How does BeReal’s definition of the authentic make users feel?

By qualitatively interpreting the app through the walkthrough method and a close reading of a public conversation about BeReal, I critically analyze BeReal’s claim to authenticity. Specifically, I examined whether BeReal’s features were successful in these claims and if users felt that they allowed for their authentic self-expression.

Being real: To be interesting and on time is to be authentic, to be late is to be fake

What does it mean to be real on BeReal? Light et al.’s (2016) walkthrough method allows us to critically analyze BeReal’s provocative claim to authenticity through its combination of a cultural studies approach of critical discourse analysis with an STS technical walkthrough to interpret its intended use. This process begins by gathering BeReal’s vision via its promotional materials, asking what BeReal purports to “provide, support, or enable” to its users (Light et al., 2016:889)? In Apple’s App store, BeReal proudly declares that it can help users see their “friends for real” and below, a caption reports that the platform is decidedly “Not another social network” (BeReal, 2020). Here, BeReal immediately positions itself as a platform that is different from other social media sites because it is “real.” I scroll through advertisements of sample BeReals to discover how the app’s developers represent authenticity: users laughing with friends; out for ice cream; basking in beautiful scenery; some at home, smiling and happy with their pets; and one, in full gear, snowboarding on the slopes. I also see the Apple App Store editor’s note that “for its millions of users, seeing and being seen on BeReal is a comfort” (BeReal, 2020). Through its promotions, BeReal appears to be a place of reprieve from the curation of traditional social media. Unlike users on other popular social media platforms such as Instagram or TikTok, BeRealers have the freedom to be themselves, to be authentic, and they can take comfort in the fact that their friends can too. BeReal seems to allow BeRealers to capture excitement, friendships, and everyday life, tacitly contrasting itself with the apparent inauthenticity of its competitors.

Opening up BeReal and engaging with the platform, we glean from the app’s technological affordances and design how it allows users to “technically” be real. First greeted with a registration page, soon-to-be users create their BeReal account by providing a working phone number, chosen username, and their birthday. BeReal then requests access to users’ contacts, which the app states will only be used to connect the user with their friends already using the app and will not be stored or shared. Finally, BeReal politely asks users to “Please turn on Notifications,” promising that all notifications from the app are silenced except for “one that will indicate you when to post once a day” (2020). Users have three options: to allow this notification, to schedule this notification, or not allow notifications entirely. While users can choose, the “right” choice is made plain: the allow button is highlighted boldy in blue and contrasts with the dark interface. If users had any further problem choosing correctly, the platform reminds them that “the only way to know when to post a BeReal, is to enable the notifications!” (BeReal, 2020). The platform makes it plain to new users the way it expects them to post – on-time. To capture authenticity, that is, to be real, users must respond to a spontaneous call to post, catching them off guard and in the moment. Here, we begin to see how BeReal positions authentic posting toward the immediate and suggests that users can be real when the platform tells them to.

Time undeniably plays a crucial role in the concept of authenticity on BeReal (Duffy and Gerrard, 2022). This was prominent in my final step of initiation into BeReal: taking my first post. The app opens and a countdown begins – I have 2 minutes to capture my BeReal. A BeReal is comprised of two pictures taken simultaneously, one from my iPhone’s front facing camera and the other from the camera on the back of my phone. The front-facing camera view was minimized in the top left corner, presumably to discourage users from obsessing over their appearance. Within the 2 minutes, I am allowed as many takes as I want under the pretense that my post is marked by a retake count that grows with every attempt at curating my BeReal and is displayed on my final post. After a few takes, finally satisfied with an awkward picture of myself and my laptop in front of me, I posted my BeReal. But alas, above my post, the platform notified me that I am already 22 hours, 30 minutes, and 15 seconds late! Not only this, it indicated that I had retaken my BeReal and failed to capture it spontaneously. This public display of my lateness highlighted the importance BeReal places on timeliness as an indicator of a user’s authenticity. It was apparent that even though the call to be real was issued before I joined the app and learned how to use it, I had already acted inauthentically according to BeReal’s standards.

BeReal defines authenticity formally as playing by BeReal’s rules, posting on time and in a single take. However, certain design features, like its “memories” page (BeReal, 2020), gesture to what it means to be authentic on the app in terms of content. In the top right corner of the app, users find their profile pages which display a grid of thumbnails full of their previous BeReal posts. By labeling BeReal posts as “memories,” BeReal signals to users’ that their posts should not only be timely, but also memorable. While the memory page, which is private and unavailable to users’ friends, encourages users to self-assess the content of their posts, the BeReal feed, which is intended to be used daily to update one’s friends on their life, further pressures users into creating memorable content. Together, these design features reinforce the idea that authenticity on the app is not just about playing by the rules – posting on time and without retakes – but also about creating content that is interesting and memorable. In this way, the BeReal brand of authenticity is defined as posting on time and with content that appears memorable, as communicated by its design and intended use. Thus, we find that the platform’s ideal BeRealer, the interestingly on-time individual, is one who can be spontaneously memorable.

But one thing is clear: BeReal users don’t live up to the platform’s standards of the interestingly on-time. Users find that the app is too flexible, even its marks of shame – late post and retake measures – are not enough to force users to be authentic. In the Reddit sub-community dedicated to the platform, r/BeReal, BeReal users regularly question the app’s ability to provide an authentic space. Much of these debates resulted from posts critiquing the slipperiness of the late posting feature and its inability to enforce authenticity as defined by the app. An exceptionally rich conversation emerged from one post, where users weighed the costs and benefits of BeReal providing the ability for users to post after the app issues its notification. Titled, “BeReal is starting to BeFake,” Redditor, u/mrb-remy, admonishes fellow BeRealers who don’t post on time and even expresses the ability to post late as reason enough for them to leave the platform (Mrb-remy, 2023). This user observed that the ability to late post had allowed friends to “fix” their appearance before posting a late BeReal, noting that some waited even 30 hours later at times to post if they knew a “more exciting moment to share” was ahead (Mrb-remy, 2023). Bothered by their friends’ gaming of the late posting feature, u/mrb-remy urged the platform’s developers to place a cap on late posting so that it would force other BeRealers to post more authentically (2023). Again, posting authentically on BeReal means immediately complying when the platform declares that its “TIME TO BEREAL.”

U/mrb-remy’s post received numerous upvotes and responses from users who agreed with the idea that because users aren’t posting on time BeReal is starting “be fake,” that is, “authentically.” And yet, those who supported their sentiments were not entirely in agreement with a feature that gatekept the ability to late post. One of the top comments on this thread was from a user in support of their suggestion for BeReal to muscle down and create stricter enforcements for keeping users authentic. However, capping the time was not the way BeReal ought to do it. U/Jams265775 stated:

I totally get your sentiments (and I agree) but that’s why they show how late you are. Anywhere past a couple of hours and people know you were not being real. I do think they should just introduce a streak system or rating that just shows next to how late you are how often you take it during posting time or whatnot (Mrb-remy, 2023).

U/Jams265775, like u/mrb-remy, also recognizes BeReal’s inability to enforce the authentic on its platform. Rather than capping the time, however, they suggested the app introduce additional features to reward a user for properly performing authenticity based on tallying the number of days that they consecutively posted on time without removing the late posting feature.

Other BeRealers asserted that the reason “fake shit” filled other BeRealers’ feeds wasn’t due to the app’s faulty mechanics, but instead a fault of their inauthentic friends (Mrb-remy, 2023). U/JannesHch responded that BeReal wasn’t suddenly “being” fake, u/mrb-remy’s friends were: “That’s not a problem with the app but with your friends instead tbh” (2023). Another Redditor, u/the_gay_historian, echoes this sentiment and joins u/JannesHch in scolding u/mrb-remy for lack of choosiness with their BeReal friends:

“You’re not supposed to have all your friends on it. Just the people close to you, the people where you don’t mind if they see you with the worst morningface there is at 1PM cause you’re a lazy sack without a healthy biorhythm. Those who have too many friends tend to be those who do the fake shit like waiting until they actually do something fun. . . (2023).

Like the original poster and their correspondents, u/Jams265775 and u/the_gay_historian render inauthentic personalities on BeReal a fault of non-compliant users. But unlike previous commentors, these two users don’t see a “fake” feed as a problem with the platform. Instead, they claim inauthenticity on BeReal is a result of a BeRealer’s poor choice in artificial friends who don’t play by the rules. Regardless, these Redditors have in common their implication of the type of individual that is authentic on BeReal. To these users, the ideal BeReal user is one who responds to BeReal’s call that its TIME TO BEREAL, not 2 hours later, not thirty, but as soon as it is received.

Questions about the ideal, on-time BeRealer are laid bare in a response by u/upstairs-water229. Here they critique BeReal’s lateness verdict as an assessment of their authenticity:

[I guess] people who work shouldn’t be on BeReal – when I’m in consultations and when my good friend, an operating room nurse, don’t even have our phones on, we should be hidden from “BR society” because we are not being real. Only people who have their phones within reach and can stop immediately to post should be represented on BR – irony (Mrb-remy, 2023).

U/upstairs-water229’s statements seemed to strike a chord with other users. One BeRealer, u/smilecausecheese, responded in agreement, stating “some people have jobs and responsibilities” (Mrb-remy, 2023). Another, u/null_cz, explained that they purposely post late to circumvent another boring BeReal post from their cubicle at work, identifying themselves “as a person that does something interesting only about once a week” (Mrb-remy, 2023). These BeRealer’s are criticizing the idea that BeReal should better enforce its rules surrounding authenticity because not all users have the time and luxury to be always at the ready and interesting. As these BeRealers suggested, there were many reasons as to why they might not post on time: working a job that doesn’t let you have your phone ready at hand, self-perceptions that one’s everyday life was not content worthy or memorable, and refusals to buy into the rhetoric that they are not “real” if they don’t post on time, if at all.

For or against the late posting feature, it’s clear through this Reddit thread the kind of “BeReals” users expect to see: that of the interestingly on-time. Reading in between the lines, we see that authenticity on BeReal is a product of a balanced tension between, on the one hand, posting on time, and on the other, posting interesting and memorable content. U/the_gay_historian’s post represents a perspective that identifies one pole of what it means to be authentic on the platform. This hypothetical user that is supposed to fill BeReal feeds is the unhealthy, “lazy sack” who failed to get up and do something interesting by the time the BeReal notification goes off. While u/the_gay_historian positions this hypothetical as the ideal BeRealer, one who authentically uses the app by posting on time, their assessment of this user as less than content worthy addresses only one of two dimensions of social pressure inherent in the app: how BeReal formalizes temporality in its call to be real. If we consider other BeRealer’s criticisms alongside u/the_gay_historian, like u/null_cz, who purposely posts “inauthentically” late as they find their BeReal’s from work to be boring, we can see that there is another pressure to be interesting, to publish memorable content. A contradiction exists between the desire to be promptly captured by the platform, but also to be interesting. It is here, at the nexus of these two aspects of authenticity, that the ideal BeRealer exists. The ideal BeReal user, as felt by BeRealers, is someone whom, at any moment, is doing something intriguing – and, most importantly, can capture it. The users that are “real,” that are members of “BR society” as u/upstairs-water229 puts it, are those who are privileged with an abundance of time, money, and social capital to always be interesting.

It is clear that the ideal BeRealer is interestingly on-time. They don’t need time for rest or work, and certainly won’t ever be caught without smartphone in hand. The interestingly on-time has the financial capital to do exciting things every second of every day. As the advertisements for BeReal on the Apple app store show, the average, real BeRealer attends concerts, eats at fancy restaurants, and travels overseas, and they don’t have to rely on a paycheck to do so. Their life is so abundant that each moment could be a memory, they don’t have to save, plan, or wait for memorable things to happen to them. And they undoubtedly have authentic friends, who likewise populate their feeds with equally unforgettable posts. The BeReal ideal is interestingly authentic, always punctually positioned with time, money, and excitement to be captured at the whim by BeReal. This ideal represents those who are at work during the call to be real and post from their cubicle as boring or trite. It also communicates to users that those who do work that keeps them from accessing their phones cease to even be real. Not to mention that BeRealer’s who are often unable to post on time with an exciting post due to constraints of responsibilities, finances, or who simply don’t have their phones on them, lead lives that are far from memorable.

Conclusions

Enter BeReal, a platform that promises a reprieve from the constant pressure to perform and that through its technological restrictions has created a space for users to just be. However, after closer examination of its design and users’ experiences with BeReal, it is clear that BeReal is unable to provide this escape – encouraging an impossible ideal that users must fit into instead. While it is true, like Boffone argues, that BeReal has disrupted the traditional social media cycle, it has not done so in a way that slows this cycle down nor, as Maddox argues, does it reduce pressure to perform through the platform. Rather, it has accelerated things. Now, instead of trying to appear interesting and content worthy once a week with an Instagram post from a fun Friday night out, users must be interesting all the time, always ready to create content for BeReal.

The BeReal ideal is an individual who is always interesting-who, we might ask, can purchase this ideal? BeReal’s “contentification” of every possible moment of BeRealers’ lives reduces the everyday into the banal, the noncommercial into the lazy or uninspired, labor into the lackluster. This impossible ideal allows few to claim authenticity, label the many who are uninterestingly on-time as immemorable, and renders those who are interestingly late as curated and fake.