In 1990, three percent of Americans said that they had no close friends in 2021. This number has risen to 15 percent sadly the trend is in the same direction all across the world. So here’s a question: if billions of us around the world are so connected through social media, why are we so lonely as it turns out the connections made through social media are not as real as we thought. What’s worse is that some sociologists think that social media has actually created a simulation of reality. A simulation that we mistake for reality itself can drive social Division and make us miserable.
New App “Be Real”
A new app called Be-Real promises to strip away the fakeness and bring back authenticity to social media and people are responding by mid-2022. It became the number one downloaded app on the app store in the United States and the most downloaded app in Australia, Germany and many other countries. So, what is Be-Real will it last and what does it tell us about the direction Society might be heading.
Brief about Social Media
When social media first gained popularity in the 2010s. It was and still is a great tool to stay in contact with people all around the world but since then we have lost our innocence countless scandals and whistleblowers have painted virtually every platform as a detriment to society.
If you feed the beast, that beast will destroy you. If you push back on it we have a chance to control it and it is a point in time where people need to break from some of these tools and the things that rely on short-term dopamine driven feedback. Loops that we have created are destroying how Society works.
It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other right we curate our lives around this perceived sense of perfection because we get rewarded in these short-term signals Hearts likes thumbs up and we conflate that with value and we conflate it with truth and it’s not an American problem this is a global problem.
People are now consciously aware of the negative effects and are starting to move away on the back of this trend Be-Real rose to prominence, it aimed to be the anti-social media.
What is Be-Real ?
BeReal is a French Social Media App developed by Alexis Barreyat a former GoPro employee in 2020. The application basically set around for two years before suddenly exploding in popularity in mid-2022.
BeReal App Features
The basic concept of Be-Real is simple, once you download the app you get a notification once a day when it’s time to quote BeReal. You will get two minutes to take a photo of whatever you’re doing, no matter how mundane the app takes a dual photo. So that is a selfie and then another photo of what you’re doing. Till now there is no option for videos on BeReal.
According to the company quote push notifications are sent around the world simultaneously at different times each day. It’s a secret on how the time is chosen every day, it’s not random. The result is the social feed filled with unedited photos of people doing unglamorous things every day: eating food, watching a movie at home, doing homework, riding the bus or just everyday things. There are two main tabs: your friends tab which is just posted from people on your contacts list & the discovery where you can follow other people. If you wish the biggest difference and the most standout thing is just how Bare Bones and basic the app is. Really it’s the opposite of Instagram in every way.
It’s actually on the verge of being boring but that’s the point in social media we’re so used to shiny bells and dopamine hacks to hold our attention and when that’s all taken away social media can seem extremely dry. There is no algorithm that shows you what to see. There’s no light counters, no filters, no editing, no advertisements, just ordinary pictures of people and comments. There’s only one post per day so, there’s no cluttering of your feet, it’s really just a simple snapshot of what your friends or people around the world are doing at that particular point in time. Despite looking boring from the outside, the app has seen immense success. This year alone downloads have grown by at least 315 percent. At least 65 percent of these lifetime downloads happened in the first quarter of 2022 and interestingly Gen Z are the majority of the users in August 2022. Be Real became the most downloaded app in Germany and the popularity has grown internationally. Fiji became the first country with an official account; the company has now received $600 million in funding. The app has over 20 million estimated Global installs and it has a decent active user base with over 10 million active daily users but it can’t all be sunshine and Roses as interesting as this app is right now.
Three Ways BeReal Could Fail
- People just get bored of it number
- Be Real adds more features until it loses its identity and becomes just another social media app
- Instagram could just steal the feature which is rumored to already be in the works.
BeReal Ad Revenue
The company still needs a way to figure out how to generate Revenue. There’s no ads on the platform at all but regardless of what happens the fact that this app has become so popular among younger people.
Scope of Be-Real
Its craze among youngsters highlights that there’s an appetite and demand for a different type of social media. A social media that is healthier and just maybe the online space of the future could be healthier too. We do hope to see this scenario unfold whether it’s from Be-Real or another player.
You also would be confused and quickly quip why don’t these kids just go outside and talk to people but for many people it’s just not so easy. If we can have healthier ways of connecting online we don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
Reality of Social Media
A hyper real scenario features a world where the simulations of reality are indistinguishable from reality itself; the real world and the simulated world no longer have boundaries. As a consequence nothing in our culture is true anymore. This theory has lately been applied to social media. It goes something like this: all the pictures that we post, links that we share, messages we type and media that we consume online creates a personalized world. Which is different from The Real World in our minds this Digital World replaces reality. Give it enough time and the digital reality becomes more important to us than the real world.
Further to this the algorithms will dictate exactly how your digital world will look like as time progresses all of our digital worlds drift further away from what is truly real for example a lot of major controversies on Twitter don’t exist in the real world another common example is the lives that you see others living on Instagram isn’t reality
Why BeReal is so Popular
So what does this all have to do with BeReal? This app might be an interesting way of tackling this hyper reality while having the convenience of staying digitally connected philosophically. The app is actually authentic. People tend to only have their close friends instead of the thousands of Instagram followers that may be strangers to them. There is less pressure to look good and this creates a judgment-free Zone. This makes the app feel more down to earth for many social media users.
FAQ
How does the BeReal app work?
You get a notification once a day when it’s time to quote BeReal. You will get two minutes to take a photo of whatever you’re doing.
What Happens if you miss BeReal 2 Min time to take a photo?
BeReal will show posts of the other friends who have shared the Photos.
Be Real is a Social Media App?
To be very frank it’s an Anti Social Media App. It is very different from other Social Media platforms which indulge their audience the whole day.
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