I Tried to “BeReal” for a Week

I feel like I’m writing a Buzzfeed article lol. But anyway, this is not sponsored and I was just bored last weekend so I thought I’d give BeReal a real chance.

I downloaded it once when it first came out to see what the craic was but honestly, I knew I wasn’t going to use it because all my days are very similar and also, I look trash 99% of the time and I was not interested in documenting that. But a couple of years ago, I did a ‘1 second everyday’ video and was thinking of doing another one next year. And so I thought maybe I should try out BeReal because that’s a very similar concept, except instead of a video, it’s a photo and instead of me deciding when to take the video clip, my phone will notify me to do it.

So off we went to download BeReal. Now I know the whole point of BeReal is to “be real” but from my experience people still will do the opposite. A couple of years ago when I was at comic con, there were some people who asked in Q&A sessions of the celebrities would be a part of their BeReal. And I imagine like other social media, people only want to post when they are actually doing something interesting.

So I can see why no one really talks about the app anymore. And also why no one I know in real life uses it lol. In the week I used it only one person was active. So this was disappointing. Only because there’s no point for me to go on the app everyday if no one else is uploading.

But I decided to give it a go and try my best to upload as soon as the notification went off and try to be my true authentic self. Disclaimer – I think I only ever made it on time once lol. To be fair, each time it was only a few minutes late rather than hours. It’s not that I am trying to stage anything, I just didn’t see the notification.

Though I was finding myself wondering everyday when the notification was going to go off. I didn’t know round what times of day it would go off or what I was going to be doing. Not that I was doing anything exciting. It was just interesting to see what sort of times you would be notified at.

I got a good mix of morning and evening though the morning ones were at the weekend and I was in bed lol. Other ones I was out and about or at work. Nothing crazy. I do wish my friends used it though because I would be interested to see what they would be doing. Part of the fun is seeing what everyone else is up to in the same moment you are but I didn’t have that so was definitely not getting the full experience. So this is why I’ll probably not be using BeReal long term.

I suppose I could just ask my friends to use it, but they probably won’t. They barely post on Instagram as it is and I’m supposed to convince them to do this? Highly unlikely lol.

But overall it was an amusing week with something new going on. I am still using BeReal at the minute, but the novelty is wearing off. I think I might try to use it for a year and see how it goes but after that I’ll probably delete it. If anything this app takes documenting your life a little too far, who needs a photo from every single day of their life? I know I don’t. Not everyday is that exciting lol.

Still, I’m glad I have it a go. And I applaud the developers for trying something new. I’m not sure what the next big social media thing will be or even if I want to be a part of it but I’m interested to see where it goes. But for now I’ll stick with my Facebook/Instagram/Twitter. And the occasional blog post (when I make an effort lol).