Waiting for the overground in a strop because you just missed a train and have to wait eight minutes for the next. Dozing in the office loos trying to avoid work. An insipid meal deal featuring all-beige food items. Not only is this a day in the life of your typical office-dwelling Londoner, it’s also every post on Gen Z’s new favourite social media app, BeReal, where the aim of the game is reality — however banal that may be.
The photo-sharing app, founded in 2020 by French entrepreneur and former GoPro employee Alexis Barreyat, aims to be an antidote to the likes of Instagram and TikTok, through which we have become conditioned to sharing our lives — and seeing others’ — through a beautifully filtered and heavily curated lens. From sage interiors, cuisine-cum-cubism, soul destroying “fitness inspo” and #sunsoutbunsout, Instagram content has all got a bit same-old, same-old and more staged than ever. People have grown tired of the polished, false imagery — as demonstrated by ‘goblin mode’, the trend which took over the internet earlier this year. Think full ‘I’ve given up mode’ (see also: going to Tesco in your pjyamas, viewing hair-washing as an unnecessary evil and eating year-old Ryvita from the back of the cupboard for dinner).
