A dirty keyboard next to a rogue piece of fluff. Piles of dishes left over from last night’s dinner. A black rucksack in the middle of a table for no apparent reason. If all of this sounds desperately dull… well, that’s kind of the point. Because these are the kind of photos you see on BeReal, the social media app striving to show people as they really are. At least, that’s the idea.
Launched as an antidote to Instagram in 2020 by French duo Kevin Perreau and Alexis Barreyat, BeReal prompts users to take one unedited photo every day at a random time using both the front and back camera of their phones. The idea, the app says, is to “capture your surroundings” and therefore, as the name suggests, be real.
