I wake up in the morning and groan. A new app has been snaking its way across the perilous landscapes of discourse and it has finally come to infect my loved ones. “Add me on BeReal,” reads the scripted invite from a friend. I ignore it, and continue scrolling for another two hours.
If you have not yet heard about BeReal, apologies in advance. It claims it is “not another social network”, and it has been exalted, time and time again, as the “anti-Instagram”. At a random time each day, it sends out a notification to all its users and gives them exactly two minutes to drop everything and take a near-simultaneous pair of photos: a selfie from the front of the camera, to show your general vibe; and a snap facing outward, to show what you’re up to.
