Words: Sophie Charlotte Graham (she/her)
BeReal: A new and revolutionary app which praised itself on prioritising authenticity is now causing its downfall with its own greed. So who is at fault? Is BeReal just a sellout or are we as the consumer to blame?
First released in 2020 as a passion project intended to promote the idea of sharing the real lives of real people, it was a juxtaposition between the heavily edited and curated versions of ourselves and the lives we post on other forms of social media such as Instagram. Described on the App Store as ‘the app designed to bring authenticity back to social media.’ As of June 2024, BeReal has been sold to the French mobile app publisher Voodoo, which may explain BeReal’s U-turn from being new and authentic to a generic corporate social media app. The general consensus of corporations controlling social media apps can likely be summed up by this TikTok user’s comment about the acquisition as ‘that company that makes shitty cash grab games with copious amounts of ads, BeReal was able to make plenty of money without ads or premium subscriptions’. If dedicated users are certain that BeReal was able to generate enough revenue without any ads or unwanted celebrity cameos, why did they force the unwanted and unneeded on everyone? Desperate corporate greed is the obvious answer here. Which is exactly what BeReal’s developers seem to have done.
Since BeReal’s surge in popularity the app has seen a number of changes, with many of these getting a thumbs down from users. One of the new features, which users feel has absolutely obliterated any sort of realness BeReal once had, is the dreaded in-feed ads. Added in February 2024, BeReal ads are integrated into users’ feeds whilst they scroll. People easily agreed they were not as well received as the developers may have liked, with one user stating in a recent review: ‘Enjoyed using this app until ads and random people I don’t know appeared in my feed. And now the ads have music when you scroll through your feed that you can’t turn off. Ruined the app’. This single review out of many can give a small insight into the overwhelming opinion that ads are incessant, unwanted, and a blatant show of prioritising corporate greed over the user experience.
At the same time as introducing ads RealPeople was introduced: the celebrity section of BeReal which allows for verified accounts to promote their own work, such as actors promoting movies and singers promoting their new albums. Is this just yet another way for BeReal to shovel more money into their pockets? Why must they scrape away any authentic enjoyment by overloading us with corporate-ified posts? As seen in BeReal’s TikTok comment section, the vast majority of users feel that the RealPeople section of the app has removed any remaining authentic experience of the app with heavily edited posts and targeted ads. BeReal has made a complete U-turn from what the developers originally wanted the app to be: free from ads and fake celebrity personas.
It isn’t only a few users who seem to have a deep hatred for how ads are taking over their feeds. Since Voodoo’s acquisition of BeReal, the app has experienced a 55% drop in downloads and a 3% decline in its monthly active users from December 2023 to July 2024. Users have told app developers time and time again that ads and obvious corporate cash-grabs dissuade them from wanting to click on the app due to the betrayal of what the app was first designed to be: an authentic social media app. Maybe we are just sick of corporate greed altogether. People originally loved BeReal due to the app being all about “being real”. It’s in the name people! But users have felt betrayed by BeReal’s hunger for money which has eventually led to the app’s downfall.
So, why did the developers go corporate? Are we as users to blame? The developers traded the authenticity of BeReal for a corporate hellscape and in the name of what? More money to pump into the app? More revenue to develop an already successful business format? I don’t think so… With the introduction of RealPeople and RealBrands, it’s clear to see corporate greed is the only feasible answer. So are the users to blame for the corporate renovation of the app? Have we, as both the consumers and the product, contributed to the switch? Our typical style of heavily edited posts for apps like Instagram, where many users have perfectly curated profiles to match their intended aesthetic, is too deeply ingrained for us to move on. This way of posting doesn’t fit the original authentic style of BeReal. BeReal is for the average person. An app where you get caught in the midst of mundane errands, not a curated moment which is prepped and planned for. This way of posting may have forced BeReal to feel comfortable switching to a more corporate style of social media when we, the users, are posting as if we are celebrities ourselves. We have shifted from the desire for authenticity to a desire for fame. Maybe a greed for our own fanbase gets in the way of our attempts at authenticity.
So, has BeReal just become another bland, boring corporate social media app? Definitely. Is it impossible to “be real” through the eyes of social media? After Instagram’s attempt at an authentic stories feature becoming just as curated as main profile posts, BeReal has seemed to succumb to the same fate. Social media is built to be inauthentic. Just like the celebrities we try to emulate with every calculated post on our carefully curated, inauthentic profiles – it’s a tool we use to boost our own self importance, allowing us to pretend we have a dedicated fanbase of our own.
