Proper noun
A French social media app, released in 2020, which prompts users daily to take photos of whatever they are doing using the front and back cameras of their phones.
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A French programmer and entrepreneur created the social media app BeReal in 2020 to combat what he saw as an increasingly unhealthy and materialistic social media landscape. Seemingly out of nowhere, BeReal has made its way to college campuses.
And it’s been successful, with about 40 million installs of BeReal this year alone, according to data from Apptopia, which tracks and analyzes mobile app performance.
But on BeReal this is much harder to do as users will be notified how many retakes it took to get the perfect shot. They will also be notified if the photographs are late in being posted.
People may have grown tired of BeReal’s authenticity facade. […] BeReal held a mirror – or at least a front-facing camera – up to its users, encouraging reflection on our self-presentations.
By 2025, BeReal was a bit like the houseplant you left shrivelled up on your windowsill. Only diehard fans were still posting, and no one really cared if you missed days in a row. The days when friends would reach out truly concerned for your wellbeing if you didn’t upload were long gone, and the golden age was over.
Noun
A post published on the French social media app BeReal, consisting of photos from both the front and back cameras of a user's phone, providing a visual depiction of what they are doing in that moment.
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Once a day you get a notification from the app. It tells you that it's time to post your BeReal for the day and you have two minutes to do so. […] Users can also see where their friends are on a map and discover other publicly posted BeReals.
While scrolling through BeReals in the past few weeks, I’ve occasionally felt gripped by loneliness. Seeing others partying, hanging out with friends, or curled up on the couch with their significant others, framed as everyday slices of life, elicited a more intense fear of missing out than I’ve ever felt on Instagram.
BeReal is driven by the desire to be "authentic" online, which is oxymoronic even on the app itself. For example, you can post late BeReals when you actually want to document your current surroundings, and you can retake photos as well.
This BeReal is going to be epic. Worshippers in the seats around me swipe open the app, hold their phones high, and angle for the perfect two-way shot that will frame their selfies with the famous figure who brought them here tonight: Sadie Robertson Huff—reality star, mega-influencer, and America’s foremost spiritual ambassador for feminine submission.
What happens to your BeReal after you post it? All of your BeReals are archived for you to see. One of the best features of BeReal is being able to see a collection of your daily posts.
Verb
To use the social media app BeReal.
Usage- Intransitive
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BeReal loves to notify me when I’m doing something mundane like heating up beans in the microwave or wiping down my salt lamp with a damp cloth. This can be solved very simply by turning off your notifications and only BeReal-ing when you’re doing something genuinely interesting like, I don’t know, singing karaoke or holding a puppy.