Two Instein TRI light authors
In early 2022, a social app called "BeReal" suddenly became popular abroad, being downloaded 1.1 million times in February alone and often appearing in the top ten of the App Store list. The core product concept of this publicly called Instagram app is to encourage users to be true to themselves and share some daily life photos that are neither filtered nor beautified, so it is called "casual version of Instagram".
Many people who hear BeReal's ideas may think of the "reconciliation with the plain face" challenge that was popular on the Internet in the Chinese not long ago, a gimmick to encourage the appearance of the plain face, which eventually evolved into a large rollover scene of the nude makeup competition. But the content on BeReal is clearly not so hypocritical, at least for now. This app will ensure the authenticity of the content through some functional limitations, such as:
Every day, the photo task is released from time to time, and the user needs to take a photo and upload it within two minutes of receiving the task, and there is basically no time for posing and concave modeling;
Taking photos at the same time to call the two cameras before and after, and must be a dump photo (that is, must be taken dynamically, can not be uploaded through the album), if there are modifications in the process of retaking, it will also leave a record after release;
You have to upload your own photos to unlock the content posted by others, thus cutting off the dive user's back road.
Although these requirements seem to be very stringent, from the data performance, young people are obviously willing to accept. BeReal has now reached 7.41 million downloads on the App Store, with 80% of users aged 16-24.
BeReal isn't the first social app to raise the banner of "pursuing authenticity and anti-Instagram." In early 2021, a picture social app called Dispo was also all the rage, featuring no filters and retouching functions, and shooting for 24 hours to show it, and the retro design that simulates the development of film cameras has gained a large number of young users.
There is also an app called Poparazzi, which focuses on "opposing selfies", which can only be uploaded by others and pushed to the timeline of the parties to encourage users to communicate offline, so it has attracted many loyal fans, and it has topped the free application list in the United States on the day of launch.
The pursuit of authentic BeReal,
Why is it popular?
The development of social media has now brought the diversification and segmentation of categories to the extreme. So, why are these social apps that pursue authenticity, encourage users to be themselves, and even return to offline, frequently favored by young people? In the case of BeReal, I think it's popular because it breaks down the triple anxiety: influence anxiety, aesthetic anxiety, and social anxiety.
1. Break the influence anxiety and return to daily life and sharing
Social media represented by Facebook and Instagram has stronger media attributes, more head users are exerting influence, and big V and KOLs with many followers have a greater right to speak than ordinary users.
Although most users do not seek to become influencers on social media, after sending a message, they often unconsciously desire to be "re-praised" - this is the result of product design stimulation, through red dots, pop boxes, data, etc. to imply that users continue to interact and refresh, in order to enhance the overall activity of the platform. These neutral product functional designs can easily lead to a kind of "influence anxiety" from the head to the bottom of all users.
And BeReal weakens that. On the opening page, it explicitly tells users that "BeReal will not make you famous, and if you want to be an influencer, you can use other products." This orientation directly affects the content style shared by users, open BeReal, obviously feel that the content is more grounded, mainly based on daily life, there is little eye-catching content, and the overall atmosphere is more relaxed.
In fact, BeReal isn't the first app to realize "influence anxiety." In 2019, Snapchat made a major update that separated celebrity, influencer and brand feeds from their friends feeds and moved them to a separate Discover section. This practice has led to the loss of a large number of Influencer star users, but the final results have proved that the overall activity of the platform has not had much impact, and the retention, use time and advertising revenue of ordinary users have increased.
2. Anti-aesthetic trend, accept imperfection
The exquisite life display platform represented by Instagram has created an aesthetic anxiety for users. Cool tones, greenery, and geometric figures all constitute symbols of petty bourgeois mood, but this delicacy is increasingly considered superficial and above the real world. The huge contrast between pictures and real life often brings a strong sense of imbalance to the user's psychology.
On BeReal, users no longer force themselves to be exquisite and perfect, and even brought up an anti-aesthetic trend, not only selfies do not care about the image, but even deliberately po some meaningless ugly photos, such as some blurred focus items, cooking failed food, etc. When most people in an environment are exposing their flaws, others will have the courage to accept their imperfections.
In this regard, there is also a good comparison case on "Douban" - the lower kitchen group and the fried kitchen group.
The former content is the standard "ins wind", a collection of photos of various perfect foods, and the comments are basically commercial praises; in comparison, the latter is simply unbearable, all kinds of dark dishes are called hunting curiosities, and cooking losers get together to mock each other.
The two groups numbered 1.47 million and 300,000, respectively, but the latter had a clear stronger sense of belonging, with more comments and likes on posts, and comments often calling each other family members – obviously, failed experiences are more susceptible to empathy, and a scorched paste looks more real and believable than carefully plated and mediated food, more likely to arouse the audience's empathy, and more likely to arouse a stronger desire for expression. After all, this class of young people may be good at cooking, which may only be a minority.
3. Disturb users as little as possible and simplify social relations
Aristotle once said, "Man is a social animal", and people always need a channel of contact with society. However, most ordinary users have a relatively basic demand for social media, and they don't have to care too much about feedback, and they don't have to care about beauty or beauty, and there is enough to express it.
Speaking of BeReal, the greeting between users seems to be more casual, the design is only "friends" and "discovery" two modules, there is no grouping, permissions so many boxes, the only feature is that you can send selfies (such as likes, white eyes, etc.) as an emoticon to reply to each other. On Poparazzi, another social product, users can't even leave messages, but can only reply to emoji memes, which alleviates social anxiety to a certain extent.
the "authenticity" that social media pursues,
Probably a pseudo-concept
After analyzing so many benefits, however, through product design like BeReal, putting aside the anxiety factors of influence, aesthetics and social relationships, the so-called social media that returns to the "real" is really what we want?
It may not be that simple. In reality, social networking is a very hard thing, requiring emotional intelligence, speech, and you need to come and go, in a sense, and the nature of social interaction is close, which is why many people call themselves "social phobia". The Internet may be able to help people cover up one or two, and its time and space are not synchronized, allowing everyone to present an image they want to present through "performance".
However, while we expect that the transfer of social things to the Internet will become simpler, let's not forget that the essence of social networking is "performance". Whether it is reality or the Internet, the self that everyone shows cannot actually be regarded as the real self. At this level, the "authenticity" pursued by social media represented by BeReal may be a pseudo-concept.
Everyone has multiple faces
Just like the circle of friends complains about grouping, everyone in reality must be multi-faceted.
If you make a funny face in front of your friends, it will be considered a cute performance, but if you are seen by your parents or boss, you may be considered unstable enough. Whether it is a reality or a relationship in the network, people are trying to maintain a relatively stable image. And those who want to break the stability and claim to want to get real social relationships may prefer to satisfy their voyeuristic desires. Just like ordinary people hope to understand the real life of celebrities through social media and variety shows, in fact, they can only see a deeper layer of disguise, and the result is inevitably "collapsing" again and again.
"Anti-aesthetics" is also about expressing beauty
The trend of content expression on social media ranges from refinement to casualness, long before BeReal appeared. Just like the beauty bloggers in the "Reconcile with Plain Face" challenge, the premise of daring to be plain is that I am also very beautiful, then - the premise of not using filters on BeReal is that my life is colorful, and the photos taken by hand are interesting, which is a more advanced disguise. Users' pursuit of beauty and fun has always been spontaneous and self-conscious, and will not change because of the limitations of App functionality.
Social networks don't really accept the "real"
From expressing "elaborately concocted" beauty to throwing out "seemingly inadvertent" beauty, people seem to have never stopped pursuing beauty, but in fact, they have only pursued monotonous beauty. The definition of "beauty" is always solidified: delicate, lazy, retro, trendy... There is no reality in solitude. Users who have accepted this definition, because they can't get the affirmation and achievements they expect, turn to products with "non-mainstream" gimmicks, trying to get more attention and empathy, except for getting a moment of freshness, may not last long.
So, like BeReal, which focuses on real social products, how far can it go?
epilogue
In the past few years, there have been new social apps appearing, each new app will play a "non-mainstream model" of publicity, in fact, there are not a few apps with micro-innovation, but in the end, most of them are silent, or go to the niche. Dispo's social attributes are getting weaker and weaker, and it has become a photo classification tool by the public; Poparazzi has been declining in downloads after reaching the top of the iOS Free List on the day of release, and has become unnamed.
The reason is none, with the growth of the number of users, users will definitely differentiate between different levels, inevitably stimulate the desire to compare, and break the track of the platform settings, there is always someone who can disguise a whole day for a two-minute task, this mentality is no product function can be limited. Of course, for these social products, the worse situation is that after the initial novelty disappears, the content produced by users becomes more and more boring, and finally no one wants to stay.