Bonjour! Je suis très bon. Je suis réel. Réel virtuel. Je ne suis pas édité. You, moi, et your friends for Real.

What are you really doing today? Maintaining my daily dose of self-exposure. I must say, I do it in a healthy way, bon? Who cares if I have a pimple, or if my under-chin is visible and I am still in my PJs? I want the world to know that I am alive. I’m still here, doing my thing. What about you?

Ça va? Ça va. Ça va bien. Real good. No thanks to the dopamine get when I can see what all of our friends are up to at 1:05 PM (that's just an example, probably not the BeReal time today... although it could be!). I’m only on here a few minutes a day!

Alexis is “Just keeping it real at BeReal.” Love that guy. And he loves his pictures. As a former employee from GoPro, he conceived: ⚠️ Time To BeReal! ⚠️. There are only 2 minutes to take one. You don’t have much time left!

Nina gets anxious. She doesn’t reply. She doesn’t comment. She doesn’t accept friend requests. And if she replies it is rarely within the right time. She checks her phone often. Other social media. Scrolling, scrolling. On-demand. I’m not like that, but I still need to become part of her daily routine. She needs to be here when I want her to. She needs to be here when I say her to be here. This isn’t the place to get followers, although they need to follow me.

I am not the place where you just snoop around without introducing yourself. I’m a commitment. A serious relationship. Committed. Real. And only you can see our past in a section called Memories. No one needs to know that we had a fallout yesterday, we have a new window today.

I didn’t want to mention it, but I will tell all of Nina’s friends that she is late. Every. time. If they are late, they are not real. Not really. Not invested. They might not want to share what they’re doing when I’m checking in. I help make sure that they're not "cheating" by only posting when they look good or are doing something interesting, I help everyone stay in line.On time.

Don’t call me needy.

Ça va? Ça va. I don’t care if you are doing fine. Hold to capture an Instant Real (emo-)Moji👍

Camille, better known as Cam posted « c’est quoi ton bereal ? » is the new « c’est quoi ton snap ? » on Twitter.

Ella installed me. I notified Nina immediately. They have not met in the two-minute window yet.

In early 2022 I gained popularity with GenZ. “authenticity” for teenagers with a gamified edge. Their friends are competitive. We live in a competitive world. Nina likes to play but only if the rules are flexible. That’s not how it works! I guess she likes to pretend she plays, her game’s too fake for this 💩

🤳 With our phones’ front- and rear-facing cameras we take a photo to share with our friends…what? It feels like another system of social control. No peeking before the compulsory posting. Call me a phoneyyy, but the anti-Instagram app BeReal is too real for her.

Finally, she noticed that the metadata shows how many times a photo has been retaken before the final image is posted. This metadata is posted. It’s basically a badge of shame.

Nina risks being portrayed as painfully ordinary, and while it may be true, she doesn’t accept it as her “real” digital identity.

Anna has covid??? She works from home and her desk is filled with tissues. Yuk! Not fun! Uncanny! It’s almost voyeuristic, so unfiltered.

A ceiling. A TV flashing. Dull scenery. Nina and Ella are not doing anything at the moment. That’s okay. Life is not always glamorous.

I have no advertising or follower counts and am basically really boring. But at the very least, we are up to date on our friends' lives. There’s no anonymity here, only reality. Oh, the tediousness of reality.

Again, the push notification arrives when Nina is out with actual other real people and she didn’t think to respond. Maybe it is just better to log off social media?

When Nina first wrote about me I was just starting to enter the mainstream. Now, I am so popular that moi is getting memed across the internet.

In August 2022, I am the No. 1 social networking app on the Apple App Store, and ninth in “free social apps” on Google Play.

We are trying to keep a cool head 🥶.

What about the gamification of being social? We might not be in it to win it, but we like to play. One moment each day. But, what do we do when people stop playing? 🎲💯

We are not abandoning close friends in favour of creators and algorithms.

I can be an addition to all the other apps you already use, every day. Not all day.

Add me like you add your close friends, your friends and then some acquaintances, loose acquaintances- who become acquaintances, friends, close friends, best friends. No ads on me, add with me. Don't lose me.

BeReal with me.