March 27, 2022 

Editor: Amy Halperin

Artist: Emily Veguilla

Grids of hundreds of photos, each posed so minorly differently than the prior, compose the contents of my camera roll. I’ve caught myself spending an absurd amount of time focusing on the minute details of every photo: the lighting, the position of my body, that one pesky chin pimple that just won’t budge. My social media posts are, after all, a collection of the highlights of my life. 

A new app is completely flipping the narrative for me. The Be Real app is a social media platform that is taking the world by storm. It notifies users at any given point in the day that they have two minutes to take a photo. The photo is captured from the front and back-facing cameras, allowing for an integrated user experience wherever they may be. It is then posted to a feed where it can be captioned, reacted to, and viewed by others.

Be Real aims to do just as it is branded: Be real. When I was introduced to the app by a friend, I scrolled through the feed of photos their friends had taken that day. Some people were simply sitting and studying with a coffee, while others were engaging in Superbowl festivities.  

Hooked, I quickly became a daily user of the app. The next day, the notification came when I was eating dinner with my boyfriend. Then it came when I was walking to a club meeting through the diag. Today, I was shopping for dish soap.

What really struck me early on was the time constraint to take the photo. I’ve always been accustomed to devoting many minutes (maybe even an hour plus) to getting the perfect shot to post. My criteria are highly specific as to what can be posted: it must follow my feed, and I must feel confident in my appearance.

It was difficult not to fall into my habits when the countdown started.  As much as I hate to admit it, I considered grabbing my concealer and covering my acne before the photo was taken. I thought about taking down my hood and trying to improve the way I looked, which would inevitably be a frenzy to do in the time constraint.

However, I learned to restrain myself. Every time the notification came there on out, it was an opportunity to capture the moment no matter how imperfect it was. It certainly helped that I was learning this when I only had a couple of followers, all of which were close friends. I felt comfortable sharing myself in my rawest form. 

Every photo captured so far has encapsulated even the most mundane moments of my life. While some photos are more just basic selfies, I’ve gotten creative with others. The caption feature has definitely helped. One day the notification went off when I was in the Michigan Diag. I captured the “M” emblem on my back-facing camera with my selfie and captioned it “might step on it” (a humorous tradition that is supposed to bring back luck). 

Moreover, these mundane photos were chances for me to be my most genuine self without alteration. The untouched, unedited photos would be posted like any other social media platform, but without the consequences of the pressure to achieve perfection. This proved to be beneficial for my relationship with social media, where Instagram models with perfect bodies and retouched images have often plagued my feed.

While I gained a sense of self-love through this journey, I was also better able to connect with the people in my life that I love. Following friends from school, I can see where they are or what they're doing on campus at any given point in the day. 

I’ve also followed my friends from home and have appreciated seeing small parts of their life they haven’t yet shared with me. It’s easy to let the busyness of our own lives cloud our connections with those living a distance away. Be Real has allowed me to connect daily with some of my best friends, when I might have otherwise forgotten to.

As I continue to use the app every day, I’ve completely rethought how I think social media should run. For one, I’ve learned that I don’t have to be perfect and posed in everything that I post. It's just not a genuine representation of who I am. I’ve also learned that there are many nontraditional ways for me to stay connected to my friends and peers. A daily life update in the form of a photo can be enough to connect me to them thousands of miles away. Throughout my journey with this app, I’ve gotten closer and closer to realizing what it actually means to “be real” online.