To BeReal, my former social media sweetheart,

My beloved. My darling. My sweet social media love of my life. You’ve changed. You’ve changed and, in the heartbreaking words of Padme Amidala in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, you are going down a path I can’t follow.

I remember when we first met. You were but a passing mention on my other social media. I’d see an occasional picture on my Twitter feed, a selfie of a friend in the top left hand corner along with an image of whatever they were viewing, or a Reel on Instagram joking about how people would wait around for the “BeReal” to hit while they were doing something interesting. I thought nothing of it, nothing of you. I figured you were another passing fad that would fade with time. But then my aunt introduced us more formally, framing it as a way to keep in touch with my cousins, and I fell in love. You were my social media soulmate.

I have a complicated relationship with social media, that I’ve already previously documented. It used to be a forbidden world to me, something I aspired to join just for the thrill of novelty and inclusion with the rest of my generation. Then it became my life, my sole source of self-expression and career aspirations. But then the relationship turned toxic and I became dependent on the external validation offered through likes and replies, struggling to break free from the expectations from others and the comparison game against players who didn’t even know we were competing.

In the past couple years, I’ve worked to improve this relationship. I’ve worked to balance my need to remain connected to my social network with my own enjoyment of the various social media platforms without falling back into the patterns of toxic dependency and scrolling addiction. I unfollowed every account that didn’t actively spark joy for me, ending the needless comparison game that I’d never win. I locked down my Twitter/X and Instagram, finding more joy when I could post for my feed without worrying about random strangers having general access to my life.

And you, BeReal, my beloved, were the golden star of my social media feeds.

In the beginning, you were so simple. I only had to post once a day, every day, and it would be at a randomly generated time. There was no need or expectation to curate my feed at specific times when others would be online. I never had the nagging feeling in the back of my head, trained there since my YouTuber days, to post something, anything, to remain relevant. I could just, as you say in your name, be real. I could remain my most authentic self while satisfying my craving to document my life. I could celebrate the mundane nature of my life while also keeping up to date on my friends and family and the honesty of their lives too. There were no celebrities on my BeReal feed, no corporations. I truly found satisfaction and community in the fact that when a BeReal notification chimed, I’d post a picture of myself watching a movie and find five other photos of my loved ones doing the same thing. It was a comfort knowing others lived the same boring life I did.

When you introduced the idea of allowing two additional photos as a reward for being on time for a BeReal, I supported you. If a BeReal was missed, it was too tempting to just wait until a later time when you were doing something interesting to post your single BeReal photo for the day, thus negating the authenticity of the post. The allowance for multiple BeReals as a reward for being on time felt like an excellent incentive to remain “real” for the BeReal posts. You could be boring at the actual BeReal time and then post whatever you wanted to for your remaining two photos. It offered a full picture of life in all of its boring, but sometimes interesting, glory.

Eventually you allowed for “Behind the Scenes” photos, which gave a little video of what someone was attempting to post. Frankly, I never could really get this feature to work on my Android phone and didn’t really care to figure it out so I never used it. But I supported it! I thought it was a good idea to really capture a “real” moment without framing a specific photo for the experience.

My first hunch that our love wouldn’t last was when you brought corporations into the relationship, asking me to follow your new friends that promised to inject life into your platform. I never liked these new friends. These friends were the reason I despised the other social media platforms. One of my favorite parts of you was that your social media was exclusive to my friends and family. But I understand how this game works. I understand your new friends would offer much needed capital for you to continue growing so I simply ignored the repeated requests to see how “Adidas” could be real every day. I’m not even sure how a corporation can be real and authentic. I don’t think a shoe could ever be watching TV at the same time as me, but I’ve been wrong before.

But as our love progressed, the honeymoon phase continued to waned and it wasn’t just due to your new friends either. Requests for my real life friends to pose for a BeReal were no longer met with enthusiasm to be a part of the novelty but rather eye rolls and questions about “how long do I have to hold it” due to the nature of the extended length of time it takes to take both a front-facing and a selfie photo at the same time. My friends and family started dropping from the platform, my feed diminishing from 10-15 photos a day to maybe 3-5 on a good day. But still I remain devoted. The other aspect I enjoyed so much about you was how you retained a history of my life on a day-to-day basis. I could flip through my backlog of photos and see how my life has grown and evolved over my 650+ day streak on the platform, appreciating the small joys of my daily life I captured in each BeReal.

With your latest update though, that devotion is challenged. Now the incentive for being on time for a BeReal is SIX photos, which is double the initial reward of three photos. I already struggled to meet that three photo quota most days - now you expect me to double my output? The six photo allowance also provides too much liberation for posting times. If I wanted full freedom to post six photos of my life to a social media feed, I’d just post to my Instagram stories where more of my social network exists and I have more freedom to adjust the photo or provide additional insight into the moment I captured. I’d also annoy my real life friends less because a photo to Instagram is less invasive and more intuitive than a photo to BeReal. There’s also no longer any incentive to not miss a BeReal. If you miss a BeReal now, you still get an additional photo to post alongside the late BeReal, which kind of negates the purpose of being on time now. I can post my boring slightly late photo and then still have an extra photo to post a more interesting moment from my life.

BeReal, my beloved, I know you’re only trying to improve yourself. I know you’re only trying to get others to love you as much as I do so you can continue surviving despite a dwindling user base and dying novelty. But with these new changes, you’re forgetting the core of your appeal: to be real. Sure people still can’t upload doctored and filtered photos at this time to your platform, forcing them to maintain authenticity with their posts without external applications, but allowing for more photos than not diminishes the celebration of the mundane that you initially championed. You might as well remove the timed requirement for a post that separated you from other social media platforms at this rate.

Perhaps it’s not you. Perhaps the requirement to implement these changes to remain relevant in the social media game is more of a reflection of our society that no longer allows for boring lives to exist than your own downfalls as a social media platform. Our society currently promotes the “interesting”, the people who are constantly on the move or doing something, anything, to make themselves look good. But the truth is that most people will probably lead a boring life 90% of the time and that’s not a bad thing. Maybe if more people celebrated the mundane natures of their lives than striving to constantly be achieving something or look impressive against the comparison game curated by the never ending bombardment of content on other social media platforms, you would be more successful with your original model. If more people accepted that in order to be real, they have to be boring, then perhaps you wouldn’t need to implement these severe changes that compromise the original testament of your platform.

Despite my complaints though, I still love you, BeReal. We can work through this. I still want to be with you for as long as you live just because, again, I appreciate the ability to capture my life in daily mundane snapshots without any real attempt or effort at curation. You take me for what I am at any time and do not demand for me to pretend to be someone I’m not, living a life I don’t live just to look good. I’m also an obsessive streak girlie who enjoys the game of being on time for your randomly generated BeReal times. Your social media remains my favorite out of anything available to me and I only wish to see you remain successful in your endeavor to promote connection through authenticity.

But if you could improve the length of time it takes to actually capture a BeReal because honestly I think an 1800’s camera is faster at times, that would be greatly appreciated, my darling. <3