There’s a new social media app in town with no filters, no friend count and no visible likes and comments and Christians are loving it. But would you try it out?
Swathes of Christians are joining this new app, with no filters, no editing, no follower counts, no visible likes or comments, just real – to the minute – updates from friends. Will you give it a go?
Who remembers when Instagram used to be an actual reflection of our lives? Back before the stories and the reels and the video content and the terrifyingly intuitive adverts, there were just photos. We used to occasionally jazz those photos up with a frame or a dark and dusky filter, but ultimately it was just a plate of food or a picture of our mates. It was fun and straight forward and just a way of keeping up to date with friends. It was a simpler time.
These days Instagram is a machine, churning out carefully curated content showcasing the most fabricated parts of our lives. Everyone is a brand and every Instagram page a marketing campaign. Everyone can track their likes and views through analytics and the more “popular” accounts can monetise this following with sponsorship and advertising deals.
But people, and certainly a lot of the Christians I speak to, are seeing it for what it is and are getting fed up. Frustrated that they can no longer use the platform to keep up with friends, they’re bored of the casual bragging platform. This can lead to insecurities as peoples real lives don’t stack up to the perfect images they’re bombarded with every day.
These days Instagram is a machine, churning out carefully curated content showcasing the most fabricated parts of our lives.
Well, that’s where BeReal is trying to go against the grain and Christians are loving it. The brainchild of French entrepreneur Alexis Barreyat, BeReal has actually been around since 2019 but it’s only seen a spike in users this year. It’s basically what everyone says they want Instagram to be, a genuine way of seeing what your mates are up to.
It’s a simple premise: Every day users get a notification telling them they have a two-minute window to post a picture. When you post, the app takes a photo using the front camera on your phone as well as the back, so it can see your lovely face and what you’re looking at. There’s no way of faking it. You can’t “be on the beach” when you’re actually watching Corrie on the sofa.
There’s no filters, no programming in advance, no way to change or edit your image.
Plus, and I reckon this is the best bit, there’s no filters, no programming in advance, no way to change or edit your image. It is what it says on the tin: real. And the cherry on the top of the cake is that there’s no follower count, other people can’t see your likes or comments and only friends that you have added can see your post.
On the app, it’s often full of snaps of piles of books or a laptop on someone’s bed/desk/sofa, a cup of coffee, or other normal things we all see and do day-to-day. Not a private jet or a poolside cocktail in sight and there’s rarely a full face of perfect make-up uploaded on the feed. And that’s the joy of it, there’s no need to perform, it’s a chance to just showcase your life in all it’s beautiful mundanity.
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