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##  BeReal and the Doomed Quest for Online Authenticity


I feel that the relaxed atmosphere that BeReal provides is very necessary. The social comparison theory proposed by American social psychologist Festinger once pointed out that people have a tendency to confirm their own ideas and abilities by comparing with others. The rise of social media has accelerated such comparisons. People can share their own lives while observing the lives of others. Social media puts personal expression in a huge interactive environment, and constantly examines itself in the process of interacting with others. A series of quantifiable indicators have been added to functions such as likes, comments, and retweets. They always give people feedback on external opinions, and invisibly drive people to adjust their behavior and modify their personal image to cater to the atmosphere and preferences of the application. This is undoubtedly a huge pressure, and the young generation Z is tired of the endless "pretend". Teenagers call for changes in social applications, and BeReal just brought a wave of "anti-aesthetic" social networking. Under the pressure of pursuing perfection in the past, individuals had no space to express their fragility and make mistakes, but the new generation of social applications should allow people to show their true status, interpersonal relationships and fragility. intimacy. This is the attempt that BeReal is making. BeReal, which removes functions such as likes and reposts, tries to create a social environment that does not require comparison and has no "competitive" atmosphere. I really like their design concept, you can be your true self on social media.