"Be Real"

File under: does the Internet know me better than I know myself?

This morning I woke up to a picture of myself someone else had posted on Instagram. I almost cried. It’s stupid, I know, but it’s wild how disconnected what you believe yourself to look like can be from how you are perceived by others, even more confusing when you add the layer of distortion that comes from the lens of a camera.

I think about the two slices of yolk-filled tortilla I ate the day before; the two glasses of white wine that accompanied it; the pasta that was doused in silky olive oil and topped with stretchy, creamy stracciatella later that evening; and the bottle of wine that accompanied it. All of these meals I’d savoured, relished, enjoyed and had sunken into in the moment – taste the only thing on my mind – in hindsight were suddenly reduced to how they translate onto my body in pixels: soft rolls spilling out. 

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The other night I was at the pub discussing Elon Musk, anime, Dimes Square, Red Scare and other culturally relevant stories, keeping up with my 26 year old counterpart whose ability to switch between subjects and draw red threads between them was honestly incredible to witness. I’d always felt like I’ve kept up with cultural trends, but I suppose that’s the difference between the youth (not me anymore, it feels) and those transitioning out of it: I keep up, they run ahead. She and another friend asked me if I had BeReal and I replied no, but that I’d heard of it (see: keeping up with the trends) and they told me it was great and hilarious, detailing a few stories from their latest posts.

For those who don’t know, BeReal is an app that eschews the filtered illusions of Instagram, giving you a two minute timer to take a picture (both front and back camera) to show your friends what you’re doing, without the pressure of ‘perfectionism’. The idea is that you don’t have time to set up the shot; instead, you should be captured in all your unfiltered glory.

At a Phoebe Bridgers gig, my friend Charlie and I talked about not being on BeReal. “To be honest,” she said, “if I was on BeReal, all I would post is a picture of me looking quite tired on one side, and my laptop screen featuring countless tabs and unread emails on the other side.” I mean, that is the realest, and surely the point? But of course, the facade of BeReal is the same as any other social media app: authenticity through the lens of being watched, being observed and ultimately being judged. And while BeReal is supposedly an antidote to the perfectionism of social media, can the antidote still come in the form of the platform it purports to renounce? Can we ever be our most real and authentic selves when we’re performing for the camera, no matter how candid? 

Sure, you could post a picture of yourself looking tired, without makeup, working in bed, a takeaway strewn across your sheets, but how real is it when you’re extracting mundane moments of your daily life and putting them online for everyone to see? Is total transparency possible when it’s all filtered through an algorithm? Aren’t we just ‘being real’ within the confines of existing online, which can never truly be real, merely just a distorted version of whatever is really being seen through your eyes? Aren’t we all just bowing down to technology, to the next trend, to the forever-filtered digital world we don’t have to live in – but instead choose to? 

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An Instagram profile for luxury bothy rentals up in the Highlands comes up on my feed. I don’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the day. The promise of cold water, wide mountains, a loch-side sauna and a small wooden structure where the only thing to do is swim, hike, chop wood, cook on fire, drink coffee outside and eat local seafood that is delivered to your door by boat is too tempting.

I imagine the stillness. The disconnection from technology. And I think about what ‘being real’ means when no one is watching you. If you didn’t take a picture of your meal, did you even eat it? If you don’t post real-time photos of your holiday, did you even go? Perhaps it’s less about authenticity, more about telling the world that you actually exist. An assertion of identity. Proof that you are real. Even if it means doing it through the flimsy medium of invisible servers carrying all the pixels that make up the sum of you through the air, to report your existence to anyone who cares to see. 

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I’ve decided that the premise of BeReal requires too much thought, despite it being an app that asks you not to think about what you’re doing. The existence of it is in itself premeditated self-marketing. We want to be seen. So we show ourselves off, expecting others to do the same; so we can talk about the things that we’ve posted on our feeds, completing the circle, echoing in the echo chamber, trapping ourselves in the algorithm, feeding the beast rather than feeding ourselves.

And isn’t this the perpetual modern conflict? A search for identity within the confines of the digitised world order; using the Internet to further our own self-development and berating ourselves for using it and losing our sense of self. I’ll ponder this over whatever meal I make later today, purposefully off camera and kept for myself.