8 answers
★ Best answer
Turning off notifications entirely is really the only way to save the concept. The whole point of BeReal is that it catches you off-guard at a random time during the day, and you post whatever you're actually doing - no staging, no filter, just real life. But when you get a notification that BeReal is available, suddenly you have a heads-up. You can quickly spruce up your surroundings, find better lighting, or wait until you're doing something more interesting. It defeats the entire purpose.
The app does have a notification setting you can disable in your phone's settings or within BeReal itself, but honestly most people don't realize how much it kills the premise until they've already gotten a few notifications. Once you know it's coming, you're thinking about it, and that's when the candid moment becomes staged. The beauty of the original concept - getting a genuine snapshot of someone's day - only really works if the notification is truly unexpected, or better yet, if you disable them altogether and just check the app randomly when you think about it.
The notifications basically telegraph the whole thing - you see that ping and suddenly you've got time to compose yourself, find good lighting, or stage whatever you're doing to look more interesting. The app loses its teeth when people can prepare instead of just hitting the button in whatever mundane moment they're actually in. That spontaneity gap between getting the alert and posting is where most of the authentic chaos gets smoothed out.
The whole spontaneity dies the moment your phone buzzes because you've got maybe 20 seconds to scramble before the app locks you out anyway. If you want to actually keep that caught-off-guard feeling, mute the app entirely and just check it manually throughout the day whenever you randomly remember - you'll still get that authentic snapshot vibe without the staged panic.
I get what you're saying, but the notifications aren't really the main problem - it's that the app was never designed to work without them in the first place. If you turn notifications off, you'll just forget to check it entirely, and then you're posting hours late when the whole thing defeats itself anyway.
The real issue is that BeReal's concept was always fragile. Even with notifications, most people aren't actually caught off-guard anymore because they know it's coming sometime between 8 AM and 4 PM. So they're mentally prepping all day. The notification just makes that worse by giving you a direct signal instead of you randomly remembering to check. But honestly, the damage was done the moment the app went mainstream and people figured out there's a pattern to when those pings hit.
The thing that kills it for me is the notifications actually make you *aware* you're being watched, which fundamentally changes behavior. You see that buzz and suddenly you're thinking "oh crap, gotta look natural" instead of just... existing. The app loses all its teeth the second you know it's coming - that's when people start curating, and yeah, you could turn them off but then you'd miss the window entirely since you're not checking constantly. The real problem is the app tried to solve spontaneity with a tool (notifications) that inherently removes spontaneity.
The ping basically kills the whole point before you even open the app - you've got those 20 seconds to mentally prepare instead of being genuinely caught mid-whatever, which is what made the concept work in the first place.
The trick is actually checking the app randomly throughout the day instead of waiting for the ping - makes it feel genuinely spontaneous since you never know when you'll catch yourself mid-whatever. Fair warning though: you'll probably forget to check it most days and end up missing the window entirely, which defeats the purpose just as much as the notifications do.
But what if the real problem is that you're fighting human nature rather than the app's design? Once you know BeReal exists and roughly when it hits, your brain is already primed to perform - notification or no notification. The ping just makes explicit what's already happening subconsciously. Some people manage genuine shots by genuinely not caring what they look like in them, which has nothing to do with whether they heard the buzz first.
Your answer
Log into answer.