What are you doing?
BeReal, the QAnon queen, millennial discourse and "slow living"
I’d rather BeFake, thanks
I wanted to love BeReal, the wildly popular, two-year-old photo-sharing app that launched a thousand think pieces this summer. By now, I imagine, we’re all well-acquainted with its shtick: Once a day, BeReal opens a two-minute posting window in which you must take a photo with your front- and back-facing cameras in order to unlock a stream of similar, simultaneous images.
The app offers no filters, no flexing or staging, and no real influencers (… to my knowledge). There’s also no way1 to disguise the tedious, routine days that comprise the bulk of our brief worldly existence. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Since I downloaded BeReal, its prompts have arrived almost exclusively while I’m working, cleaning or napping — the sorts of tasks necessary to maintain a life, but not exactly a record of life itself. For me, there’s also an irreconcilable geometric difference between the phone angle needed to capture what’s in front of me (straight up-and-down from around shoulder-level, or tilted a bit forward) and the angle required to capture my face with fewer than three chins (forehead level, 30ish-degree tilt in the opposite direction).
As a result, my posts are inevitably both banal and unattractive. (So are most everyone else’s.) Worse: All these random little prompts have forced me to confront, at least once daily, exactly how uninspired so much of life is. BeReal was meant to liberate me from the fantasies of Instagram; instead, it’s filled me with existential dread. I will take the fake stuff, please. We all need fictions to believe in.
P.S. I am going to Portugal next week, so Links is off until late September. That sounds like a long time, but it’s not — like, it’s basically already pumpkin beer season.
If you read anything this weekend
“Why Do We Love TikTok Audio Memes?” By Charlotte Shane in The New York Times Magazine. This is about TikTok and the rise of audio memes, which have (maybe?) displaced text and images — but it’s also a fascinating exploration of how our brains interpret sound and music. Highly recommend.
“Inside the QAnon Queen’s Cult: ‘The Abuse Was Non-Stop,’” by Mack Lamoureux. The most dangerous influencer in the (distinctly American) QAnon movement is actually Canadian. Romana Didulo, the self-declared “queen” of Canada, has encouraged her followers to attack police, shoot up vaccine clinics and spread her cult to other countries — the U.S. included.
“How Social Justice Became a New Religion,” by Helen Lewis in The Atlantic. Not sure why this essay on our social media-mediated politics focuses so much on the left — don’t people who oppose social justice *also* use the language and logic of religion?? — but it’s full of the kind of observations that you see everywhere, once you’ve seen them.
“The Beginning of the End of Millennial Discourse,” by Michelle Santiago in The Cut. Millennials “aren’t aging out of the internet — they are aging out of youth.” Boo. “Gen Z isn’t supplanting millennials with its own unique brand of youth culture; it’s carrying the torch from one generation of suburban white teenagers to another.” Hm!
“Whataboutism,” by B.D. McClay in The Hedgehog Review. On the sanctimonious tweeters who police what other people “pay attention” to — and the weird, circular logic of attention as currency, in general.
👉 ICYMI: The most-clicked link from the last newsletter was this essay on BeReal’s true draw.
The classifieds
Subscribe to Girls' Night In, the cult-fave weekly newsletter with over 140,000 readers. Worth-it recommendations for your weekend and cozy vibes, sent straight to your inbox each week. Sign up here.
Good for U (?) is a lighthearted podcast about capitalism-critical consumerism in the wellness industry. Each week, we discuss what's haunting our carts, the trends we can't escape, which sexy unique scams to avoid, and our (loosely held) strong opinions. Listen here.
Want to raise a reader? Can we read? is your weekly guide to creating a culture of reading in your home. Let me save you the time, energy, and emotional labor of finding excellent children's books so you have more bandwidth for what really matters: reading together.
Postscripts
The aesthetics of weird girls and slow living. The extremist alternatives to YouTube. “Instagram face,” “anti-party tech” and the disgusting online marketplace for non-consensual nudes. Why QAnon won’t let Fauci go. How John Fetterman’s campaign got so fun. This week in -Toks: birth control, psych wards, dentures and prisons.
Inside the subreddit for ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses and the vlogosphere for “coin-pushers” (… not what you’d assume!). When people play the same Sims for years. When AI mimics a living artist’s work. Amazon turns the propaganda up to 11. Let’s never speak of Andrew Tate again. Last but not least, for the folks in the back: The internet 👏does👏not “turn” kids trans.
That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards.
— Caitlin
Okay, there is actually SOME way — BeReal still lets you post “late” after its daily window closes. A growing number of people may be jumping on that feature to optimize their posts, which I think indicates I am *not alone* in my realness struggles.