CS371 Blog Post #1: Ice Breaker - Tiffany Chan

Hello everyone, my name is Tiffany Chan and I am a third-year communication studies student with a minor in psychology and ux design. As an avid user of social media, I have used many platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. However, I have been recently finding myself heavily invested in the platform, BeReal (https://bere.al/en) as it allows users to capture an image in that specific moment of the day, showing their friends what they are doing and how they are feeling. Every day at a different time, the platform notifies the users and they have two minutes to capture the image. The ease and authenticity of the platform allows for users to have fun, not needing to worry about what is being posted as the content on there is more casual. As such, aspects such as who screenshotted, the number of retakes, hours late and much more show other users the real side of their life. I find BeReal quite enjoyable as I can see what my friends are up to while having a collection of memories with the snapshots I have taken throughout the past few months. 

Much of the content that is being posted on social media platforms becomes filtered where users take multiple pictures and edit them to show others their “perfect” life. With platforms such as BeReal being created, do you think we are starting to move away from the filtered side of social media? Why?