the problem With developing An App For Sharing Your “genuine Self”

Casey Neistat’s new app, Beme, is designed to create a distinction to the sparsely curated personas featured on social media profiles. instead of adding filters to make images appear better, reviewing movies prior to posting, or adding witty comments in hopes of accumulating “favorites” or “hearts,” users document four-second video snippets via lifting the cellphone to their chests, which prompts the camera. they can’t evaluate the video or add comments ahead of posting.

This, Neistat explains in a video, goals to correct an issue with other social media systems. “Social media is meant to be a digital or virtual version of who we are as individuals,” he says. “instead, it’s this highly sculpted, calibrated model of who we are, told through filters that make our eyes bluer and moderately chosen photography to painting a version of who we’re that doesn’t really resemble the reality of things…I’m now not sharing the actual me, I’m sharing a model of me.”

right here’s the problem: who is the real me? Even in physical space, all of us present variations of ourselves which can be sculpted and calibrated. The selves we present at work, as an example, are quite totally different than the selves we existing when we’re with our folks or at a concert. folks put money into colored contact lenses, make-up, and cosmetic surgery: the physical world’s versions of Instagram filters. developing variations of who we’re is a human situation, now not a digital one.

And shooting shaky video from the chest will not be likely to trade that.

After downloading Beme, I to find clips labeled “neighborhood strangers,” “a ways away strangers,” and “attention-grabbing strangers.” I see a cat in New Jersey. A shaky shot of a motorcycle rested against an condominium hallway in Broadmead, England. Some window blinds in Florida. And oh so many keyboards. “So which you can’t in reality see what you’re recording,” is the only communicate I seize after an hour or so of taking part in with the app. It’s towards the top of a video shot with the aid of one in every of my chums, who appears to be explaining the app to somebody—although the footage is generally of the ceiling, so i will be able to’t make sure that.

Like Snapchat, the videos disappear when they’re consumed, relieving creators of the scrapbook mentality of fb or Instagram. but in this case, shooting video from the chest that is uploaded immediately additionally relieves them of any inventive accountability. As intended, they’re no longer seeking to provoke me. but from an expertise standpoint, I would favor that they had been.

i like Beme’s observation. It factors out how as a culture we’re obsessed with curating a picture, and it valiantly objectives to counteract the addiction of viewing the whole thing during the point of view of how it’ll appear to followers, chums, and others who we’ll share it with. “as a substitute of seeing the world through your eyes,” Neistat says, “you see the sector through your cellphone.”

however I disagree with Neistat’s view about what social media is supposed to be. I don’t need to experience your uncurated fact on a platform like Twitter to any extent further than i want my boss to point out as much as work carrying swim trunks (despite the fact that it is his more authentic self, on the weekends at least). i’m annoyed when folks overpost to fb with mundane pictures. i am going to Instagram to not see the truth of things, however precisely to see what is most pretty or exciting or attention-grabbing. And like each person else in on the cliche, i do not need to hear about your lunch on Twitter.

perhaps video clips which can be shot blind, not reviewed or edited, and instantly broadcasted, will create a less-invasive solution to share. but the end result will not be a “real me,” just another model—and one that’s up to now much less enjoyable to observe.