- Joined
- Aug 4, 2020
Well, there's what Homer was talking about, and then there's these fucks:
A Brief Rundown on the Instagram "Discourse" Community
This community's basis is exactly what's written on the tin: A bunch of Instagram users come together to have a discussion about topics, usually controversial in nature. However, with Instagram being image-centric, these users had to find a way to present the information in a way that was digestible and interesting to the userbase. Some discourse accounts use plain backgrounds, or "aesthetic" pictures. The real gems though are the ones that come from accounts that use fictional characters from series like Danganronpa, often juxtaposing anime characters with the more serious nature of the topic they're speaking on and undermining the points they're trying to make.
There is also the matter of the platform being primarily used by teenagers, so discourse account admins can range from as young as 12 to as old as 20-something. This leads to not only hilarious posts like the one above, but also causes any civility in discussing more controversial matters out the window. Though, let's be honest: Was there going to be any civility or a productive conversation on a platform like Instagram to begin with? These kids do not post these with the intention of having a conversation; they want to virtue signal for popularity and having a horde of yes-men like everything they post, and/or they're looking for a fight. Believe it or not, this place can be just as bad as, dare I say, Twitter, at times. A good majority of these accounts have a "you're either with us or against us" attitude, and I have often seen the word "discourse" used interchangeably with """drama."""
In case you were wondering about their overarching set of beliefs, it's pretty much the typical shit you'd expect from a Tumblrista or common Twitter user, only with more post-Tumblr era LGBTQ+ discourse sprinkled in. Topics include: Why asexuals should/shouldn't be included in the LGBTQ+ community, whether or not he/him lesbians are valid, whether you need dysphoria to be transgender, all that jazz. But, that's not the only discourse you'll find. Hell, you can find topics ranging from abortion to ship discourse to how clown emojis are harming the clown industry. It makes for some pretty hilarious out-of-context posts, and there's whole accounts based around taking Instagram discourse accounts out of context, which makes the admins very angry.
There accounts usually have "discourse" in their names, or the "-course" suffix. However, discourse posts of this nature don't necessarily have to come from one of these accounts. "Flop accounts" will share similar purposes, and character advice accounts (i.e. Dio Brando telling you to remember to douche and drink water) will occasionally post this sort of stuff, though it's primarily geared toward fandom in the latter case.
Allow me to sperg for a moment why this whole community is flawed on a base level and why I put "discourse" in quotation marks: Ironically but unsurprisingly, these discourse accounts tend to create an echo chamber, which is the very antithesis of what discourse is about. The problem is that you have someone talking at you instead of to you. It's like trying to debate with a political YouTuber in the comments section of their video: While you may be having good conversations below, what most people are going to see is just the content itself. The person who made the post already inherently has the high ground and the understanding of the users, which leads to a fear of dissent (unless they make a point that contradicts the hivemind, then by all means, spam them and tell them to kill themselves). Instagram is not a good platform for discourse by its very design, what with very limited information being able to fit per post, word limits in comments sections, and the general information flow.
That, and they're using fucking anime characters to spout rhetoric.
Anyway, this is my first time making a thread. I was genuinely shocked nobody had talked about this community before, considering what a goldmine it is. Good to be here and sharing these gems with the Farms.
EDIT: I was informed that I needed to have links to the images/sources. Unfortunately, I cannot trace back all of the images back to their respective accounts, but I will do my best to source them. Links will be corresponding to the images in order that they appear on this first post. Note that the abbreviation "CIC" will stand for "CursedInstaCourse" which is the page I stole most of these screencaps from and will be the indication if the image is sourced from there. Another note, this time about posts linked back to actual accounts: I will be archiving the Instagram post and the slides themselves separately, as archive sites have a hard time saving multi-slide Instagram posts.
Thank you guys so much for the advice on how to better this thread. I'm glad people are enjoying it so much. Let's keep building on it and having some laughs.
Last edited:
