Instagram poetry has grown with a massive amount of popularity, especially among young high school and college students. This type of poetry is known for having very short sentences and stanzas that are accessible to everyone through the poem’s content and the social media platform.

Rupi Kaur is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Milk and Honey.” Her success came from her huge social media following on Instagram where she posted small poems about “violence, abuse and femininity.”

One of her small poems from “Milk and Honey“ says, “You were so afraid / of my voice / I decided to be / afraid of it too.” To me, it is difficult to call this type of writing real poetry. It does not hold much substance and depth to it.

Poetry by writers like Sylvia Plath, Pablo Neruda and Charles Bukowski all are carefully thought out and do not use any oversimplified style. Their works make us feel and evoke emotion that lasts. They make us think deeper because their poems include elements of imagery, allusions and metaphors. Instagram poetry may just evoke an emotion for a second or not all and does not require any deeper thinking due to its simplicity.

Another one of her poems says, “She was a rose / in the hands of those / who had no intention / of keeping her.” This is all just one poem. There is nothing else to the page besides blankness.

Reuben Holmes is another famous Instagram poet who uses his social media following as a way to publish his poems. He goes by the name r.H.sin on Instagram. His style of poetry is very similar to Kaur’s as it relies on an empathetic audience, angst and simple language and format. One of his poems says, “She wasn’t / doing it for you / she was always / a rose / and this time / she was blooming / for herself.”

This style of poetry relies on some teenage angst coming from the audience in the hopes that the audience can relate. The “Instapoets” write their poetry to be as dramatic, relatable and simple as they can so they can reach as many people as possible. It is only written to be consumed easily by others and for the writers to gain a very lucrative amount of money over simplicity and little meaning.

The “poems” read like inspirational quotes, but a compilation of inspirational quotes does not qualify as a good poem.

How every poet chooses to express themselves is not my decision, but their popularity over simple writing is frustrating when other poets who are so talented are unrecognized. I believe reading is beneficial to people because it opens your mind to a different view of the world, but this type of reading through a social media platform geared toward becoming famous is unnecessary.

I do have to applaud these Instagram poets for their ability to draw people in and make money off of this writing, and I am not saying that all of their writing is bad. However, most of the poems posted on their social media accounts, where their audience mostly consumes their product, have little content that does not challenge the reader’s mind.

Others have caught on to the ridiculousness of some of these Instagram poems. One person poked fun at this style of writing: “I understand / why guacamole is / extra / it is because / you / were never / enough.” When put into a joke, it’s easy to see how overdramatic most of these poets’ content is.

Even with these Instagram poets, at least there is an audience that wants to read and be involved in literature. Hopefully, their audience is also consuming great literary and poetic works other than just “Instapoetry.”

Jaime is a sophomore in LAS.

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