DEPARTMENT OF VISUAL PARADOX AND PATAPHYSICAL RESEARCH
INSTA POETRY UNDER COLLISIONAL CONDITIONS:STATEMENT 1âž”∞
Within the Department of Visual Paradox and Pataphysical Research, Insta Poetry is regarded as a low energy/orbit phenomenon, a form of language that circulates rapidly but burns quickly upon atmospheric re-entry. It purports to be poetry freed from elitism, yet it liberates only the algorithm — a machine optimised for recognition rather than revelation. The Department identifies Insta Poetry as a medium where being seen replaces vision and the act of publication precedes the act of thought.
In the Collider, Insta Poetry’s structure is easily broken down into statements of emotional fact and exhortations of self-certification. The Department has observed that such work relies on a precise formula of brevity and affirmation, the linguistic equivalent of the motivational powerpoint rendered scrollable. Meaning is flattened into accessibility and ambiguity is treated as a design flaw. The poem becomes a slogan that believes itself sincere like a new age prayer.
The Department’s research designates this phenomenon as affective automation — the industrialisation of intimacy. In place of the poetic line, we encounter the marketing rhythm; in place of enjambment, the swipe. The poem no longer unfolds but loads. Each fragment functions as a mirror held up not to language but to the poets desire for recognition. The Department’s instruments detect no resonance beyond the self….the signal returns immediately to sender.
Central to the Department’s critique is the eradication of complexity. Insta Poetry operates under the ethics of instant comprehension. It has to be understood immediately or risk deletion. This creates what the Department calls semantic poverty — the deliberate evacuation of complexity to maximise circulation. The poet, now functioning as content producer, becomes both product and algorithmic supplicant. The Collider registers this not as democratization but as the transformation of poetic uncertainty into a brand identity. Each 'post' performs within the marketplace of empathy trading emotion for metrics. The poem’s success is no longer aesthetic but statistical — measurable in hearts, follows, and algorithmic reinforcement. The Department notes that the logic of the viral is indistinguishable from the logic of contagion.
Under laboratory conditions, Insta Poetry decays almost immediately. Its phrases — seemingly luminous at thumbnail scale — disintegrate into cliché when magnified. The form depends on ephemerality as both medium and defence. The poem survives precisely because it refuses depth. It cannot be wounded by interpretation because it has no interior. The Department classifies this poetry as a hermetically sealed text that prevents meaning from entering or escaping.
However, the Department concedes that within the debris field, there exist fleeting particles of genuine communication — flashes of linguistic sincerity unburdened by ambition. These moments, rare and extremely unstable, suggest that even within the algorithmic wasteland, language retains a pulse.
In conclusion, Insta Poetry, under Departmental analysis, represents not an evolution of poetry but its commodified afterlife — a ghost of lyricism converted into user experience. It is poetry’s most efficient disguise, wearing the face of accessibility while erasing the labour of thought. The Department does not condemn it outright, rather, it records it as data — an artefact of an epoch where expression has become interface, and where the poem’s final task is not to move us but to keep us scrolling.