[TALKING TRENDS] 'Geulstagram'

Seo Jeong-min
The author is a senior reporter of the JoongAng Ilbo.

On Instagram, people can share their own photos and videos. A number of new words related to the platform have been coined. “Selfies,” “instagrammable,” “injeung-shot” are just some of the examples. Injeung-shot refers to a photo that you take to prove something really happened.

Recently, the word “geulstagram” has been coined. It is a combination of geul, which means writing in Korean, and Instagram. As you can see, it refers to uploading writing on Instagram. You still need a photo to run a geulstagram account. But what really matters is the caption you write. Photos are just a background. People upload meaningful quotes from good books, movies, or dramas on their geulstagram. Sometimes they write their own feelings, just like you do when keeping a dairy.

These days, essays published by users who run geulstagram accounts are gaining popularity. Ha Sang-uk, known as a “social media poet,” became famous by sharing his short writings on his Facebook account years ago.

“You’ve Done Well, You’re Doing Well, You’ll Do Well,” written by Jeong Young-wook, “I Want You to be Happy” by Park Chan-wi, “All the Stars Are Shining for You” by Son Him-chan, “I Hope Your Anxiety Won’t Last Longer” by Yoon Geul, “It Comforts Me, When I Tell Myself What I’ve Told to Others” by Kim Wan-seok, and so on. These essays are all on the bestseller list nowadays.

By just looking at those titles, you can realize that people share sentimental quotes on their geulstagram accounts.

“I started writing some captions on my social media page to comfort myself, because I have to pretend to be okay even though I’m not. And more and more people have followed the account. I got to know that there are many people who want to get consolation from just short and simple sentences like the ones that go ‘It’s okay,’” said Kim in an interview with the JoongAng Sunday on Oct. 18.

When you search the hashtag “#geulstagram” on instagram, you can see 3.54 million posts.

BY SEO JEONG-MIN [meantree@joongang.co.kr]