The who’s whos of ISMA Social Media Pages

The feud between the three biggest IMSA (ISMA, as deemed by the students) Instagram pages has been quite intense as of late. They consist of @isma_barstool, the account that’s been used for the last couple of years, @better_isma_barstool, a new account made by Venkataashish Gogieni (Ven) this August after getting 20 likes on a comment saying he would do it, and @isma.rot_, another relatively new account made over the summer. 

Barstool accounts are inspired by the company Barstool Sports, which has made many different barstool pages where they display funny happenings at school campuses, both for events and school culture/memes. These accounts tend to focus on humor, since they’re operated by students appointed by the company themselves. Due to this, many high schools in America have copied the idea, making barstool pages where they display memes. However, most accounts are unofficial, and IMSA does not allow unofficial use of the name; hence, “ISMA” is used instead.

Generally, barstool accounts pick a specific day to post and title all of their posts “Almost [the day after the day they chose].” Both @isma_barstool and @better_isma_barstool follow this pattern; however, @isma.rot_ posts nearly daily, focusing on things that had happened at IMSA the day they posted, or just posting memes if nothing important happened that day.

@isma_barstools’s “Almost Friday” posts had a lot of controversy last year, as they did not take down posts when requested. This caused many people to begin disliking barstool, especially when they were under radio silence for the beginning of the school year. This also caused Ven to make the comment that led to @better_isma_barstool, though he no longer is running it, with Jameson Jones taking his place.

@isma.barstool | Source: Instagram

While @better_isma_barstool is just currently trying to make a frequent and (decently) respectful barstool-style page, @isma.rot_ is focusing more on just making funny videos, with some talk about events, like the schoolwide intervisitation ban, PDA problems in halls, and the Students Demand Action walkout. This has caused more of a positive swing towards them, as they focus on actual things going on at the school rather than just posting memes like the barstools. They’ve even had posts taunting the other barstool pages, which further bolstered their support.

@isma.rot_ | Source: Instagram

Looking at the side of actual posting frequency, @isma_barstool has made some posts, but they’re still not at full operation, as they haven’t posted since the week of homecoming (September 27th) as of the time of writing this article (November 7th). @better_isma_barstool isn’t faring much better, as they are having logistics problems with finding where to get their photos from, as many people just aren’t very interested in sending them out right now. They’ve only made one post all year. @isma.rot_ attempts to post daily and is still putting up story posts requesting photos of specific people, which has both made it easier for them to get permission from people and also has made it easier for IMSA students to decide what photos to send, as there’s no indecisiveness when the specific person is already known.

Overall, @isma.rot_ is currently leading the race for being the most popular IMSA Instagram page, as @isma_barstool is disliked by the masses and @better_isma_barstool has small and infrequent updates, as well as leadership issues.