In the course of the twelve years that have followed Bizhan Elahi’s death in 2010 his poetry and she’re-e digar (Other Poetry), the highbrow modern movement he led, have gained in unprecedented and unnatural popularity amongst different groups of Iranian social media users. Learned or unlearned, the majority of those users are on Instagram –– the only social medium that has escaped the regime’s security measures unscathed. A profusion of the poet’s pictures and extracts from his poetry have been posted by Iranian users some of whom may not have much familiarity with modern Persian literature. It has not been merely the poetry of Elahi that has found favour with Iranian users. Elahi’s disciples and close writer friends, too, have been iconised to an extent that some of their devotees on social media even imitate their behaviour and appearance. Elite as it is, Elahi’s poetry, in particular, has waxed so fashionable on Instagram that people even caption irrelevant pictures of their gatherings or goods they sell online with it. This unusual popularity, however, is not a unique phenomenon in the history of art and literature. In this paper, the proclivity of the populace and the elite for Other Poetry is contextualised within narratives that bear testimony to the popularity of ‘the chic’ in different periods and the hypocrisy that ensues from it. Ultimately, Coffee Reading 1, one of Elahi’s little-known unsophisticated short poems, is foregrounded to challenge the audience with a question: if the piece bore a condemned lowbrow name as its author, would it still attract partisan support from Other Poetry fanatics? Keywords: Bizhan Elahi; She’r-e digar (Other Poetry); Social media; Modern poetry; the chic; Hipocrisy