Leo Barrera On Instagram, Reposts And AI IShowSpeed
By O.A. CARRY FOR: 65,000〡PUBLISHED: July 18th, 2025
Azure4001 profile picture and admin Leo Barrera.SUBSCRIBE to US on SUBSTACK to SUPPORT MORE WORK LIKE THIS and GET VIP CONTENT
On the other side of the phone, on the other side of the country, Leo Barrera, the lone admin of Azure4001 on Instagram, tried to relate to my East Coast lifestyle.
"I was visiting my brother in New York last year,” he said. "I actually witnessed Brat Summer happen in Bushwick."
The words hung in the air.
"I didn’t necessarily enjoy that album, and I don’t hate Charli XCX,” he continued, ”but seeing all the people in the green shirts was so interesting.”
The observation, like one from an invisible man, I would soon learn, is integral to Barrera’s worldview:
Everything is interesting. Everything is worth watching.
It's woven into his Instagram page, which, like many repost-only pages, reflects the web like a funhouse mirror, flirting with labels like archive, scrapbook and diary, but never bringing any of them to a second location.
(It’s better to play the field. It makes it more interesting.)
But Barrera would be the first to tell you that Azure4001 isn’t special.
To him, it looks like many other meme accounts, but what sets it apart from the pack is Barrera (duh) and how he views the act of reposting.
Who I met on the phone challenged my opinions on face reveals, AI slop and the fear of death, as in, a meme page owner’s fear of getting deleted—and although he didn’t wear green during Brat Summer, he really appreciated that people did and that it happened; that anything happens, ever.
First off, what does the phrase “Minecraft Steve feels” mean to you?
[Laughs] That was the original conception of the page. It was a page called @minecraftsteve.feels that I made in the summer between eighth and ninth grade.
There was this trend in Instagram irony pages at the time, I think it still exists, of people choosing a character and making an ironic “feels” account.
Yeah, can you explain the “feels” movement?
Well, I don't know if anybody remembers the concept of “kinning.” It was very prevalent back then. Usually, very young, super, hyper online people would become attached to a certain fictional character.
I couldn't tell when it was, but there was a point when it tipped, when most people who were “kinning” were actually doing it ironically.
People started making pages that were named “[insert character].feels,” which would be a person roleplaying online as the character. So my first page that I ever made was @minecraftsteve.feels.
I was inspired directly by this other page called @shel.feels. It was supposed to be a Shel Silverstein feels page [laughs].
@shel.feels profile grid sample (Source)".feels and .moments are dead!" (Source)
I didn’t really post Minecraft-related memes, but that page got to like 7K or 8K, which at the time like felt like a lot. But then I clicked on the wrong link and somebody got the password.
When I made the page, I think I typed in my email wrong. So the email that didn't actually exist, somebody made that email and then stole my page.
I was in ninth grade.
It was really bad.
What was the next day at school like?
Honestly… Only a couple of my friends actually knew about the page, and they were like, “That's crazy.”
And then nobody cared.
Sisyphean task (Source)SUBSCRIBE to US on SUBSTACK to SUPPORT MORE WORK LIKE THIS and GET VIP CONTENT
Wait! Oh, yeah, he was trying to get a ransom. I was like, “Bro, I'm literally fucking 12 years old.” He was trying to get the Season 10 Battle Pass gifted to him.
But I was asking for his Fortnite account to kind of “troll” him, but I was honestly coping so hard 'cause I was really sad. I was like, “Wow, this is so over.”
I was actually like, “Wow, I'm gonna have to grow up now.”
He ended up changing the account’s username to @minecraftsteve.jokes, which is still around. He blocked me, though. But he never ended up selling it, so…
There is no meaning. I just thought it sounded cool. I was inspired by that page @a7xgh. I don't think he really posts anymore, but I always liked his name.
Azure4001 really means nothing. I just think “azure” is a cool word.
Usernames go really well with word→number, and my username’s short. It sticks.
Why did you make a meme page to begin with?
I was actually thinking about this the other day. In third grade or fourth grade, we got to experience that first wave of Chromebooks.
I remember we made a Google Drive slideshow, like a shared slideshow. It had like 200 slides where we made an interactive game throughout it. There were like 50 kids participating on it and we would make our own games in it, and then also just post random memes in between them.
Back then, I was like, “Okay, this is a form of communication that I understand,” like, “I like jokes and stuff.” It's just a fun thing to do.
Making the page came from that. I don't think I ever intended it to ever be this big.
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What's your earliest memory of being online?
I have a distinct memory of playing Kingdom Rush. That was one of the first games I played 'cause I didn't have any game systems when I was young. My parents didn't get me any video game stuff.
They also didn't let me watch cable TV [laughs] because they “didn't want me to get infected by the advertising” or whatever.
I had my mom's laptop. I’d play Minecraft on there. I watched this one Spider-Man animated show in clips on YouTube. I would watch that on my mom's computer. They let me on YouTube way too early, honestly.
If you have kids, are you gonna let them on the internet early?
I think my first instinct is to say no, but in like 10 years or so, when I'm having children, the landscape will be so different that I probably won't fully understand it.
My parents were planning on not giving me a phone until I got to high school, but it became such an important part of the social culture, of being a teenager, that you kind of needed to have a phone. At a certain point, they just caved.
I assume that will probably happen for me, with whatever it is, microchips and the like. I'll give my best to keep them away from screens at least.
Kids share freaky stuff, like in that Google slideshow I was in, some kids got in trouble for the stuff they posted. But I would never post anything explicit in elementary school [laughs]. I was using it on my iPad, that my sister and I shared, where I used to go on iFunny…
Obviously, it's funny to a certain extent, but if it's every post and like five people are collabed, and, “Oh, it’s iFunny.” I don't know. There is some financial benefit, I guess.
I think I try to make a conscious effort not to be a hater in a lot of circumstances because, like, I do have the tendency to be a cynical person, especially about things that I care a lot about, which, at the end of the day, I do care about Instagram.
You care about Instagram, can you elaborate on that?
I don't necessarily think this is a good thing, but I do care about Instagram as it exists as a medium for people to communicate.
I think it's a really flawed medium—and I don't think it's crazy to say that it's inherently evil—but I think that even though it is evil and definitely a net negative for society, I think Instagram’s an interesting point in history where so many people are using this really messed up communication tool.
Okay, this is such a cliché, but like, it connects so many people, but it also drives so many people apart through connection.
At the end of the day, I do care about it, in the sense that I’m curious what it will cause in like 10 years or 50 years. Or when I'm on my deathbed, what are people gonna be saying about Instagram?
In your daily Instagram posting habits, how do you express care for what you're doing?
There's def a difference between posting with care versus posting carelessly.
I think I do try to at least think about the things that I'm posting in a critical way before I post them 'cause I know for a fact that memes are one of the most powerful forms of communication, and it's really dangerous too when people don't realize what symbolism they're using or what sort of messages they're sending without intending it.
There are so many people that just post alt-right dog whistles or straight-up hate symbols all the time in the guise of memes that are really common. It's important for pages that reach a lot of people to be mindful of that.
Like, fascism is on the rise in the West, and the war isn't just gonna be fought on the ground or through debate. The war is gonna be fought through subconscious messaging, which is memes. In the fifties and sixties, they had television and radio and today we have memes.
At the end of the day, it is just jokes, and people can joke about whatever they want. But there are so many pages out there like…
Okay, like, @yungstarbeam is honestly a really good example of this. I've called him out on it before, too, and he just like did not care. He's posted some crazy stuff where the messaging and the phraseology were just, that's clearly inciting a certain group to respond to this post.
To play the devil's advocate for myself, Instagram, the platform, will always trend to the negative. People will always ragebait, and people will always use hate speech and symbolism to garner support or rage or whatever attraction for their post. But like, I don't know, I feel like on an individual level, that's what I try not to post because even though they’re reposts—like, I didn't write the thing or put the text on the image—by posting it, I'm saying it too. This is my speech basically.
I think it's really dangerous when people aren't thinking of posting on Instagram as speech, when they're using irony or whatever as a sort of mask for their actual intentions.
Well, comparing you to a page like @yungstarbeam, he doesn’t post face, but you do. He’s anonymous and you’re not. I guess that that difference contributes to the “mask” you’re talking about.
I think that’s also something that comes from the OG Instagram irony days, like specifically that page @shel.feels. I don't really know much about him, but I'm pretty sure he was Mormon and grew up in Salt Lake City or Provo. He would post his face all the time and he was always very upfront and super nice to everybody in the community.
I was like, “That's sort of a good ideal for how people should be operating online.” And like you said, posting face, it does confirm a bit of the responsibility ‘cause faceless pages are cool–and I honestly will prefer a faceless page over a page that posts face all the time–but like, I think at a certain point, I am curious about who is spreading this message, like, where is this speech is coming from?
I know we keep mentioning him, but @yungstarbeam is one of those pages where the person is trying to put on an appearance of the page being something more than it is, building their "personal Instagram brand" or something.
Which is fine, but I think to have the most authentic speech, you have to sacrifice a bit of yourself and step over that line, and make yourself vulnerable in that way. People do respond to that.
But I don't know… I think honestly, if I could go back in time, I would probably be like, “Don't post your face online” [laughs]. But having done it, I think it's a good tool to enhance that connection with people in general.
Yeah, I kind of forgot that Instagram irony pages used to post face all the time. I think of Ibo Eshak.
I've been fascinated over the past year about when a meme page posts face, and what that means, but I never thought about there being a trend cycle to it. Like, right now, I think we’re in a posting face era, but at the start of the 2020s, it was a bit taboo.
Yeah, you know, with like Ibo Eshak and that era, it was because nobody was even seeing them.
What do you know everything about, that you could speak to no end on?
If you had asked me that a year ago, I’d have an answer, but I don't think I have an answer now. The more that I learn about anything, the more I know nothing about what I’m learning. The more I know, the less I know.
But I do have a lot of opinions on music, and I think even though I don't know everything about music, I can definitely talk at length about music.
So music's one of those things where you just, you keep learning, but you have no idea?
Yeah, exactly, and that's my favorite part. That's why I think it's such a great artistic medium. That factor, where, in order to truly enjoy any music, at least in my opinion, you have to remove it from the context of all other music. You have to appreciate it as it exists in and of itself, rather than viewing it within the context of all the music that came before and after it.
If you do, then you can get lost in the sauce of genre, inspiration, aesthetics, and all these things that really don't matter at the end of the day.
Relevant Azure4001 post (Source)SUBSCRIBE to US on SUBSTACK to SUPPORT MORE WORK LIKE THIS and GET VIP CONTENT
Do you think memes are the same way?
Yeah, I think they're really similar, to a certain extent. In terms of reposting memes, it's like a shared form of communication.
When I visualize it in my head, it's like this highway that we're all attached to.
When we go on Instagram, it's like we're plugging into that highway and, I don't know, fucking, The Matrix, or Tron or whatever. It's like all of these little interconnected zones, and some zones overlap, and some zones are really far away from each other…
When you say Instagram is like a highway with different things you plug into. Is there something that you're seeing online right now that you think is underrated, that people should know about or be talking about more?
Hmm, I like those AI Speed videos. It's this continuing story about him. It's really funny but, I mean, it's horrible. It's the lowest form of entertainment I would say.
It's just super manipulative and it's really clear that they're trying to push this weird, I don't know, like a narrative, a sort of global narrative of conflict resolution being made through violence. There are all these weird things with Speed's mom being a baddie or something [laughs].
What do you think you get out of it?
It's funny but, more so, I like to know that it exists. It's very self-indulgent I would say. It's pure—and obviously, this is also a really overused term—brainrot. I don't think it necessarily holds value, but I think it is the forerunner for what all social media’s probably gonna be in a year, is posts like this of higher quality.
I think it's interesting to experience “in-between stages” because people will look back at these years as being the ”birth years” of AI and we obviously see them very differently; we see it as “AI taking over,” or whatever.
But I think in like 20 years when people look back, they'll be like, ”Wow, remember those six months when that guy was making those AI Speed cartoons [laughs] and they looked like obvious AI?
That's lowkey my most powerful copium [laughs], is just thinking about the future and being like, “Wow, I wonder what people in 20 years are to think about today!” That's how I stop myself from being scared about the future.
Like with the highway, there are these shared languages and all these language gaps between really small communities.
Like, Gen Z-Gen Alpha slang, all of this stuff that's emerged. We could probably catalog just the first half of 2025. All of these brand new words, and phrases, and concepts, and jokes and inside jokes.
Obviously, there are some certain circumstances where people are making their own beings and sort of producing their own content. Like, a meme page that posts OC is pretty different from a repost page.
OC pages, like Tony Zaret, are much more traditional comedy format, like a comic strip, almost, as opposed to a repost page, which is more like a community; it’s sourced from the collective.
As a repost page, do you think what you do is important?
Not really. There are plenty of pages that are pretty indistinguishable from mine. I think if my page disappeared, it would be replaced by something else, which is very comforting to me personally.
You wouldn't be sad?
I'd probably be a little bit sad, but like, I’m ready. I've accepted it if it ever happens. I'm not doing anything that special, and it's not that unique.
With all that being said, I feel like different pages and different reposts have a certain voice, and I think the voice and the taste of the page are some things that are important.
I think there would be a void left if the page didn't exist.
Have you ever been in love?
Yes.
"Azure4001 is showing a culture Instagram wants erased" (Source)
You can follow Azure4001 on Instagram at @azure4001. Leo Barrera's personal account is @leowbarrera.
There are a thousand ways to dress
And 1
There are a thousand ways to dress
And 1
I'm going for that
And 1
You feel me?
You see me?
There are a thousand ways to dress
And 1
