1. @winnipegwildin (Instagram)

2. @faceplam (Twitter)

3. @mbpolidragrace (Instagram)

The Red River Rebellion. The General Strike of 1919. If Day. Winnipeg has been chaotic for as long as it’s been; wildin’, even. It was only a matter of time before someone made a tidy agglomeration of its daily folly for convenient consump - tion on your timeline. Enter @winnipegwildin.

“All Winnipeggers have their opinions on the city, and it’s just kind of put into a page. It’s all inside jokes that Winnipeggers know,” the head of growth at @winnipegwildin, who wishes to remain anonymous, says. We’ll call him Dave.

The Instagram page showcases “the good, the bad and the ugly” of Winnipeg through user-submitted content, witty tweets and headline news. City-specific memes coexist alongside peculiar traffic incidents and videos of citizens fighting the elements in their own zany ways.

“Ninety-nine per cent of the content is from Winnipeg. If we post anything that isn’t from Winnipeg, I would usually hashtag ‘notWinnipeg,’ so people know,” Dave says.

@winnipegwildin is one of many such accounts under the Wildin Media Group, which had its origins in Lethbridge, Alta.

“My business partner here, he started it in Lethbridge about four, four-and-a-half years ago. He came to Winnipeg, and he pitched the same idea here. It was just a fun place to post community-related memes,” Dave says.

The group hopes to provide a less sanitized perspective on the city and its happenings.

“People can go there and see what’s really happening in the city: the headlines of what’s actually in the news and also things that aren’t in the news. Things that wouldn’t regularly be covered in the mainstream media.”

Even then, there is content made in our great city deemed unfit for “wildin” standards.

“I try and keep the craziness to a low. It doesn’t really seem like that, but a lot of the really crazy stuff, it’s just not posted, because it can’t be.”

Published in Volume 77, Number 12 of The Uniter (December 1, 2022)