Hilarious Instagram devoted to chubby babies is a must-follow for 2017

There's nothing like a chubby 'lil baby to turn your frown upside down, and 2016 had plenty. 

First, there was the "rice ball baby" meme, then it was "bread or baby arm?" 

Now, prepare to squeal with delight at the sight of this cute and hilarious Instagram account to end all cute and hilarious Instagram accounts: Tiny Gentle Asians. 

SEE ALSO: Another day, another baby with an inconceivably full head of hair

The account's creator, Mel Kenny, is a Thai Australian editor and social media consultant with a noble mission: To fill your feed with the best baby content around. 

Specifically, she's obsessed with the way Japanese and Korean mothers take "dramatised, humorous or unflattering pictures of their babies," as she puts it. 

And she's clearly not alone in that obsession. The cheekily-named Instagram page has 52.6K followers and counting, including Candice Swanepoel and Chelsea Handler.

What is it about Tiny Gentle Asians that makes people lose their minds? And how does the account's boss lady feel about its huge reception? Turns out she's just as amazed and delighted as you are. 

Around two years ago when Kenny began the account, she admits it wasn't entirely above board. 

"Scroll back to the very beginning of TGA's feed and you'll find some incredibly stealth and probably-not-okay pictures of cute Asian babies taken on my phone," she told Mashable. "I just found encounters with them to be so gleeful. Not in a maternal way … but more that I chanced upon a few with really great outfits that smiled at me or whatever." 

After quickly learning that the best and funniest images came direct from (mostly) Korean or Japanese mothers themselves, she changed approach — opting to re-post, tagging the original pictures. "Mums are generally okay, but I have been blocked in the past," she said.

"I think as the account has grown, perhaps follower numbers are able to better represent 'credibility' so that parents are less inclined to think that I harbour any suss feelings about babies." 

It's not just the staged photos or candid, perfectly-angled portraits that are a chuckle-fest. 

The made-up geolocations and captions attached to every image vary from surreal, to sincere-ish, to intentionally cliche. 

As Kenny explains, "Applying very silly, incongruent voices to pictures of tiny children that haven't yet formed identities is certainly the most enjoyable part for me. I think a portion of the audience finds the captions and the image create a funny experience, while the rest are just into the cute thing." 

Naturally, an Instagram that focuses on the cuteness of babies from East Asia specifically, is going to lead to conversations around race and representation. 

Kenny agrees that TGA isn't a project a non-Asian person could have (or even should have) taken on, and she sees all manner of interpretations at play in the comment section. 

"Possibly, I subconsciously narrowed the scope of babies to only Asian ones to broadly reflect my identity, though there doesn't seem to be such a big Instagram 'mum culture' in Thailand, or at least not one that captures babies in such a ridiculous light," she said. 

"It only really feels conflicting when I see a certain kind of comment from someone white, which makes me wonder if I've improperly homogenised or depreciated Asian-ness through naming it 'Tiny Gentle Asians.'" 

Comments like "Look at these Asians" or "Give me this Asian baby" can sometimes appear under an Instagram post, prompting Kenny to ponder if the simple appreciation of a post's humour can give way to something more caricatured.

"Of course, growing up in Australia I've been privy to people making generalised statements about Asians directed at me, or trying to guess 'what kind of Asian' I am," she said.

"Those experiences, or people referencing 'the Asians' like [anti-immigration senator] Pauline Hanson, are recalled when I read comments like that. I can't deny that choosing such a literal name has fed these kinds of comments — though thankfully they're rare." 

Mostly, she said, the feedback has largely been overwhelmingly positive. 

And with a mission she described by way of improvisation as "Show them the fat ones and make them laugh," Tiny Gentle Asian is definitely fulfilling its core objective.  

"Rolls and LOLs are definitely the two vital ingredients in a great post," she said. Whether it's through photos, merch or longer form content, Tiny Gentle Asians wants to simply "spread the same kind of joy as tagging friends in any post might." 

If 2017 is anything like 2016 — may the joyful and cherubic faces of a feed full of Tiny Gentle Asians keep you smiling all year long.