Its a social network...its so people can be social & share picture with their friends or the rest of the world if they choose, but where instagram shines is there is no messaging people. Its really all about the pictures. And if the pics look bad its because the users took a bad pic or choose to apply a filter to it. There is nothing stopping a person from never adding a filter, or only following people who don't add filters
Here are two pics that I didn't add a filter to
Photo by havox22 • Instagram
Photo by havox22 • Instagram
But they do compress the pics so quality is lost, but at the end of the day there is really nothing to get. I hear the same thing with twitter and facebook...whats its purpose? well its to be social, there is nothing special about any social network except the people that are on it, and even that will depend on the user & how they want to interact
Also, you can always put your photo through Photoshop before uploading it if you want enhance your photos without being limited to their filters
Photo by havox22 • Instagram