A few weeks after my wedding last summer, I was invited to join Pinterest—a social media site that lets users pin and categorize images they fancy from wherever online they find them. It’s a whole lot of fun. The site was designed by men, but the huge majority of users are women, who use it to plan weddings (real or imaginary), cook, find do-it-yourself home improvement inspiration, and, notably, daydream. Possibly more time is wasted on Pinterest even than on Facebook.
As fun as it is to window shop, there’s something about Pinterest that irks me. I don’t mean the usual escapist’s guilt over hours frittered away. I think purposelessness is built into the site. The tools are great and I love them, but what are they for? Right now it’s akin to a pictorial version of Facebook—you don’t just share interests and keep in some semblance of touch, you collect bits that reflect your taste and use them to promote an image of yourself.
What first provoked my dismay is that everyone on Pinterest has exactly the same taste. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen the same shabby-chic weddings, the same impulse to stick crystal chandeliers in every room of the house, and the same lace skirt with the sweepy green blouse recurring on the personal and worldwide homepages. Everyone loves this stuff, and nobody seems to be bothered that most users build their content through “repinning.”
It’s groupthink. A very specific image of happiness is being sold to young middle-class women by advertisers and product designers. The image is more traditional than our mothers bought in the 70’s, glitzier and more lighthearted than the imitation-fancy or false-modern décor they now buy at Macy’s, and just as lacking in real elegance as both. It’s painfully bourgeois. One sign of true community is differentiation of personalities, which reflects itself in taste. So it seems Pinterest-people aren’t a community but a demographic. In contrast to Twitter, where each person contributes to a dynamic network that has taken on a personality of its own, Pinterest-people are statistics and Pinterest is the chart. No wonder more than a few minutes of pinning turns stultifying.
How do I console myself? In the stupidest way possible. Somehow, if your tastes are edgy enough and you pin all the time, you hit some kind of algorithm where the Pinterest staff notices you and starts recommending your boards for other people to follow. So I start exercising some quality control on my content and secretly pat myself on the back when I gain followers I don’t know. In the not-very-far back of my mind I know this is a sorry success. I don’t want to become a Pin-Monster; I don’t want to chalk up followers like marbles. I want to know them like you can on Twitter and feel like I’m contributing to something.
So we come to problem #2. Although it claims to be “social,” Pinterest’s incentive structure combines (im)material accumulation with “look-at-me” narcissism, much like the personal exhibitionism driving Facebook. Although Pinterest users can sync with other networks to find and follow friends, Pinterest itself has no networks, no circles, no lists—no social or geographical delimiters of any kind that let you pick your audience. Its messaging capacity was never good and is now gone altogether. And there’s no meaningful way of assigning priority to pins or boards, or of rating content shared by other users. Both the social and content structures are flat and discrete.
It reminds me of an early modern political fiction about how atomistic pre-political society is—the state of nature. The fable was supposed to point out how the state of nature was dangerous, so we formed political societies to protect ourselves. But in reality, it’s boring. People manically pin and repin images from retailers and lifestyle blogs. But I want to connect, compete, achieve, discuss, and flourish—do things that all communities do. If Pinterest wants to gain depth as well as breadth, it needs to allow its users to encounter each other as people—and not just with pin contests on third party sites.
As a side note, my last complaint: their servers are terrible.
The idea of a pinboard is useful and exciting, but the execution so far is dull. You don’t get inspired by fiddling in an imaginary universe. I would love to see Pinterest draw people together instead of handing out free isolation in the guise of a daydreaming tool.
While I am an avid reader of books, I generally do not read blogs, cards, or even pinterest pins I think are too long. However, after skimming over this post I had to go back and read the blog in its entirety.
ReplyDeleteWhile everyone is clearly entitled to their own opinion, I am surprised at the strong negativity focused at something as innocent as Pinterest. I am not against social media in anyway, but I don't have a Facebook. However, I do have both Twitter and Pinterest accounts. While you find Pinterest to be narcissistic, I find it to be inspiring and helpful. I am grateful to "pinners" who are willing to share ideas, recipes, and tips with the rest of the Pinterest community. On more than one occasion I have used an idea, recipe, or tip I found on Pinterest in my real life. I don't pin/repin to create a "'look at me' narcissism", but as a way to save things that I find helpful and inspirational.
Furthermore, while "one sign of true community is differentiation of personalities", aren't communities brought together because of their commonalities? What is wrong with celebrating the things that we have in common. Maybe there is a reason that people "love" shabby chic. While I prefer more modern decor, I do see the beauty and value of styles that others appreciate.
Maybe I need to find an outlet to "promote an image of myself", but I think that Pinterest is a valuable website that can be used for so many things including evangelism.