1 – I’ve always loved a good board. In middle and high school I used to comb through magazines tearing out my favorite images, mostly Calvin Klein ads featuring Christy Turlington, and plaster them all over my walls. In college my dorm room bulletin board was covered with photos taken on disposable cameras artfully collaged with ticket stubs and free stickers and coasters swiped from bars. I curated hundreds of magazine clippings and Polaroid’s when planning our wedding (It will be 10 years in a few weeks!). Next came layers of invitations, thank you cards and birth announcements – each a reminder of a happy event for someone in my life. For me a good board is a mix of inspiration, aspiration, work in progress, and things you just don’t want to forget.
2 – Pinterest is not what I thought it would be. So yeah, I was a pinner before pinning was even a thing. And when Pinterest came on the scene I was down. I loved the idea of being able to organize and file images that I liked. My old method was emailing them to myself and then filing into a folder system where things always seemed to be disappearing into the Bermuda Triangle of “I know I saved that somewhere.” So what could be better than a neat little place to stash images that caught my eye? But instead of an organizational system, I found that Pinterest was more like a constant flood of images coming at me. And I’m looking, and looking, and looking. And there’s a lot of really beautiful things – most of them not relevant to my life at all. And there’s a lot of nail art. And there’s a lot of really weird things. If you type in seal, for example, you get everything from Seal in a Speedo to toys shaped like seals to seals giving birth.
3 – Keeping it inspiring vs. wanting to poke my eyeballs out. I’ve heard people say that Pinterest just makes them feel crappy. And I get that. It’s easy to get sucked into comparison mode. To feel inadequate or less than. To look at so many images of homemade party garlands that you want to vomit. It can feel like a never ending stream of all the crafts I’ll never do and the meals I’ll never prepare and the outfits I’ll never put together and the living rooms I’ll never have because mine is covered in Legos. And at the end of the day, I’m okay with that. I know my strengths, and I know when to be happy with whatever is on clearance in the party section at Target. I think the trick to healthy Pinterest use is being able to separate inspiration as a jumping off point for what you want to accomplish in your own life from pining (that’s pining not pinning) for something you don’t have. If you’re not living the life you envision for yourself and you’re looking at Pinterest through a green tinted half empty glass, it’s probably going to deflate you. I also like to remind myself that most users of Pinterest are marketers – selling a brand lifestyle that ultimately sells a product or steers you to a web site where you look at their content where they sell ad space that sells a product. Like magazines, it works best when you take it with a giant grain of salt.
But some days I still can’t stop from getting sucked into the vortex of looking. And somewhat compulsively searching. I am basically gazing into other people’s lives – their homes, their pantries, their parties, their closets. It’s like reality TV – you know it’s not real, but you just can’t stop watching. It’s like Facebook when you find yourself looking at pictures from your friend’s cousin’s girlfriend’s vacation for no reason at all. And when I feel myself slipping into that social media malaise where I’m constantly looking but not participating making it not really social at all, I know it’s time to put the iPad down and walk away – right after I find another maxi dress that I will never buy to pin onto a board named “Closet” that looks absolutely nothing like my closet.
Are you on board with Pinterest? Can you explain to me the Heart? If you Heart something but don’t re-pin isn’t that just saying I kind of like it but not enough to re-pin? Or are you supposed to Heart and re-pin? I don’t get it. This is the kind of social media etiquette that stresses me out.
Leave a Reply