My friends have been dogging me to join Pinterest. Apparently, a social network isn’t legit until I come and crush its dreams.
Ugh. Fine.
Let’s ruin another hotshot, flash-in-the-pan social network.
So, what the hell is Pinterest?
This is how the geniuses over at Pinterest describe themselves:
Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.
Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.
In plain English: Pinterest is yet another website where people can share images with their friends.
How novel!
You find things you like (or hate in my case), and then “pin” them to board. Then your friends see them and they “repin” them to their boards.
Don’t we have this idea already? Isn’t it called Facebook? Or is it Tumblr? Or Reddit? Or Twitter? Or Google+? Maybe the creators of Pinterest forgot they had those sites and that’s why they made their own.
So it’s generic. Fine.
Here’s what I hate most about Pinterest.
Pinterest is all about things. Things to buy. Things to make. Things to use. It’s the epitome of consumer culture. Pinterest asks its users to equate themselves with materials. Is this what we want from a social network? A way to describe ourselves as a sum of discount crap that was made in sweat shop?
Every day, we push more meaningless crap onto the web. We’ve devalued our relationships into meaningless numbers of friends and followers. We’ve stopped being people, and started being personal brands. Are we finally ready to reduce our identity into a collection of photoshopped images of crap we can’t afford?
Pin that to your “Products I love” board.
