Pinterest is essentially an online pinboard that allows users to create theme based bulletin boards by pinning content, particularly pictures, to their various collections.  Pinterests are easy to share and the website suggests you use your pinterest to plan your wedding, decorate your home, or document your favorite recipes.  This is probably why 83% of American Pinterest users are women.  Take a look at this Pinterest, made by a woman who is not engaged, to depict things she likes about weddings.  I’m still trying to decipher this content; it doesn’t appear to have much organizational motivation for her future fantasy wedding nor is there some unique representation of “wedding” as a concept or artistic idea.  The images are disjointed and vague –  just there, available for anyone to look at, for no reason.

Right now, I hate Pinterest.  I’m tired of people’s pins being shared on Facebook and running into blogs that link to what, to me, are just glorified collages.  Pinterest’s mission according to their website is “to connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.”  It promotes the very idea that the internet already has too much of – the sharing of meaningless things that people think are unique, original, interesting, whatever, to a bunch of aquaintences who just don’t care.  Every Pinterest I’ve seen has been of a bunch of material objects I never needed to see, and I have a feeling even the creators will seldom look at their boards again.

It’s not that I think Pinterest is a bad idea.  I don’t. It makes sense to have a mechanism for organizing images from different parts of the web thematically that makes it easy to share, a place where we can hold onto things we see and want to remember.  In concept, it sounds like something we should have.  However, Pinterest lately has added bulk to the internet; it’s like if we walked around with a lifetime collection of knick-knacks in our pockets through everyday life.  There are some things we shouldn’t hold onto because they don’t matter; they’re not worth remembering.  Take this Pinterest below, that someone themed “I love Smoothies” and then pinned pictures of smoothies that looked good.  What does this achieve? Who cares? Why am I looking at this? Why would the creator even look at this again? A quick google image search could produce similar, if not the same, pictures of smoothies.

I know – Pinterest could be a great, easy-to-use organizational tool for content; sharing business plans, coupons, designs, inspiration boards, memories, family history, etc could all be made more accessible to the average computer user.  However, we already have ways to achieve that same goal and the fact is it’s being overused to present content that doesn’t serve any greater purpose.  I guess what I’m emphasizing here is that Pinterest’s purpose is empty; there is no deeper meaning behind these trivial things that we’re all supposed to be connected to, and through them, be connected to each other.  It is the insignificant, mass consumption of “pretty pictures.”