Pinterest and list-articles

It’s on my mind right now, so I’m gonna talk about it.

Pinterest.

Let me tell you about Pinterest.

It’s on my mind because I follow a bunch of baking blogs.  I usually don’t feel particularly inspired by them.  I love the pictures and I would usually like to eat whatever it is that is being presented on any given day, but I have a very rigorous selection process.

The things I pin have to feel doable.  They can’t involve a billion special ingredients that I’ll never use again.  They can’t involve kitchenware that I don’t own and had never considered owning before.  They can’t take up hours and hours or tons of fridge space.  And I have to want to eat them.

So I usually end up pinning relatively simple recipes, and I like it that way.  I think people tend to be impressed but intimidated by ridiculous baking projects, and I don’t really want to be thought of as a fancy baker when I bake.  I just want people to eat whatever it is that I’m offering.

So I pin a very select number of recipes because they SPEAK to me.  I really like the gadget on these blogs where you can pin a picture if you hover right over it.  That’s my favorite because I don’t like the seven step process of copying the URL, going to Pinterest, uploading a pin – from the internet, which I always get wrong the first time, picking a picture, titling it, picking a board… the gadget cuts all that out and fast-tracks to the end.

I see people complaining about Pinterest all the time.  I see that more often than I see people pinning to their own boards.  “It’s such a time-sink!” they say, “I just get so distracted!  I don’t have time to lose hours to Pinterest!”

I think I have the wrong interests for Pinterest, because every time I look at someone’s board, I just feel… bored.  It’s not that other people’s interests don’t interest me.  I’m interested in other people, but not necessarily in every detail.  So maybe I’m not really the intended user.  I don’t get lost on the site itself.  I like food blogs a lot, and I just use Pinterest as my online recipe book.  It’s pretty sweet.

Speaking of things being posted on facebook, if I see even one more “well-meaning” (or not) piece on not getting married before 23 (or a rebuttal to the original), I’m going to post a little rant on my status.

“Hi all.  Please stop posting list-articles (is there any lazier way to write?!) about things that you’d rather do than get married.  It makes you look mean-spirited, jealous, and insecure.  If you feel the need to post an article about all of the things that you are doing instead of getting married, you probably aren’t actually happy that you aren’t getting married.  How can you expect not to see major life events on facebook?  Engagement pictures are usually really pretty, and so are wedding pictures, and stop taking this so personally.   Stop alienating your betrothed friends.  It hurts their feelings; they aren’t getting married specifically to spite you, and you are posting these articles specifically to spite them (don’t argue with me there is no other reason to post a snarky, badly written list-article about things you’d rather do than get married to facebook.).  You look immature and very uncomfortable in your singleness, which is ostensibly the antithesis of everything you were trying to convey.  Save the snark for offline.  Thanks for listening.”