Created in 2010 by entrepreneurs Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp, Pinterest burst on the scene as a way for internet users to organize and curate their lives. The site was a gold mine of memes, recipes, DIY hacks, and more all isolated on a single, long-scrolling page for easy interaction.
According to writer Zachary Weston on Medium, their social media platform eventually became “one of the fastest-growing websites in history,” amassing over 10 million monthly users within its first few years.
One of its most alluring features is its resistance to common social media traditions like “likes” and “dislikes” in addition to its informal approach to content creation. There’s less emphasis on who you’re following, how many followers you have, and what your feed looks like. Instead, users are given the freedom to simply view and scroll aimlessly, making Pinterest one of the more relaxing and wholesome social media platforms.
Pinterest is not exempt from how social media reconfigures our cultural practices and mental processes, though. Despite its departure from toxic internet behaviour and its devotion to inclusivity, overconsumption of this social media platform should still be regulated.
Pinterest’s best feature and biggest downfall is its ties to curation.
Platforms like Instagram and TikTok allow users to organize their saved posts into personalized folders, but Pinterest kick-started this trend. Instead of “likes,” Pinterest users “pin” posts to their accounts. These “pins” are then isolated to personalized “boards,” which they can customize into categories like “outfit inspo,” “hairstyles,” or “recipes,” for example.
If you’re anything like me, you could spend hours curating every inch of your life, from planning your dream wedding to your summer outfits. A certain joy exists in the act of pinning and creating boards. All our aspirations are compacted into these tiny folders that we can see and admire. In a sense, it’s motivating. However, with curation comes a lack of creativity and an emphasis on superficiality.
We’ve heard the story a million times about how social media is a breeding ground for narcissism, so I’m not trying to peddle the same narrative. Rather, I want us to accept how much visual consumption we engage in on Pinterest and how harmful that can be to our sense of self.
Traditionally, a curator works within art spaces like museums or galleries to make decisions on when/how the artwork should be displayed or presented to the viewer. They are storytellers who use existing art to bolster important themes and narratives of the world.
Pinterest is more laid back with their version of curation but, the tradition remains the same. With the content provided, users decide which are worthy to be selected and pinned to their boards. The vastness of the internet makes us absorbed and obsessed, thereby seducing us into interiorizing the content we consume.
The constant act of pinning and the incessant belief that we must organize our aspirations can completely alter our perception of the future. We may believe that if we don’t achieve the aestheticized ideal we’ve carefully organized, we will have failed ourselves.
It makes us care too much about what we look like and what energy we give off. So, while pinning and organizing is a relaxing pastime, it’s important to take a step back to remember that the internet is not reality. Your sense of self should be influenced by all areas of the world, not just by what is on screen.
Whenever I become too invested in my online persona, I always think of Louis Althusser’s theory of interpellation which states that “the mechanism through which pre-existing social structures ‘constitute’ (or construct) individual human organisms as subjects.”
Essentially, we are constructed to act in specific ways according to the world’s social, cultural, economic, and political structures. If we think about this existentially, we are living a life influenced by deeply rooted “truths” created for us. We submit to organized control.
Interpellation is exactly what Pinterest imposes on its users. The identities we are curating and aspiring to are not ones employed on our volition (remember, there’s a lack of creativity). Rather, they are simply a response to the images and content already generated for us. We are not creating anything, we are simply organizing what we like and basing our identities on this.
Now, it would be completely hypocritical of me to shame others for submitting to the ease of the digital lifestyle. Still, there is something eerily artificial about how much visual content we consume and Pinterest’s algorithm and interface work to pump users with as much content as possible.
Our brains, though accustomed to the fast-paced, media-driven world, still use an “ancient operating system to process information,” said Mary E. McNaughton-Cassill, a professor of clinical psychology in a Vox article. While, physically, we can handle all of this visual stimulation, it still takes time to ingest what is presented to us mentally.
What is actually real? What is constructed? These are constant permeating questions that social media, including Pinterest, often create in our heads. Disassociating from the hyperbolic misconceptions of reality that many like to portray online takes a lot of effort. When we turn to Pinterest to learn how to live, we are essentially embodying the visual content we consume while failing to realize how idealized it truly is.
That is why, when we believe that Pinterest is a silly, wholesome exploration of the self and a harmless pastime, we should remember to remove ourselves from the internet’s headspace and return to the beautiful messiness of reality. Don’t allow the internet to dictate who you are. Remember, these machines were created to serve, not consume us.
So, is Pinterest a friend or foe? That choice is completely up to you.