It’s been a few months since we last checked in on Pinterest. When we first started hearing about this little site that used “pinning” to share ideas, interesting odds and ends, and cool stuff found around the web, we thought it was the next step in streamlining all those tidbits people post on Facebook and Twitter that may work better to serve an audience already primed to readily accept those things we once cut from magazines or gleaned from a personal email.
In visiting now, yeah, it looks like Martha Stewart exploded all over the site. Or rather Martha Stewart trainees were told to “rapid fire create her entire essence” via “massive pin assault” resulting in wedding pictures, recipes, hairdo techniques, home decor’ ideas, cute overload pics, tchotchkes, and garden party photos. It is literally the self-created woman’s magazine Hearst Publications is probably sooo frustrated they never thought of. It’s been referred to by others as a digital yogurt commercial, and more to the point, “Cupcakes, Boots, and Shirtless Jake Gyllenhaal,” as Slate’s Farhad Manjoo mentioned late last year. Even Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams’ initial impression went from seeing it as “social networking for cat ladies” to fearing that the site could lose its charm and become a “pink ghetto.” Yawr, a pink ghetto. If you didn’t quite understand before, Pinterest might as well have a tagline that says, Pinterest: For Ladies Who Like Pretty, Girly Things. Yet, they claim their mission is “to connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.”
But when you view the site, and read Pinterest’s statement about people using the “pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes,” without coming right out and saying it, sure, yes, the perception is that boys aren’t allowed to come into the clubhouse and stink up the place with their gym socks, jockey shorts, and talk about manly things, like beer farts, wearing a mustache successfully, or all other things listed here on the Modern Man Card. And the guys, yeah, they’ve taken that mantra and ran with it if College Humor is any indication. (Trigger Warning: Heavy Snark)
In feeling a bit displaced from the world of “pinning,” dudes have tried to start man-centered sites that are similar, like Dart it Up where “daps” are rewarded instead of pins, and Manteresting, which gives out “bumps” for things well-liked. All three sites have their own certain level of cool. But, it does seem strange that if people of all genders, races, creeds and so on can uniformly get behind Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, why is this so different? Why is or should there be two separate camps when it comes to online scrapbooking? Documenting what we find online and in our daily lives isn’t just a womanly pursuit. Amid other things, men do enjoy discussing what they wear, what they eat, and what cool stuff they’ve found — whether at Ikea — or the batarang, ninja star, and nunchaku depot.
It’s been said that perhaps the thing with Pinterest is that it’s too earnest. Farhad Manjoo contends that for him because it’s so free of irony and jovialness that it’s a bit of a turnoff, which is interesting. He’d much rather look at a funny list of items on Buzzfeed than read the often cluttered Pinterest website that in his view, brims with visual chaos. Aside from housekeeping things like site layout, is that like saying that this pervasive earnestness and inability to scoff at things or make light of the mockable, purely lends itself to more of a female sensibility? Hmm, that sounds a bit like saying that women don’t have a sense of humor, and that those hair-braiding tutorials are very serious business! (Fingies opens Pinterest and realizes that, yes, hair-braiding tutorials are very serious business.)
He also sites that because the whole Pinterest thing first caught on among women in the Midwest that’s “why people (i.e. women) don’t Pin stuff ironically, or to convey any other emotion aside from full-throated, earnest appreciation.” Urgh. Personally we say Bah! at that notion. There’s nothing wrong with being earnest, and there’s also nothing wrong with bringing the funny. But we’ve heard this mantra about “acute earnestness” before. We know that in some sub-cultures scoffing at the flotsam floating around in that sub-culture’s ether is a no-no, since “each little nugget of awesome is no joking matter.” Take our conversation about How Much Twee is Too Much for instance.
So we do understand what he’s saying to a degree, but we’ll add that men aren’t the only ones who can rib their buddies and point out when something is empirically lame. For those of us who are ribald and would like to be able to say about Channing Tatum, who’s at the top of the Pinterest landing page as this is being written, that he’s a walking, talking abdominal pot roast with the acting ability of a oak canoe at a woodworking conference in Fresno — could we say it without fear of instant recrimination? It does seem a little doubtful. And yeah, we think we could possibly say it on Dart it Up or Manteresting (without the half-naked picture attached, natch) but, gah! While we ladies are able to appreciate Channing’s considerable assets, we are also witty enough to lob jabs at his lesser ones, right? C’mon, chicas!
We really shouldn’t have to buddy up to the more man-friendly sites for laughs as Manjoo suggests, should we? It seems rather silly to have these gender-specific websites that tout their inclusiveness. Be what you are, but let us firmly see the tongue in cheek. There’s so much that’s overlapped in the internet world, why does discussing our likes and sharing them in this format need more exclusivity than any of the other forms of social networking we use? Isn’t the whole point of social networking to bring us closer together? Not sure how you can do that if we’re making sharable sites that in viewing them are the equivalent to reading someone’s diary and filled with so much dogma and stigma that we take up the same mantle of gender ideologies that we’ve been trying to avoid. And well, this Buzzfeed list “125 Reasons Why Guys Are Scared of Pinterest” posted by a woman, is a bit frightening, and we’re saying this as a woman, and as a human being. Yikes.
The Clever Girls Collective in their article “How to Stop Being a Pinterest Sexist” believe that men “not getting” the site is really their problem, and that writing about it as being some intangible lady-speak thing is sexist. And they have a point. Using diminutive language to describe something is always insulting, but despite pronouncing that men should “Learn it. Love it. Preach it.” isn’t that a bit hard to do if men don’t really feel that they’re welcome to partake in the Pinterest experience? Whether you aspire to it or not, the whole thing about social networking is wanting to feel included and by extension liked, right?
The internet isn’t some unknowable thing. By now we understand how it all works, but by and large it takes people to keep it chugging along. But an important part of that, at least this blogger thinks, is working together. We happen to like the way thefancy.com, a competitor to Pinterest, does it. Both guys and girls seem to really dig it — and use it. It cuts a formidable swath right through the omnipresent gender stuff of other sites. It’s fun, it’s gorgeous, it’s centerpieces and motorcycles, and full of cool, rockin shit.
Take Kanye West and Mark Zuckerberg‘s like of it for whatever that’s worth, but it’s possible if The Zuck likee, it could really be on to something. So perhaps we should also embrace “cross interests” scrapbooking and use them as a model? Yeah, so how about we pin, dap, bump, and fancy together, eh?
