The Problem with Pintrest

I admit, I use Pinterest from time to time. I’ve used it to find some delicious recipes, funny memes, and cute hairstyles. However, some areas of the site have become so insular that everything ends up looking exactly. like. everything. else.

Case in point: looking for home office decoration ideas on Pinterest.

office1

White, minimalist, small, white, modern, small, white, white.

How many times do you see the same uncomfortable-looking chair?

officechair

When people see themselves as “Pinterest Bloggers”, and they only view Pinterest for inspiration, it becomes an echo chamber. Your post looks like all the other twee posts out there? Success!

Your posts are especially pinterest-friendly if they’re useless. I can’t count how many times I’ve clicked on an image to try to find out who manufactured a particular item, only to find no information whatsoever. It was just a slideshow titled “25 creative ways to decorate your home office” followed by 25 pictures of the same office with slightly different shades of white paint poured over them.

Thanks, Pinterest. Now I know where not to go when decorating. Not the best business model.

You might say “Well, Pinterest tailors their search results based on what they think you’ll like.” If clicking on 4 white offices out of 100 pictures of white offices means they will now show me nothing but white offices, then Pinterest’s user base is even more of a drone hive than I thought. Yikes. Give me some g*ddamn color! And a chair that a human would willingly sit on!