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Telling me I should join Pinterest?

It’s no surprise that hoards of my sorority sisters and female friends have already joined Pinterest, the image-oriented online bulletin board where users can aggregate photos they find around the Internet.

Melissa Buckman

My Facebook and Twitter feeds have long been poisoned by Pinterest posts about “OMG CUTE” hair braids, “CAN’T WAIT TO TRY THIS!!!!” pictures of food and, well, puppies.

A handful of male friends have, to my delight, also acquired accounts and designed absurd pinboards around hyper-masculine topics such as bacon, beer, mustaches and parodied chic male fashions (“hella tight Birkenstocks,” for example).

But when one of the most widely respected commentators on the state of journalism told me I should score an invite to the seventh most popular site in social media today, guilty concern — not disregard — was my instinctual reaction [“Why it’s time for journalists to pay attention to Pinterest & what you can do there,” Poynter, Jan. 20].

I think my guilt-concern smoothie blend tasted so sour because of those myriad women whose pinboards make them look like caricatures of the female race. But I also think a more obscure ingredient was involved: my hipster-like distaste for jumping late onto a social media bandwagon.

Swallowing all of this has felt like discovering Bon Iver at the same time as the rest of America. And the latter ingredient of this confusing concoction has been harder for me to pinpoint (pun not intended, but retrospectively appreciated) than the former.

For starters, Pinterest has seemed, at least to me, to highlight every stereotypically feminine and domestic practice the Internet has done an otherwise fine job to blur.

Besides the aforementioned hairstyles, food and pets, a number of my peers have taken to creating wedding pinboards. Is it mean to say that I think the college-aged women who do this are least likely to actually get married?

Though Pinterest is undoubtedly a useful tool in the planning process, such presumptuous prudence gives me the creeps and cold feet on behalf of any potential suitor.

Arguably worse, quote boards — photoshopped excerpts of Nicholas Sparks novels, more or less — exist.

Looking at a quote board is like walking into someone’s apartment and seeing “Live. Laugh. Love.” painted on their wall. You know precisely the type of person and the amount of campiness for which you’re in store.

Still, as Poynter pointed out (pun intended this time), Pinterest poses potential beyond its current market. Its small roots paired with vast room for growth aren’t unlike the early versions of Facebook and Twitter.

Pinterest is also, as the article mentions, a “visually compelling” method with which journalists can tell stories — perhaps even more effectively than sites such as Tumblr.

Outlets such as The New York Times and PBS News Hour are growing in presence on the site, too, as are other brands looking to tap into a new and attractive well.

And so I’ve come to observe and slightly regret my harsh stance on Pinterest. Poynter’s rational and utilitarian perspective has, unfortunately, forced me to refer to my eighth-grade emo self: an uncomfortably out-of-place, vehement opponent of the mainstream.

Today I’ve canned the Hot Topic T-shirts and screamo CDs, but I’m not much different. This time, I’m just overtly pretentious about the social media I elect to use (and Bon Iver, whom I listened to way before he went mainstream, by the way).

I accumulate disdain for sites I didn’t join before they grew popular and, ironically — in this now quasi-hipster mindset — complain about them on the very social media to which I, at one point, conformed as well.

In essence, I’ve created my own “quote board” — one of fancy rants. Oops.

Still, I wonder: who’s most wrong? Poynter, the girls with wedding boards or me?

Does Pinterest suck as much as I think it does? Is it more so the Internet’s Foster the People (looks pretty, sounds good, will be gone at the sixteenth minute) than its Bon Iver? Should I sign up and start a wedding board?

I’m not sure quite yet. Either way, I apologize. The Buck(man) stops here when it comes to bashing sites with potential before I give them a fair chance.

That being said, somebody please send me a Pinterest invite.