The only time I seem to interact with Pinterest is when I’m searching for images of something on my phone, let’s say “pictures of mountains”. I want to get the image in full res so I go to the site, then I can’t copy it or download it.
From these brief interactions and exploring the site I just don’t see the appeal. Pinterest just seems like a terrible image search engine with the ‘feature?’ that every few scrolls pulls up similar-ish categories to the image search you did(Mausoleum might bring up Pharaohs for example). It could be that I’ve just never taken the time to use it properly, so I thought I would ask people: what is Pinterest good for / why does it exist.
Hopefully is not too harsh I am high atm.
I try to avoid the site like the plague, have never really attempted to use it, and when the internet inevitably dumps me there is my search for something I’ve never found any value in it.
But I think the idea is that it’s supposed to be sort of a brainstorming tool.
Think back to the days when physical magazines and catalogues were more of a thing. When you were planning or designing or working towards some goal you might gather up a bunch of clippings, pictures, articles, recipes, your own notes, sketches, and doodles, etc. and pin them up on a cork board (sort of a “vision board”) or maybe put them in a book or folder or something so they were readily available for you to look at for inspiration or reference as you go about your planning.
I think that’s what Pinterest was supposed to be. Sort of a place to save all your little inspirations and reference pictures for whatever project or goal you have in mind.
And I kind of suspect that for that purpose it does its job well enough (though I don’t really get what benefit it has over a folder full of pictures and word documents, spreadsheets, etc. saved to your computer or phone)
And I guess maybe having a platform where you can share that sort of virtual vision board and get feedback on it and see what others are planning is maybe useful for some people’s creative process.
But it’s also kind of like glimpsing into someone’s personal notebook full of their illegible handwriting, half-finished sketches and doodles, and made-up shorthand. It probably makes lots of sense to that person, but since you don’t know what was going on in their mind when they put it together and it was never edited for someone else to make sense of, it might as well be the ramblings of a mental patient.
And since most of the rest of us only stumble onto Pinterest in search of a source for something - a place we can buy something, the recipe for food, an article or the context for a picture, a how-to guide, etc. it seems like a total waste of time because most people only share the picture and a couple quick thoughts or hashtags or whatever, it’s basically useless.