Summary
- Pinterest is an aesthetic search engine, not a social media platform with the heavy comparison culture.
- The platform offers endless inspiration for various interests, not just artsy content.
- Individual presence is not required on Pinterest, making it an uplifting and pressure-free space to explore.
I remember the day I signed up for Instagram in 2013. It was middle school (age me away, why wouldn’t you) and I was the very last one at my lunch table to have an account. I’d finally received permission, and downloading the app to my iPod Touch was the most exhilarating feeling all year. Little did I know, more than a decade later, it’d be a massive source of dopamine spikes, unsolicited news, comparison culture, and what would come to be known as doomscrolling.
I guess it really was those damn phones all along, because it seems like everyone’s in the same boat — we love and hate social media at the same time. Every so often, you’ll even see a user or two post a black screen on their story with the caption: “deleting social media, be back soon”. It’s a temporary act of defiance and detoxification I’ve seen all across Instagram, Snapchat, and even Facebook when I deigned to ever click into that app.
However, the one social app I’ve never seen anyone have a hateful relationship with is the World Wide Web’s sweetheart: Pinterest. Sure, it’s not your typical timeline, but I think there are a few reasons why it doesn’t slowly — and painfully — flip the fight-or-flight switch in our brains. Let me elaborate.
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What do you even use Pinterest for?
Inspiration, obviously — but quite literally a million other things
People get on Instagram to scroll. They get on TikTok to get sucked into the algorithms. Others toggle between those two and Snapchat to talk to their friends or post a quick Story, and some, like me, head to Facebook once a week to try and buy patio furniture for their new apartment (which I’m having an ungodly difficult time finding for some reason).
Pinterest isn’t an everyday entry for most people. Usually, someone only opens the app — or even the browser — when they already have an idea of what they’re looking for and are itching for something more. It’s the place on the internet to find inspiration. But for what?
Pinterest isn’t a place to keep up with Jones’s. It’s a secluded spot on the internet to gather endless ideas and inspiration to then compile them all into digital bulletin boards to save for later.
A vision board, quotes, character inspiration, color palettes, S-tier memes, art, itineraries — you name it. People treat Pinterest as a search engine. However, unlike heading to Google, Bing, or even DuckDuckGo where you’ll find thousands of pages of information spanning all kinds of media, Pinterest will give you thousands of “Pins,” in their little rounded-corner boxes. Rather than looking up information, I like to think of Pinterest as looking up vibes and moods — something that, often, words cannot encapsulate properly.
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It’s more of an aesthetic search engine
You’ll find what you’re looking for, and then some
I have created about a hundred Pinterest boards over the last 12 years or so. Some are filled with novel ideas long abandoned, and others are outfit examples to inspire packing for trips to New York or Norway. I know there are fashionistas, artists, travel planners, photo editors, and a million other more talented people than me out there who have shared their own experiences online to make mine easier. I’ve found countless favorite bloggers from Pins they’ve created, which have saved me from fashion disasters in hostels across the world. My most searched term might be “capsule wardrobe summer 2023” if Pinterest ever threw out the statistics, not that I actually want to see them.
It’s not just artsy (or girly) stuff on there, don’t fret. You can search for anything that you need tips, tricks, or ideas for — for example, although I may be in tech journalism, coding languages aren’t going to be the first thing I pull up (if it’s not on my Duolingo, it’s not happening). But, a few quick searches gave me hundreds of Python, CSS, and Java cheat sheets as well as coding-related project inspiration sheets — not to mention some stellar memes.
Don’t get me started on the recipe or fitness side of Pinterest, either. You’ll never run out of ideas ever again on those fronts.
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Your presence isn’t required
And time is a figment of the online enigma
If you took the rising idea of leaving the hustle and bustle of city life behind to live on a farm in the countryside and applied it to apps, Pinterest is the online landscape for you. Call it apples to oranges, but it’s truly a sigh of relief in such a chronically-online time.
The comparison culture that exists on apps like Facebook and Instagram doesn’t have a place on Pinterest, nor would it be sustainable if you even tried to foster it. Similar to LinkedIn, a higher percentage of Pinterest users don’t post regularly — if at all — and are just there to watch and observe. Personally, I think it’s due to the unique nature of the algorithm and what does (or rather doesn’t) dictate it.
I guess it really was those damn phones all along, because it seems like everyone’s in the same boat — we love and hate social media at the same time.
Your Pinterest feed isn’t arranged by which accounts you follow or the times they post. Like a search engine, Pinterest builds out your feed with what you’re interested in and have searched before. The clever app was way ahead of TikTok and Instagram with its particular algorithms, but it always felt much less creepy coming from Pinterest, all because you actually asked for this information in the “search” bar.
Pinterest isn’t a place to keep up with Jones’s. It’s a secluded spot on the internet to gather endless ideas and inspiration to then compile them all into digital bulletin boards to save for later.
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No pressure, no rules, just vibes — literally
No one is watching you, and no one cares
It’s a liberating feeling, not curating the perfect Instagram post or stressing over the nature of your first-semester-dump caption. Likes don’t matter, if you even notice them at all.
While it’s easy to head down tangent after tangent and suddenly get twelve pages away from your original search, there’s no despair in the scroll on Pinterest. It’s an overwhelmingly positive community, and it’s fueled by creative ideas more than it is by users intending to go viral.
A good way to describe it is an open-mic show — the people who attend them are there to show their support, but no one is pressuring them to get on stage. But, the people who step up to the mic are bringing something unique to the table that others might gather inspiration from.
Overall, Pinterest is lovely to open and easy to leave — at least on my phone, it is.
