I have a love-hate relationship with Pinterest.
Being an organization junkie, I love having an online bulletin board available to house things that I come across on the interwebs. Organizing, naming and keeping my boards tidy is fun for someone like me. It’s also a great way to procrastinate. Housework? Nah! I’m too busy pinning when the kids nap. I have friends who can spend hours upon hours searching and pinning. To be honest, it’s become more of a search engine for me than Google.
We live in a visual world and “5 ways to live a happier life” and “25 life hacks for mommies” is what feeds our need for quick knowledge and instant gratification.
Just think… what a boring life we would live if we weren’t all converting our pallets into wine racks and gardens. What about the environment? Think of all the extra waste that would go into the landfill if we weren’t all saving our wine corks to make magnets, key chains and photo frames. Pinterest does make the world a better place.
What I hate about Pinterest is that originality is now an endangered quality. For the creators out there who can relate… how many times have you done something that you thought was unique only to have someone ask you, “Did you see that on Pinterest?” or, “I have that one pinned too!”
Don’t get me wrong, great ideas should be shared and being a creative producer with a blog, my intention is just that. Being a-type I’m also an expert executor so much of what I photograph and share on my blog is Pinterest inspired. But tell me, do we really live in a world where originality has become extinct and we automatically assume that the food brought to your work potluck came off a Pinterest board?
Anywho, I’ll stop this rant now before I take it too far. Time to go and pin this post to my Pinterest account.
#pinterestaddict
#followmeonpinterest
Check out my organized Pinterest boards here: https://www.pinterest.com/sarahbeebarah/
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Very interesting post, Sarah! Have you seen the Everything is a Remix series (http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/)? There is also a really good article out there (I can’t remember where- maybe the Atlantic…one of the sites with longer more detailed articles) about click-bait and the consumption of tiny pieces of essentially meaningless information.
I love Pinterest for it’s organization and structure. Yes, it’s full of inspiration, but it’s good to have an efficient mechanism for accessing that inspiration when you need it. In this day and age, a lot of DIY ideas have been posted and re-posted, and it’s not so much about coming up with new ideas, as much as it is about packaging your ideas in a away that people find accessible, helpful and inspiring. You happen to be very good at that, which is why I think this blog is so amazing!
Everything is a remix…sums it up perfectly! Thanks for the share. There are so many ways to share ideas in a world with social media…there are no boundaries, oceans or borders to limit our reach and as a result we are bombarded with information that can stifle our creativity.
I appreciate your thought on embracing the fact that originality may now be a rarity but instead shifting our focus to packaging old ideas in new, fresh and inspiring ways…and I am SO GLAD you can appreciate that aspect of my blog!
Whether I’m producing new ideas or packing up old ones, you will always be a source of my inspiration. Awwwwww 🙂 🙂
I think Tracy hit the nail on the head re: packaging old ideas in new ways. It’s the digital version of repurposing… and making the ideas easy to digest and accessible can sometimes bring even more value than the original idea – especially to those who consume this information in Pinterest/Twitter bite-sized pieces. 🙂