Pinterest is, of course, one of the currently pervasive Internets Flavors-of-The-Month. Like all the others, it came, it’s exploded, it’s here, and it will undoubtedly go.
(Which is why, while I’m all for churches using the Internet, I also think, aside from a basic, informative, well-designed web page, social media should probably be way down on a typical parish’s to-do list. If you have someone who’s into it and knows what they’re doing, set them loose. I think a diocese should definitely have a communications person who’s savvy with social media. But otherwise….remember MySpace, calm down and give the liturgy, catechesis and works of mercy more time.. Don’t need a full-time Twitter Apostolate or Pinterest Ministry team just yet.)
So, Pinterest. Just a couple of thoughts.
I know some people experience it as a huge time suck – just one more addictive, inadequacy-inspiring corner of the whole addictive, inadequacy-
inspiring Internet we’ve all grown to love and hate over the past two decades, especially (it seems) women and especially (it seems) mothers.
A month ago, April Perry offered this brief reflection, not only on Pinterest, but on the inevitably-dashed high expectations that too much time amidst the cunningly organized spices and hand-made soaps of the Internet, not to speak of the clever Tweets and clever blog posts (and lure to produce the some of all of them) can bring. Your children want YOU! she reminded her readers.
Mercifully, Pinterest doesn’t seem to have the power to pull me into its web. Yah, I’m on Pinterest, and I “pin,” but I don’t spend a lot of time surveying other people’s boards. Once in a while I cruise for recipes, and I’m finding some useful and interesting resources on Catholic homeschooling boards…but that’s about it.
(No,no,no…Pinterest recipe boards? Not a problem…please excuse me while I tumble down my daily rabbit hole of cooking blogs, though…)
The primary reason I use it and am on it is because I use it as a Bookmarking/Favorites site. For myself. (Although as long as I’m there, I have some stuff about my books up – might as well.) If the site had the function to go private, I would do it – I find it just so easy to pin recipes (mostly) - and then just as easy to run through them later and actually be able to remember what it is that appealed to me about that recipe, since there’s an image attached. Much more helpful to me than a list of text-only bookmarks.
So I was thinking I was going to write a Pinterest post anyway, but then today I was checking up one of my former (high school) students, a woman who’s carving out a very nice career as a fabric designer and crafter – Rashida Coleman-Hale. I only taught Rashida for one year (her senior year, my first year teaching in that school), but she flew back on my radar via Facebook a while back, and I discovered her sharp, charming Japanese-and-retro-influenced style, which is just marvelous.
And she has 844,428 Pinterest followers.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, then!
How do you even do that without being on American Idol or being married to Demi Moore or something?
And how many of you can say such a thing of one of your former students?!
(P.S. – here’s an interesting article on “10 Brands Suprisingly Killing It On Pinterest. But still..none of them has over 800K followers!)
Amy, not to be all, I know something you don’t, or check out this app, but, your discussion of using Pinterest as a personal bookmark site, jogged this. I found a need for something similar, to capture bookmarks, “to read later”, when I was on my phone. Having limited time, or no desire to read lengthy prose on a tiny screen. I chose Instapaper. It has a cool phone interface, and an add-on to my tool bar on mozilla which allows me to, with one click, capture a bookmark, store it on a web site, and retrieve it later when I have time to read. Very cool. I will also share that your overview of social media and churches is spot on, and I wish more businesses would realize the same thing. If I have one more employee corner me with the idea that I hire a couple people to start up a facebook page I am going to scream. Additionally, I believe you have convinced me to avoid pinterest at all costs, even if my marketing department loves it.
See..I keep hearing the words “instapaper” and “evernote” (are they similar?)..I know there are cross-browser/system bookmarking sites out there…but I confess I am reaching saturation and the Internet is starting to swim in front of my eyes in a confounding way….
One of my summer goals is to actually cook some of the things I’ve pinned. I am looking forward to trying things from my healthy board then offsetting them with items from my sweets board. I do think Pinterest is the best way I’ve found to keep up with Internet recipes.