My Beef with Pinterest Users

My Beef with Pinterest Users

First, I want to let y’all know that I LOVE Pinterest. It’s my go-to website for, like, everything. Trying to decide what to cook? Pinterest. Trying to think of a cute & creative gift? Pinterest. Looking for new ways to tone my butt? Pinterest. I think you get the idea. My love for Pinterest is pretty much an obsession but there are some things about the people who use it that annoy me.

When someone brings a really good, never-before-seen dessert to a function and gets asked, “Where did you get that recipe?” and they reply, “From Pinterest!”

Uh. No. You did not get that recipe from Pinterest. You saw a photo of that super freakin’ awesome looking chocolate caramel marshmallow Nutella cake and followed the link TO A BLOG where the recipe was written (and where it quite possible originated!) but who ends up getting the credit here? Pinterest. So, please, the next time someone asks you where the recipe came from tell them you got it from the “Momma Cooks A Lot” blog. Or whatever.

When someone pins something from the homepage of a blog.

Example scenario: It’s 9:30pm and I just got my son to sleep. This week is his last week of preschool so I want to make something cute and crafty for his teachers. I spend an hour browsing Pinterest for a teacher gift when all of a sudden I see it. It’s perfect. And it looks relatively easy & inexpensive (yes!) so I click the image to go to the originating website and BAM. Home page. Of course, as luck would it have it, it’s from a blog that’s been around for 6 years and was one of the very first posts – oh, and there’s no search form, category listing, or archives on this blog. OF COURSE. So now I have to spend another 30 minutes trying to find the darn thing (or just use Google’s Advanced search but I’m trying to be dramatic & prove a point here so whatever). People.. PLEASE.. Click on the post title before you hit the Pin It button. The whole internet will thank you.

When people re-pin spam.

The above scenario could be used for this one too but instead of opening the homepage of the originating website, you click the photo of the “THE ONLY CHOCOLATE MOUSSE PIE RECIPE YOU WILL EVER, EVER NEED” and get sent to a website that’s trying to sell diet pills. Obviously, most people don’t do this on purpose. Most people just hit “Repin” without checking to see if it’s a legitimate pin but I’m seeing this A LOT lately and it’s driving me insane.

When people pin photos of their family.

This shouldn’t even be something I have to mention. Why people have decided to turn Pinterest into their own Facebook Album is beyond me. Now, if you’re a professional photographer (I mean a real, professional photographer – but I’ll save that for another post) and your photos are amazing and inspiring and one just happens to be about a family member that’s cool. Your photos are pretty and I like to see them. But there is absolutely no reason whatsoever why anyone should upload their iPhone photos of their children or grandchildren and nobody cares anything about seeing those on Pinterest. Start a blog, get on Instagram… anything, but not Pinterest.

Nail art.

This is kind of a cop-out complaint but I want to point out that I haven’t seen anyone paint their fingernails 6 different colors since Kindergarten until Pinterest became popular. When the Accent Wall became a thing to do for anyone who owned a home I didn’t think much of it. I mean, sure, some people did it horribly and obviously never watched a single show on HGTV but there were others who made it work and look decent. But it should have ended there. We don’t need an Accent Nail. I mean.. am I the only one that LOLs just from saying Accent Nail? Of course, it gets worse when grown adults start gluing shit to their nails.