Have we gone a little crazy with our crafty?
August 3, 2012 6:56 PM   Subscribe

Pinterest, you are drunk
posted by the young rope-rider (73 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- Brandon Blatcher



 
I know very little about pintrest culture, but do appreciate amusing blogs which aggregate things like this.

But.... only three entries per pageload? Yeah, I'm not going to spend too much time clicking through on that. Still the first 3 pages were amusing.
posted by hippybear at 6:59 PM on August 3, 2012 [12 favorites]


UGH bikini cookies ugh.
posted by sweetkid at 7:00 PM on August 3, 2012


If it's not from the same genius who brought us Regretsy... well, it gave me an excuse to link to Regretsy.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:01 PM on August 3, 2012 [6 favorites]


I was at a house once where they had the weird toilet paper bows. The most confounding part was that the bow was crafted from a separate sheet of toilet paper and simply placed on top of the roll. I mean, what are you supposed to do with this? Do you wipe with the bow? Do you discard the bow and use the tp as normal? What I ended up doing was removing the bow, using toilet paper like a normal person, and then deftly trying to place the bow back on top of the roll--which, let me tell you, is a LOT harder than it looks, did you know those suckers are round? AND they spin?

Anyway, it was awkward. Especially when I returned to the room with the hosts and tried to pretend like nothing unusual had happened.
posted by phunniemee at 7:09 PM on August 3, 2012 [28 favorites]


Pintrest you are off your face on taro chips
posted by The Whelk at 7:16 PM on August 3, 2012 [8 favorites]


A lot of the entries were indeed some what-were-they-thinking terribleness. But a good chunk of them just read as, "HEY LOOK EVERYBODY SOMEBODY DID SOMETHING FUN AND CREATIVE -- WHAT AN ASSHOLE."
posted by Sys Rq at 7:16 PM on August 3, 2012 [18 favorites]


I agree with Sys Rq - some WTF mildly amusing moments but a lot were just some time intensive creative fun stuff being mocked.

I mean those piñata cookies defy awesome! Kids breaking them apart with joy and delight in seconds is the whole bloody point.
posted by gomichild at 7:32 PM on August 3, 2012 [15 favorites]


Finger cookies: "Cool! Those are perfect for Halloween!"
Cat poop cake: "Oh, dear God. No. NO!" Followed by a shudder.

I'm not sure what this says about me.
posted by Athene at 7:32 PM on August 3, 2012


3 per page. So lame.
posted by lazaruslong at 7:35 PM on August 3, 2012


The Internet: "HEY LOOK EVERYBODY SOMEBODY DID SOMETHING FUN AND CREATIVE -- WHAT AN ASSHOLE."
posted by zamboni at 7:41 PM on August 3, 2012 [16 favorites]


I mean those piñata cookies defy awesome!

I'm definitely making the pinata cookies. And I made the cupcakes in eggshells for Easter and AWED MANY CHILDREN WITH MY WIZARDRY!

Am I that tacky that I found so many entries awesome?
posted by jrossi4r at 7:44 PM on August 3, 2012 [4 favorites]


Am I that tacky that I found so many entries awesome?

No, I don't think you are. This is definitely a site which thinks it's mocking things which everyone will mock, but mostly it's showing a distinct lack of depth and understanding about what appeals to different segments of the population, and as such is showing it's own biases much more strongly than a site such as, say, Cake Wrecks, which shows things that pretty much everyone agrees are horrid.

That's one of the dangers about Going For The Lolz. Sometimes your insights are on target. But quite often, they really just end up being a rosetta stone into your own character.
posted by hippybear at 7:50 PM on August 3, 2012 [36 favorites]


Pinterest, you are lying face down in a pool of your own homemade smoothies! smoothies! smoothies!
posted by Dr. Zira at 7:54 PM on August 3, 2012


OK, only three posts per page, making fun of things which are kind of awesome--come on, one more and we'll have an entire page's worth!
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:00 PM on August 3, 2012 [1 favorite]


I made a litterbox cake for my older daughter's birthday a couple years ago. Her birthday party was the day before Halloween and she wanted all the food to be scary and/or gross, so it was the obvious choice. It was a huge hit.

We also served, among other things, kale chips that we labeled "Frankenstein Scabs". Those were almost as popular as the cake.
posted by padraigin at 8:00 PM on August 3, 2012 [10 favorites]


The mockery seems kind of mean-spirited in a "look at these fucking white-trash-redneck-nouveau-riche people" kind of way.

Hey, guys, classism ain't classy. It's one thing to make fun of tacky things, but it's another to say that people have poor taste and are therefore risible because they don't have the right fucking pedigree. People are not fucking dogs, fucking grow up.
posted by Scientist at 8:11 PM on August 3, 2012 [2 favorites]


The Internet: "HEY LOOK EVERYBODY SOMEBODY DID SOMETHING FUN AND CREATIVE -- WHAT AN ASSHOLE."

This is what I sometimes think is happening: As more people join in to jeer at other peoples' creative pursuits, the less likely people are to attempt something new. And the less likely a person is to try creating something new, the easier it is for that person to jeer at other peoples' creative attempts.

This seems like a negative feedback loop that the Internet would be better without. I love the Internet, think that it's by and large great, and believe that there are positive feedback loops that overwhelm this one, but I think blogs like this are little more creative than Nelson pointing his finger and saying "ha ha."

And even though sometimes what Nelson is pointing at is funny, no one thinks that Nelson is a cool guy for doing that shit. We laugh at cartoon Nelson because as grown-ups we can recognize that our school bully was just a shallow jerk with an extremely limited repertoire. No good-hearted adult would laugh at a real-life Nelson, because, well, I think it's probably obvious.
posted by compartment at 8:14 PM on August 3, 2012 [5 favorites]


"Frankenstein Scabs"

Stealing this!
posted by Mizu at 8:15 PM on August 3, 2012 [3 favorites]


The mockery seems kind of mean-spirited in a "look at these fucking white-trash-redneck-nouveau-riche people" kind of way.

Hey, guys, classism ain't classy. It's one thing to make fun of tacky things, but it's another to say that people have poor taste and are therefore risible because they don't have the right fucking pedigree. People are not fucking dogs, fucking grow up.


Taste is very subjective and ranges wildly, and doesn't always have much to do with socioeconomics. There's a lot of shit on Pinterest that is just straight up WTF (and I don't personally agree that everything I saw on this blog goes in that category). But I personally have a whole board devoted to crazy shit that other people pin to Pinterest that I find appalling and bonkers and it's the board of mine that has the most followers, so I'm clearly not alone in my bemusement.
posted by padraigin at 8:15 PM on August 3, 2012


I had never heard of a litterbox cake before, but I am being delighted by the richness that is google images.
posted by Forktine at 8:15 PM on August 3, 2012


OK, that was... curiously addictive. I kept meaning to bale, but before I knew it I was at the Goth Avocado on page 141.

Truly, truly disturbing. Also enthralling - I'm guessing none of those... those... things happened with any sense of irony. I suppose also that you can see it as a celebration of the human spirit untrammelled by social acceptance, taste or appropriateness.

I'm glad to inhabit a planet where such things happen without the perpetrators having their eyes gouged out and their fingers cut off and fed to pigs by the village elders. Because that's what would have happened before the internet.

However. Do not mistake this site for my Amazon wish list. The pigs, they are hungry.
posted by Devonian at 8:17 PM on August 3, 2012


I completely agree that this is a site that says far more about its author than intended. And yes, three entries per page is super-lame. But I'm still glad I lived to see these sausage bouquets.
posted by hot soup girl at 8:23 PM on August 3, 2012 [3 favorites]


I COULD USE THIS
posted by jimmythefish at 8:24 PM on August 3, 2012


I get that padraigin, but punchlines like "A boat for the nouveau riche" and "Even rednecks find love, I guess" don't do much to convince me that this is just harmless tacky-stuff-is-tacky mockery.
posted by Scientist at 8:24 PM on August 3, 2012


I think part of the thing is that a lot of people use Pinterest as sort of an accumulation of ideas for stuff to do in the future. So the ludicrous thing isn't that somebody made a wedding veil out of bacon, or whatever, it's the idea that a whole bunch of other people saw it and thought THIS IS BRILLIANT and pinned it with their wedding inspiration stuff. Or, well, allegedly. I think the reality is that it's more "things girls want other girls to THINK they're going to do" and that nobody really makes the little rabbit-shaped sandwiches, and the really ridiculous thing is the number of women trying to project the image that they are the sort of women who wear cute aprons and carve fruit into amusing shapes for their well-dressed and adorable children, while really they're just as flustered and exhausted and messy as everybody else.
posted by gracedissolved at 8:52 PM on August 3, 2012 [7 favorites]


So far my favorites are the sausage bouquets and these. Brilliant.
posted by The Hamms Bear at 8:59 PM on August 3, 2012


I make rabbit shaped sandwiches and carve fruit into amusing shapes for my. . . well, I'm not sure well dressed is necessarily the term I'd use for my child.

well, dinosaur shaped. And I use a cutter for it, I don't do it freehand. And I only do wacky stuff once a week, on Mondays. But yeah, some of us really do this.

I am definitely flustered and exhausted and messy though.
posted by KathrynT at 9:07 PM on August 3, 2012


huh, that came out a lot more "I am a supermom!" and a lot less "I am a woman with possibly misplaced priorites!" than I meant it to. Suffice it to say: I have some misplaced priorities. Also a whole drawer full of wacky food cutters and picks and silicone cups.
posted by KathrynT at 9:09 PM on August 3, 2012 [3 favorites]


I do that too, and I am hopelessly messy and useless in every other way. But bunny shaped boiled eggs? Yes. No problem.
posted by woolly pageturner at 9:11 PM on August 3, 2012 [1 favorite]


I only recently joined Pinterest and I'm fascinated by the number of married women I know who have "wedding ideas" boards.

Other amazing Pinterest phenomena (so far):

--The low, low bar for being declared "Genius!" ("Genius! Put tealights in wineglasses!" "Genius! Turn sweaters into mittens!" "Genius! Soak cookies in vodka!")

--The number of "World's Best Chicken" recipes, some of which are clearly going to be absolutely terrible (undercooked roasted potatoes, for example), but which are all enthusiastically attested as fabulous. Only chicken, though. Doesn't happen with other foods.

--The HAIRSTYLES, and the number of people who pin them. People with super-short hair. People who would never use a curling iron. People who wear ponytails every day. All these crazy princess styles that require four-and-a-half feet of hair. I get that people pin things aspirationally or just because they're cool, but SO. MUCH. HAIR.

--The ridiculously overboard party details, like wrapping water bottles' wrappers in scrapbook paper that matches your party decor. First of all, it's a water bottle. Second of all, that's going to cost an arm and a leg. I realize this is a bit pot calling the kettle black since I have never thrown a party where I didn't ridiculously overdo something, but some of this stuff just makes even me go, "Seriously???" Especially for children's parties. Who are you trying to impress?

--The number of gifts in jars, so your giftees can make their own gift with supplies you provide. Who knew you could stack so many recipes' worth of arguably shelf-stable things in jars? (ARGUABLY shelf-stable.)

--The popularity of crafts that turn trash into an entirely different kind of trash that takes up space while being useless, which you could 100% of the time buy cheaper Bed, Bath, & Beyond. I know has always been a broad category but it wasn't something you bragged about. Now everyone's pinning, "Turn your old corks into a diving board! So awesome!"

I don't know. I've got a million pins for turning old clothes into tote bags and someone's looking at my pins going, "Why is this woman constantly throwing away clothes and what is she doing with a zillion tote bags? Toting severed heads?" It's just a super-weird glimpse into your friends' inner lives.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:12 PM on August 3, 2012 [36 favorites]


But bunny shaped boiled eggs? Yes. No problem.

Better than egg-shaped boiled bunnies, amirite?
posted by KathrynT at 9:15 PM on August 3, 2012 [5 favorites]


Incidentally, I saw this one pinned as "Genius!" today ("Keep your drink cold without diluting it with melting ice! Genius!") and all I could think was "How slowly do you drink?"
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:25 PM on August 3, 2012 [1 favorite]


I think this entry and its comments pretty much sum up this site. This person thinks they're being so clever, but really, they come off as kind of assy.
posted by NoMich at 9:39 PM on August 3, 2012 [5 favorites]


Incidentally, I saw this one pinned as "Genius!" today ("Keep your drink cold without diluting it with melting ice! Genius!") and all I could think was "How slowly do you drink?"

Also completely missing the point which is to drink beer in public on the sly.
posted by onya at 9:54 PM on August 3, 2012 [6 favorites]


Heh. Still does not touch Regretsy.
posted by swooz at 9:58 PM on August 3, 2012 [1 favorite]


Wasn't this what Tumblogs were???

Pinterest does serve a similar purpose to tumblr (getting a curated stream of content delivered to your doorstep where you can then share that content to create an 'image' or 'brand' for your own stream of content), but the stuff on Pinterest is probably more likely to be practically used in some way (recipes, crafts, looks, styles).

The same stuff is certainly possible on Tumblr, but Tumblr also requires that you go out of your way to add friends, curate content, and other stuff. Tumblr is more active and less passive, so Pinterest is probably picking up a lot of people who'd be in to Tumblr if Tumblr were less work. A bit like how BBSes and Forums provide similar functions as Facebook, but Facebook is a lot more popular with the general populace.

Pinterest also tends to operate based off your social network that's pre-established with Twitter or Facebook, whereas Tumblr is more of a community unto itself and possibly even actively adverse to real-life identities. This means that when you connect to Pinterest through Facebook you have an existing network of users who are pinning stuff that you're probably interested in, simply by virtue of already knowing them in real life. Once again, a leg up on Tumblr.

Pinterest is way easier to monetize than Tumblr as well. Companies already are paying them money to get people engaging in consensual marketing, where they construct advertisements that are then pinned, and spread, for free by users. Independent artists, craftspeople, designers, etc. are also using Pinterest in a way not dissimilar to how a lot of independent musicians used MySpace back in its heyday - an easy and prebuilt platform with a baked in userbase to try to get their work out. A graphic designer friend of mine has several thousand followers who repin her designs, as well as the inspiration material (and probably wedding planning material, since she's just gotten engaged) that she pins.

It seems to me that if Facebook took Livejournal (posting updates about your life) and made it consumer ready, then Pinterest takes Tumblr and does the same thing. I wonder if Tumblr's moves to monetize are being motivated by the appearance and sudden popularity of Pinterest.

As an aside: This is an interesting article about the hate that Pinterest gets as it relates to its mainly female userbase.

As a second aside, I thought to myself the other day, 'there has to be some sort of pinboard knockoff that caters to porn', and unsurprisingly there is (that is obviously NSFW). This is also biting on a core part of Tumblr's content (random, decontextualized streams of porn), but I have no idea how successful it is.

As a third aside, I've seen a shitload of bots on my occasional forays in to my assumed Pinterest identity. It's actually sort of beautiful to see their randomly generated 'interests' in a horse_ebooks kind of way.
posted by codacorolla at 10:08 PM on August 3, 2012 [8 favorites]


The machine gun shit isn't even funny.
posted by mediated self at 10:15 PM on August 3, 2012


The 3-per-page thing is annoying, but if you stick with it there's a sausage bouquet.
posted by a hat out of hell at 10:41 PM on August 3, 2012 [1 favorite]


"Pinned Off" is just the best.
posted by drjimmy11 at 10:49 PM on August 3, 2012 [1 favorite]


"TURTLES IN SEA!!"
posted by drjimmy11 at 10:50 PM on August 3, 2012


"pinterest i would be a lot harsher with you than i am being but if i did, i would draw flak (because you are pinterest), so pinterest you are merely 'drunk'"
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 11:16 PM on August 3, 2012


Some of this stuff is awesome, what the hell? I mean - I would wear the hell out of these, and apparently I don't care who knows it.
posted by Space Kitty at 11:24 PM on August 3, 2012


I kept telling my wife (an avid Pinterest user) that I wanted to turn my unused Pinterest account into an ever-so-subtle skewering of certain trends on Pinterest...basically where I just start pinning like DIY stuff that seems reasonable at first but on closer inspection turns out to be so outlandishly tedious/ridiculous that nobody in their right mind would do it. But she's afraid that some people would miss the satire of it all and it would end up ruining someone's day because they would actually take it seriously and try to follow the crazy instructions. So, it is verboten.

I didn't agree with her at first but seeing this person's website attempting a similar thing I'm glad I listened to her.

Being mean really isn't that great.
posted by Doleful Creature at 11:34 PM on August 3, 2012


Who are you calling Pintrest?!
posted by Bonky Moon at 12:17 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


or Pinterest.


Have I shown you my spelling bee medals? (I don't have any.)
posted by Bonky Moon at 12:18 AM on August 4, 2012


> I think part of the thing is that a lot of people use Pinterest as sort of an accumulation of ideas for stuff to do in the future. So the ludicrous thing isn't that somebody made a wedding veil out of bacon, or whatever, it's the idea that a whole bunch of other people saw it and thought THIS IS BRILLIANT and pinned it with their wedding inspiration stuff.

But...Pinterest is kinda like favorites on Metafilter. The purpose and intent is up to the individual. The ludicrous bacon veil might be inspiring a bride's own earnestly ludicrous bacon veil, or maybe it's an idea for a wedding-shower satirical bacon veil, or it's pinned there to amuse and/or scare the shit outta the the bridesmaids or mother-in-law, or it's a reminder of silly wedding-themed BS, or a hundred other passing thoughts that caused someone to click it.
posted by desuetude at 12:23 AM on August 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


I am obsessed with Pinterest. When I need a break, I like to head over to the KIDS stream and look at the weird pregnancy porn (not like that - just like there are all these women who are heavily, heavily into the fantasy that everyone is incredibly interested in the pregnancies of other women, and there are all these staged and 'shopped photo announcements of things like "We had our first Braxton-Hicks contraction!") and the weird newborn prop photos and the crazy headbands people put on their infant girls.
posted by thehmsbeagle at 12:32 AM on August 4, 2012


social acceptance, taste or appropriateness

These things are so subjective, they delve into the deepest strata of how people connect with one another. Those comic figure boutonnieres? I won't be socially accepted by my conservative friends for them, but my comic-bookstore-owning friend and friends who loved "Avengers as Sailor Senshi"? They would get a kick out of them. That skulls dress with a faked corset is a basic example of Gothic Lolita, and could fit into parties some of my friends go to, where many of them sew their own clothes. (More complex than that though. And while skulls can often be seen, there are also unicorns and fairy wings with caution tape.) I even kind of like it for how high the bodice goes and the nice elongating effect it gives to the waist. I post some uniquely patterned and colored things to my boards not for their patterns or colors, but for the piecing techniques and lines they use. Sometimes it's just one small thing I hadn't seen elsewhere.

And that gourd dress for a wedding – I want to know the person who pinned it. Besides that, one of my wedding photographer friends, who recently posted a pic of himself doing blowfish cheeks with a large rubber ducky stalking him, would probably like it too.

The fact that others find these things inacceptable, tasteless, and/or inappropriate? You tend to figure that out in middle school and shrug it off.
posted by fraula at 2:48 AM on August 4, 2012



Just started using Pinterest a couple of weeks ago. Love it. For me it's a visual way to see my bookmarks all on one page. I renoing a fixer upper as well as a have a small business making clothes and being able to have a visual marker of ideas that I collect is great. I've also found some things I'm already using from other people's boards that are interested in the same things. I'm a visual organizer so the whole thing is right up my alley. It's like having my file cabinet laid out for a visual scan. Now I don't have to look at the text version of my bookmarks and try to remember why I saved it or figure out what link is connected to the picture that I remember seeing.

And yeah, I've come across some pretty bizzare things and boards. It's fun.
posted by Jalliah at 3:50 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


I only recently joined Pinterest and I'm fascinated by the number of married women I know who have "wedding ideas" boards.

Every 17-year old girl I know (cousins, etc.) has one, too. I'm glad I got married before Pinterest! Twee, quirky wedding blogs were bad enough; I nearly had a breakdown a week before the big day worried I didn't have enough "cool" stuff like mustaches on sticks. Having an organized place to stash all those ideas might have driven me over the edge. Related blog post by Rachel Held Evans: In praise of my unspectacular, pre-Pinterest wedding.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:24 AM on August 4, 2012


I nearly had a breakdown a week before the big day worried I didn't have enough "cool" stuff like mustaches on sticks.

YOU LEAVE MOUSTACHES ON STICKS ALONE.

I made EVERY ONE of those moustaches by hand. And the kissy-lips on sticks, too.
posted by Elsa at 7:32 AM on August 4, 2012


Previously on MeFi - this was a good discussion of "Why Pinterest" in general.
posted by Miko at 8:28 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Oh, this one too, Pinterest and Feminism.
posted by Miko at 8:30 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]



Think of it like bookmarks, except with pictures of each of them. Each 'board' you create is a category folder. You can make them public so other people can see them and if you want add to the category. Or you can just keep them private so no one else can see them. When you browse the web and find something you like you just 'pin it' to your board or you can repin things off of other peoples board.
posted by Jalliah at 8:35 AM on August 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


There's a certain variety of ArtsyCraftySuperWoman who is epitomized by Martha Stewart. This is someone who will work her ass off to make some kind of incredibly difficult and intricate thing (be it a cupcake, a knit sweater, or a bit of toilet paper roll origami) and will then, with a faint smile, proclaim that it was "nothing, really. Just something I knocked out in a few spare minutes."

This of course has the intended effect of making the rest of us feel like turds.

I love seeing Pinterest get skewered, because it is the warehouse, the high church, the centralized gallery of ArtsyCraftySuperWoman.

Which is to say, Pinterest makes me feel like a turd (and I'm pretty sure it's meant to).
posted by ErikaB at 9:11 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


I have a friend who has Pinterest boards like "Terrifying Clowns" and "Pooping Animals" (although he calls that one "Pincherest") and "Fruit That Looks like a Human Butt." He uses Pinterest for no other purpose. So I'm browsing my Pinterest stream, and all of a sudden, BLAM! Nine pictures of horrible eye diseases in a row.

This is someone who will work her ass off to make some kind of incredibly difficult and intricate thing (be it a cupcake, a knit sweater, or a bit of toilet paper roll origami) and will then, with a faint smile, proclaim that it was "nothing, really. Just something I knocked out in a few spare minutes."

I officially wrote Martha Stewart off after she had an episode on making Scottie Dog-shaped shortbread cookies. (By, of course, making a bog-standard shortbread dough and then cutting it with her $12 Scottie-Dog-Shaped-Cutter.) After cutting and baking, she said "You can ice your cookies any way you want to! I've done mine in plaid." And, sure as shifty-eyed salesmen, she had iced them with little plaid coats. That's when I decided that she's a project tweaker; I mean, she might not actually doing meth, but the personality is the same.
posted by KathrynT at 9:26 AM on August 4, 2012 [9 favorites]


I love seeing Pinterest get skewered, because it is the warehouse, the high church, the centralized gallery of ArtsyCraftySuperWoman.

I must be avoiding those ones. I hang out more with the DIY things out of old pallets and cobble things together people.

Martha Stewart would hate me.
posted by Jalliah at 9:40 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


I have a friend who has Pinterest boards like "Terrifying Clowns" and "Pooping Animals"

I misread that as "Popping Animals" and was so, sooooo torn. Because of course it would be terrible to see an animal pop, but of course I was impossibly curious to see what that would even mean.
posted by Elsa at 9:51 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]




Psst, padraigin, would you mind sharing your WTF board? (Or memailing it if you don't want to out your Pinterest identity...)
posted by lily_bart at 12:48 PM on August 4, 2012


Related to that Onion story related to Pinterest weddings: I wonder if The Onion got wind of Jess & Russ's wedding website a few days before Gawker did (if it didn't, that's some amazing coincidence on the names). And bringing things back to the topic of the post, wonder of wonders, Jess seems to have a wedding board on Pinterest, with, yes, mason jars.
posted by jocelmeow at 1:04 PM on August 4, 2012


I must be avoiding those ones. I hang out more with the DIY things out of old pallets and cobble things together people.

Yeah, me too. I don't get Pinterest hate, because it's so flexible it can be anything you want - a visual bookmarker, like Jalliah said. I collect historic images about specific topics on a couple of my boards, examples of typography and signs on another, interesting maps on a third. BEcause of the nature of my boards, the people I follow and those who follow my post pretty good stuff. Because it's based on your own social network and your own following choices, everyone pretty much gets the Pinterest they want (and the one they deserve!).

I think it is probably hard to evaluate Pinterest if you don't use it, because without an account all you are going to see is the undifferentiated pile of the most-recent or most-popular images, which, much like an Amazon browse or something similarly driven only by popularity, is going to reflect an extremely broad-based common denominator rather than niche interests. So the perception one might have of Pinterest without actually participating doesn't match up with the actual user experience of Pinterest.
posted by Miko at 2:12 PM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Alright, I was all "No really, this is hilarious." And then... the breast milk popsicle.

THAT IS GENIUS, GENIUS I SAY AND I WISH I HAD THOUGHT OF THAT.

Anyone who has had an exclusively breastfed teething infant knows what I'm talking about.
posted by sonika at 5:11 PM on August 4, 2012


"I think it is probably hard to evaluate Pinterest if you don't use it"

Yeah, the first several times I looked at it, I was like, "Well, this seems weird and not useful." Then I was looking for a way to visually organize my sewing patterns and tutorials, because "open all in tabs" was a really tedious way to look for the one I wanted, especially when I was collecting several tote bag patterns.* My friends assured me Pinterest was what I wanted, so I gave it a try, and it actually is super-useful for organizing my pattern bookmarks visually.

And being linked to friends makes it interesting and useful. People pin some weird stuff, but I do see a lot of stuff that makes me go "neat!" and a lot of stuff where I go "useful!" I have a lot of friends who are very good cooks and they pin a lot of recipes. It's like being able to go browse their cookbooks and see what things they've put stickie notes on or written notes under, and then steal those recipes. I DON'T see a lot of the fashion and body stuff (I only see it from a couple of my friends' teenagers, mostly). The "consumery" things are mostly people assembling idea boards for redecorating rooms (it turns out most of my friends don't share my taste in interior decor, but it doesn't bother me to look at). The couple of people who pinned a lot of stuff that annoyed me, I just unfollowed.

It does bemuse me sometimes and it can be a weird window into people's minds, but it is much more useful than I would have thought, and visually browsing curated material can be pretty interesting.

*For the severed heads.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:35 PM on August 4, 2012


I cannot get past the CAT POOP CAKE-- which is served in a kitty litter pan with a kitty poop scooper. This reminds me of the Disgust Scale-- would you eat fruit served to you from a new, never been used fly swatter? a fly swatter that had been used to swat flies, but thoroughly cleaned?

My response to the kitty litter pan and the fly swatter is the same-- it's not made from food grade plastic. It's going to leach phthalates and plastic chemicals into your food.

I had the same reaction on Lifehacker "Make Watermelon Juice Using a Drill and Coat Hanger" inside the watermelon-- not food-safe. Also-- wear eye protection in case that crazy coat hanger comes flying out of the drill.
posted by ohshenandoah at 6:23 PM on August 4, 2012


Pinterest seems like a very visual way of retrieving bookmarks, maybe like an unreliable hypertext scrapbook (is there a "Premium" version which also caches the pinned website and a couple of layers of links? - this might be something I'd be willing to pay for, but mostly for some random rare bookmark from 2003 or something) - I usually rename my bookmarks (which default to the web page title[?]) with keywords and rely a little on the site-mini-icon associated with it, if available.

I was interested in the userbase breakdown and ran into this detailing gender and socioeconomic users between the USA and the UK. Unexpectedly and significantly divergent. I hypothesized USA useage stats, the UK ones are very counterintuitive unless male UK users are much less public or more selective about dissemination. How accurate are google doubleclick ad tracking stats?

Are there any conversion programs/sites that will turn exported Firefox bookmarks into a Pinterest thing? I'm a bit curious what my crufty randomly and rarely currated decade old Firefox bookmark list would look like.
posted by porpoise at 8:07 PM on August 4, 2012


I do really wish the bookmarks would always retain sourcing. Nothing irks me more than to come across a great piece of art and find that I have not a hope in hell of figuring out who the artist is, other than randomly Google image-searching which is productive maybe 50% of the time.
posted by Miko at 8:15 PM on August 4, 2012


other than randomly Google image-searching

I've been impressed with tineye, Miko, it's a reverse image search engine so you upload the image and it'll return sites that use either that image or something very similar (resized/cropped, sometimes there are interesting failures).
posted by porpoise at 9:29 AM on August 5, 2012 [1 favorite]


My response to the kitty litter pan and the fly swatter is the same-- it's not made from food grade plastic. It's going to leach phthalates and plastic chemicals into your food.

I had the same reaction on Lifehacker "Make Watermelon Juice Using a Drill and Coat Hanger" inside the watermelon-- not food-safe.


Kitty Litter Cakes are made with fairly dry-ish ingredients and won't be in the plastic very long at all.
Leeching is most problematic with liquids which are being stored for a period of time, not non-liquids which are going to be there for an hour or two at most. The chances of chemicals leeching into the food is small, but if you're truly worried about this possibility, you can always make a litter box liner out of plastic wrap, which would look authentic and would stop this worry in its tracks.

As far as the coat hanger not being food safe... what is unsafe about metal? What are your food-safe concerns when it comes to metal coat hangers? Most of your food implements are made of metal of various sorts. If you're worried about germs, you sterilize the coat hanger before you use it.
posted by hippybear at 10:02 AM on August 5, 2012


As far as the coat hanger not being food safe... what is unsafe about metal? What are your food-safe concerns when it comes to metal coat hangers? Most of your food implements are made of metal of various sorts. If you're worried about germs, you sterilize the coat hanger before you use it.

Reminds me of the time I ended up using my husbands saws-all to cut up the 26 lb squash I used to make thanksgiving goodies. Steriliztion? Didn't even occur to me at the time I was so damn frustrated in trying to get the thing in pieces. lol
posted by Jalliah at 10:48 AM on August 5, 2012


Reminds me of the time I ended up using my husbands saws-all to cut up the 26 lb squash I used to make thanksgiving goodies.

FWIW, the method I use to get into enormous hard shelled winter squashes is to take my largest chef knife or a cleaver, raise it over my head, and bury it in the squash as best I can. Then I take a mallet or hammer and tap the knife through the squash until it splits. Sometimes I have to do this in a couple of different places, but it eventually breaks the squash open, even if the knife is shorter than the diameter of the squash.
posted by KathrynT at 12:57 PM on August 5, 2012


Ohmigodyouguys be really careful with those hard-shelled squashes. I cut my finger really badly a few years ago trying to break into one a winter squash. It's amazing I still have functionality in that finger. I can't even look at the scar, it makes me nauseous just to think about the episode.

Apparently I'm not alone, either: every year there is a sharp uptick in hand injuries caused by winter squashes.

Keep the knife blade pointed away from you, and never hold the handle and push downward (it's so very easy for your hand to slip and slice itself open on the blade).
posted by ErikaB at 2:56 PM on August 5, 2012


Best tool for opening a hard-shelled squash? A pumpkin-carving tool I got in one of those $2 pattern packs from Walgreens at Halloween a few years ago. Seriously. It has push serration (rather than pull) so you can put all of your effort into cutting it. I can halve a hard-shelled squash in under a minute.

As soon as they start putting decorations up in stores, go buy yourself one. You'll laugh at all the years you spent nearly killing yourself using a grownup knife.
posted by phunniemee at 3:03 PM on August 5, 2012 [2 favorites]


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