I’m a sheltered lady, it’s true. I’ve never had a TV and my first experience with “Mean Girls” (the people, not the movie) was college. So maybe I’m a little over sensitive, but there are really some nasty pieces of work commenting over on Pinterest. There are loads of other problems with the platform that plenty of bloggers have detailed, so this post is all about the manners, friends.
Here’s a basic rule of thumb: if you wouldn’t walk up to someone in a shop, take the item they’re buying out of their hands, and tell them it’s hideous – don’t say it on the internet, either. I’m shocked at the level of rudeness in the comments on pins (or Instagrams, or whatever) of people I KNOW are strangers to these commenters. Has the world gone mad? Who thinks it’s ok to be so blatantly nasty all the time?
Here’s another thing: The internet was not invented to provide you with a venue to endlessly share things you didn’t create. If I see another “If you don’t want it stolen, don’t put it online”* defense of taking someone else’s work, I’m going to scream. I’ve been interacting with people online for SEVENTEEN YEARS and there used to be this wacky thing called community, where we shared to make connections with other people, with respect. Sure, there were trolls, but it wasn’t an entire platform built with the idea of trolling. We didn’t assume that the things people shared with us were ours to take. Trying to explain to the women on Pinterest that what they’re doing really isn’t ethical basically gets a response of “LOL WUT?”
Really? You’re just going to cruise through life responding to the suggestion that you operate nicely in society with “LOL WUT?”
All I see now is entitlement, no reverence. Not for people, not for culture, context, experience, discovery. Are we speeding merrily toward the second (over-exposed) Dark Ages?
“Pretty” stands in for what was once culture, and people flip flop through “cultures” at will. The whole system is a series of mimics mimicking mimics. Remember when you liked something because you wanted to, because it had meaning? Remember when you discovered something and unturned every stone and clue to learn more about it? The way we experience culture online has become like a game of telephone, a very fast paced game of telephone, an endless reblog making a mockery of every cultural aspect of life.
Sure, when you look across any wide scale system it probably works this way, there’s always going to be people like this. But it was slower and more isolated before social media, people could see less of the whole, and so they made more realistic decisions about who they were and what they did. We weren’t bombarded.
So I’m going to give these bad eggs on Pinterest the benefit of the doubt and say we just aren’t evolving fast enough to understand or handle the implications of so much information, across such a vast network of humans. Think about how many people human beings would interact with in their lifetimes historically, even up until the 1980s. That number of human interactions has grown so expotentially that we cannot possibly concieve of what it’s doing to us emotionally. But maybe we could all try to be a little nicer & to think about the fact that behind our blogs and our pins and our instagrams, we’re real people.
*This is 2012, in order to exist in business you basically have to be online. So, yeah. Not really a choice there?
Image: Clara Bow in “It”. From when we had to take our own damn film stills.
The internet is so faceless it’s easy sometimes. And I think people are lazy. Hell I’M lazy and don’t probably always pay enough attention to sourcing things on Pinterest. But to respond with “LOL Wut?”
That just makes me angry.
I mean, it’s really just a HUGE JOKE to them that anyone would ask them to credit, or properly source, or think about the content they’re reblogging. It’s infuriating.
Some days I’d really like to see that “LOL WUT” turned into an “OMFG FML!” when realized they are being sued for copyright violation.
I really liked the analogy you gave of walking up to someone in a shop. It’s true, that if you wouldn’t do it then, then why do it online? Although I must admit, part of me cringes to think that there ARE people who would do that in to a person face to face these days. I think general etiquette and manners are completely lacking in EVERY aspect of our lives now.
This is my frustration with Tumblr as well, where I have seen the work of favorite artists being endlessly reblogged without credit or context. It’s extremely irritating, particularly knowing some of these artists are just starting out. I definitely don’t think society has remotely evolved to address the crazy accessibility/sea of humanity on the internet, and I really wonder when it will.
Well if it’s worth anything, just to even it out I wanted to let you know that I LOVE this site and think your design is beautiful (house, wedding, website, etc). I started pinning some things with credit to you then realized you had a request for your blog items not to by pinned so I took it down promptly! I ended up deleting my pinterest anyway because I work in an eating disorder treatment center and the amount of junk posted that was aimed at getting skinny thin was disgusting. Anyway, I totally respect intellectual property.
Thanks for your beautiful work!
Thank you! & thank you for respecting my request!
The skinny-inspiration stuff is so frightening, and it really is prevalent there.
Agree times a thousand. So much body-hating ridiculousness. My current favorite is an image (supposedly from Nike Women) about when you work out and your butt gets rounder instead of disappearing (do they not enjoy sitting down?) and then all this great supposedly body-positive stuff about big butts. Only the model in the image, of course, does not have a big butt AT ALL. If her butt had been a stove setting it would have been medium-low.
hear, hear!
Like you, I was an internet “early adopter,” and there are certainly big parts of that community, and shared enthusiasm, that I regret having lost.
I read this article the other day and thought that it captured some of the transformation of the internet: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/the-death-of-the-cyberflaneur.html?pagewanted=all
Part of why I read your blog is that you were part of the internet before it became what it is today, and I enjoy your reflections on that. Most importantly, I think that you engage with your readers in a way that is rare on most blogs. It’s not just that you reply to comments, which alone is a pretty big thing for me – I largely don’t comment on blogs because I hate feeling like I’m talking to a wall, but also because you somehow manage to engage in a way that feels more comfortable and personal, I think in a way that harkens back to another era in the internet.
Ahh! This article is so good & true.
Facebook seems to believe that the quirky ingredients that make flânerie possible need to go. “We want everything to be social,” Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said on “Charlie Rose” a few months ago.
What this means in practice was explained by her boss, Mark Zuckerberg, on that same show. “Do you want to go to the movies by yourself or do you want to go to the movies with your friends?” he asked, immediately answering his own question: “You want to go with your friends.”
Facebook will create powerful (but latent) incentives that would make users eagerly embrace the tyranny of the “social,” to the point where pursuing any of those activities on their own would become impossible.
SO TRUE. I DONT ALWAYS WANT TO GO WITH MY FRIENDS, MR ZUCKERBERG.
I have a counter-argument. I think that just as many people produce interesting, quirky, weird, incredibly specific and personal content as ever. That’s the kind of people who are willing to jump over a million barriers to get online and start reading and talking about insane things. Only now, all the people who don’t care that much, who are just snacking and consuming and floating and shopping, who wouldn’t jump over any barriers to get here, are flooding in because they don’t have any barriers left. It’s not that fewer people are doing it, it’s that there’s a lower ratio of people doing it.
I think you’re totally right. As the internet became more and more “normalized”, the demographic changed so that the ratio of creators to consumers became much more imbalanced, where the “creator” group wasn’t growing anywhere near the rate of the consumer. That NY Times article touches on that a little!
So. Interesting. I hadn’t thought about it this way, and I think it’s so true.
Also! This is making me realize that when I shared on something like Livejournal, I’d spend the day out, absorbing and experiencing and feeling, and when I came back, I processed my experience and presented vignettes, sharing them but the sharing was NOT the priority, and never took away from the experience. I never, back then, thought “I should share this” at the time of the experience and the idea of narration had not yet invaded my sense of experience. It’s so pervasive now that it makes me want to cry to think about it.
Yes, I remember noticing when I first started mentally on-the-go narrating my life.
Glad you liked the article.
Oh yes, the narration! The titling of photos and sound-biting of experiences that takes over my thought processes if I’m not careful. Stepping back from the Internet and blog world had been good for me. I’m much more selective with what I read and post online these days. Great post, excellent points. Thank you!
Oh wow, funny how that livejournal experience slipped my mind. Thenner monologue / narration cutting across my daily life. Deciding if some experience would be an interesting post, and how to relay it and how it would fit into my community.
Pinterest has started making me feel like a raccoon grabbing for every shiny bauble to stash away in a hollow tree. It’s not healthy.
I took a law and ethics course in grad school about art, images, copyright, and though there are a lot of little details that make copyright confusing, I always thought most of it was fairly straightforward and common sense. But all the times I see someone post “I don’t know the source for this” and still feel it’s ok to share that image I want to ram my head against a wall. Common sense, logic, and respect are dwindling.
My issue is with people being angry with Pinterest for not policing bad pinners. Yes, there are some issues with the language of their Terms of Service that people should have some questions about but I don’t think Pinterest could possibly police all the content.
I hate knowing that there are people who would knowingly behave in an unethical and inconsiderate manner online or in person. All I can do is try to be a better person and consider the creator of the content, give them fair and accurate (to the best of my knowledge) credit and hope that others will do the same for me.
But PInterest COULD stop pinning from aggregate sites. Polyvore does this, you can’t clip images from google. If Pinterest started out blocking sites like tumblr, ffffound, piccsy, etc etc etc, that would go a long way. They also REALLY need to change their TOS – they can’t have a business model that encourages uploading photos from all over the web and then claim that they own those photos, that’s batshit.
Agreed that that’s ridic. But haven’t they started to block things? Now I don’t remember what it was – Picasa?
Pinterest strikes me as not being as bad as, say, Tumblr, because at least on Pinterest you can usually click through to the original source – the attribution stays with it. (Unless of course they’re pinning something that already had the source removed….) On Tumblr it seems to be a lot harder to get back to the source, even when it’s not originally from some kind of aggregator.
Hi Tamera, I’m a long-time follower and first-time commenter. I am also an interaction designer and spend most of my day thinking about how to design our online experiences to be more meaningful/useful/beautiful. Your post articulates some of our greatest challenges in our age of re-ification (reposting, reblogging, etc.): a simple lack of manners, respect, and attribution.
One of the best solutions I’ve seen is Curator’s Code, which you may have already run across: http://www.curatorscode.org/ It is definitely a step in the right direction!
I just saw an article about that yesterday! Sadly, many people will ignore it. It’s up to YOU, THE INTERACTION DESIGNERS OF THE WORLD, to create experiences with the subtle cues that make people curate correctly, and to simply and easily allow further information to be served up without it breaking the fast paced mentality we’re all getting into…I’m glad to hear people thinking about it!
The main reason I even have a Tumblr is to reblog things I’ve found that are mine and add credit if need be. I don’t think I could handle Pinterest. I guess I’m more of the old fashioned type… usually I save things I like to a folder on my computer, that way if there’s something I like without credit I’ll be the only one to see it. Even on my blog, I much prefer sharing only my own content rather than photos by others, even if they had the proper credit. It just seems weird somehow, I guess it’s from so many years of being on LJ and posting only my own stuff. I can’t believe some people don’t care at all about crediting… it’s not like it’s difficult! If you don’t know the source, don’t post it, simple.
“LOL WUT?” pretty much encapsulates all that is wrong with the internet to me. Attention spans are so short not only do people no longer have time to be considerate, they don’t even time to form complete thoughts. They don’t even have time to spell the effing word out. I know twitter has a lot to do with this, but it makes me so frustrated. It’s like with each technological innovation, people get more ignorant. Or maybe I’m just more aware of them now that they are all playing on the internet? I miss the old days.
p.s. Ratatat!
‘Remember when you liked something because you wanted to, because it had meaning?’
So much about this post rang true for me, thank you for taking the whole topic on. I’m doing a bit of stuff-purging at the moment (in more ways than one), and it depresses me to realise just how heavily I have relied on the internet in the past few years to dictate my every want, whim, way of thinking about the world and myself.
Wow, your sentiment, Anna, about how the internet shapes our every want and desire really hit a chord with me. I remember when we blamed magazines and television for filling our heads with wants and desires but those didn’t seem nearly as pervasive as the 24-hour access to not just images of things we don’t need but the ability to buy them without time to consider what they mean to our lives.
I really appreciate taking the time to consider how we use Pinterest and other sites not just in how we collect the images and what we comment to others but how genuinely necessary this visual consumption is to our lives.
Thank you for planting the seed of consideration, both to each other and to our own peace of mind.
I agree with every word you’ve written here, particularly the issue that we seem to have traded context and meaning with ‘pretty’ and ‘inspiration’. What does ‘inspiration’ even mean today? Does it compel thought, art, creativity, meaning? Or is it simply a nice picture to look at, added to a board or endlessly re-blogged with no point? Sometimes the level of superficiality I see online really frightens me. The posts that I write on my blog have a clear relationship between images and words. But I know that realistically, there are people out there who view my blog as simply a repository for pretty images rather than a form of intellectual, emotional and artistic engagement between word and image. I actually receive emails on a regular basis from people telling me I should cut down the length of my posts and stick to presenting pretty images – I’m not joking. The thing that keeps me motivated about blogging and blogs though is the amount of intelligent and thoughtful bloggers I’ve encountered too.
Thanks for this post, and thanks for linking my own discussion on the matter.
No, thank you!! It’s really reassuring (especially when frustrated to the point that I can barely begin to splice cohesive thoughts together) to see other people expressing so eloquently their perspectives on something that’s been rolling around in my head.
I shared this on G+… because it’s true. I have to admit that you start out naiive as to reposting/not sourcing images… but a lot of these Pinterest people are internet veterans and should know better. Also, Pinterest’s TOU makes users completely liable for all litigation should anybody raise a fuss about copyright.
I think this is kind of why I exited the internet for the last… jeez, year almost? Not enough creativity, not enough motivation to stay creative.
I like this article/entry/post a lot, Tamera. I always enjoy listening to your musings on the internet v. cultural consumption. You are far more articulate than you give yourself credit for. It’s really difficult to write about these issues because the feelings are so complex and, in my case, kinda tinged with a deserving bitterness. I tried (emphasis on “tried”) to write about something similar last month in the context of sharing a curated image site that I really liked. You can check it out here.
One of the points that I’m not sure that I clearly made was how this site plays with context and content in a way that is really jarring and sadly refreshing. Placing images of, say, dead children next to images of a deep jungle or a half naked white girl can cause a really nice vibration of unsettlement and questioning if executed well. Or, I’d at least like to hope that’s what they were going for.
Fantastic post, Tamera, you’ve really hit on something with what you say about entitlement and respect and the concept of “pretty”. I don’t have much else to add except “aaargh Pinterest”. And I’m off to read Hila’s post now!
I read this post yesterday and came back today because I was sure that there would be loads of interesting comments to read through as well. I do value the internet very much for putting me in contact with the ideas of interesting people that live far away. I move countries every few years it seems, and so it’s nice to have some community that is constant, even if it is only online. I am also really grateful that I can be in touch with other artists that I would never have met otherwise. But of course, I can see this other extremely depressing side of internet communities, and I am really glad that people are talking about it, because it really needs to be discussed!! I do try to avoid online experiences that would leave me feeling the same as if I had just leafed through a glossy fashion magazine, but it’s not always possible.
I think you are dead on about how back in the days of LJ it was possible to write about our lives without a sense of what to share next constantly looming over them. This shift in mentality is something that definitely needs to be thought about and addressed more widely.
Thank you so much for posts like these, which open up dialogues like this one!
Thank you for this post! I miss the way the internet used to be, back in the LJ days and earlier. It makes me happy, though, that that time isn’t forgotten by the people who “lived it.”
Not to be devil’s advocate here, but I’ve never had any illusions about “intellectual property” or sanctity of the internet, *ever*. The whole point anymore seems to be that it’s a free-for-all and no one actually owns anything. Have you downloaded music without considering copyright infringement? I think it falls under the same category of what you are addressing.
Appropriation has always been part of “culture”, or whatever you want to call it, or at least pop culture (hi, Warhol)– Kenneth Goldsmith makes good arguments for this through his conceptual work.
There are always going to be unimaginative, slimy, vulturous, opportunistic bores out there, and they are unstoppable. Just think of the internet as the faceless version of Single White Female, and you’ll reconsider before sharing what’s sacred to you.
and what’s in question here, anyway? make up? home renovation? Most of what I see just *mimics* glossy design magazines or fashion spreads or whaaatever. There are moments when I look at Rookie Mag and I feel so irritated, but that feeling passes and I realize, you know what? They can HAVE it. It was never mine to begin with. Let the cultural bloodletting bleed itself! fuck it.
As I said in the post, the mimicry is a natural human response that in this case is just magnified by the sheer volume of interactions that the internet allows. So while it existed before and did not rankle as much, the nonstop churn is overwhelming purely because we’re not used to seeing it in such volume.
The reblogging of photography or art without credit, however, is what I’m talking about as far as copyright infringement. To compare it to your download metaphor, it would be like downloading a song with no artist or title and never knowing who made it, and then reblogging it and putting your own name on it. So not only is the original artist having content stolen, the chance to actually sell work or have appreciation is completely lost.
The whole system is a series of mimics mimicking mimics.
That doesn’t mean it is correct or should be free from critique. I think Tamera is suggesting that it shouldn’t be this way, and by posting her critique is starting a dialogue in which we can start to brainstorm about how to change a bad system.
While a large part of the system is mimicking mimics, there are people who are creating and they have intellectual property rights. The internet is a wonderful tool to share their creations to a larger audience. Posting to the internet does not diminish the rights of the creator. Ignoring and dismissing those rights because the “whole point” appears to be a “free-for-all” does not excuse or protect the mimickers from critique or legal recourse.
Of course people will copy. It is increasingly difficult to be original. That is not what is the problem here (although it is a problem).
The problem is the fact people repinning or tumbling work with no attribution.
It always belongs to someone and that someone spent time creating something.
It’s always easier to pin, blog or whatever something you’ve found from someone else rather than make the original work yourself.
I’m all for sharing but sharing implies people know where the work comes from.
yes yes! I think the hardest thing for me to fathom is how anyone could argue AGAINST proper citing of sources and linking back? I see it on Tumblr the most, which is a whole other beast. I’ve seen multiple back and forth interactions with some friends who are artists (photographers, illustrators, etc) who use social media as a way to share and promote their output, and all they really ask in exchange is basic courtesy: if you repost or share, link to the original source. They’ve had people blatantly say stuff like, “Oh including a line of text with the original credit messes up my Tumblr’s aesthetic!” or “If you don’t want people taking your stuff, don’t post it.” Seriously?
I try to do my best, to offset the karmic imbalance, by searching fiercely for the original source of an image I see re-posted, that I find compelling and want to share. If I’m unable to find it, I usually don’t post it.
Thankyou for your very eloquent words.
Too often I end up feeling so desperately lonely and ignored on the internet. That idea of “community” really is missing. As are manners, and politeness, and just general consideration for others. But it is sad that I have to feel let down by the internet, because that means that I have come to rely on it for those very things. And that I think is unhealthy.
Hey Tamera,
Yes – Pinterest criticism is going about. I agree that at the end of the day it is about manners. I realize I’ve gone slack in working to find out where an image is from & credit it properly before I “pin” it. After reading an article on the legal ramifications for pinterest users, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about where I’m going with my account. I like Pinterest. A lot. It helps me with all kinds of design organization. I haven’t bought so-so magazines home since I’ve begun using it and the magazines I do bring home are better quality publications. I have a space in my studio dedicated to countless fading torn out magazine images so in this way – pinterest has helped me out. But for all of that I find myself sad about the ignorants. Sadder still that they have no clue that their actions are upsetting on many levels. I told Jane a few days ago- and I’ll say it again here: You and Jane taught me so very much about manners, etiquette, and responsible blogging when I first started out with my website. I’m very grateful for you. Keep standing up. People do listen.
I recently read a statement that said “Create more than you consume” and I have to admit, it really has me re-thinking my image-hording ways. Additionally, some of the points you make here cement the deal.
I read this when you initially posted it a couple days ago, and it’s been rolling about in my head for a while.
Am I actually inspired to do anything/make anything by the nearly endless collection of images I’ve amassed on pinterest over the last year(with added ownership credits and clear links back to sources but still whatever)?
In short, no. In fact, I’ve totally used the ingestion of more images as an excuse to avoid finishing a real and rewarding project that I have lurking in the background in my actual life.
I’m not on the Pinterest, but from the outside it seemed, to me, as a big multiple signpost, pointing to different creators.
I took it as read that the pinners weren’t, in the vast majority of cases, the creators of content.
I saw them as curators and sign-makers: “I like Arthur Rackham, and I like Bosch, and I like Vania Zouravliov. There works are so good I want to show them to you! Go, visit their sites/galleries!”
Are people claiming content as theirs?
And using that awful “If you don’t want it stolen, don’t put it online” defense?
Oh dear.
* * *
That “mimics mimicking mimics” deserves a post of its own.
More and more people are calling attention to it.
You might find this article interesting (long, but totally worth it): http://thequietus.com/articles/06386-simon-reynolds-retromania-interview.
* * *
Or wait, maybe I’m getting it wrong: do you, personally, object to any pinning of your work, be it “oooh, go check out verhext, she’s amazing!” or “yeah, that’s mine. nope, never heard of verhext”?
Or just the latter kind?
Or something in between?
Well, that’s the thing. Everyone thinks Pinterest is a way to aggregate content, but the Terms of Service state:
You acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for all Member Content that you make available through the Site, Application and Services. Accordingly, you represent and warrant that: (i) you either are the sole and exclusive owner of all Member Content that you make available through the Site, Application and Services or you have all rights, licenses, consents and releases that are necessary to grant to Cold Brew Labs the rights in such Member Content.
However, that’s not how people are using it. Maybe people don’t want Pinterest.com to have rights to use and sell their content? (Facebook & TwitPic do this too – I do NOT upload photos to Facebook, etc) – what you’re doing when you pin something is giving Pinterest that right.
The issue, too, is that people DON’T pin from the actual source, they pin from tumblr, or blogs, or ffffound, or other sites where there is no credit, no way of tracking. I’ve seen photos of mine re-tumbled THOUSANDS of time with no credit or link.
And, for people who just blog for the community/their family/friends & don’t make money from it, traffic doesn’t really mean anything and isn’t an incentive.
& check out my blurb over on the sidebar ——> that’s been there for years.
Wow, I didn’t know that Pintereset, TwitPic and FB had those rights.
And I overlooked the blurb, my apologies.
Thanks for explaining this further.
(And I love TinEye for searching for the source of uncredited images on tumblr, we heart it and the like. I both like to keep everything neatly labeled and I’d want to see more of somebody’s work, and it has helped me with that a lot.
With sites like TinEye and Google image search, there’s no excuse not to properly credit, at the very least.)
To sum up – Pinterest could be awesome IF:
-The No Pin opt out actually worked (and could be added to blogspot, etc) and you couldnt just right click and pin images anyway.
-Pinterest did not claim ownership or distribution rights of the content
-Sites like tumblr, fffound, weheartit, google, flickr were totally blocked
-People gave a shit and respected no pin codes, copyrights, etc, and pinned from the source only
I imagine that shops, museums, maybe even magazines wouldn’t mind the free marketing and traffic, but maybe Pinterest could be an opt-in thing rather than an opt-out?
I don’t know. Just typing/thinking outloud.
When I first started blogging, I followed the model of “post a picture with the post to make it more interesting.” It took about six months before I posted a picture without proper credit (I gave a source but it wasn’t the original source) and somebody commented asking me to take it down. I’m still not sure if it falls under the technical legal definition of fair use (I was taking an IP class at the time), but we decided that we should stop using any pictures we didn’t own or couldn’t source to their original creator. More recently, after a couple long conversations over whether or not cooking blogs should repost recipes, I stopped copying and posting recipes unless I had made substantial changes to them and thought those changes would be helpful to readers. I still use Pinterest, although I have been very wary since reading that article by a lawyer about the TOS. All of this is to say, these conversations are important. They matter. We’re in that fuzzy gray area where even though everybody knows that stealing is wrong, they don’t think of using somebody else’s IP in a way that doesn’t make them money or get them in trouble as stealing. It’s not something that kids get taught in school – in fact, if you think about it, we learned that clipping pictures out of magazines and pasting them to posterboard or using them in a powerpoint was totally okay. So as much as it might seem totally obvious that you shouldn’t need to point out to somebody that they don’t have a right to appropriate your intellectual property or ideas, just because you have chosen to share them, I think for a lot of people they probably have a very visceral action to being told that something they thought was completely okay is actually wrong.
At first I thought the idea of Pinterest was interesting. Until people
started pinning me, my family, gifts they made me, and the words
they’d put with them would be incorrect or no actual source credited.
The day I flipping was someone pinned flower arrangement my husband
made for me. When I told friends I cared they said I was being foolish
and I should be flattered. I wasn’t. I already had a please done pin
notice on my site and in my kind I equated to I showed some people in
real life a photo and then hung it ony wall. You wouldnt take my
photos literally on my wall right? Then companies started pinning
images I had used with permission from other sites and they’d credit
someone else entirely. So frustrating.
The whole social media culture has made people loose all kinds of
manners. Saying whatever they feel like to anyone at anytime. Would you say that stuff to my face? I want to ask that to people daily.
It also creates this odd reality of “frienship” and knowing people. People need tone fonts. So I know is someone being passive aggressive, sincere, smarmy, rude etc.
Facebook and twitter are the worst. The following and unfollowing, pressure to add people. I take so many things personally because of all that and leaves me with hurt feelings when others maybe didn’t think twice about it or didn’t mean harm.
I don’t remember any of this being an issue in 1995 when my family got internet. I would use chat board and discusssion boards then and I am sure some of it happened but I don’t remember it being an issue.
I’m so uncomfortable with Pinterest. As you point out at the end there, being online and being in business are now hopelessly tangled, and I found myself on Pinterest for business (not that it matters much… unless I put the new block code up, everything on the site could end up there anyway). But it makes me uneasy. It’s such a quick snack way to go through the world. It makes things shallow and empty a little. And more and more I’m just seeing things re-pinned from Pinterest. People are now too lazy to actually go to the WEB to find things.
But you’re right. Beyond that, the culture on Pinterest is terrible. I’ve gotten hateful anti-gay marriage screeds, for one.
But whatever, at least Pinterest is encouraging visual creativity. Don’t even get me started on Facebook.
Wow, I was just talking about this the other day with friends.
Very encouraging to see such a well written and though out post on it.
The behavior we see is upsetting. Makes me concerned for the younger generation. Instant gratification…no ramifications.
Oh Tamera, perfect timing. I’m writing about this too. Why don’t people read terms of service? Thank you!
A great article on pinterest:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/shenegotiates/2012/04/10/pinterest-is-a-female-impersonator/3/