Jul 23, 2013

The Pains of Pinterest

I have a... complicated relationship with Pinterest. My favorite categories to browse recently are the craft/DIY, and the Home Decor boards.  The good thing is that it stimulates the same love I have for scrounging through thrift shops, antique markets, craft fairs, museums, and a farmer's almanac all in one (and all during down time at work!).  I've found craft inspiration, design ideas, stain removers, recipes, hacks, and the occasional delightful animal photo. Want to see the happiest sloth in the world?  Just click here.  Or do you have sheets that have gotten dingy with use, or shirts with pit stains?  You can make a pretreater with 1 part dish soap, 2 parts peroxide, and 1/2 part baking soda that works amazingly well.  You really never know quite what you're going to find.

The down side of Pinterest really just ends up being every other problem with the internet, the people.  It is not, as you would think, the level of tacky that starts to get to me.  I've gotten really used to the fact that there are a lot of people out there with no taste and a lot of time on their hands. Maybe I'm unique or dull, but I do not need to cover everything in glitter, I do not redecorate my house every season, I do not need to bedazzle everything I own, or make fake flowers out of every material known to man (I also don't have children, which helps).  I am not judging these people (well, sometimes I judge their taste levels, but you really can't help that), they are always going to make up a certain percentage of the population.  Without them, we wouldn't have sites like regretsy.com.

What starts to annoy me are the people who create web pages just so that they can get hits from Pinterest.  There have been multiple times where I see something which promises a walk-through of how to do something impressive looking.  Therefore, I am intrigued at how they did that thing. I click on the link, and there is a page with the photo that was pinned along with a whole lot of ads, but no walk-through.  Occasionally, there is a link to the original site, but often there is not.  If I am motivated enough, I might go and do a Google search for the original tip, but I still feel conned into providing web traffic to whoever did it.

To make this post not just a complete rant, I figured that I would share something useful that I found on Pinterest (although seriously, the pretreater listed above? Do it.).  The University of Illinois has an entire site dedicated to stains.  You can find it here.  Just look up what caused the stain, and it gives you information on how to get it out.

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