I Fucking Hate Pinterest

6 Mar, 2012

OK, I said it, I fucking hate Pinterest.

I know it’s all the rage and it’s growing like a weed, but what is the point? How many photos of adorable babies in adorable outfits, women contorting themselves into artistic yoga poses, Pottery Barn living rooms, inspirational quotes crafted in gorgeous typography, and food porn do we really need, after all? Apparently, a lot.

I get it. I’m not really the target demographic for Pinterest. I don’t have a vagina. But that’s not the main reason that Pinterest gets under my skin. I created an account a while ago to give it a try. I thought that maybe it could be a replacement for the lackluster Delicious as a bookmarking site. Notsomuch…

Then the emails start. Every girl I ever went to high school with whose Facebook friend request I mistakenly accepted (and have since unsubscribed to) is now following me on Pinterest. Yay, Facebook connect! Their pictures of high heeled boots, impeccably decorated spacious lofts, and blueberry scones start showing up all over the place. Many of them seem to be using it to plan their dream weddings (both real and imaginary).

But that’s not the only reason why Pinterest has become the focus of my disdain. Every time I’ve tried to use the browser bookmarklet to “Pin” something, it doesn’t work. The site hangs. It won’t load. I have to re-log in again and again. Duplicates are posted that I’m unable to delete because, again, the site is hanging. I know they’re dealing with massive growth, but it negatively impacts the user experience.

So, I’ve said my peace. Pinterest, I think I speak for a lot of people (men in particular) when I say that I’m not a fan. Fortunately, the next big thing is scheduled to come along any minute now…

Update More reasons to dislike Pinterest: PINTEREST, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

Posted in Social Media, User Experience | 79 Comments »

http://twitter.com/SpaceMonkeyX Rob Lammle

I do hate that I have to login all the time. That’s annoying. But I don’t have the same problems with bookmarklet. My only problem with it is that it feels slow, which makes me not want to use it.

As for the content – as everyone says about every social site – it is what you make of it. Why Follow on Pinterest the people you’ve unsubscribed from on Facebook if they’re not offering you anything of value? Or why not follow the one board they might have that you’re interested in? Nothing says you have to follow their wedding, recipes, storage solutions, or dream vacation Boards. But you might like the one they have for music, so just follow that one. Of course there’s always the option of not following them on Pinterest at all.

I mainly follow Boards, rather than people, so I really only see things I’m interested in. Naturally that’s going to make the experience more enjoyable for me. I’ve found some really interesting boards that are not the typical “girly” ones out there, but my interests just might be different from yours, of course. So maybe you’re just not finding good matches for what you’re interested in. If that’s the case, then, yeah, the site’s just not for you.

That being said, I’d never call it the greatest site ever. I go there a couple times a week (give or take) and have been pinning less and less lately; it’s just not a destination for me yet. Then again, that’s been my general experience with all social media as of late, so maybe I’m just experiencing overall social media fatigue.
http://www.adjustafresh.com/ Scott Kiekbusch

OK, I admit that my post was a bit over-the-top. (It was late. I’m trying to blog more often). You’re right, Rob, any social site is what you make of it; I wasn’t a fan of Twitter for a long time either. That being said, I find Pinterest hard to use. It’s kind of like flipping through a never-ending magazine to look at the photos which is something I don’t often have time for.
Gen Walsh

You really shouldn’t let it bother you so much.
Zac

I agree Fuck That Shit!
ChallengeMango

Guys seem to almost always look at this wrong. If you’re not going to pin then don’t follow anyone unless you need to buy birthday/holiday/wedding/anniversary gifts for them. Most people have a board that is just stuff they want but don’t want to buy it themselves. And people have had pinterest for so long that they don’t remember half the stuff they pinned. Its the easiest way to buy a gift for any girl in your life without asking what they want and getting the ‘I don’t care’ answer.
Disgusted and fed up

I hate Pinterest it is not accurate for how many followers you get or how many your following. It doesn’t add your pins to the home page most times and it deletes a lot of your pins and adds them themselves to their page wth. It seems shady to me and unprofessional. I hope something bigger and better does come along that doesn’t screw people over like Pinterest does wtf! Disgusted and fed up!
KayCee

I hate Pinterest. I mean haaaaaaaaaaaate it. What it does to poor brides is sad. Everything I cant stand about pseudo sophisticates is contained on their site. Did I mention I hate it much?
KayCee

I asked to post as guest!
Christopher Barnett

What REALLY makes me want to pin the creator to the floor and beat them in the face until they stop moving is the fact that you HAVE to make a damn account and go through SO much “What are you interests…” bullshit just to look at a fucking picture!!!

FUCK OFF, PINTEREST! I don’t even give a crap what people think about me. It’s data mining fucktards like this that need to be removed from this planet.
Mike

I would like a face to face with the puss head who decided to force us to join and sign In when I only want to take a look
Mike

“Piece.” You don’t say your peace, you say your piece. Pinterest, by the way, is a total tool of Satan, and until they get rid of that stupid gray bar blocking the whole page and trying to blackmail you into joining before you can even look at someone’s page, they can go to hell.
chango369

The forced sign up has put me off, so I’ll be staying with Google Image search or any other equivalent where an account creation is not needed, fhank you (sic) very much.
mrooney

I hate it because when I’m searching for something, pinterest shows up in a zillion results. And you can’t access any real information from somebody’s online scrap book. It’s the lamest, most time-wasting thing ever.
anonygoat

Nailed it!! I also hate the way it clogs up search results, it’s like a middleman between you & the original link.
anonygoat

Well, I have a vag, and I hate, hate, hate it! :P The last 6 comments are spot on, I can’t agree more. There’s gotta be a way to block Pinterest from search results without a google cookie. I wish I could just block all links from softonic, pinterest, and a few other spammy timewaster sites. Or just give mommy bloggers their own section of the internet so they can stop ruining it for the rest of us.
DODGYGEEZ

Yeah, you can not scroll down to the 4th row of pictures without being forcibly prompted to sign in. Not only that; when I log in with Facebook… I’m still prompted to sign in! So I sign in with a Google account and I STILL CANT FUCKING LOOK AT ALL THE PICTURES.

What the fuck is this shit. I can’t be arsed, I’ve tried every possible step in troubleshooting that I could think of, but I refuse to fall victim to their overly long sign-up process. I would prefer to google ‘I fucking hate pinterest’ and post a negative remark on whatever link I click and never go on pinterest again unless it seems a relevant result in the far, far future when the site has probably been propperly administered while the creator is hopefully in the state of mind of someone with a mental age of 12+

#fuckpinterest
Sam Speed

I hate Pinterest too. It’s the forced signup. That kind of shit went out in the early 00s.
Cesare di Angelo

I hate the POS website as well, I hope they get sued out of existence for all the bloody copyright infringement
dont bully

I just refuse to be fuckin blackmailed, end of.
VoldemortsNipple

“I’m not the targetted demographic… I don’t have a vagina.”
Maybe you don’t get any, either. (See what happens when we take it to a vulgar level?)

Anyway, some of us do. But Pinterest is annoying because it likes to “collect” images without giving reference to the source.

I see an image that I’m interested in learning more about, click it, and not only am I being forced to “log in” to an account I have absolutely no interest in… but I’ve lost the initial image that I had wanted in a sea of other images that are not even like it. And even if I do find the image, the source is gone and all I see are weird commentaries.

Well, no less weird than yours. Since we’re making this about genitalia, maybe you’d like Pinterest more if it had a hole in it that you could “pin” yourself into. Is that where you were going with this? X’D
Dixie88

I agree. Pinterest is super annoying. You cannot find a photo anymore that ISN’T owned by this stupid, idiotic group. I am so sick of seeing that Pinterest label everywhere online. I am female & I HATE Pinterest!
No one

I am a female and hate pinterest more than any man out there. It is a fucked up site. I do not want people following me around online. I am not one of those people that have 1,000’s of friends. I have a handful like 4-5 that i call real friends. Acquaintances are not friends. Pinterest wants to connect dots that are not wanted by the users. I do not want to be followed by any one. I take pride that no one can google my name and find me, cause I am not there.
If site is from pinterest I just move on.
m&m

I hate pinterst just showing up on random searches – I don’t need the BS & I am sick of typing -pinterest on my searches
little jew man

cant even login to pinchtits jesus it must run by a bunch a tiny lil jews that want my pennies or seomthing
lafiamma

But who says you have to look at Pottery Barn items or babies? I’ve never seen either on Pinterest because I don’t look for them. Also worriesome is your claim that women won’t leave you alone after finding you through Facebook. If you don’t like Facebook, or Pinterest, or babies, or yoga, or Pottery Barn—then find something else to do. I think your real problem is you dislike women, and you find the internet to be a convenient place to dump anonymously. There are a zillion guys like you, no woman is shocked by this, believe me.
Summer Wind

To stop pinterest images from showing up in google image search or a link to pinterest place this before or after your search term -site:pinterest.com Works a charm. I do a lot of image searches dealing with art and pinterest was driving me crazy. No more pinterest! YAY!

Edit: Sorry that was meant for the people that were annoyed regarding pinterest showing up in searches. Onward ->->
Helen

whats it good for???? Nothing!!!! Gets in the way of my searches!!!!!!
Woody

I too hate pinterest for two reasons. 1. People have stopped being creative and simply go there to take ideas rather than sit down and thoughtfully express themselves as individuals. 2. The shit on there is done in my house, not by me, and I end up spending a good deal of money for stupid ideas and am left to clean up the mess afterwards. Fucking think before doing anything in your house the consequences such as putting Scotch tape on the ceiling in four separate rooms of the house.
TheYetiRises

Are you just looking? Sign up.
Oh ok, want to continue to your pictures? Hahaha, SIGN UP.

Pinterest is like a molester to people who don’t have accounts, you just want to browse some pictures but then creepy guy (Pinterest sign-up molester) pins you against the wall and tries to diddle your email, leaving you the option to run and not spend your day at the art museum of pinterest, or go through the tedious task of blocking everything with the javascript viewer or whatever.

TL;DR Pinterest sign up is a molester, you either beat the shit out of him with javascript of have to run away every single time you want to see a picture in his domain.
TheYetiRises

God yes exactly
TheYetiRises

I want an addon for Firefox that blocks everything with the words ‘Softonic’, ‘Pinterest’, and ‘Minecraft’ in it in my Google results.

Make this happen.
I.M. Pistoff

Yes he should.
proGMO

ME TOO IT’S THE STUPIDEST SITE I HATE THAT A SEARCH IMAGES AND IT’S ALL PINTEREST CRAP
Fred Garvin

Searching Google images, How does pinterest out-SEO a legitimate webpage with ACTUAL content related to the the image? Is it just easier? Faster? for Google to pull some “1000+ images about X” bullshit from pinterest? It’s clogs up my image search results on Google which I rely on constantly! IT NEEDS TO FUCKING DIE!!!! Oh yeah and the low res thumbnails that are the “pintrrest” results coercing you to go to their site for the full size image?!? NEVER!!!!
hurmen

A social laggy website that blacks out it’s main page and doesn’t let you get to browse anything until you log in ? how disrespectful, I quit using anything related to this website since they implemented this trick on users just for the principle of it, it’s like you’ll be accessing top of the line latest scientific pages or something, it’s just online junkies pictures and rants, next thing they’ll be requiring visitors to pay a fee just for having the privilege of typing the website name on their browser, what a pity.
Batphink Reynolds

I HATE Pinterest,just Googling for some cool pics and then Pinterest pops up and blurs what you are trying to view unless you take out an account with them. FUCK Pinteterest!
EatYourVeggies

“And you can’t access any real information from somebody’s online scrap book.”
Yep! I f*cking hate that. I click on a picture, oh that looks cool! Only to end up in some weird no man’s land with absolutely no information about who/what/why/where etc. Total tease and waste of time.
TheYetiRises

I play Minecraft no less, but gosh is the fanbase just so horrific! Anyhow.
robin

Pinterest is a waste of time!
http://www.salescopywriter.net/ Alan

I hate it because it demands I create an account to see other people’s uploaded content. No. Never. I’d rather bitch about it on the net than ever, ever, bother giving them my email. I just wish there was a way to stop Google from offering that damn site in the result.
Cheryl

I hate it too. Takes too many clicks to look at one thing and then it takes you to a deadend.
Сергей

i hate it because it damaged google search. Now instead finding real useful information it searches shit on pinterest and even can’t find original page (even after using pinterest app). I have no words to say how i hate it.
Betty D

I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE, (Etc exponentially forever to infinity) Pinterest! You cannot search an image on the web anymore. I am a super visual person- my job is creative visual. I have to show people images all of the time (I am not steeling photos or anything- just searching the web for an image of say the Taj Majal…or whatever as inspiration) But can you save or use any images!??? NO!!!!!!!!!!!! because all of the photos are being sucked up by Pinterest by the millions and then you cant even LOOK at them- never mind save or forward them unless you have an account and then you can only look at them and share with other pinterest people. So, Yeah. F.U. Pinterest.
jedy123

I’m not signed up to Pinterest yet it clogs up most of my image searches on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo. It’s like Pinterest is saying “We have no rights to this image but we will refuse to let anyone see the original and its information unless you sign up to our site”. How the hell has this dreadful site been allowed to take over image searching like this?
C.Short

Pinterest is WORTHLESS!!! It is absolutely ridiculous to have to “sign up” just to view some damn diy photos or recipes!!!! Forget it!! There are so many sites that I can visit and find the EXACT same things WITHOUT having to sign in. To this chic, Pinterest is the site for those snobby “soccer moms” that all belong to the same snobby cult!!!
Jannik Svensson

Yes PINTEREST IS JUST FUCKING ANNOYING, NO I DONT WANT TO LOGIN, NO I DONT SPECIALLY DONT DONT DONT WANT YOUR FUCKING APP TO FILL UP MY STUPIDPHONEANDROIDPIECE OF SHIT.
larry w

I hate it. Its a string maze. Wont get back to original website esp if u are online to research a purchase. Gotta sign in every fucking time. Goes off in tangents like a billion demented minds.
Felicia H

When you click on the photo and it takes you to Pinterest, there should be a link on there for the website where the project/ product is from. Lame in my opinion. Why do I care that some stranger pinned this project? Pinterest is like a middleman, I see what I want, but I have to sign up for the stupid site (which has no directions whatsoever) only to be directed to another site so I can get the info for what I want. I had to sign up for it too because just about every dang picture on google images takes you to Pinterest.
Felicia H

So do I! I can’t look up anything without being directed to that site. And Pinterest doesn’t give you any directions as to how to actually do the project….. So why does it even exist? Just to let me know that some stranger shared it? Dumb. Just take me to the website where this product is sold/or where the directions are for this project.
EatYourVeggies

I’m still mystified how this became so popular. Oh well.