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How To Fail At Pinterest

Pinterest

If you don’t know what Pinterest is, you’re not only a dude, but also one who has not interacted with a female within the past 6 months. I suggest some therapy or maybe hiring an escort or something. I have heard that can be helpful for guys with crippling social anxiety when it comes to dating. It has taken the sorority community by storm, providing us with ideas for monogramming items previously unmonogrammable, adding glitter to just about everything, and a gazillion baking recipes. Lots of great stuff on there, don’t get me wrong. However, I do take issue with certain facets of the community.

The Recipes: I’m not one to brag about my skills in the kitchen. Actually, I am hugely one to brag about my skills in the kitchen. I was raised by an old nanny who grew up picking cotton and thus learned to make soul food sans recipes, measuring cups, and the like. I’ve moved onto other dishes and will sort of measure these days, but maybe my standards are higher than most. I can not COUNT the number of times I have pinned a recipe with glowing reviews of “best chicken recipe ever!” or something and it was no improvement over the recipes on the back of the campbells soup cans. There are great cookbooks and cooking blogs out there, go to them, not some random pinner who may or may not have any clue what she is doing.

The Wedding Boards: These are a FANTASTIC idea. If you’re engaged. Or maybe it’s headed that way and you have the board set on private. However, I am continuously amazed by the 19 year olds who fuss over wedding planning. The average age of marriage for college women is 28. Do you honestly think that nearly ten years from now that any of those ideas will still be appealing, or that pinterest will still exist? Also, it doesn’t take a genius for a guy to find these things. I can not imagine how horrifying that would be for a man three months into the relationship. And don’t even get me started on the “New Mom Tips: Pin now, read later!”

The Crafting Projects: By far my favorite items on pinterest are the crafting ideas. I love to make cute little things with bows on them, or decorative things for my apartment, and the like. But what is up with all of these “10 ways to repurpose wooden pallets” and strange transformations of dressers into, I don’t know, not dressers. Does anyone actually do these things? Is that what hipsters do on weekends in between slam poetry readings and discussing obscure literature? I can work power tools and drive a tractor, but I don’t do any of that for funsies.

Bad Clothing Pinning Etiquette: This one really chaps my ass. I see something adorable pinned. I MUST have it. There is just no way around it. So I click the pin to see the link. Which goes to someone’s tumblr. Which is from someone else’s tumblr. Which I don’t even understand tumblr anyways. Why do you pin these things when there is no ability to actually purchase them? Are you a fashion masochist? Do you like looking at adorable pink lace skirts in your free time but never wearing them? If that’s the case, do it on your own time.

Stupid Fitness Boards: Do this arbitrary combination of normal exercises once a day for a perfect body or whatever. They always come in list form and have some suggestion of the time of day to do it. Why do you need to have 20 of these things on a board? Just go to the gym and do your thing and don’t freaking broadcast it to everyone. Or be a normal sorority girl and just hit the elliptical until you work off lunch. If you require more assistance than that, you want a personal trainer, not a cutesy graphic you found on the internet.

The Sock Bun: Has anyone actually done this? Why is having a massive donut of hair on your head attractive? And why do I see some variant of this pinned every single day? Ditto on smokey eye tutorials. You should have learned this by the 12th grade. Also, I regret to inform you that flatironing a braid will look like a loose 80s crimp job, not a wave.

All that said, I got drunk last night and made an entire board of Scott Disick looking hot and playing with his son, so I’m probably equally to blame.

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