Word (as opposed to things ostensibly worth a thousand of them).

[digitaldiscipline]

So, there's been a lot of buzz at Job Two (J2) about Pinterest, since it is apparently the new hotness when it comes to social media things (I've seen discussion of it on both Cnn and NPR in the last couple of days). I have been resistant to bother with it, not leastwise because I have no fucking time for participating in social media interactions I find enjoyable (this, most notably; as well as my workout blog... hell, I've even been on FB and Twitter less of late because I lack the time or interest to keep wading through).

But, back to the Pinterest/Tumblr thing. The conjunction of Pinterest workchat for J2 and interesting human yuki_onna starting a tumblr of her own (here's an LJ crosspost from her tumblr, which is both interesting in its own right, as well as illustrates the points I will make further along) made me examine why, precisely, I give no fucks about them, where other things that cannibalized social mindshare in my circle of friends were met, instead, with hostility.

It's the words, stupid.

I'm not shy about being a visual media consumer; I like looking at interesting and attractive things, but I'm not overly concerned with sharing them unless they're exceptional-to-me, and I sure as fuck am sparse with creating them (see the aforementioned limitations on time, combined with a limited skillset which I have minimal-at-best interest in developing aptitude; anyone who's seen my captioned Youtube videos has been exposed to about the height of my art). Because I don't create in the same space that Pintumblr seem to occupy, they don't get traction in my brain.

Look back at Cat's post - it's a pile of great words and interesting ideas, broken up with visual items. To some readers/viewers/consumers (pick your term, or choose a different one), those includes might elevate her essay; to me, most of them are distracting as fuck (animated gifs, in general, have a high bar to clear to not be annoying, since they constantly nag at my eye and pull attention away from what I want to be looking at; stills are far less demanding and annoying).

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that the newest of the new social media and I aren't a good fit for each other, and I'm fine with that. They are not cannibalizing all the words of people with whom I miss corresponding and discussing things; they're providing an outlet or expression for people to do new and different and interesting-to-them things that can be shared, or for them to share things they have found.

I, personally, am not a huge proponent of saying, "Hey, look at this shiny rock I found! Now look at this one! And this one!" all the time; we're not corvids, people. Sharing cool stuff is what the web in general, and social media in particular, are for, yes, but these aggressively sharing-centric services have dialed things way too far towards the "noise" end of the signal-to-noise ratio for me to pick up any signal at all, and I'm not in a position to bother building, buying, or developing a more finely-tuned antenna for them. I've got a perfectly good cable service that I'm not using as it is (both metaphorically and literally; I should probably see about downgrading my television service to stop wasting money on it).

However, I did, finally, check out Pinterest yesterday, and it was clear within a very few minutes that I am not their target audience or demographic. It skews crafty and female, and I am fairly vigorously neither of those things. As I put it to a couple of J2 colleagues via IM, "The main page there is like being beaten with the contents a medical waiting room for no good reason."

Maybe the mud in which I am a stick is finally starting to ossify.