A MALE friend recently suggested I might like a photo-sharing site he had signed up to, Pinterest.
His girlfriend liked it, he said; women like it. What he described was the fast-growing "virtual pinboard" where people post images of elegant pots, gorgeous shoes, beautiful houses and great art works and follow and appreciate each other's taste in nice pics. In 2011, Time magazine listed it in its "50 best" websites of the year.
"I'm not sure I would be very pinterested in that," I said and went into a great deal of detail about my inability to use Facebook for more than saying "hi, you're still alive" to people I haven't seen for decades.
He asked me if I liked to collect beautiful things. I paused for a second to consider the question, and thought of the many people I know who love to gather such items and shook my head. "Not pinterested. It's just not my thing." And I wasn't. My friend nodded. "You're like me, more a word person." But still the name stuck in my head, and since I am, as he said, a word person, I got more and more pinterested. I kept running the name round in my head, in the same way I had the slogans "Incredinburgh" or "Blogmanay". All had got stuck on repeat, like daft advertising jingles.
Naturally, I signed up, in spite of my lack of pinterest. It asked me to pick some images so it could work out my "pinspiration".
I looked through the gallery, and struggled to be pinspired. The only images I liked were of birds, so I clicked on them. I didn't realise I was pinterested in birds.
The site is, pindeed, full of nice pics. But really, in the end, my feelings are as they were when I pinitiated this quest. There's no marketing like an annoying, silly name. Next post on the site, "pincredinburgh".
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article