What we pin, post, and “like” allows us to demonstrate our refined tastes, to declare publicly what we deem picturesque. Part of the pleasure of using Pinterest stems from declaring this shirt, photograph, or coffee mug represents “who I am,” designing a self as Steve Jobs would a phone. Identity is performed not as through a transparent window but through the logic of mediated and curated imagery. Pinterest lets us immerse ourselves in ourselves, awash in a never-ending torrent of our own taste.

Thus, the danger of Pinterest, as Bon Stewart has argued, is that it might foster an uncreative, Stepford Wife version of the self based on the currency of the repinnable. 

-Nathan Jurgenson, “Picture Pluperfect,” The New Inquiry Magazine, No. 3: Arguing the Web 

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