Would it be mixing my metaphors too much to say we stumbled upon Pinterest in 2012? I suppose so. But that’s really what happened.
By the end of last year, Kate Allison and I were debating about Pinterest: should the Displaced Nation be participating in a pinboard-style photo-sharing site that some commentators were predicting might surpass Facebook in popularity? Kate felt cautious about making another major commitment to social media, whereas I was gung-ho to give it a whirl.
Kate also pointed out, very sensibly, that the Displaced Nation isn’t trading primarily in food, fashion and weddings — the most popular Pinterest topics. Not wishing to be dissuaded, I reminded her of our “IT’S FOOD!” category, adding: “We also do fashion, and multicultural marriage…”
It came to pass that one day in early April, Kate, for reasons still unknown to me, took the Pinterest plunge. She told me about it afterwards and said we’d been missing out on a whole lot of fun! As anyone who reads Kate’s posts will know, for her to say something is fun is a high recommendation. “I wanna get me some of that,” I said to myself.
The bubble tea of the social media world
The first time I pinned, I was reminded, in a strange kind of way, of my first experience with Taiwanese bubble tea. Just as I wasn’t sure what to do with all the tapioca balls or pearls, I wasn’t sure what to do with all the images on a Pinterest page. But as with the tapioca balls, which proved to be chewy and addictive, so with Pinterest. It was not long before I was pinning with the best of ’em.
This pinning business is amusing, that’s for sure, as well as mildly addictive. But let’s not overlook the fundamental question. Do collections of photos that are archived on Pinterest bring more attention to issues that are important to the Displaced Nation? We’re talking not only food but expat stories, TCK experiences, travel yarns, books about the displaced life, movies about said life, and so on.
As New York Times senior writer C.J. Chivers said in a Poynter article listing the ways journalists are trying to use Pinterest:
Used poorly, [Pinterest] would be just as much as a time suck on work and on life as the rest of the Internet can be.
Two dozen boards and counting…
The Displaced Nation currently has 28 boards and has accepted invites to several shared boards, including the one for #hybridambassadors, a group put together by Anastasia Ashman, and two on travel.
The boards that get the most traffic, by far and away, are the shared boards on travel.
Why is it that comparatively few have discovered our other collections? Especially as five of those boards would qualify as a useful “visual index” of themes I would posit to be the core of the shared displaced identity.
Here is just a small sample of what people in our circles may be missing:
1) Displaced Reads
Purpose: Originally created to keep track of all the books by and/or about expats we’d been featuring on the Displaced Nation, this board has become a repository for any books we happen upon that involve global voyages or living in other countries.
Recent pins: Tequila Oil: Getting Lost in Mexico by Hugh Thomson; Beirut: An Explosive Thriller, by Alexander McNabb; and To Hellas and Back, by Lana Penrose.
Recent repin: An Inconvenient Posting: An expat wife’s memoir of lost identity, by Laura Stephens (via BlogExpat, their “Expat Books” board).
2) The Displaced Oscars
Purpose: To keep track of the films we’ve been reviewing since launching our Displaced Oscars theme last March. As with Displaced Books, Displaced Oscars has morphed into a record of all the films we hear about that involve expats, displacement and/or global travel.
Recent pins: The Iran Job, a documentary about an American pro basketball player who signs up to play for an Iranian team for a year; Infancia Clandestina (Clandestine Childhood), a cinematic memoir about a family returning to Argentina after many years in political exile; and Tabu, an experimental fiction that ranges from contemporary Lisbon to an African colony (Portuguese Mozambique) in the distant past.
Recent repin: Notting Hill from the Jetpac blog — they’d pinned it to their “Movies to Fuel Your Wanderlust” board.
3) Third Culture Kids
Purpose: To highlight the third culture kids who’ve contributed to this blog, along with other accomplished people who fall into this category.
Recent pins: Fashion designer Joseph Altuzarra, who was born in Paris to a French-Basque father and Chinese American mother, and now lives in the U.S.; Maggi Aderin Pocock, who was born in Britain to Nigerian parents and is now the BBC’s “face of space”; and Isabel Fonesca, a writer born to an American mother and Uruguayan sculptor father, who ended up living in London (she is the wife of Martin Amis, and they’ve now moved to Brooklyn).
Recent repin: President Obama, via Kristin Bair O’Keefe (her Inspiration board).
4) Multicultural Love
Purpose: To continue one of the blog’s most popular themes, especially after the momentum gained this past February, when we did a whole slew of posts in honor of Valentine’s Day.
Recent pins: Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton; Carla Bruni and Nicholas Sarkozy; Martin Amis and Isabel Fonesca.
Recent repin: Becky Ances and her Chinese boyfriend, in Shanghai, via Jocelyn Eikenburg (pinned to her board “Chinese Men and Western Women in Love”).
5) Displaced Hall of Fame (Historical) & Displaced Hall of Fame (Contemporary)
Purpose: To flesh out a category that has been somewhat neglected on our live blog — not for want of examples.
Recent pins: Historical: Robert Sterling Clark, heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune except that he preferred to explore the Far East; Josef Frank, the Hungarian-born architect and designer who became a Swedish citizen and lived in New York; and P.L. Travers, the Australian-born author who moved to Britain in her twenties and composed Mary Poppins in a Sussex cottage. | Contemporary: Writer and literary critic Francine du Plessix Gray; Pakistani writer and journalist Mohammed Hanif; model and actress Diane Kruger.
Recent repins: Historical: Lady Sarah Forbes Bonetta Davies, a West African royal who was taken to England and presented as a “gift” to Queen Victoria, from #hybridambassadors. | Contemporary: David Beckham, via Smitten by Britain (her “My Favourite Brits” board).
Is Pinterest Pinter-esque?
There’s such a wealth of images on Pinterest that I sometimes feel that, as in a Harold Pinter drama where what the characters don’t say speaks volumes, it’s what you don’t pin that’s more important than what you do, in shaping your Pinterest presence.
Right now we are in a period of excess — it was just so right-brain-stimulating to become immersed in the Pinterest world. Or, to put it another way: I’ve done so much pinning, my head is now spinning!
But might we move to more curated collections in 2013? Instead of pinning all of our Random Nomads onto a single board, for instance — with their food choices in another board and their favorite objects in yet another — could we give each one a board of their own, with all of these items?
Readers, we are dizzy and would appreciate your help in getting our balance back. Can you answer these questions please:
- What are the rules of the Pinterest game?
- What’s a “secret board”?
- Should we have fewer boards, more boards?
- Are there any other topics we should be covering?
I apologize if you’re fearfully bored (hahaha) but I’m on pins and needles awaiting your advice. What’s more, if I don’t hear from you soon, I may go back to pinning (yes, I’m pining away!).
STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post from the author of a displaced read (yes, her works have been pinned to our “Displaced Reads” board!).
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