February 2012

You know the saying, a picture is worth a thousand words? Well, if one picture is worth one thousand words, what’s the worth of a thousand pictures? Or a hundred thousand pictures? Do you calculate that worth arithmetically, or exponentially? Is the increase in that worth linear, or geometric? Is the narrative power of pictures such that an epic aggregation of images is the equal of a grand library?

I’m not sure, but if it is, Pinterest is that library. And I’ve been falling in love with it for that reason. It’s a vast space through which you can wander and browse through visual story after visual story: a food story here, a fashion story there, a fantasy about oh, the places you’ll go, and infinite variations on and combinations of all these stories and more.

Note that I am only telling two stories about things are ‘Awesome,’ but that I have almost countless stories about shoes. You can refrain from reflecting upon what that says about me.

And this: each story leads to another story, leads to another, leads to another: a Pinterest page is an aggregation of Pinterest boards that reflect one’s interests – a story that one tells about one’s self and one’s life – and a Pinterest board is an aggregation of images (‘pinned’ to that board) that link to pages that contain those images, and sometimes also words, and sometimes also more. A Pinterest board is, in other words, an aggregation of micro-stories that have a life beyond their narrative existence on the board, which itself has a narrative existence beyond the micro-stories within it. There are stories within stories within stories (and I haven’t even mentioned the stories that are told through the sharing of those stories) in a sort of infinite visual puzzle box. Which is awesome. Fascinating. Fascinatingly awesome.

I’ve only just begun my Pinterest storytelling journey – I’m really still trying to figure how to map that journey, which is to say that I’m still really trying to figure out whether I can map that narrative journey, or whether Pinterest’s model of narrative journeys is one that lends itself only to wanderlust. We’ll see. All I know right now is, it’s exhilarating. Really.

*math not reliable.

You see how this post is on my Intel Digital Life page? That’s because I wrote it with my Intel hat, which is totally a little foil beanie that receives satellite transmissions from the galaxy of AWESOME. Or something. Anyway, it’s part of the series that you see here, on this humble page, about living la vida digital, which is also part of this whole storytelling exercise over here, on Facebook. You should check it out.

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