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Critical Studies in Media Communication

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New media producing new labor: Pinterest,yearning, and self-surveillance

Hillary A. Jones

To cite this article: Hillary A. Jones (2016) New media producing new labor: Pinterest,yearning, and self-surveillance, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 33:4, 352-365, DOI:10.1080/15295036.2016.1220017

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2016.1220017

Published online: 07 Sep 2016.

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Newmedia producing new labor: Pinterest, yearning, and self-surveillanceHillary A. Jones

Department of Communication, California State University, Fresno, Fresno, CA 93740, USA

ABSTRACTScrapbooks, a medium long used by women to curate experiences,employ a past-oriented affective capacity of remembrance. Byengaging in modal analysis, this essay explores how the socialnetworking site Pinterest, although visually similar to scrapbooks,instead offers a future-oriented affective capacity of yearning toits (primarily female) users. This temporal pivot and change inaffective capacity engages women not in celebratory memorywork but in a postindustrial, postfeminist third shift of laborcurating yearning and self-surveilling.

ARTICLE HISTORYReceived 21 February 2016Accepted 28 July 2016

KEYWORDSSocial media; Pinterest;digital labor; affect; feminism

The social media network Pinterest’s aesthetic draws upon a medium that women havelong used to celebrate accomplishment: scrapbooking. Traditionally, scrapbooks haveenabled women to connect socially (e.g. cropping circles) as they curate memory. Inher Critical Studies in Media Communication article, Lui (2015) contextualizes Pinterestin light of existing cultural practices of curation, primarily in museums and libraries,and collection, primarily through private notebooks. She shows that Pinterest users “con-tribute to a new kind of public construction of knowledge online” (p. 129) because “privateacts of collecting things are simultaneously public acts of display” (p. 139). Pinterest pub-licizes private knowledge construction, in other words. Although she acknowledges itsaspirational nature, Lui does not question Pinterest’s scrapbooking aesthetic.

In contrast, I view Pinterest’s scrapbooking aesthetic as an alibi. By identifying Pinter-est’s future-oriented affective capacity of yearning, I contend that the site engages womenin a third shift of labor. Although, as Lui (2015) establishes, the site offers new forms ofknowledge production, Pinterest does not feature the traditional affordances or affectivecapacities provided by scrapbooking. It appears to offer a social network, duplicatingthe logic of analog crafting groups, but Pinterest users collect and broadcast wishesinstead of accomplishments. Rather than helping to celebrate memories and successes,therefore, Pinterest engages users in labor: curating yearning and self-surveilling.

I begin by explaining modal analysis and affective capacities. Second, I survey the lit-erature on scrapbooks, which historically have featured accomplishments and memories.Finally, I place Pinterest into a larger conversation about postindustrial, postfeminist

© 2016 National Communication Association

CONTACT Hillary A. Jones hjones@csufresno.edu Department of Communication, California State University, 5201North Maple Ave M/S SA 46, Fresno, CA 93740, USA

CRITICAL STUDIES IN MEDIA COMMUNICATION, 2016VOL. 33, NO. 4, 352–365http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2016.1220017

digital labor to illuminate how the future-oriented affective capacity of Pinterest engagesusers in a third shift of labor that serves capitalism.

Affect and modal analysis

Jenkins (2014), surveying visual rhetorical scholarship, illustrates that it typically proceedseither by analyzing a single visual text in context or by considering bodies of texts (e.g.genres or practices). He notes the need to consider rhetoric in motion, as a fluid phenom-enon, in order to account for the ways in which the rapid shifting of images in digital con-texts complicates the delineation, identification, and definition of text, context, andrhetoric (2014, pp. 445–446). Thus, he advocates for identifying Deleuzian modes, the pos-sibilities contained within forms rather than particular instantiations. For example,Jenkins studied fail/win memes, looking not at individual texts but at the potential con-tained in the form. In short, the rhetorical work of modes, like affects, emerges fromcapacities, not actualizations.

The cultural and rhetorical capacities of affect have been traced by numerous scholars(Ahmed, 2004a, 2004b; Andrejevic, 2011; Arcy, 2016; Gregg, 2006, 2009; Gunn, 2012;Hamera, 2009; Ouellette & Wilson, 2011; Weeks, 2007). Although they mobilize theterm in varying ways, most agree that affect exceeds individual subjects or texts.Ahmed (2004a) observes, “It is the very failure of affect to be located in a subject orobject that allows it to generate the surfaces of collective bodies” (p. 126). Uniting aMarxian critique with psychoanalysis, she establishes that circulation produces affect(Ahmed, 2004a, pp. 120, 123). This helps to account for affect’s constitutive propertiesin digital spaces; it is not contained within individuals or attached to objects because itmoves fluidly between them. Gregg and Seigworth (2010) agree that “affect arises in themidst of in-between-ness: in the capacities to act and be acted upon” (p. 1, italics original).Similarly, modes precede rhetors or images, providing instead “a recognizable structurethat enables the emergence of an open set of images subject to continual remaking”(Jenkins, 2014, p. 443).

Therefore, when studying texts that are remade constantly, such as digital and socialmedia, focusing on individuals or actualizations glosses the affective capacities of thephenomenon. Indeed, Jenkins (2014), studying memes, asserts that “attention to specificimages deflects attention from the mode and, thus, the significance of this phenomenon”(p. 445). In contrast, modal analysis, by identifying underlying affects, capacities, and pos-sibilities, illuminates what interactions are invited or privileged. Jenkins, drawing onDeleuze, explains that modal analysis

requires a shift in emphasis away from the examination of distinct texts and contexts to afocus on the manners of engagement, away from a focus on the actual to the virtual. Sucha focus acknowledges that rhetorical images are not texts but bodies endowed with affectivecapacities; that audiences don’t merely “read” texts but interface with them, via their ownaffective capacities, in a variety of ways. Rhetorical scholars performing modal analysisthus will not read texts for meanings but instead map their affective capacities. (p. 452,italics original)

Thus, modal analysis, the method employed in this article, identifies possibilities con-tained within a field rather than analyzing textual actualizations or individuals’ experi-ences. In sum, modal analysis involves studying potential, rather than kinetic,

CRITICAL STUDIES IN MEDIA COMMUNICATION 353

expression. Given the ever-changing flow of images and myriad ways in which users canengage Pinterest, this method helps to reveal the affective capacities and modes undergird-ing potential expression on the site.

Crafting (re)collections

Scrapbooks offer remembrance as their primary affective capacity. In the analog world,some women formed cropping groups to bond socially, to collaborate in honing theirscrapbooking craft, and to create practical objects and rhetorical frames for their lives.Many women have sought to replicate the experience online, leading to social mediaadapting traditional practices into digital spaces.

Women have used crafting to mobilize politically, as well (Hahner & Varda, 2014).Bratich and Brush (2007) argue that such groups provide women with access to powerand revalue women’s labor. However, they acknowledge crafting activism relies on prac-tices historically associated with the domestic, a space women already held as a sphere ofexpertise. Feminist media studies scholars have complicated this history. Luckman (2015)accounts for the renewed popularity of crafting, including the appeal of handmade “auth-entic” goods, how crafting items intersects with creating and marketing the self and theeconomics of crafting micro-enterprise. Jarrett (2016) theorizes the “digital housewife,”analogizing the cultural and economic functions of domestic labor with social medialabor, to illuminate the complexities of unpaid labor performed via social media. Similarly,in her critique of crafting culture, Groeneveld (2010) highlights the privilege required toengage in crafting, such as leisure time and funds for materials. She suggests that the dom-estic sphere’s resurgence in feminist activism converses with “what is, to some extent, animagined feminist ‘past’” (p. 259). The promise of agency lurks in the communities thatemerge around crafting, but the bridge to that agency is built on a path with many poten-tial pitfalls.

Scrapbooking entails memory work, which occurs as people curate photos, videos, andpersonal objects (Demos, 2006; Hunt, 2006; Medley-Rath, 2010; Tucker, Ott, & Buckler,2006). Memory work has evolved as it has moved into digital spaces (Gibson & Jones,2012; Good, 2013; Haskins, 2007; Hume, 2010; Van Dijck, 2007). Primarily, scrapbooksserve as memorials of the everyday (Gordon, 2010; Katriel & Farrell, 1991; Powley,2006). In addition, they have been used for therapy (Douge, 2010; McCarthy &Sebaugh, 2011; Reynolds, 2010; Williams & Lent, 2008); as a parenting tool (Goodsell,2011); to perform citizenship (Hof, 2006); and to construct identities (Downs, 2007). His-torically, scrapbooks have enabled women to curate memories, to make sense of the world,and to connect socially. Pinterest appears to join the scrapbooking tradition, moving theassemblage and memory practice into digital space, but it does not duplicate scrapbook-ing’s modes.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a digital, visual, social platform that enables users to collect images and ideasthey encounter online and on the site. The site is composed of individual images (“pins”)presented as a stream of collected images, featuring numerous photos tiled on a singlescreen (unlike Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram’s single, centered post or image). Users

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“pin” images to a thematic “board” that the user curates, presenting an aesthetic similar tomatted photos pasted to a scrapbook page. Each image looks a bit like a Polaroid photo;photos bleed to the edge on three sides, with a white portion beneath including a caption,re-pin and “heart” counts, and the name of the pinner and board to which it was pinned.The boards initially had pre-defined categories, ranging from fashion to photography todo-it-yourself (DIY). Lui (2015) observes that this structure, although no longer man-dated, persists because so many boards were created using this schema.

Pinterest, as a social networking site, encourages interaction (Kaplan & Haenlein,2010). Users can locate new material to pin by following or browsing others’ boards.When a user pins a new image to a board, this pin appears on the board and simul-taneously in the site-wide stream for that category. By browsing a category, users canlocate pinners who share their interests.

Pinterest boasts a juggernaut of users. Launched in March 2010, by December 2015,Pinterest had 87.4 million confirmed users (comScore, 2016); the company claims over100 million users worldwide (Isaac, 2015). Most users are 30–49 and college-educated.Pew found 21% of US users were hispanic and 32% white in 2014 (Duggan, Ellison,Lampe, Lenhart, & Madden, 2014); in 2015, 23% identified as black (Duggan, 2015).The vast majority of Pinterest users are female. Pew (2015) reports that 44% of womenin the US now use Pinterest, compared to 16% of men. In contrast, the founders andthe development team are overwhelmingly male, although Pinterest garnered attentionfor a concerted effort to increase diversity in the workplace in 2016 (Alba, 2016; Henry,2016).

Pinterest users generate more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTubecombined. Based on data gleaned from tracking over 200,000 sites, marketing pro-fessionals determined that Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter (in that order) lead thepack on traffic referrals, that is, the number of people who visit the site and then visit acommercial site (Edwards, 2013; Smith, 2013). Furthermore, the traffic generated by Pin-terest tends to lead to consumption. Kim (2013) reports, “on average, purchases driventhrough Pinterest are $168.83 per checkout—nearly double that of Facebook andTwitter” (“Why brands should care”). Since 2015, some pins are paid advertising andare captioned indicating they are “promoted”; for example, a pin might feature an info-graphic explaining a subscription service for pet products and be captioned “Promotedby BarkBox.” Even bearing the captions, these images are pinned approximately 30% ofthe time (Bradford, 2014). In June 2015, Pinterest rolled out a second monetized pin:“buyable” pins. These enable pinners to purchase items without leaving the site (Yamar-tino, 2015). By that November, 60 million “buyable” pins were posted (Primke, 2015).

Considering Pinterest’s role in consumption, Schiele and Hughes (2013) used it tostudy virtual possessions. Many of their interlocutors noted they use Pinterest daily,many several times a day, and some spend several hours a day on the site. Indeed,Duggan (2015) documented daily usage for 27% of users. Most people would not opt towatch commercial advertising for several hours a day, but users do not view Pinterestas advertising. Nevertheless, users are creating marketing profiles: curated boards contain-ing the items, practices, and experiences for which they yearn.

This is compounded by the hardware most Pinterest users to access the site: tablets.Approximately 75% of users access Pinterest via a mobile device and, of the time usersspend on the site, 93% of it occurs via mobile devices (eMarketer, 2014). These devices,

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in contrast with a desktop or laptop, focus on leisure more than work (Stawarz, Cox, Bird,& Benedyk, 2013). Using Pinterest on a tablet is fun. Pinning diverts and rewards userswith pleasure, but, given that they are participating in consumption and creating market-ing profiles, they are engaged in the unpaid labor that masquerades as free time.

Postindustrial, postfeminist digital labor

Blurred boundaries typify postindustrial, postfeminist media. For a long time, mediaemployed industrial logic: people consumed the same goods or messages, producingsimilar experiences, socialization, and beliefs. In contrast, new media operate with postin-dustrial logic: consumer/producers claim unique, hyper-individualized experiences. Man-ovich (2001) asserts that digital technology reassures users of individuality, fitting with thelogic undergirding postindustrial society, which “values individuality over conformity”(p. 41). Although this postindustrial (and neo-liberal) space alienates users by cateringto niches, the logic opens up spaces for new forms of rhetorical invention. Media operatingwith a postindustrial logic enable users to innovate and experiment, to produce as well asconsume. That modularity, Manovich (2001) points out, is one of the central tenets, andpromises, of digital culture.

The move from broadcast to digital, industrial to postindustrial, has engaged users inmore production, leading scholars to consider the ways in which “produsage” (pro-duction/usage) and “prosumption” (production/consumption) now characterize muchmedia (Bruns, 2008; Fuchs, 2010b, 2014; Fuchs & Sevignani, 2013; Hesmondhalgh,2010; Scholz, 2012). Fuchs (2009) notes that a postindustrial (among many other “post”terms) context does not constitute a break from capitalist dominance; indeed, he arguesfor engagement with Marxian concepts to plumb how forms of dominance persist incybercultural spaces (Fuchs, 2012). Terranova (2000, 2004) suggests that Web 2.0 appli-cations have changed the media business model in postindustrial times by capitalizingon the production of “consumers” spending time sharing information, producingcontent, and engaging in “free labor” (pp. 73–75). Thus, Fuchs (2010a) argues for expand-ing the definition of “class” to include “knowledge labor,” explicitly highlighting user-gen-erated content online as non-wage labor. Ritzer and Jurgenson (2010) consider howprosumption, relying on user-generated content, leads to products containing less value(due to an abundance, rather than scarcity, of options). Van Dijck (2009) complicatesthe prosumption model with YouTube as a case study, showing how agency cannot bedefined merely as participation or interaction when users create the majority of thecontent (pp. 47–48).

Social media scholars have been exploring how users mobilize their generated contentaspirationally, thereby producing a secondary stream of income or seeking to convert thepursuit into future employment, leading Corrigan (2015) to analogize digital labor withinternships. Scholars have coined a range of terms to explain these phenomena, includingventure labor (Neff, 2012), entrepreneurial labor (Neff, Wissinger, & Zukin, 2005), hopelabor (Kuehn & Corrigan, 2013), and aspirational labor (Duffy, 2014, 2015a, 2015c, 2016,forthcoming; Duffy & Hund, 2015). However, much of the labor performed during leisuretime does not advance a career. The modding community, for example, invests enormousamounts of labor creating video game mods without employment aspirations (Pearce,2006; Postigo, 2007). Although some users employ Pinterest for business purposes

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(Scolere & Humphreys, 2016), the site is not designed for professional advancement, incontrast with networking sites like LinkedIn.

This does not mean the leisure activity does not constitute labor. Alongside the work offeminists focusing on women’s immaterial labor (Campbell, 2011; McRobbie, 2010;Weeks, 2011), a vibrant group of feminist media studies scholars has been foregroundingthe intersection of gender, labor, and digital media in postfeminist contexts (Duffy, 2015b;Gill, 2002; Jarrett, 2014, 2016). These scholars, like Ouellette (Andrejevic et al., 2014), callfor sustained consideration of the gendered aspects of digital production and consump-tion. I join this conversation by using modal analysis to analyze how Pinterest, used pri-marily by women, creates a third shift of self-surveillance.

Quite a few newmedia scholars have considered surveillance in a postindustrial society.Deuze (2012) and Andrejevic (2007) cover surveillance with the most theoretical depth,but many scholars have taken up new media cases, including Andrejevic (2008) on tele-vision fan culture and (2004) on reality TV, Fuchs (2010b) on Google Buzz, andPostigo (2003) on gaming. Cohen (2008), for example, traces how Facebook, even in itsearliest iterations, valorized surveillance of producer/consumers, thereby commodifyingusers’ free, immaterial labor (pp. 7–8).

To make sense of how such labor features in capitalism, scholars often turn to the“shift” concept. The prevalence of contingent labor and increased global mobility hasblurred the shifts to some extent (Hochschild, 1997; Veijola & Jokinen, 2008), but, tra-ditionally, the first shift consists of paid labor outside the home. Hochschild (1989)initially pointed out that (white) women working outside the home still performedmost domestic work, engaging in a second shift that created gendered inequity inleisure time (Aitchison, 2003; Green, Hebron, &Woodward, 1990).1 The second shift con-sists of work relating to maintaining one’s home (Gerson, 2010; Hochschild, 1989; Stone,2007) and family, including familial affective labor (Boyd, 2002; Hochschild, 1983). Fur-thermore, scholars have theorized a third shift to account for unpaid activities that purportto be leisure activity but yield production that advantages capitalism. For example, thethird shift has been posited as consisting of maintaining body fitness (Dworkin &Messner, 2002; Dworkin & Wachs, 2004), voluntarism and community contributions(Messner, 2009; Pardo, 1997; Romero, 1997), and working to improve the self, therebyaugmenting performance in the first and second shift (Chess, 2010; Daly, 2002; Kramarae,2001).

Using these concepts, digital media scholars explain how capitalism converts leisureinto new forms of labor (Jarrett, 2016; Rodino-Colocino, 2006; Scholz, 2012; Yee, 2006).For example, Ouellette and Wilson (2011) document how watching Dr. Phil engageswomen in domestic labor as part of their second shift; Luckman (2015) details how thefirst and second shift blur in her analysis of crafting’s commercialization via sites likeEtsy. Jarrett (2014) identifies analogical similarities between the digital, immateriallabor of the third shift and women’s unpaid labor on the second shift. Applying theshift to pure leisure, Chess (2010) analyzes women’s play of the popular video game“Diner Dash” to show how the game focuses on improving time management andnurturing.

Because it masquerades as leisure, much third shift labor rewards the user with plea-sure. Aspirational labor often involves turning one’s passion into a profession: as afashion blogger (Duffy, 2015a ; Duffy & Hund, 2015); as a young, urban creative, or

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“yuccie” (Duffy, 2015c); or as a woman engaged in post-feminist self-fashioning (Duffy,2015a, p. 61; Duffy, 2015b, p. 711). Duffy and Hund (2015) explain: “bloggers encouragethe kinds of individualistic, self-discovery characteristic of the post-feminist self” bybroadcasting participation in a glamorous lifestyle (p. 9). They elaborate that fashion blog-gers “depict an updated version of the post-feminist ideal of ‘having it all’” via an aspira-tional and “entrepreneurial femininity that obscures the labor, discipline, and capitalnecessary to emulate these standards, while deploying the unshakable myth that womenshould work through and for consumption” (p. 2). This conundrum, pleasure accompa-nying capitalist exploitation, helps to account for the simultaneous appeal and dangerof laboring on a third shift.

Individual Pinterest users could be driven by myriad motives. Williams (2008) studied350 households in England, discovering that DIY and makers’motives included acting “asrational economic actors, dupes, seekers of self-identity, or… out of economic necessity orchoice” (p. 311). Regardless of the specific motive or enjoyment experienced by any indi-vidual, labor that is unpaid, purports to be leisure, and benefits capitalism constitutes athird shift. By placing Pinterest into these larger conversations about postindustrial, post-feminist digital labor, I argue that Pinterest users (almost all women), responding to thesite’s affective capacity of yearning, labor on a third shift by engaging in perfecting prac-tices driven by self-surveilling.

Pinning and surveilling for capitalism

Modal analysis of Pinterest reveals the site’s primary affective capacity: future-orientedyearning. This yearning leads to virtually hoarding items of excess-value (images of pro-ducts/practices for imaginary future consumption) and creating a third shift of labor inwomen’s leisure time, aimed at perfecting one’s first and second shifts. This prosump-tion/produsage looks to the future, yearning for improvement, if not consummateperfection.

This differs from the mode and affective capacity of scrapbooks: remembrance. Scrap-books have always been a magpie form of art; croppers put together what they have accessto when assembling the books. A scrapbook, for example, might feature mementos from avacation, a memorial page for someone who has passed, or photos of landmark moments(e.g. the first day of school). Although they might produce yearning as nostalgia, theprimary affective capacity for these actualizations in a scrapbook centers celebration.

In contrast, Pinterest looks to the future, across all aspects of life. For example, on June18, 2016, the first five pins on Pinterest’s “Popular” page all typified the broad range offuture-oriented yearning common to the site: a Louboutin shoe, a tip for improving teach-ing, an abs workout, a parenting tip, and a house in Laguna Beach, captioned “luxurydesign.” Thus, although they share a similar visual form, Pinterest and scrapbooksdiffer dramatically due to a temporal pivot. Pinterest’s affective capacity functions tosupport capitalism by interpellating women into a postindustrial, postfeminist consumer-ist logic.

Although Pinterest’s signup screen encourages exploration (“50+ billion ideas to dis-cover”) and its bookmarklet enables pinning from outside the site, its architecture andprimary unit operation (pinning from the home feed) privileges recirculation. Thus, theindividual actualization, one image or one person’s experience, could easily duplicate

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any other—but the site maintains the illusion of individual accumulation via the person-alized feed. As individuals pin from “the world’s catalog of ideas” (how the signup screenbills the site), they engage the site’s affective capacity of yearning, which rewards themwith the illusion of a postindustrial hyper-individualized experience. Simultaneously,the site yields marketing data, en masse. In short, individual women are courted withthe promise of individuality, but they are capitalized via cybernetic mechanisms.

Pinterest’s yearning engages users in imagining and surveilling all parts of life. Brows-ing the site is like being assailed by Vogue, Shape, GQ, Better Homes & Gardens, and hun-dreds of other magazines, all at once. It presents a hyper-idealized world that coaches usershow to govern almost every aspect of life. The “ideal” woman constructed rhetorically onPinterest plans perfect meals and custom cocktails for perfect parties (that she makes all ofthe decorations for, by hand, using repurposed materials), dresses a body honed by perfectworkouts with the ideal outfit, dons perfect makeup and nail polishes, dresses her partnerand children perfectly, and welcomes guests into a perfectly designed home featuringperfect photos from perfect vacations and previous parties. Not every vision focuses onthe domestic sphere; plenty of pins focus on assembling the ideal work outfit, provingfandom, and admiring markers of cultural capital, like architecture and photography.

These perfectionist ideals for regulating the self and governing everyday life emergefrom individuals implementing Foucaultian technologies of the self. Foucault (1988)explains that the technologies of the self

permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number ofoperations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to trans-form themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, orimmortality.(p. 18)

Those technologies of the self, taking up residence in an individual’s consciousness, lead aperson to govern and monitor the self. Although Foucault theorized these in reference toindustrial disciplinary societies, these surveilling practices extend into postindustrialcontrol society via sites like Pinterest. As Jenkins (2014) points out, “life under controlsociety leads to a lot of energy spent in repeated acts of surveillance and self-discipline.Control society is marked by an unbounded, continual self-disciplining exercisedthrough communication networks extending throughout all space-times, includingleisure activities” (p. 460). In order to achieve the desired happiness, safety, or perfection,the self engages in techniques and practices that enable, but also constrain, the individual.

Women have historically had to surveil the self significantly more than men. Women’sbody surveillance and governance, for example, might articulate as engaging in exercise,reading fitness magazines, keeping a food diary, and posting “progress” photos on Insta-gram. In a postindustrial, postfeminist context, the medium that women use to implementtechniques informed by the overarching technologies of the self converge, incorporatingthe material body, mass-mediated images and messages, and new media. Pinterest func-tions in this converged fashion, uniting all of the surveilled and governed parts of an indi-vidual woman’s life.

Furthermore, the individual, in performing her pinning in the public of her socialnetwork on Pinterest, displays her taste and cultural capital. She surveils the self, is sur-veilled by her network, and surveils others’ yearning, in turn. One need not invitefriends over for that perfect dinner party, after all. By moving the historically private

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work of the second shift (e.g., creating an idyllic domestic space) into public, pinning onthe third shift amplifies technologies of the self by adding an audience. Beyond this, due toPinterest’s future-orientation and affective capacity of yearning, it invites women to usetheir leisure time to imagine and perform who they could be. In short, Pinterest convertsleisure time into a postindustrial, postfeminist third shift comprised of extending technol-ogies of the self and publically fashioning and performing the yearned-for self.

Even those who use Pinterest for purposeful self-promotion couple public display withself-surveillance. Scolere and Humphreys (2016) studied how design professionals, such asinterior designers and architects, use Pinterest. These artists utilize the site for businesspurposes, and they are keenly aware of the public nature of their pins. Several admittedto using “secret” boards for projects that did not align with their brand or for workthey deemed too “edgy” or new. Even users pinning for professional purposes surveilthe self, curate images to perform an ideal, and respond to the affective capacity of yearn-ing proffered by Pinterest.

Regardless of the area, the pins on Pinterest depend on its mode of yearning, aiming atperfection. The focus on ideals that permeates Pinterest has produced blog rants about“Pinterest perfection,” and numerous websites and blogs feature failed attempts to trans-form the ideal into the real, including “Pintester,” “Pinstrosity,” “Epic Pinterest Fail,” and“Pinterest Fail” (Cole, 2011; Foust, 2014; Jackson, 2012; Marquette & OperationRachel,2012). These failures happen so frequently they have spawned a hashtag (#Pinterestfail)and, starting in 2010, a sub-Reddit forum and a meme (“Nailed It!”). So much for mem-orializing women’s achievements: Pinterest’s future-oriented yearning seats perfection,consumption, and surveillance front and center.

Concluding thoughts

Although Pinterest does provide a handy visual bookmarking medium that opens itself toall sorts of users and promises to provide a space for imagining, it only masquerades as ascrapbook. Like so many forms of new media, Pinterest’s promise is undermined by itscapitalist entanglements. Rather than curating experience or connecting with otherpeople, women using Pinterest end up curating yearning and surveilling all aspects ofthe self. Pinterest pretends to use the logic of the analog scrapbook (curation ofwomen’s memories), but closer consideration reveals that it employs the logic of late capit-alism (prosumption/produsage). Pinterest produces marketing data, in the form of a jug-gernaut of self-sorting users. It uses its future-oriented affective capacity and scrapbookingaesthetic to lure women into a third shift during which they produce technologies of theself that feed consumption.

Scrapbooking is hardly a perfect medium for women, but at least it focuses primarily oncelebrating lived experience. In contrast, Pinterest’s future orientation and its affectivecapacity of yearning yields a third shift comprised of all-inclusive self-surveillance.Rather than offering new tools, it offers old, exploitative ones. Examining the ways thatsocial networks online fail to translate women’s existing rhetorical work into newmedia teaches a useful lesson, however. Pinterest does provide women with new equip-ment: not for life but for understanding how women are produced and commodified bysocial media and the machinations of postindustrial, postfeminist capitalist logic insocial media spaces.

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Note

1. The “second shift” as a concept derived from white, middle-class, heterosexual women’sexperiences joining the workforce as a result of the second-wave of feminist activism.Women of color and poor women were working multiple shifts long before then.

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