This Is What Dudes Are Doing on Pinterest
It may have risen to fame on the shoulders of mommy bloggers, brides and fashionistas, but a growing number of guys are staking -- or pinning, as it were -- their claim in the land of Pinterest.
As of January 2014, Pinterest has more than 60 million monthly active desktop users globally, according to ComScore. Of those, 30 percent are men -- and some have taken to the sugar-and-spice-dominated platform with the same obsessiveness devoted to fantasy football leagues and "March Madness" brackets.
"I find amazing things on a regular basis -- tutorials, recipes and masculine design ideas that I wouldn't have thought to look up on my own," Daniel Bear Hunley, a "pinfluencer" with roughly 1.6 million followers, who currently maintains 42 different boards.
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"The best part about being a dude on Pinterest is that'll help you design your own sense of style -- and that's a leg up that some of your brethren will never have," he added. "Show me someone who doesn't like a sharp, stylish man."
To wit, Hunley's most pinned topics include "Men's Style," "Gastro," "Home Goods," "Typography & Lettering" and "Man Garden," the latter featuring images of sleek and modern outdoor spaces. Other smaller boards focus on aspects of his hometown Nashville, Tenn., such as where to eat, cool t-shirts and graphically compelling destinations.
"Were starting to see demographics and the types of interests represented on Pinterest broaden as we grow around the world," a spokesperson for Pinterest said. "We believe that Pinterest can ultimately work just as well for activities like travel, fitness, camping, cars and outdoor sports, as it does for fashion and home decor.
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Motor enthusiasts can truly lose themselves down many a car or motorcycle-focused rabbit hole on the site.
On his page "Bikes from the Past," Rick Adams curates images of beautiful vintage motorcycles, like the 1913 Scripps-Booth Bi-Autogo or a 1913 Royal Enfield. But he's clearly partial to Indian.
Meanwhile, Richard Von Arthur Larue focuses his "Motociclismo" board on more modern designs, such as the Moto Guzzi V35 Black Boot or the Ducati 900SS Cafe Racer. Many of his 581,471 followers repin, like and comment on his posts, noting a particular scrambler here or "attitude of the pipes" there.
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But it's not all sharp duds and hot rods for male pinners. Others are just looking for ways to entertain their kids, like on Chase Roper's "Stuff for Stay-at-Home Dads" board. There he's pinned an eclectic array of items that range from a Star Wars Millenium Falcon beanbag to "3rd-Grade Electricity Science Fair Project Ideas" to a recipe for April Fool's day that looks like chocolate chip cookies but is actually made with mashed potatoes and black beans.
If only to create gag dishes, the site may be luring these men into the kitchen.
"Pinterest pushed me to learn to cook," said Hunley. "I'm proud of what I can whip up these days. It's an essential tool in helping to get second dates."
And do any of these dates or his friends give him a hard time for hanging out on what has traditionally been a female-trafficked social media site?
"If I had a friend make fun of me for using Pinterest, they wouldn't stay a friend for long. It's 2014," said Hunley. "There are more women, but it's a lot like Twitter -- your experience depends on the people you follow. My Pinterest feed looks completely different than my little sister's."
