On Friday The Thirteenth, I received an email from Pinterest at 1:18 in the AM. Pinterest removed one of my pins because it “went against,” their policies on sexually explicit or pornographic content.
I deleted it thinking it was a phishing attempt.
Click here to see more information, then call this phone number and have your credit card and bank account numbers available whilst we connect you to someone with an accent thick enough to hold a spoon upright.
But later when I tried to access my Pinterest account (I believe to find what might could be dinner later), I saw a similar message. This time, a warning was added:
Please review all of your pins and boards for sexually explicit images and remove them immediately.
I’m not sure what the worst is that can happen in this scenario. Pinterest suspension? Public ridicule? Jail time?
I fetched the original email from my email provider provided trash-can.
The deleted image was from my California board. Love California. Love everything about it. Want to be California when I grow up. I base stories there in little made up towns up and down the seaside, where no one pays taxes or sits in traffic for hours on end.
The Pinterest po-po gave me the link to the offensive pin. Like I’m going to fall for that and click on it! Double jeopardy much, PINTEREST??
I know my rights.
I can tell the link contains content about the most majestically (sic) trees in the world.
That’s how you know you’ve been punked by someone in a sweaty shirt in a sweaty internet cafe with a God Knows What language to English dictionary opened next to him, drinking shot after shot of some kind of shitty local moonshine, creating links from majestically (sic) trees to pine-on-pecan porn. “Bistore!” He shouts and then hits…PIN IT.
His mayhem is shared and I’m the one in trouble.
Innocent me sees an image of a tree and thinks, how nice, and pins it to my California board. Y’all, I don’t even remember doing this.
Now, after seeing the warning, I feel I can’t ignore it. I don’t even want to see what happens if I ignore it. I go through all the pins.
I have almost 2000 pins.
I was pretty diligent on the first ten, reviewing each image, then clicking to see where it lead. Then I got bored. On the last 1,900, I just scanned for the f-word.
I had more f-words in my pins than I care to admit. But now they are all deleted in accordance with the Pinterest Scriptures. I felt pretty clean and good about myself until I remembered some fitness stuff I’d pinned. So I looked at those more closely.
Many, many ass-shots. Women in panties or hot pants leaning over their kitchen counters and balcony railings, as one does. I got rid of those too.
Stop! In the Name of Love
I feel like the sheriff will knock on my door any minute with a, “mind if I poke around, ma’am?” and he will push open the door without waiting for my answer, clutching a copy of the state’s obscenity law.
“Excuse me,” I say, hitching up my yoga pants. “But I’m in the middle of a squat challenge.”
The sheriff peers over my shoulder at my laptop.
“I see that. You don’t mind if my deputy and I help a little filly with her work-out.”
Woo-Hoooo! He and his deputy tear off their breakaway brown, work trousers and fling their mirrored aviators across the room.
The Pinterest Blacklist
Obviously, I’m on some kind of list. Some kind of offensive pinners’ list. I should lay low until there’s turnover at Pinterest and the new people forget to check The List.
“What list?” Someone will ask.
“I dunno. We used to check The List every morning. I never knew why. The person in charge of it has retired.”
“It must not have been important. Pitch it.”
That’s right, Pinterest. We’ll just forget the whole thing. Shh. Sleepy time now.
