First, credit where credit is due. I adore Pinterest. Pinterest - Pinterest’s algorithm - is very good at its job, which is giving me more of what I want. A few hundred thousand strategic clicks over the past nine months of life on the couch have provided me with a custom virtual oasis of white, black and beige, postmodern decor, and surrealist sayings in psychedelic fonts. And everytime some click releases fresh dopamine into my brain - red Gaetono Pesce chair! - the algorithm provides again. One hundred more Pins, more Italian modernism, more red chairs, more clicks.
Sometimes, I like to click on “Parisian Images”. Because Pinterest is so very good at its job, I always get exactly the images I want. That means no Eiffel Towers in the snow (it doesn’t snow), no saturated Maison Rose in Montmartre (the light doesn’t look like that), no Le Monde with a breakfast display (I don’t like Le Monde). Here’s what I want: Haussmannian apartments and candids of fashion girls in places that you only recognize as Paris if you’ve already been to Paris (hint: sidewalk poles). There must be hundreds, thousands of images on the Internet at large that check these boxes. Pinterest’s mission is to deliver them all to me: to be as specific as possible, so I spend more time there and keep clicking.
Many of these images seem to come from Instagram, which I can tell by - how can I tell, exactly? Something about the way they’re arranged, their artfully-crafted spontaneity. Pinterest and Instagram have a symbiotic relationship. What is posted on Instagram as proof of realness, of “here-and-nowness” becomes intemporal bricks in the building of online Oases such as my own. Croissants and a copy of Le Monde on Instagram signify presence: I’m here in Paris this morning. Croissants and a copy of Le Monde on Pinterest could date back 50 years, it doesn’t matter. The purpose is to signify the idea of Here in Paris This Morning, in a form that affords keeping, recollection, and access.
Thus in this digital world, where one can literally possess any abstract concept, Pinterest’s job is to facilitate the acquisition. Their selling point is specificity: no matter how singular the idea, no matter how precise the signification, Pinterest cross-checks every element and delivers every possible iteration. Anything, everything I might click on. One can experience a Parisian breakfast, but one cannot own the very concept of skimming Le Monde over croissants and coffee: adding a photographic representation to a digital collection is the closest one can get.
Of course, we can’t give the algorithm full credit. Taste and trends play a large part in determining which images and ideas are circulated; the semiotics of a given image are themselves products of their meandering movements through social life. If Pinterest relies on Instagram for a great deal of its content, that’s because Instagram algorithm itself encourages reproduction of certain types of content. On Instagram, through, most users don’t just consume content, they’re also actively producing it.
Instagram culture rewards the creation of images that check off certain boxes: here, the aesthetic value of the image (as a visual medium) and the semiotic value of the image (as a carrier of meaning) are one and the same. The goal is to reproduce certain significations via symbolic objects, colors, forms, etc. In other words, the visual elements of the image serve, again, as the building blocks of an endlessly mutable representational whole. Thus, a croissant can “tag” an image with Frenchness, with warm-browns for a cozy aesthetic, with indulgence, with comfort. What’s unique to digital space is that ultimately, the singular image has a relatively weak semiotic impact; its true meaning will arise from its placement next to others in an Instagram feed or on a Pinterest board. There, their shared presence will signify yet-larger constructs, such as an aesthetic, a vibe, or an identity.
In short, if the Instagram algorithm supports sameness and the culture supports image production, there’s a great deal of social reward to be found in sort-of-copying. Certain images - a kiss in front of the Eiffel Tower, for example - are collector’s items in the Instagram world. You can find a thousand of them with a click, but producing and sharing one oneself presents significant barriers to entry. Remember that on Instagram, images signify presence. It’s not enough to reappropriate someone else’s image; for full semiotic value, you need to actually show up. The degree to which your image will vary from any of the thousand others will depend not only on personal taste, but on how abstract the signifers have become. For a kiss in front of the Eiffel Tower, you’ve got a great deal of wiggle room for personalization. In other cases, it’s best to be direct.
All of this has been an attempt to explain some images I recently found on Pinterest, which you can see above. Let’s discuss them.
The first one is a black Gucci glove touching the entryway keypad of a Parisian apartment building. We know this because these keypads are very common in Paris and nowhere else, that’s +1 for “images of Paris you wouldn’t know were actually Paris unless you’d been there” (see above). A black Gucci glove needs no explanation. This is Pinterest giving me exactly what I want: I want to look at the very idea of Paris as a capital of understated (Western) luxury and fashion.
Click on it. A selection of similar images appears below.
Second image, a disembodied female hand wearing a chunky gold ring (+1 “fashion”) enters the door code to a Parisian apartment building (+1 “images of Paris you wouldn’t know…”), while holding a croissant. There’s a layer of semiotic disabstraction: the “Frenchness” here has become significantly more in-your-face. In case you didn’t get that this image is Parisian, she’s holding a croissant. Here, she’s punching in the door code, which adds a degree of realism and presence to the image: it’s Instagram-plausible that she’s just grabbed this picture on her way back up to the AirBnb, having ducked out to pick up breakfast. This is too direct for me, and I don’t like croissants.
Click on it. A selection of similar images appears below.
Third image, similar to the second one. A disembodied female hand touches the keypad to a Parisian apartment building (+1 “images of Paris…”) holding a croissant dipped in chocolate and dusted with pistachio. This image is both more and less “French”. It is more French if, for you, Frenchness is codified in images of indulgence, gourmandise, and delicacy. It is less French if you know the French breakfast to be an exercise in restraint; it becomes a testament to a more-American habit of treating a trip to Paris as an invitation for excess (c.f. Paris, Emily in.)
Nothing about this image outwardly signifies “Fashion,” unless you are willing to imagine that the “No One Showroom” label leads to some designer’s atelier. But, because of its resemblance to the first two images - the use of gold is an excellent call-back - we can easily recognize that this third image stands for just about the same things as the second one. Yet there’s an uncanny tell - the finger isn’t actually pressing any button, the pastry is touching an ostensibly very germy keypad. The photo is visibly play-acting at the indicators of presence used in the second image: this hand has come from nowhere and has nowhere to go, this croissant won’t melt in any real mouth. This image enters the realm of the purely symbolic, an attempt to render visible and consumable the idea of Heading Back to Your AirBnb with Croissants.
Next image.
In this fourth picture, we see a hand holding a baguette (strongly-coded Frenchness here), touching the keypad to a Parisian entryway (hint: sidewalk posts). The fashion signifiers are front and center (black Gucci bag (nice call back) and crisp white shirt). The meaning of this image is clear; it’s part of a category of images that take the idea of Touching Parisian Keypad with Baked Goods to represent participation in broader concepts of fashionability, style, and Frenchness. The photographer has worked to codify this image with the significations of presence associated with Instagram: her wrist is twisted and her finger is bent to show movement and action. She’s just picked up her baguette and is on her way back upstairs, to her atelier. Leaning the bread against the dirty outside wall of the building, she presses her finger hard against the key fob receptor and waits.
From here, a hundred different images open before us. Pinterest has plenty of ideas for what we might be looking for. There are more muted tones, more French baked goods, female legs with a croissant in a bed, a stack of books in tostled white sheets, an entanglement of pearls and gold chains atop a Haussmannian mantle. Each image means everything and nothing; they offer an infinite number of significations useful in the creation of some greater concept. They are a kaleidoscope of abstractions, each more or less literal than the last, a churn of symbols and representations.
Sometimes, they fall out of order: they become pure simulacra, symbols without any referent. That’s how I fell down this rabbit hole: the fourth image showed up on my feed, and I laughed out loud and clicked when I realized the hand was pressing the key fob receptor. What was this image supposed to be communicating? I couldn’t imagine. I hadn’t realized I’d stumbled upon an image with its own genre, its own history of art, the Very Concept of Fashionable Hands Touching French Keypads. It doesn’t matter at all what order they came to exist in - the Gucci glove could practically be an ad, a reference to an Internet trend (I don’t think Gucci would do that, but another brand might).
The semiotics of Pinterest is a constant swirl of representing the general ideas of things. Thus you can be both extremely specific (picture four) and extremely unspecific (picture one) - it’s a matter of abstraction, of how far the referent has travelled in the symbolic realm. We watch, as we endlessly click, the real-time movement of symbols through social life. Their constant exchange transforms them before our eyes, marked by our hands as we take them for our own, as they become tools in our creations: a Dream Vacation, a French Girl Vibe, a Daydream.
First, credit where credit is due. I adore Pinterest. Pinterest - Pinterest’s algorithm - is very good at its job, which is giving me more of what I want. A few hundred thousand strategic clicks over the past nine months of life on the couch have provided me with a custom virtual oasis of white, black and beige, postmodern decor, and surrealist sayings in psychedelic fonts. And everytime some click releases fresh dopamine into my brain - red Gaetono Pesce chair! - the algorithm provides again. One hundred more Pins, more Italian modernism, more red chairs, more clicks.
Sometimes, I like to click on “Parisian Images”. Because Pinterest is so very good at its job, I always get exactly the images I want. That means no Eiffel Towers in the snow (it doesn’t snow), no saturated Maison Rose in Montmartre (the light doesn’t look like that), no Le Monde with a breakfast display (I don’t like Le Monde). Here’s what I want: Haussmannian apartments and candids of fashion girls in places that you only recognize as Paris if you’ve already been to Paris (hint: sidewalk poles). There must be hundreds, thousands of images on the Internet at large that check these boxes. Pinterest’s mission is to deliver them all to me: to be as specific as possible, so I spend more time there and keep clicking.
Many of these images seem to come from Instagram, which I can tell by - how can I tell, exactly? Something about the way they’re arranged, their artfully-crafted spontaneity. Pinterest and Instagram have a symbiotic relationship. What is posted on Instagram as proof of realness, of “here-and-nowness” becomes intemporal bricks in the building of online Oases such as my own. Croissants and a copy of Le Monde on Instagram signify presence: I’m here in Paris this morning. Croissants and a copy of Le Monde on Pinterest could date back 50 years, it doesn’t matter. The purpose is to signify the idea of Here in Paris This Morning, in a form that affords keeping, recollection, and access.
Thus in this digital world, where one can literally possess any abstract concept, Pinterest’s job is to facilitate the acquisition. Their selling point is specificity: no matter how singular the idea, no matter how precise the signification, Pinterest cross-checks every element and delivers every possible iteration. Anything, everything I might click on. One can experience a Parisian breakfast, but one cannot own the very concept of skimming Le Monde over croissants and coffee: adding a photographic representation to a digital collection is the closest one can get.
Of course, we can’t give the algorithm full credit. Taste and trends play a large part in determining which images and ideas are circulated; the semiotics of a given image are themselves products of their meandering movements through social life. If Pinterest relies on Instagram for a great deal of its content, that’s because Instagram algorithm itself encourages reproduction of certain types of content. On Instagram, through, most users don’t just consume content, they’re also actively producing it.
Instagram culture rewards the creation of images that check off certain boxes: here, the aesthetic value of the image (as a visual medium) and the semiotic value of the image (as a carrier of meaning) are one and the same. The goal is to reproduce certain significations via symbolic objects, colors, forms, etc. In other words, the visual elements of the image serve, again, as the building blocks of an endlessly mutable representational whole. Thus, a croissant can “tag” an image with Frenchness, with warm-browns for a cozy aesthetic, with indulgence, with comfort. What’s unique to digital space is that ultimately, the singular image has a relatively weak semiotic impact; its true meaning will arise from its placement next to others in an Instagram feed or on a Pinterest board. There, their shared presence will signify yet-larger constructs, such as an aesthetic, a vibe, or an identity.
In short, if the Instagram algorithm supports sameness and the culture supports image production, there’s a great deal of social reward to be found in sort-of-copying. Certain images - a kiss in front of the Eiffel Tower, for example - are collector’s items in the Instagram world. You can find a thousand of them with a click, but producing and sharing one oneself presents significant barriers to entry. Remember that on Instagram, images signify presence. It’s not enough to reappropriate someone else’s image; for full semiotic value, you need to actually show up. The degree to which your image will vary from any of the thousand others will depend not only on personal taste, but on how abstract the signifers have become. For a kiss in front of the Eiffel Tower, you’ve got a great deal of wiggle room for personalization. In other cases, it’s best to be direct.
All of this has been an attempt to explain some images I recently found on Pinterest, which you can see above. Let’s discuss them.
The first one is a black Gucci glove touching the entryway keypad of a Parisian apartment building. We know this because these keypads are very common in Paris and nowhere else, that’s +1 for “images of Paris you wouldn’t know were actually Paris unless you’d been there” (see above). A black Gucci glove needs no explanation. This is Pinterest giving me exactly what I want: I want to look at the very idea of Paris as a capital of understated (Western) luxury and fashion.
Click on it. A selection of similar images appears below.
Second image, a disembodied female hand wearing a chunky gold ring (+1 “fashion”) enters the door code to a Parisian apartment building (+1 “images of Paris you wouldn’t know…”), while holding a croissant. There’s a layer of semiotic disabstraction: the “Frenchness” here has become significantly more in-your-face. In case you didn’t get that this image is Parisian, she’s holding a croissant. Here, she’s punching in the door code, which adds a degree of realism and presence to the image: it’s Instagram-plausible that she’s just grabbed this picture on her way back up to the AirBnb, having ducked out to pick up breakfast. This is too direct for me, and I don’t like croissants.
Click on it. A selection of similar images appears below.
Third image, similar to the second one. A disembodied female hand touches the keypad to a Parisian apartment building (+1 “images of Paris…”) holding a croissant dipped in chocolate and dusted with pistachio. This image is both more and less “French”. It is more French if, for you, Frenchness is codified in images of indulgence, gourmandise, and delicacy. It is less French if you know the French breakfast to be an exercise in restraint; it becomes a testament to a more-American habit of treating a trip to Paris as an invitation for excess (c.f. Paris, Emily in.)
Nothing about this image outwardly signifies “Fashion,” unless you are willing to imagine that the “No One Showroom” label leads to some designer’s atelier. But, because of its resemblance to the first two images - the use of gold is an excellent call-back - we can easily recognize that this third image stands for just about the same things as the second one. Yet there’s an uncanny tell - the finger isn’t actually pressing any button, the pastry is touching an ostensibly very germy keypad. The photo is visibly play-acting at the indicators of presence used in the second image: this hand has come from nowhere and has nowhere to go, this croissant won’t melt in any real mouth. This image enters the realm of the purely symbolic, an attempt to render visible and consumable the idea of Heading Back to Your AirBnb with Croissants.
Next image.
In this fourth picture, we see a hand holding a baguette (strongly-coded Frenchness here), touching the keypad to a Parisian entryway (hint: sidewalk posts). The fashion signifiers are front and center (black Gucci bag (nice call back) and crisp white shirt). The meaning of this image is clear; it’s part of a category of images that take the idea of Touching Parisian Keypad with Baked Goods to represent participation in broader concepts of fashionability, style, and Frenchness. The photographer has worked to codify this image with the significations of presence associated with Instagram: her wrist is twisted and her finger is bent to show movement and action. She’s just picked up her baguette and is on her way back upstairs, to her atelier. Leaning the bread against the dirty outside wall of the building, she presses her finger hard against the key fob receptor and waits.
From here, a hundred different images open before us. Pinterest has plenty of ideas for what we might be looking for. There are more muted tones, more French baked goods, female legs with a croissant in a bed, a stack of books in tostled white sheets, an entanglement of pearls and gold chains atop a Haussmannian mantle. Each image means everything and nothing; they offer an infinite number of significations useful in the creation of some greater concept. They are a kaleidoscope of abstractions, each more or less literal than the last, a churn of symbols and representations.
Sometimes, they fall out of order: they become pure simulacra, symbols without any referent. That’s how I fell down this rabbit hole: the fourth image showed up on my feed, and I laughed out loud and clicked when I realized the hand was pressing the key fob receptor. What was this image supposed to be communicating? I couldn’t imagine. I hadn’t realized I’d stumbled upon an image with its own genre, its own history of art, the Very Concept of Fashionable Hands Touching French Keypads. It doesn’t matter at all what order they came to exist in - the Gucci glove could practically be an ad, a reference to an Internet trend (I don’t think Gucci would do that, but another brand might).
The semiotics of Pinterest is a constant swirl of representing the general ideas of things. Thus you can be both extremely specific (picture four) and extremely unspecific (picture one) - it’s a matter of abstraction, of how far the referent has travelled in the symbolic realm. We watch, as we endlessly click, the real-time movement of symbols through social life. Their constant exchange transforms them before our eyes, marked by our hands as we take them for our own, as they become tools in our creations: a Dream Vacation, a French Girl Vibe, a Daydream.