The Antidote to Pinterest Stress: 6 Sites that Don’t Take Pinning Too Seriously

Pinterest can be a lot to take sometimes. Don’t get me wrong — I love Pinterest. It is an excellent source of inspiration, and I honestly don’t remember how I kept track of anything I liked before it came around. But sometimes Pinterest’s steady diet of craft perfection can make a person feel kind of inadequate.

I went onto Pinterest a few hours ago looking for a cute way to tie a scarf, and now I have an overwhelming desire to serve my friends milk in tiny jugs with handmade mini doughnuts as garnishes. But my house is a mess and I don’t know how to make doughnuts and I think my friends are all either gluten-free or lactose intolerant. I need more pin-able friends, preferably with beards and/or nail art.

Pinterest Stress is a thoroughly modern ailment, known to target young brides and mothers with toddler birthday parties to plan. We know we’re not supposed to judge our lives by someone else’s Pinterest board, but sometimes all the perfection just makes a person feel inadequate. When that strikes, nothing helps banish it like a quick reminder not to take Pinterest so seriously. When Pinterest Stress hits, I recommend stopping by one of these Pinterest parodies to put things in a bit of perspective.

This is the place where Pinterest good intentions go to die (no really, that’s their tag line). Courageous folks share the failed recipes and projects that come from trying something they saw on Pinterest. The photos are beyond funny.

The Pintester
All those beautiful pins make crafting look so easy. We plan to do them someday, but Sonja Foust actually takes them on, and her attempts to recreate beautiful pins can veer into terrifying places. I don’t know why I would want to cut a glass bottle with fire, but the threat of flying shards of fire scares the Pintester not.

Read The Pintester to remind yourself that not doing every DIY tutorial you see is probably extending your life by a few years.

My Imaginary Well-Dressed Toddler Daughter
The adventures of Quinoa and her shockingly well-dressed toddler friends never fail to entertain, and it’s good to remember that there’s more to life than being really, really, ridiculously well-dressed.

Pinstrosity
This seemingly endless trove of Pinterest Fails and terrifying attempts to bring Pinterest projects into the real world is so hilarious I often find myself a little disappointed when a project actually comes out as intended.

Pinterest, You Are Drunk
Including helpful advice like, “When your DIY starts with ‘saw through a grand piano,’ it might be time to simplify.”

WTF, Pinterest?
Not everything on Pinterest is gold. WTF, Pinterest finds some of the most bewildering pins out there, including some of the strangest Pinterest comment fights you will ever see. There’s nothing like a 100-post flamewar over a Doctor Who quote to remind you not to take Pinterest too seriously.

– Re-edited from a post originally published August 18, 2013 – DF