Pinterest drama

Over the weekend, something very strange happened while I was on Pinterest. I got an invitation to join a group board – I get a lot of those – but before I accepted the invitation, I checked out the board first. I wanted to have a good look at it first. I ended up liking A LOT of pins on that board and started pinning like crazy. I guess the person who owned the board got offended that I did not accept her invite right away because she ended up blocking me. (It’s too bad; I also checked out her profile and she had some really awesome boards and I wanted to follow her but I couldn’t because she had blocked me.)

I tried to figure out if I had done something wrong. Did I break some kind of Pinterest etiquette rule? Was I in the wrong to FIRST pin from that board before addressing the invitation? I would’ve accepted the invitation but could not do that anymore. Still, I was already following that board, and I was not banned from it, so I was still able to pin from that board.

But, still. I was confused. This was a really bizarre thing to happen. I was trying to figure out if I had done something wrong or if I was being affected by somebody else’s drama.

So I contacted the folks at Pinterest to see if I had committed some kind of goof. I have NEVER run into this problem so the whole thing had me a bit flummoxed. Because it was the weekend, I knew it would be a while before I heard back from TPTB at Pinterest. I contacted a friend of mine who is also on Pinterest and who I follow and I asked her about it. She said it sounded strange to her, too, and she hasn’t run into something like this either despite being on Pinterest for a long time. After that talk, I figured that maybe it was the board owner taking issue and that I had not done anything wrong. It struck me as silly that we would HAVE to accept a group board invitation. I don’t think we should be forced to.

Well, I heard back from Pinterest today. The person said A: The board owner is allowed to block anyone for whatever reason. B: I was not obligated to accept an invitation to join a group board. And C: I was still allowed to pin from that board if I wanted to.

I am so glad I got answers! So apparently the bottom line is that the whole “crisis” was about someone else’s drama. NMP!

I have to admit, though, that I’ve since been wary of group boards. I REALLY don’t want to run into a situation like this again. To be honest, this is the first time since I started using Pinterest years ago that I have run into drama on Pinterest. The BIG thing I have always loved about Pinterest is that it’s been drama-free (up until now, I guess). So many people on there are SO NICE and KIND and UNDERSTANDING. And fellow fangirls get the way we talk and act crazy over pins related to our fandoms. So now I guess the drama will be everywhere, even on Pinterest.

That said, I am now wary of group boards. Unless I know the person IRL or we’ve been Internet buddies for years, I won’t follow anymore group boards. I’m not gonna deal with other people freaking out over me not accepting their invitations to join their group boards. Yeah, I know it means less boards for me to follow, but that’s okay. There are lots more out there.

And now I can just walk away from this whole situation untroubled and keep doing my own thing!