Over the weekend, I saw a pin on Pinterest that was basically issuing a rule. If you repin too many pictures, you'll be blocked. Board raiding, where someone pins hundreds of pins without following the pinner, are evil deeds and must be stopped. She went on to say in her note-picture that on her board, ten repins on the limit and then you're blocked.
I'm reading this going WTF? There are rules? I've never pinned hundreds of pins from one user in a day before, but people have done it to me and--guess what?--I don't care. Pin all you want.
It never ceases to amaze me how arbitrary rules get created. How are people supposed to know these made-up rules? This was the first I'd heard of them and only because someone had herself a little rant about a group board that I'm somehow following.
There used to be a game I played on Facebook that I really liked called Fairyland. It involved planting flowers and watering other people's gardens to find animals at the feeding plates. I've stopped playing the game now for two reasons. The first is not enough time, but the second made it easier for not to try and carve time out of my schedule. People started making up rules.
Seriously anal rules like you can only sprinkle so many times or don't water all the flowers when you visit. No swooping (where someone takes a critter away from others who've been patiently watering, waiting for its appearance). It seemed as if there were as many rules as there were gardens.
It became stressful to play. I mentioned lack of time to play the game. Because of this, I would return sprinkles to people who watered my garden as fast as I could. I frequently didn't see warnings not to water until after I'd already done so. These arbitrary rules took all the fun out of the game.
In my experience (and I could be wrong), but it seems to me that it's women who make up these ridiculous rules, changing what should be stress-free and fun into some kind of minefield of unknown etiquette.
At least on Fairyland, there were places to post the rules for any particular garden. That wasn't what was supposed to go in that text box, but it gave the visitor a chance to figure out what not to do. Pinterest doesn't have anything on the individual pins to let a person know they're about to make a grave faux pas by liking too many pictures enough to pin them.
My message to those who are making up rules: Stop. Just have fun and let everyone else have fun, too. There are enough rules in life without creating more.
