The only time I seem to interact with Pinterest is when I’m searching for images of something on my phone, let’s say “pictures of mountains”. I want to get the image in full res so I go to the site, then I can’t copy it or download it.
From these brief interactions and exploring the site I just don’t see the appeal. Pinterest just seems like a terrible image search engine with the ‘feature?’ that every few scrolls pulls up similar-ish categories to the image search you did(Mausoleum might bring up Pharaohs for example). It could be that I’ve just never taken the time to use it properly, so I thought I would ask people: what is Pinterest good for / why does it exist.
Hopefully is not too harsh I am high atm.
On top of the definition provided by the other commenter, it’s vaguely analogous to shopping for something, and opening a new tab for everything that looks vaguely good. Then doing a pass to winnow down and close items.
There’s also structure for organizing things that are related. So if you weren’t sure if you wanted a toaster or a toaster oven, you could spatially have two separate groups.
It only clicked for me once I saw someone else use it. I’m used to it just being hostile to search traffic.