Pin Not, Observe Do.

Flaneurie, once a large and known community of line-walkers who neither identified within the industrial city with all its expanding population, or the prestigious bourgeoisie who owned the right to the means of production (Prouty, 2009). This group used the urban city and its masses as a camouflage in which to express themselves, sometimes being as outrageous as walking a pet turtle and it worked.  The Flaneurie was thought to have faded into the unknown after the fall of the arcades in Paris, in which had allowed these people to observe and become spectacles if they so wished, as described by Walter Benjamin in the 1870s (Prouty, 2009). However, Prouty believes that this community had a to have a more robust and lengthy existence (Prouty, 2009).

Many would agree with Prouty’s thoughts; how could a whole community of people just disappear because of one simple misfortune? Perhaps they didn’t, perhaps the majority of them simply lay dormant until an opportunity arouse that would allow for them to become prominent again. This is where we look into the online community. Unlike Paris as mentioned by Benjamin in the 1800s, the online world is home to not just the population of one location but the population of the world. Millions of people are online everyday exploring different sites and places in anonymity, yet still allowing their individualism to come through. Does this not sound familiar? Pinterest is a great example for this. To be involved in Pinterest one does not need to actually pin anything themselves, there are many accounts in which have little to no content on them at all. If they do not wish to share content themselves why do they have an account?

Cyberflaneur.(Cyberflaneur, 2014)

This is what we could call a cyberflaneur, much like their 19^th century predecessors they like to observe and blend in rather than participate. Rather than create their own space they fill and expand among other spaces, linking a network of pages relevant to their interests and cognitively mapping them in their minds (Barnes, 1997). Of course, the centre of these maps, as stated in the week four lecture, is what is considered the most important (Kuttainen, 2017). In the case of cyberflaneurs on Pinterest, this would be their interests, everything else would be expanding off that.  Some argue that this idea of the cyberflaneur has come to end via the ability to engage in frictionless sharing. That if you open up your Pinterest account everything that you are interested in or care about it there and this defeats the concept of being a flaneur and not caring but just wandering (Morozov, 2012). Could it be that even though you do not participate and re-pin or like or comment on content, if you follow any particular board, you are no longer just wandering but unconsciously participating? It is an interesting argument to ponder would you not agree?

Word Count: 475

References

Barnes, G. (1997). Passages of the Cyber-Flaneur. Retrieved from http://www.raynbird.com/essays/Passage_Flaneur.html

Cyberflaneur [Image]. (2014). Retrieved from http://stengali.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/resurrecting-cyberflaneur.html

Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place lecture four: Maps. [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au

Morozov, E. (2012, Feb 4). Opinion | The Death of the Cyberflâneur. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/the-death-of-the-cyberflaneur.html?pagewanted=all

Prouty, R. (2009). Turtle on a Leash. Retrieved from http://www.onewaystreet.typepad.com/one_way_street/2009/10/a-turtle-on-a-leash.html