If you’re going to get married at home plate, who better to be a groomsman than Johnny himself?Yeah, that Johnny – the one with the goofy grin who wears an oversized pot on his head.After a spring spent dissecting Pinterest with a thousand gingham-patterned scalpels (It’s feminist! It’s anti-feminist! It perpetuates princess culture! IT NEEDS MORE GINGHAM!), purveyors of aspirational, kittens-in-mittens social-networking sites can turn their attention to a new site: Dudepins.com.
Social networking with a side of Jim Beam and rugby tackles and bacon tacos. Pinterest for Dudes.
Two young tech-type Vancouver, British Columbia, dudes were having a drink back in February, lamenting the lack of dude-oriented materials on Pinterest. “We thought Pinterest was great,” says Colin Brown, one of the dudes. “But I just didn’t feel like I was connecting with people who had similar taste. Weddings and fashion design – that’s not really what I’m interested in.”
So they created an online bro space. With a slogan: “Man up. Sign up. Pin up.”
In May, Dudepins opened in Beta to invited users. Brown and his co-founder, Kamil Szybalski, won’t say how many they have now, except that their numbers are growing “30 (percent( to 50 percent” every week.
It could just as easily be read as surrealist parody – dudism by dada. The main page frequently reads like a pre-“Mad Men” rule book of masculinity: Dudes want to peruse The Ultimate Steak Manual. Dudes would appreciate a poster reading “I Have a Mustache, Therefore I Am.”
Brown admits Dudepin’s definition of dudedom is tailored to his and Szybalski’s tastes; the two retain veto power over all posts.
