What would make it possible for us to reveal our secrets to complete strangers?
In the PostSecret project, men and women from all over the world anonymously send in illustrated post cards with their secrets printed on them. Founder of the project, Frank Warren says, ““There are two kinds of secrets. The ones we keep from others and the ones we keep from ourselves.” PostSecret was created as safe place where people could get their secrets off their chest and sometimes have them on display for the world to see, while still remaining anonymous. The project was founded on January 1, 2005 and grew to hold over 2,500 postcards by 2007. The sheer number and varying content of the confessions is overwhelming and Frank claims that the “postcards are inspirational to those who read them, have healing powers for those who write them, give hope to people who identify with a stranger’s secret, and create an anonymous community of acceptance.”
PostSecret Official Trailer
Here is a video about PostSecret that includes the shared testimonies and secrets of everyday people.
PostSecret: Fifty People, One Question
In her book, “Alone Together”, Sherry Turkle examines the intricacies of exposing one’s secrets on PostSecret. “The writers hold a mirror up to our complex times,” she explains. “There are important things to learn or be reminded of… loneliness is so great that marriage to someone we have only met on a website can seem our best hope… we fall in love with twenty-first century pen pals. Often their appeal is that we don’t know who they ‘really’ are.” However, one of the aspects that Turkle considers is the fact that readership and exaggeration are directly related, the more outrageous the secret, the more people will gravitate towards it. Is this an incentive for people to be untruthful with their secrets or does the anonymity of the PostSecret project, in general, help keep this in check? If people are making up their secrets and not being truthful then the whole project is fiction, which is why true confessions are vital to the nature of the system and the impact made. Though it may seem that PostSecret is no more than a black hole in which to drop one’s baggage, the project does much more to try to engage its writers by connecting them to others who share their issues or can offer encouragement and inspiration. Instead of keeping a diary, twenty-year-old Nancy sends a postcard to PostSecret every month. She struggles with self-esteem issues, but her condition is improving through her involvement with the project.
On a wider scale, PostSecret also holds an annual picnic where writers can meet others and view the original postcards. As Turkle explains from her interview with a young man who uses the site, “sometimes acceptance is there. Sometimes it is not. PostSecret offers the pretense of acceptance” and that is what all its users are striving to gain – they are not necessarily expecting a life-changing resolution, all they want to know is that someone is listening.
PostSecret works so well because the creating a postcard is not instantaneous. It forces the writer to think about what they want to say and choose the best way to depict it through visual and textual representation. Unlike other confessional sites where revealing a secret is simply a click away, PostSecret’s mail-in method provides for a more-thought out and prepared approach.
Overall, PostSecret offers a chance to uncover people’s secrets that is not possible anywhere else on our offline. In physical confrontation, there is always criticism and often disapproval, even within the boundaries of family and friendship. Online, it can be too impersonal and not meaningful enough to post a secret to a chat room or confessional website. But, through PostSecret writers can reveal their darkest secrets in an artistic and significant way.
Sources:
lnicolegates 
An awesome blog entry, Lauren. It just fascinates me. These kinds of confessional websites (and actually, many blogs also feel like very personal diaries “writ large” with intimacies exposed to the word) leave me wondering about the psychological work that these digital opportunities allow and promote. It must be very therapeutic for some people to do this. For others, I think, it’s a kind of exhibitionism. Really interesting stuff. We should have a great discussion tomorrow. Maybe you could ask everyone in class to write down a secret and share them anonymously….