By Candice Montenegro, Contributor
INQUIRER.net
WHAT if you were given a chance to reveal a secret without anyone ever knowing it’s yours? Would you?
PostSecret is a blog that allows you share your deepest, darkest secrets anonymously. The blog is a collection of secrets from people across the US and around the world containing revelations ranging from childhood humiliation and betrayal, to funny experiences and fantasies.
You can reveal practically anything, and you only have to follow two rules: it must be true and it should never have been previously shared with anyone else.
Frank Warren, the artist behind the project, put up the blog in January 2005 and has since received and displayed up to 200,000 secrets. The site is updated every Sunday with 20 new secrets, all 4-by-6-inch postcards in which the secrets are written, drawn or otherwise creatively put together.
The site is simple and straightforward. The artwork is posted one after the other, sometimes with a short explanation or story. Past secrets aren’t archived and cannot be accessed after an update. And you can’t post comments on the blog, in keeping with its non-judgmental feel.
The blog also features a PostSecret Community where readers can participate in a forum and check schedules for PostSecret events. It also features Video Secrets that are much like the traditional postcards, except the secrets are revealed through a montage of sorts.
PostSecret won the Best Blog category in the 2007 Weblog Awards. It also gave birth to international counterparts PostSecret France and PostSecret auf Deutsch. The idea is also starting to catch on locally, in young blogs such as Code Blued.
Warren stresses in the site that he cannot vouch for the truthfulness of all the secrets he receives. Each postcard, however, is a work of art that has different layers of truth that can mean different things to different people.
He also says that a secret we keep to ourselves sometimes becomes true only after we read it on a stranger’s postcard.
Some people probably find consolation in knowing that somewhere out there, someone is hiding the same dirty little secret. To most, it’s simply entertaining to read another person’s embarrassing, disgusting or stupid secret.
Is it any wonder then that the postcards keep coming?
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:32 pm
this is cool, i liked the idea of sharing my own secrets
May 5th, 2008 at 4:47 am
How uncanny. I recently discovered this site by surfing the blognet and added this to my blogroll. take a look: eastsidemommy.com/blog I didn’t realize this blog was such a rage.
May 4th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
thanks for the mention! send in your secrets to codeblued@gmail.com!
April 24th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Hey, this stuff is cool! Finally, a site where I can share my secret anonymously, huh!
Hmm, I got plenty of “secrets” that are somewhat crazy enough to even think about, secrets that are simply ‘mind-boggling.’
Given appropriate time, I’ll log in some of ‘em. You’ll go crazy over ‘em… that’s for sure!
Kudos to you, guys!
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:34 am
i’m proud of you