Whether it’s a silly story of a drunken goof or a far more serious personal account, we all have our secrets. And when others want to tell you theirs, the notion of knowing that special nugget of truth can send tingles down your spine.
Hence the genius of the PostSecret project. Creator Frank Warren started the project as part of Artomatic, a forum for visual artists, musicians and performers. Warren passed out postcards to strangers, told them to write a secret on it and encouraged them to send the cards back to him. But the secret-cleansing process didn’t end there, Warren said.
“I reached a point where I stopped passing them out and thought that would be the end of the project, but the idea spread virally in the real world,” he said. “I started getting postcards on homemade postcards, on these beautifully decorated postcards. … Today, I receive between 100 and 200 every day from all over the world.”
The influx of secrets, which exceeded the Artomatic project and spawned PostSecret.com, has become a major success on the Internet. Warren said the site has had 120 million viewers in the past three years.
With those numbers, it’s not hard to see the site has become must-read material for many people, including Shin Ock, a sophomore psychology major.
“It’s different every single week,” she said. “It’s like watching a television show – even though sometimes the plot lines are recycled or whatever, you watch because you’re so invested in it. I feel like I am invested in whatever he posts that week.”
Freshman journalism major Lindsay Deutsch says she also feels the draw of secrets.
“It seems really authentic,” she said. “It doesn’t look like a big production; it looks like actually people are writing these postcards and it’s very personal. It kind of … puts your life into perspective.”
And that perspective can take different forms – secrets on the site are typically either humorous or darkly personal. Choosing which secrets to post to his site can be a difficult task, Warren said.
“I try not to judge the secrets,” he said. “I think they’re all pretty special. But I do select ones that are new or surprising or shocking. I like the funny secrets and the hopeful secrets.”
While Warren enjoys the more lighthearted secrets, others – even the intense ones – are similarly interesting, he said.
“I like the secrets that seem really heartfelt,” Deutsch said. “It doesn’t seem like they take a long time to make really flowery phrasing. I like the ones that seem more honest and taboo – when they’re not poetic and they’re just kind of out there.”
Where the raw honesty draws Deutsch in, Ock sees the site as a window into the world.
“It’s kind of like a reflection of yourself, as well as society,” she said. “A lot of the secrets are relatable by everyone – like you’ll read it and be like, ‘Wow, me too!’ – or some things are just so scary or so shocking that it just draws you closer – ‘What kind of person would write something like that or do something like that?’ – It kind of makes me feel more connected with people.”
Despite Warren’s struggles to narrow down his choices every week, he does have occasional moments of clarity.
“Sometimes the secrets will choose themselves,” he added. “I’ll go through a hundred during the day and put them away and then at night, as I’m about to fall asleep one of the postcards will just pop into my mind. It’s almost as though it’s demanding that I go back and get it and put it on the website one Sunday.”
While the secrets change from week to week, one thing keeps people coming back for more.
“Everyone, whether they want to admit it or not, wants to know other people’s deepest and darkest secrets,” Deutsch said.
Frank Warren will be in the Grand Ballroom of the Stamp Student Union on Tuesday night from 6:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. The event is free for students and $10 for non-students. All attendees must pick up tickets before the event.
Tripp.Laino@yahoo.com
