PostSecret

“We elementary school teachers do NOT want you to ‘volunteer’ in our classrooms! We all think you need to get a JOB, get a LIFE.”

“I think GOD makes my period late, just to watch me squirm.”

“Every year a single rose from this pink rose bush would bloom white. My grandpa thought it was really special, he and I would wait for it every year. He died nine years ago. The white bloom still comes but now it’s just like any other flower.”

“Everyone who knew me before 9/11 believes I’m dead.”

This is a sampling of the ever-changing selection of secret-bearing postcards that are found every week on PostSecret, the Internet-based community art project created by Frank Warren, an entrepreneur turned blogger, author and public speaker. Some are funny; some are tragic; all are deeply personal.

Despite posting new content only once each week, PostSecret boasts a monthly hit count of more than three million and a total visitor count of more than 131 million since its creation in 2003. El Mundo PostSecret, a Spanish-language version of the original site, began on March 2 of this year and has already received 17,500 visitors. If The New York Times with its 24-hours-a-day news coverage receives only 13 million monthly hits, just four times that of PostSecret, it is clear this art project meets online community is no flash in the pan.



To Share a Secret
Emily Bursch is a sophomore at Flagler College majoring in English literature; she also has a secret. “Since the first time I read PostSecret, there was one secret that I had in mind,” she said. And so she made a pact with her friend: each of them would create a postcard and submit it. If one of them was posted, the card’s creator would admit the secret to her friend.

Some time later, Bursch’s postcard appeared on the Web site. Though unwilling to publicly admit her secret, Bursch made her friend guess which was hers. “There were only five posted that week, so she figured out which was mine,” Bursch explained.

“It really was therapeutic to make up a piece of artwork for something I had been thinking about a long time,” Bursch said. Because she is an “artistic, crafty person,” physically creating the postcard did not take a long time. But she explained that the finished secret could have taken on a much different form at another time in her life. “If I were someone younger – five or 10 years ago,” she said, “it would’ve been completely different than what I chose.”

Jenna Ullrich, a sophomore graphic design and photography major at the University of Maryland, was hired as one of the first two PostSecret interns last year; in this role, she saw hundreds of secrets arrive each week. Though she thought about submitting her own, she never followed through with it. “You have to be really brave to send out your secret to a complete stranger,” she said.

Northeastern University middler and philosophy student Nicole Keimer completed the pair of original PostSecret interns, but unlike Ullrich, she has submitted some of her secrets. None of them were published, though if they had been, “none have been that devastating,” she said. “People talk about how they felt such a release from sending in their secret, but… I just enjoyed the process of doing the artistic piece to represent my secret.”

Judith Hall, a social psychologist and professor at Northeastern University, equates the creation of these postcards with the expressive writing tradition. “If someone is given an opportunity to write about something that troubles them, it has these incredible effects on their well-being,” she explained. “There are less emotional symptoms; they are healthier and more focused.”

“If someone spends a long time deciding on a secret, deciding on the phrasing, how to present it, it is a much more significant event than it seems on the surface,” Hall said. “It gives them a chance to vent. It’s a form of unconscious self-therapy.”

Though now an alumna, Britta Nugent first heard about PostSecret as a student of theater and English literature at Mount Union College; she submitted her secret during her junior year. “It wasn’t exactly something I was keeping from my friends at school, but it definitely was something I was keeping from my parents – and it was eating away at me,” she explained. “I think sending that postcard in is what eventually gave me the courage to tell my parents what I had lied to them about for so long. I’ve given PostSecret most of the credit for that for a long time. I’ll always be grateful.”



PostSecret: The Evolution
From obscure beginnings, PostSecret has grown into an international phenomenon. The band All American Rejects requested to use some of the postcards in its 2005 “Dirty Little Secret” music video. PostSecret has won eight Weblog Awards – the “world’s largest blog competition” – including Best American Weblog, Best Community Weblog, Best Topical Weblog and Weblog of the Year. It has also received two Webby Awards – “honoring excellence on the Internet” – in the 2006 NetArt category: Webby Award Winner and People’s Voice Winner.

Warren has parlayed the Web site’s popularity into four successful books: “PostSecret,” “My Secret,” “The Secret Lives of Men and Women” and “A Lifetime of Secrets.” He has appeared on “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America” and “20/20,” as well as programs on CNN, MSNBC and NPR. The PostSecret International Art Exhibition is currently touring the United States and Canada.

But the project is not all about profit and fame. Warren promotes numerous wellness resources, primarily the National Hopeline Network – 1(800) SUICIDE – for which PostSecret has raised more than $100,000. Instead of accepting the $1,000 offered to him by the All American Rejects, Warren asked them to make a $2,000 donation to the Hopeline. For his efforts in “advancing awareness and acceptance of mental wellness and mental illness,” Warren was honored by the National Mental Health Association with one of their inaugural forWARDS, which “pay tribute to the people, actions and events that move the cause of mental health forward each year.”

The Truth Shall Set You Free
One of the biggest questions raised by the immense scope of this anonymous project is, are these thousands of secrets all true? Though several attempts to contact him were unsuccessful, Warren addresses this question on the Web site, stating that it “is more complicated than it might appear on the surface.” He goes on to explain that he views each postcard as less of a secret and more of a work of art. “As art, secrets can have different layers of truth. Some can be both true and false, others can become true over time depending on our choices,” he said. “Sometimes a secret we keep from ourselves only becomes true after we read it on a stranger’s postcard.”

Bursch feels the question is not really worth considering. “I think that if somebody was making up a secret and sending it in, there must be some underlying thing going on,” she said. “It must be therapeutic in some way or they wouldn’t spend all that time on it.”

Though there is no way to prove if the secrets are true or false, Hall believes there are probably only “a tiny fraction” of people fabricating secrets. “There is really nothing to be gained,” she said. Making up a secret is “interesting in and of itself.”

Hall concurred with Warren’s explanation of the multifaceted nature of secrets and the project in general. “Maybe it’s a wish instead of a secret,” she explained. “If nothing else, they may be reaching out for attention. Knowing a lot of people may look at it is satisfying a need.”

There is, however, the potential for people’s competitive nature to come through. If a person is only sending in a secret to get it posted on the Web site, “it could promote distortion,” Hall said. “It may lead people to make up a secret or make it more vivid.” She also considered the idea that previous postings may influence new submission. However, the lack of online archives may act as a mitigating factor, promoting an “instant amnesia” about what has been publicly posted.

Community: Why PostSecret Has Become So Popular
“It’s a kind of voyeurism,” Hall said about PostSecret. “Even mentally healthy people have a streak of that in them, a morbid fascination for the terrible.”

“To have this window into other people’s lives is definitely alluring,” Ullrich concurred. “What keeps people coming back is the cathartic effect it has for those who read their own secrets… written by a completely different person.”

Now, beyond just reading the postcards posted each Sunday, people can interact with one another through the PostSecret Community. “Since [Warren] receives so many secrets, he can’t post or publish them all,” Keimer explained. “The Community was created so that people can still share their secrets anonymously and have their voices heard.” Since its creation, the Community has expanded to more than 20,000 registered users, she said.

Though she has a fulltime job as an instructional aide for children with learning disabilities, Nugent is a dedicated member of the Community, often spending up to four hours on it each night. “Some of us who have been there for a while have formed some fantastic friendships,” she said. “It gives everyone the opportunity to come on the forum – post a secret if they so choose – and they immediately receive support.” She added, “It’s really helped me through quite a bit in the past, and the people who post there are some of the most genuine, loving people you’ll ever come across. I’ve found a home away from home… and I’m so thankful for it every single day.”

PostSecret is a blog and a business, but also a community and a form of therapy. “People have sent in cards saying they saw the Web site when they were thinking of killing themselves, but they called the [Hopeline] and changed their mind,” Bursch explained. “PostSecret has an impact on people. It can change their lives.”

Nugent added, “I hope PostSecret stays around for years to come.”