PostSecret

There’s quite a few things I love about the World Wide Web, that allows people to connect with each other on astronomical levels as never before even if they don’t know a thing about each other, it’s one of the strengths of non-verbal communication which is the most fundamental aspect of how we communicate. The web is a highly non-verbal medium, despite recent broadband video, devoid of such things as body language; pictures and written words, even punctuation, convey a message. It also affords some aspect of anonymity and both these aspects are for the most part seen in a negative, even perhaps sinister way. 3:40 in this video turns into something very valuable, this is what I love about PostSecret.

PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death and God from Frank Warren on Vimeo.

What if anonymous, non-verbal communication, open to interpetation, yet so clear as you know what it’s saying right away, actually was a good thing? What might it allow us to communicate to people that we’d otherwise be bound by social law not to communicate? What if the only thing you knew about a person was their innermost secret and their idendity was as secret as the secret itself was, still is in that persons life? A level of safety, in public disclosure, no need for a name. What insights into life, the trials and tribulations of therein could you learn and yourself identify with, what if you could let something out that’s been inside, a confession, a feeling, a fear, a joyous memory?

So PostSecret, as much a movement of free expression and honesty as art and voyeurism, a glimpse into people’s journey through life, of which we are all on one and going through similar things to the post secret writers. Affinity, empathy mixed with sorrow and shock sometimes and it’s beautifully simple, people write on a postcard their secret and add their own artwork send it in and this guy called Frank sifts through them and posts a weekly blog post with the scans.

Today a video was posted up on the postsecret blog, and it’s worth watching just to see how hard it is to say what you feel without anonymity or fear of rejection, misunderstanding, this is the video above. Readers of the blog also pickout their best of the best, sometimes make videos or whole new blog posts sorting them into categories, secrets that really affected them, made them cry, made them laugh, perhaps even caused them to positively change their lives. This is one of my recent faves

I have a few of my own, I guess, well I hope one day, one of them will make someone smile. Secrets aren’t always bad, they can be feelings that you’ve hidden away simply because you haven’t found the right person who’ll value those feelings. Then again it could all be guilty-tourette syndrome.

I like to eat cereal in my bedroom alone in my ……

Posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009