Thursday confessions. My favourite day. On my favourite forum chat site The Knot/Nest, today is Thursday confessions on the boards I hang out on. We all bare our souls and announce what has been eating at us that week. Its refreshing, invigorating and its cleansing. But its still not completely anonymous. I know I have held back in Thursday confessions, partly because these people know my real name and my real life, and partly because in my stupidity, I made my log-in name my first name and I worry about people I know in real life googling me and finding me. But for all of us to scared to confess whats bothering us or baring our deepest secret, there is a virtual community that is completely anonymous: Post Secret.
I kind of assumed everyone is now aware of one of my absolute favourite web phenomenons. But just in case you haven't:
PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.
Frank at Post Secret started this project about 4 years ago. He now has 3 books out and blog site full of people's secrets. It is updated every Sunday with the best for the week. The image at the top of this post is my favourite from this week. My confession: I only clean my house if I know someone is coming over, so I tend to invite people to visit every 3-4 weeks. Otherwise my house becomes certifiable.
What I really love about this though is the spinoff activities it has spurned. With the release of his 3rd book, Frank encouraged people to leave Post Secrets in copies of the books in libraries and bookstores before purchasing their own. Some people reported up to 3 secrets in their copy, and one person even found a response to a secret left by someone else! Visit the Post Secret forum community for more stories of found secrets. In an increasingly digitized world its hard to feel that connectedness to the world around us. Post Secret helps that - reading these stories every week, there is at least one that says to me, "hey, I know how that feels". A virtual confessional where everyone gets to be the priest and offer forgiveness. Redemption is only a click away.
If you haven't checked it out, do so. And I thought as a fun experiment, I will allow anonymous comments on my blog for the next few days. Leave your own "post" secret for us - let it out and be free!
What I really love about this though is the spinoff activities it has spurned. With the release of his 3rd book, Frank encouraged people to leave Post Secrets in copies of the books in libraries and bookstores before purchasing their own. Some people reported up to 3 secrets in their copy, and one person even found a response to a secret left by someone else! Visit the Post Secret forum community for more stories of found secrets. In an increasingly digitized world its hard to feel that connectedness to the world around us. Post Secret helps that - reading these stories every week, there is at least one that says to me, "hey, I know how that feels". A virtual confessional where everyone gets to be the priest and offer forgiveness. Redemption is only a click away.
If you haven't checked it out, do so. And I thought as a fun experiment, I will allow anonymous comments on my blog for the next few days. Leave your own "post" secret for us - let it out and be free!
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